Unknown Knight

What the slightly plump old man said was a bit Versailles, and it also confirmed Aix's previous guess that these Yakuts were indeed in a friendly closed loop of advantages.

They leave such a large group of reindeer alone and come all the way here to buy food. Do they have much room for retreat? No wonder they can survive in the harsh climate further north. The extreme cold environment there will only be colder than here. Those thousands of reindeer are their last source of confidence.

In addition, they all have excellent archery skills, so they have a lot of gains. They can also hunt very rare albino animals with high added value. These precious furs are very popular among the nobles and can be exchanged for a lot of materials. It may be an exaggeration to say that they live a rich life, but it is definitely to a wealthy level.

Think about the Vijia natives in his territory. They used to have to stay at home to avoid the winter. In comparison, these people are the masters of this cold land. No wonder Igor said that they are descendants of the North Wind God.

"Old man, if I say that I have enough food and supplies to exchange with you, what good things can you give me?"

Seeing Nicholas looking at him hopefully, Aix responded to him, saying that as a business expert, he knew that the wealthy old man in front of him could definitely make him a fortune.

"Oh, haha, my kind sir, I have two white bear skins, five snow fox skins, and more than a dozen snow ermine skins that I just hunted this winter. Do you need them?"

After hearing this, Aix frowned and shook his head. He was not familiar with the upper-level networks, and it would be difficult for him to sell these precious furs.

"What about the stone gold in your hand? Here I have..."

Nicholas felt around in several places on his body, but couldn't find it. He turned around and shouted outside:

"Shelmy, Shelmy."

The first two sentences should be people's names, followed by a bunch of gibberish that Aix couldn't understand.

Soon a timid young man ran in, about seventeen or eighteen years old, holding a small cloth bag in his hand. After calling out to Nicholas, he handed the bag to the old man and turned and left.

Nicholas smiled at Aix and said:

"This is my little grandson. He doesn't speak your language very well. My Lord, look, I only have this much stone gold. How much food do you think it can be exchanged for?"

Then he handed the small cloth bag to Aix.

Weighing it in his hand, Aix felt that this small bag of gold nuggets of varying sizes weighed at least half a pound and was worth at least three hundred silver coins.

It was difficult for him to bargain. If he traded at the market price, the territory would be short of food. If he gave less, he was afraid of hurting the relationship between the two parties. After all, this was their first transaction, so he asked the old man:

"How much do you think is appropriate?"

The ball that Axel kicked back made Nikola quite embarrassed. He thought for a long time before he stammered:

"Well, in previous years, we could get at least twenty bags of wheat from Feste, but this year they are only willing to give us ten bags of wheat. Please give us fifteen bags of wheat."

After hearing this, Axel frowned and tried hard to suppress the urge to laugh. However, he couldn't bear to let the old man suffer any loss. After all, he came here from far away.

But in Nicholas's eyes, he thought that the lord was in trouble, so he couldn't wait to add:

"If all else fails, thirteen bags will do. Ten bags are too few. We'll have to travel a long way to find them!"

Obviously, this person felt guilty, but Aix realized how closed-minded this group of people in a closed-loop friendly circle was. Their overall value system must not be high. From a businessman's perspective, this was a huge discovery of a profit point.

We must firmly grasp this huge interest point, so we decided to give him a huge shock. He weighed the small cloth bag in his hand and said in a very calm tone:

"Well, I don't really need these things, but this is our first trade, and I can't let you lose. Let's exchange at your previous price. I'll give you twenty bags of wheat."

Nicholas clapped his hands excitedly. Before he could say thank you, Aix added:

"But I have a condition. You can only trade with me in the future. Don't worry, I have everything here. The price won't hurt you. It will just be higher than other places."

"Okay, sir, we still need salt. If possible, we can buy some other spices. It would be best if you could sell us some arrows..."

Nicholas obviously lost his confidence at the end. Arrows were generally prohibited items, especially for fishing and hunting residents like them from the tundra. Arrows were absolutely prohibited from being sold. After all, the lord did not want a group of tax-free hunters in the territory, using the arrows sold to them to hunt prey in the territory. He was just trying to ask.

"It's not impossible if the price is right, but I don't know if you old man have anything I need?"

Axel said calmly, but with a doubtful tone.

Nicholas immediately cheered up when he heard this, and with the energy that only young people have, he said to Aix in a vivid way:

"Of course, sir. You don't like white fur, but I have brown bear skins, wolf skins, three tiger skins, and a large number of deer skins, reindeer skins, horse skins, seal skins, and... Shermi, Shermi..."

