Chapter 173 – Job Advertisement

I had already prepared a couple of job advertisements to post there. I rented a small ad space on the board for one week for a small fee and put it there. The content itself was simple.

[Looking for a selnic engineer to develop and mass-produce items for the market. The job location is a workshop on the outskirts of dome 82. Salary is to be negotiated in person. If interested, please stand before this ad any day at 10 in the morning to meet the employer and have a first contact.]

I copied other job ads to know what should be written while adding some personal flavor. Most people put in a phone number to call, but some wanted a direct meeting in person, like I did. The main difference was that they specified a date, while I was fine meeting any time.

I teleported to dome 6 and repeated the process, only changing the time a little in case I needed to interview someone in dome 82 first. I also added that I would pay for the gate fee since they would need to move to another dome. Due to the larger population in dome 6, my ad was one of many, while in 82, I was the only one looking for a selnic engineer at the moment.

Now that was done, I moved to the next step. Since I was in 6 already, I made my way to one of the three markets and rented a stall there. I originally wanted to wait for Suuru to decide whether she was interested in working here or not, but after thinking about it, I realized I didn’t have that much leisure.

Every day without working, the amount of food I needed to sell increased due to my deal with the Muyal family. I could halt our contract temporarily but there was a much better solution. I could simply sell the crops myself in dome 6 until Suuru was ready to take over, just like I had done in 82 before. Plus, I didn’t have much else to do, at least not until the workshop project began in full.

This time, I was a lot more careful when renting a booth in the market. All three markets in the city sold raw food, but I went with the one that had the fewest food merchants. Each market had zones where traders selling a type of goods regrouped to make it easier for the customers and attract them all to one place. However, I went the other way around, putting myself in the middle of a zone full of merchants selling home furniture and equipment. Fortunately, there was no rule forcing a merchant to set their stall in a specific zone, and, except for some weird looks, no one said anything about my move. On the contrary, I felt like they were happy to have one less competitor, someone selling something completely different.

As for me, even though I would have trouble selling food to people coming to furnish their homes, I wasn’t worried. My prices would do the job for me, just like what happened in 82.

Last but not least, considering the large population and high number of food merchants, no matter how much I sold, it would still be far from creating a shift in the market as it did in 82. Even in the worst-case scenario, I would be safe for a long time.

Now that I had a stall spot ready for me, the next step was to start the workshop construction. This one was quite straightforward. I hired a construction company in 82 and showed them Suuru’s house. The workshop would be built as an extension of the house and wouldn’t need any special permit. They initially asked for an exorbitant price of 180,000 lods for the work, but agreed to lower it to half that when I said I would provide the building materials. Unfortunately, they refused Suuru’s help, barely holding themselves from showing her some contempt due to her low rank, concluding that they would do everything themselves.

They left after giving me a list of the materials they would need, and I spent the rest of the day going back and forth between Alfiro and 82, filling my storage with the heavy and large stone, earth, and metals required for the work. I piled everything neatly next to the house and stopped for the day. After the usual physical and magical training, I was done with my day and went to sleep together with my housemate, who still wasn’t in the mood for sex yet.

The following day, I was a little excited when thinking of maybe recruiting my second employee as I made my way to the city hall. To my regret, however, no one came to meet me, whether in 82 or 6.

The building company inspected the goods I provided, a bit surprised I managed to get everything in such a short amount of time, and approved their quality. They immediately began the work in front of Suuru and me. Building something wasn’t such a complicated process when sel was involved. Earth mages employees manipulated the soil to create a foundation, metal mages created something similar to reinforced concrete by mixing the metal with some concrete, and wind mages transported things all over the site. It was a very pleasant process to observe since one could witness the building coming to life in front of their eyes.

I couldn’t stay there forever, though. I left Suuru to monitor progress to teleport to dome 6. Today would be my first day selling food there, and I was looking forward to a new beginning. I had several days’ worth of crops to liquidate, and so, no matter how many people came, I wouldn’t lack stock.

As expected, sales were slow at the beginning, close to non-existent. People were startled to see a food stall completely out of context and didn’t buy anything. I noticed my prices and good-looking vegetables and fruits didn’t leave folks indifferent, though. A lot of them had a pensive look as they passed by. I knew at least a few would come to me later to save some precious money.

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