The black sun hangs high

Chapter 15 Trading
Having delivered the message, Sally no longer needed to stay in the "Alchemy Thief" shop. It was already sunset, and she had to hurry back to the beer hall, or she would surely face old Schubert's raging fury.

Sally then made a face at Hugh and then nimbly slipped out of the store.

"Um……"

The enormous Boss Gerald reached out and turned on several other magic lamps, then sat down in an equally enormous chair. He took a heavy breath and looked at Hugh, saying, "Mr. Ernst, little Sally likes you very much."

Gerrard's tone was subtle.

But it was also very sincere.

Hughes exchanged a glance with the large-sized boss, paused his movements, and after a moment nodded: "Hmm... I know."

He certainly knew.

As an ordinary girl growing up in the city of Seren, Sally Miranda's way of looking at things and people is simple and cautious. Despite being at the bottom of society, which is filled with all kinds of messy information, she is more willing to trust the judgment she makes with her own eyes. It is precisely because of this that when her original self, the unfortunate and pitiful illegitimate son of the Ernst family, arrived in Seren, she did not cast a contemptuous and hostile look at him like others did.

However, the memories that Hugh inherited show that the original Hugh Ernst was so insecure. Although he also had complicated feelings for the young and beautiful bartender, he never dared to express them openly. And after taking over this body, Hugh himself had no time to deal with this situation.

Although Lin Xiuge, who controls this body, has a liberal arts background, he is always exceptionally rational in certain aspects.

“If I really want to repay her for her feelings for Hugh Ernst, then I must handle the next steps... If possible, I should find a way to get her out of Cilan City.”

Hugh lowered his gaze and sighed helplessly in his heart.

As if he had figured something out, Gerald chuckled a few times, then raised his fat arm, marked by the tightness of his clothes, grabbed a huge metal cup from the cabinet next to him, and gulped down several mouthfuls.

It was only then that Hugh noticed that Gerald's legs seemed unusually short and thick. Compared to his exaggerated physique, his legs looked like two pillars grafted onto his body. It was hard to imagine how such lower limbs could support such an exaggerated body.

"Hmm... I have some ogre blood."

Boss Gerald clearly has the ability to make outrageous statements. He put down his water glass, then reached behind him and grabbed a hidden handle on the wall. With a seemingly easy pull, he ripped open the extremely heavy half of the wall.

It turned out to be a hidden shipping container.

Hugh estimated the weight of the wall and exclaimed in surprise, "Are you serious?"

"What's there to lie about... hahaha."

Boss Gerald licked his lips in the light of the magic lamp: "Ancestrally speaking, I have 30% Eastern cannibal blood, that is, the cannibals from the Eastern world across the ocean."

"Would Eastern cannibals be any different?"

"Of course, of course."

Gerald was in high spirits. As he opened the drawers in the container, he said, "Compared to the ogres on the Love Plateau, the ogres in the East don't actually eat people anymore. Since several decades ago, when the major empires in the East signed treaties restricting ogres, they no longer dare to attack humans indiscriminately. They are now like... like some gluttonous humans, serving as soldiers and laborers to earn a living and food. They are strong but not very bright, and easy to use."

Hugh's expression became somewhat subtle. He hadn't expected Gerard to be so blunt when talking about his ancestors and elders, but upon reflection, it made sense. Given the level of rejection and hostility humans showed towards other races in Vaan, Gerard's words were already considered quite lenient.

"Alright, let's not talk about those things anymore. You said you need incense ingredients? What kind do you want?"

Boss Gerald patted the open drawer beside him: "Let's get this straight first, if you need a large quantity, I can give you an extra discount. If it's small... well, the discount will naturally be smaller. Is that acceptable?"

"of course."

Hugh nodded and then said, "However... what I actually want is not those incense materials, but some other alchemical herbs. In addition, I may need to purchase some rare and scarce items. I wonder if you can provide them here?"

Hugh's words startled Gerald, but he quickly understood and pointed to the store's door: "Go close the door. There's a sign behind the door; hang it up for me so no one can come in."

Hughes nodded and did as he was told.

He wasn't worried that this boss, whom he had just met and who had cannibalistic blood, would do anything terrible to him. After all, he hadn't sensed any hostility from the other party, and his usually highly sensitive mental world hadn't given him any warning signs in the past two days.

Soon, the shop with the "Closed" sign was closed, and Hugh stood in front of Boss Gerald again.

"Mr. Ernst, tell me, what exactly do you want?"

Gerald's expression turned extremely serious: "Since you used 'incense ingredients' to deal with little Sally, then what you need must be something quite extraordinary?"

Hugh shook his head: "In terms of the variety of items, they are not particularly rare, but I have strict requirements for the quality of these things."

Hearing Hugh say this, Gerald became interested. He patted the shipping container behind him, raised his eyebrows, and said, "Tell me about it."

So Hugh read out the names of the items he had been "longing for" one by one.

"The left ear of an adult earthworm must be intact."

"The short-tailed wolf of the dense forest has five sharp teeth, all of which must have venom glands."

"The roots and stems of young Killer Vine must not be damaged."

"The spider's eight eyes must all belong to the same spider and retain their magic."

"Three bottles of moss on the back of the swamp witch, and their fur... well, never mind that."

As Hugh continued to list what he wanted, Boss Gerald's eyebrows gradually furrowed. Finally, when Hugh almost blurted out "three baskets of fresh hair from the swamp witch," he couldn't hold back any longer and raised his hand to interrupt Hugh. "Stop!"

