Trash in the Apocalypse

Alday Ruan calmed himself and restarted the meeting. "Marichu, how are the craftsmen members doing? Are they any good? Do we have the latest status updates from them?"

Marichu took a bunch of papers from her inventory and placed them on the table. She already read this once, but having them out will make sure she doesn't commit any basic mistake.

Out of eleven craftsmen in training, one has advanced to junior craftsman, three have become apprentice craftsmen while the rest remained novice craftsmen. The most promising was a newcomer hat joined a week ago and has already reached the apprentice rank."

Alday nodded. "Call all of them back and brief them about the situation. Coordinate with Crisanto and gather all the materials needed for crafting before the craftsmen returned. I want to see 'wands' in the next few days."

"All of them? Won't calling them all back cause suspicion?" Marichu frowned.

"What suspicion? Everyone already knows about the treant branch! We are already lucky that no crazy group has tried to barge in and try their luck with us. Of course, we can crush any group that tries to do so, and that will remain facts. There's a bigger problem we have to face other than that."

Just as he finished speaking, the door swung open and a frantic guard reported, "Reporting! A department head of Black Haven wants to speak with the leader."

"Speaking of the devil," muttered Alday.

The soldier continued, fear evident on his face. "Also, Sir Melchor started teasing her when they met."

"That manchild! Why is he acting like this?" Alday massaged his forehead, before turning to Gener. "Make sure the old man doesn't make anything stupid. As long as we don't do anything too badly, Black Haven would have no reason to deal with us."

Alday Ruan stood up and stared at everyone. "Alright, everyone, get moving! I'll fight the devil as long as I could, and I want finished products as soon as possible."

—

—

Gina waited around five minutes before someone approached her. It was a grumpy old man that mocked and teased her. The garrison unit she had as escorts were about to get pissed off when the old man was grabbed by a muscular guy and carried away.

Afterward, a beautiful secretary walked up to her and brought her to a room on the second floor. She left the guards in the hallway and entered the room. From the door, she saw a grown man seated on the far end of the table, staring back at her. 

She realized who the man was after recognizing his features. A small figure that emits leadership and energy. Their gazes met and the man smiled.

"Sorry for taking so long to accommodate you. We were having an important meeting earlier and I had to see through that we finish it."

"It's alright, I didn't wait for long. Besides, I was able to relax and enjoy the surrounding scenery, met some unique people too."

After exchanging a few pleasantries, Gina sat down and recomposed herself.

"I'm Gina, the Department Head of Black Haven Trade and Commerce. I'm pretty sure you already know why I'm here today, so I'll go straight to the point. I want to buy materials from you, specifically the treant branch,"

Gina was having a calm day browsing the forums when she stumbled on the post about the treant branch. The moment she laid eyes on the post, she instantly realized that she absolutely needed to procure that item. She informed Evo about her plan and got several escorts along the way. The selected members of the garrison were delighted being able to strut around, following a high ranking official. 

Gina already thought of several rebuttals in case Alday Ruan tried to keep the resources to themselves. She would reason that dungeon resources cannot be monopolized. Just imagine Black Haven hoarding all the fishes in the Fishpond dungeon, and only selling whenever they like. The whole territory would literally be taken hostage if that were to happen!

Even Black Haven was sharing resources! Why would you think that you can do that?

Prepared with an answer, she calmly waited for the rejection.

"Sure, we can sell you some. We've been indirect allies for some time already and small favors like these are peanuts." Alday responded.

Wait, somethings wrong! This isn't on the script that I practiced! Why are you acting so docile?!

Due to being poor and working on minimum wage, Gina's confidence wasn't as high as her position. That's also one reason why many people loved working under her. The marketplace and other staff were working positively since they were following a humble leader.

She viewed this procurement with a lot of importance and on the highest difficulty, simply because the other party was another powerhouse. However, she has forgotten one thing while she was making her plan. She was from Black Haven and a department head at that!

