A deal with the merchants (b)

The chubby guy was wise, if one was foolish or not conscientious, they could be easily swindled by this guy. Even his facial expression while proposing this to Virtya showed that he was in pain after presenting this, anymore and he would not accept the trade, his fellow merchants also nodded along, they accepted what the chubby guy had just proposed.

Virtya knew very well the cost of the goods and the transportation fee, so he could tell if there was an anomaly somewhere but he didn't point it out.

He knew that if he negotiated some more, the merchants would still allow room for more haggling but Virtya didn't do it because he not only wanted to buy the iron ingots from them, but he also wanted to sell to them barley and the clothes like what they were wearing. Being too unrelenting might destroy their business relationship and Virtya didn't want that. After all, even his predecessor knew this, even if he was cruel, he knew never to be on the bad side with bigger merchants from the Northern continent like Avril.

His kingdom might fail to have the basic necessities if he was not keen due to being neglected by the merchants, but as always, the past Virtya would always bargain for a better price that was reasonable to both the merchants and him, he had never mistreated them.

However, now Virtya wanted to make a perfect alliance with these merchants, so he could not go too far, the subtracted delivery fees was enough for him. One should know that iron ingots were too expensive and that was why their delivery fees could not compare with the price of the goods.

"I will take it as that." Virtya said to the merchants who had held in their breaths, his answer certainly took them aback as they had not anticipated for this outcome.

Eugene who had expected a scene to unfold was also as astounded like the merchant, he had expected to see a heated debate between them and the merchants but that didn't come.

He only came back to his sences after remembering that Virtya had accepted such a deal, do you know what that means?

That means they would have to pay two million gold coins for the five ships of iron ingots. If Virtya would have been determined to haggle for a while, they would have paid 1.5 million instead, this was surely a huge waste of money according to Eugene Perrin.

Before the merchants could even celebrate in their hearts, Eugene chimed in, "Your majesty, I think there is a problem here..."

"I have already decided. There is no need to make a scene." Virtya waved at Eugene dismissively.

"I also have something to give you guys. This time round I don't plan to pay you using gold coins but bags of food and other merchandise, but only if you are interested, if not, we can still use the usual gold coins to finalize the trade." Virtya said solemnly while beckoning a knight to bring some samples of the produce that he wanted to do barter with the merchants.

In haste, several bags of produce were brought and Virtya allowed the merchants to inspect them.

'There is no much food in Azuhai kingdom but the king wants to swipe the produce for our iron ingots, is the produce even worth the quality?' Gregory was still skeptical about the food produced by Azuhai kingdom because Azuhai kingdom always produced low quality and quantity produce.

In the previous years, the merchants had tremendously reduced the bulk of food that they usually buy from Azuhai kingdom because Azuhai kingdom itself could not even satiate themselves with the peanuts that they usually get from their farms not to mention the low quality produce but when Gregory's eyes fell on the bag of barley that had just been harvested, he could not help but gasp in surprise. He exchanged looks with his fellow merchants and they then nodded their heads towards each other in agreement even without speaking, hastily, Gregory checked the other merchandise like the clothes and the furnitures and his hands could not help but tremble.

How did they do it?

'Just look at the size of this grain of barley, it is so fleshy in that I didn't accept that it was barley at first but when I bit it and felt its unforgettable inherent taste, I could not help but jitter, This! It's unbelievable!'