Nicholas said something to his grandson outside, and soon the young man named Shermi ran in, followed by two young men carrying packages.

The three of them put their packages on the ground and opened them to show them to Aix. It seemed that there were quite a lot of good things. These should be the good things that Nicholas had accumulated.

There are bear skins, tiger skins, tiger teeth, long tendons of unknown animals, tiger whips, colorful stones, etc. There are even two long horns of narwhals and an unknown black stone, which is composed of many octahedrons of different sizes.

Aix dug around in the pile of colorful stones, but didn't see any shiny stones. The sound was very much like natural glass, and the white marks on it from collisions showed that it was not very hard, so it was probably not worth much. He lost interest and returned to his seat.

Seeing that what he thought was a good thing did not arouse Aix's interest, Nicholas felt disappointed, but he was unwilling to give up, so he picked up the black stone on the ground and said to Aix:

"My Lord, look, this is a good thing!"

Aix looked at the geometric crystals on it and thought it should be some kind of natural mineral, so he answered him:

"Oh, what's the good idea?"

"It can hold anything made of iron."

"Oh? Let me see."

After taking the black stone handed over by Nicola, Axel pulled out the dagger from his waist and tried it. It really was able to stick to the stone easily.

"Well, sir, I didn't lie to you, did I?"

After hearing his words, Aix shook his head with amusement:

"Yes, but this stone is not worth much."

"How could it be, sir? How could such a magical thing be worthless?"

Aix said to Nicholas confidently:

"Did you find this stone in a valley? There is not just one stone there, but there are stones all over the valley. They can absorb the weapons you carry with you?"

Nicholas blushed when he was exposed. Before he could say anything else, Aix continued:

"Anything, once it is in abundance, is no longer valuable, just like your white animal skins, except that white animals are rare, and they are actually just a different color from their own kind.

Imagine that there are such stones all over the mountains. What is the difference between this stone and ordinary stones? There is nothing special about this kind of stone. They are just iron..."

When Aix said this, he was stunned, and suddenly realized that this was a natural magnetite. Judging from the crystals, the iron content should be very high. Doesn't the territory need a lot of iron right now?

And judging from the old man's rarity, it means he has never seen this kind of stone before, and he certainly doesn't know the function of this stone. Maybe this magnetite mine is near the territory, so he changed the subject and said:

"This should be a stone from the Black Iron Mountain. Is the place where you found it not far from here?"

Nicholas, who thought he had been exposed by Aix, nodded embarrassedly and said:

"Forgive me, sir. I have not seen it either. I found this stone not far north of here last year and I thought it was something extraordinary."

"It's not worthless. If you tell me where you picked up this stone, as long as it's close to my territory, it has some value. If you tell me, I can uh..., give you ten bags of food as a reward."

Although Aix seemed to speak nonchalantly and as if it was nothing, he was actually extremely ecstatic. If he could get really close to the territory, he would never lack iron again.

"Not far, not far. It's not far to the north. If you walk along the nearby river, you will reach it in a day. It's in the valley near the river. It's very close."

Fearing that Axe would go back on his word, the old man hurriedly told Axe that he actually had a little trick up his sleeve. The so-called one-day journey was the distance he would travel on a sled pulled by reindeer. Going north along the river was all about primeval forest with no roads. If they walked after the snow melted, it would take at least two days.

However, he had never been to the sea in his life, had no concept of water transportation, and didn't know there was such a thing as a boat. As long as he could get there by following the river, it didn't matter if it was a little further away.

After hearing the news, Aix happily paid Nicholas ten bags of grain.

Then Aix lost the enthusiasm to exchange things with him. Apart from animal skins, there was nothing else that Nicholas brought that caught his eye, so he asked someone to call Manide to talk to him.

He also privately told Manid not to exploit Nicholas too much, to treat him as a trading partner, to trade with them at a price better than that offered to other Vigia nobles, and to try to make their tribe use this place as the only trading base in the future, so as to attract more Yakut tribes to come and trade.

And see if we can buy some reindeer from them. This kind of domesticated livestock is very cold-resistant, tenacious, and easy to raise. They will not freeze to death even in the wild in extremely cold weather.

It can be used to pull sleds to transport goods to the territory in winter. The territory is usually covered with ice and snow for up to five months, so such a means of transportation is very necessary.