It took Alday Ruan several minutes of planning before he decided to meet Gina. In those few minutes of strategizing, he realized that he couldn't do anything to resist whatever kind of request Black Haven had.

Everything ended in battle power! Black Haven was too powerful and could easily crush them if it viewed them as an eyesore. The best that he could do was act like he was the best ally while getting benefits in return.

He expected Gina to request dungeon access but the latter only wanted resources! It was a great deal compared to what he was planning.

Realizing that the other party wasn't that shrewd, he began to wind up his own plan. "The Frontier is happy that we were able to help you. Also, we could go further and allow Black Haven to enter a few hours a day in the Forest Dungeon."

Gina got surprised. "Eh? Why?"

"Of course, it's not for free! The scariest thing nowadays were free things. Please consider this offer as a gift. Recently, we tried to upgrade our gears with elemental orbs, but they always fail. We already wasted a lot of resources and were thinking of buying information from the Virtual Library. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough reputation to view advanced information."

"So you want me to help you search for the method to embedding ?" Gina frowned. "I'm sorry but I won't help you."

"Miss Gina, please hold on a second. It's not like we weren't planning to pay. We are willing to pay a premium price! Please understand, gathering reputation for the Virtual Library is hard. We just want to survive too..."

Alday tried his best to appear as pitiful as possible since he can't take the aggressive path. He was just trying to wiggle his way to a shortcut instead of waiting another week to gather enough reputation grinding missions every day.

As for the reason why no one is delving into info-sharing, the Virtual Library Terms and Conditions states that one cannot share or divulge anything above certain tiers. Anything on Level 3 and below was public domain and can be shared with a limited number of people. This feature allows groups to funnel all the reputation on one individual for every completed mission.

Gina was weak to pleading. Despite being in such a high position, she never had to become cruel and instead underwent the same road of having to kneel down, and beg others.

She turned around and faced Alday. Her neatly combed hair tied into a meat bun plugged with a simple black clip remained steady despite her sudden turn. Crystal-clear eyes gazed forward without a moment of aversion. 

"My answer is no, and I'm also ready to pay the premium price. Please include several dozens of treant barks. You can send the price list to the marketplace or I can send someone directly." Gina turned around and stopped at the door. "It's nice meeting you Mister Alday. Your acting sucks though. You need a better haggler for the job."

The door closed and a chuckle suddenly came from the side of the room. Monica appeared from nowhere and placed her arms on her husband's neck. "You went too emotional suddenly. It's pretty cringy to watch. Want me to teach you about haggling?"

"Get off me." Alday Ruan pouted and sat on his chair. "Was I too obvious?"

"You were like a desperate trader trying to get rid of radiated goods. Hahaha! Well, from the available we have on her, she grew up poor and started working at the flea market at a young age. She might have no idea when you started talking, but as time goes on, bits and pieces of your intentions became clear."

Monica sighed. "Am I really the only fool that fell for your tricks?"

Alday pouted even more. "Tch. I'm going out! Is Crisanto still around? All my planning went to waste!"

Alday Ruan personally went to Black Haven Trade and Commerce Office to settle the matter. He brought extra gifts to ease the situation and hope that everything would be settled. 

As someone running a business, Gina knew when to play hard and act softly. She accepted the gifts and called what happened earlier a misunderstanding. Owners and customers must always be friendly towards each other, or they'll both lose out!

In a house several streets away, Paterno continued adjusting the channel selector of the radio. Sometimes he would hear music, sometimes he would stumble on people calling for help. After things settled down, he moved out and lived alone. 

In this world, only the cheerful voice of the little angel makes him remember the old world.

"Grandpa, I brought you some food. Mister Mike told me he doesn't know how to cook banana bread, but he'll try to learn if he had some time." Judy said.

"Thank you. How's your studying, you learn any new skills?"

Judy giggled instead of answering and ran out of the house. "I just want to play~"