Gerald's large face was contorted in a grimace, and at this moment, he finally resembled a cannibal: "Mr. Ernst, are you sure you need these things? I feel like you're just here to make fun of me?"

In that instant, Hugh felt an overwhelming sense of oppression.

The other party's image was somewhat similar to "Zhen Guanxi," but unfortunately, I was not Lu Zhishen and naturally could not withstand such an imposing manner.

So he quickly waved his hand: "Of course not, do you think I'm such a boring person? We've only just met today, I wouldn't risk being crushed in two by you to provoke you."

After hearing what Hugh said, Gerald finally calmed down.

He pulled a notebook from a corner of the container, then took out an old magic pen: "Repeat what you just said... If you haven't finished, continue. I need to write it down so I can check it one by one in the warehouse."

After saying that, he glared at Hughes again: "I hope you're not just making fun of me!"

"Absolutely not."

Hugh said very sincerely, "However, I must tell you that I only need to buy a portion of them, not every kind. My budget is about three universal gold coins. Is that acceptable to you?"

"Three universal gold coins... three universal gold coins."

Gerald muttered the same thing twice, then nodded: “Okay, but if that’s the case, I’ll remove some of the things you listed, because their prices are far more than a few gold coins can cover, not to mention some of them are borderline contraband.”

As he spoke, he forcefully drew two lines on the notebook with his magic pen, then picked up the notebook to show it to Hugh. Hugh noticed that the two lines crossed out were "the complete left ear of the earth dragon" and "the eyeball of the spider that traverses the earth".

"Come on, Mr. Ernst, continue. What else do you want?"

"There are quite a few more. Shall I list them all at once?"

Gerald nodded: "Speak!"

He had the air of a slaughterhouse owner.

Then a string of strange and unusual terms popped out of Hugh's mouth, and Gerald's expression became extremely subtle as he listened to these demanding requests.

In the end, Hughes rattled off everything he could think of, including the strange requests for "a basket of fresh hair from the swamp witch" and "a set of orthodox female noble ornaments from the Kingdom of Walter."

Even Gerrard, who was well-informed, couldn't help but distort his face upon hearing the names of these two things.

Gerald put away his notebook, glanced at the seemingly very serious and innocent young man in front of him with a complicated expression, and then said, "Mr. Ernst, if I may be so bold, some of these items cannot be considered incense materials, nor can they be used for alchemy, and they are not even suitable as collectibles."

He swallowed hard, then continued, "Of course, if this is just your personal quirk... well, I could try to find them for you, but are you sure you need them? I don't want to ruin my shop's reputation."

“I’m sure, Mr. Gerald.”

Hugh forced a smile: "If conditions permit, I can also increase the budget to four or even five universal gold coins. Within this range, no matter how many items you put together that meet the requirements, I will accept them without hesitation."

"Fine, if I don't make money, I'm not even as good as a giant-eared goblin!"

Gerald slammed the container shut, then stuffed the notebook into his waistband: “Mr. Ernst, you can go now. I’ll go check the warehouse now, and I’ll take anything that meets your requirements… Tonight, I’ll take the stuff to Ernst’s old house, and we’ll trade in person.”

"Deal, Mr. Gerrard."

……

Before leaving Mrs. Small's shopping street, Hugh made a special trip to the "Horn of the Earth Dragon" shop where the commotion had occurred the previous night. This shop was much larger than Gerald's "Alchemy Thief" shop, and it sold not only incense and alchemical herbs, but also a wide variety of everyday magical items.

Inside the store, Hughes smelled an unpleasant odor, somewhat similar to the smell of sewage backflow in his memory. The shop assistants obviously couldn't find the source of the odor, so they used a lot of incense in the store, making the whole store smoky and unbearable.

After confirming that there were no other traces, Hugh quickly headed towards the old house.

He was in a rare good mood. Humans are always like this; as long as they can see the light and hope in adversity, they can always move forward.

Gerrard's feedback filled him with anticipation for the evening's meeting, a feeling akin to those gamers in their past lives who had finally accumulated enough resources to "go all out."

And so, with his vision for the future and a jar of minced meat and mashed potatoes for dinner, Hugh returned to the Ernst family’s old house.

After sitting down at his desk in the bedroom, Hugh calmed down again. He carefully recalled the information that the female mage, Verin Ernst, had revealed to him during the day, and then picked up a pen and began to write quickly on a blank sheet of paper.

He certainly didn't want to seriously write some inflammatory text for Philip, but Hugh felt he needed to go to the Peace Newspaper again. If he didn't have a finished manuscript by then, it wouldn't be easy to get into Philip's office.

"To be honest, this kind of thing is much easier than what I usually write. Anyway, there's no logic or evidence, you can just vent your emotions and make things up."

As Hugh wrote the ambiguous text filled with fabricated information on the manuscript paper as Philip requested, he couldn't help but shake his head more and more as he wrote, feeling nauseous just looking at it.

Time passed slowly, and just as Hugh was about to finish his awful article, he heard a carriage slowly stop in front of the old mansion's gate, followed by a heavy knocking sound.

To prevent Gerald's exaggerated strength from destroying the old house's gate, Hugh had no choice but to put down the manuscript he was about to finish, put on his trench coat, and hurry downstairs. After he reached out and opened the door, Gerald's distinctively large figure and effeminate face appeared before Hugh.

"Mr. Ernst, prepare to receive the goods!"

(End of this chapter)