Chapter 7

As Ryan was considering his options, he received a phone call that broke his chain of thoughts. It was a call from his aunt, his mother's sister.

"Ryan, are you doing alright? I just got a call from the bank saying they sent you an ultimatum!" His aunt's worried voice could be heard over the phone. Ryan wanted to nod, but realized that nods couldn't be seen on the call. He was still suffering the dysphoria from returning to the past from a more advanced future.

"I'll handle it aunt. Don't worry about it. Worse comes to worse I'll just move out." Ryan calmly replied. His aunt wanted to say a lot of things to him, especially wanting to curse his parents, but she knew that it was pointless. In the end she just sighed and wished him luck before cutting the call.

Ryan decided to forget about this matter for the moment and went online to check what the forums were discussing and see the reaction to his post. Ryan had made the post on the forum anonymously and put up the item on auction anonymously as well. So when he logged in, he was surprised to see that his anonymous post had actually been pinned by the forum's moderators and it was trending at the highest level with a massive amount of activity.

A ton of the comments were speculating about how he managed to find the set, the others were drooling over the cloth set. Yet others were arguing over who would win the auction battle with many would be guilds declaring that no one would be challenging them. Ryan also observed, to his shock that most of the other sticky posts in the forum were actually addressed to him.

"To the Seller of cloth set - We wish to deal privately!"

There were several other ramifications of Ryan's post from yesterday. Demand for exchange of in game currency in exchange for actual money suddenly spiked. However, people still didn't have enough money to sell their coins even if they wanted to at this point.

Ryan frowned. He didn't think that his actions would suddenly cause a price inflation in the currency exchange market. "I need to be very careful about how I affect the market in the future. Perhaps I should use this opportunity to connect with the future movers and shakers so I can make private deals directly that don't affect the market." He edited his original post about the auction and added a single line.

"Use the special message option at the Auction House for business."

While the auction house allowed sellers to maintain their anonymity, it also allowed for willing customers to be able to contact the seller discretely with a charge of five bronze coins. While most players couldn't yet afford that kind of money, Ryan didn't think that gathering that amount would be an issue for larger guilds and conglomerates who would soon be rushing to enter the gaming scene. The tiny edit on the post was already noticed and a new frenzy of replies began flooding the post. Ryan quit the forum and entered the full dive capsule to enter the world of Gaia.

When Vergil's character came online near the town center, he found the stares of several players gathering at him. However, the mask on Night Crawler cloth set covered the bottom half of his face as he quickly rushed into the Auction House to check the status of the sale. What he discovered slightly surprised him, but the frenzy on the forums had already indicated to him that things might have gotten a little messy.

Vergil found that the cloth set he put up for an auction had already reached a bid price of 2 gold 3 silver. The auction of the item was set for a three day period and Vergil wasn't in a hurry to cash out. From his memories, he knew that this particular quest couldn't be discovered before the open beta by other players. It was unlikely that any player would discover the means to unlock the secret shop. Instead, he let the auction continue and focused on the Auction's messaging feature. His tiny announcement on the forum had worked. Over twenty individuals had spent the coin to contact him, clearly for business.

Vergil went through the names and raised an eye. There were a mix of player names he had never heard about as well as those belonging to powerful guilds. Vergil didn't discriminate between them. He sent all of them a link to a private discord he set up anonymously the day before for this person. This private server to connect with the game's elite was his first attempt at a parallel sale network for items he planned to monopolize in the future.

Within seconds, several of the people who had messaged Vergil joined the private discord server. Vergil did not make a big show of his status or greet them extremely politely. In a matter of fact manner, he posted a screen grab of details of another cloth set into an auctions sub forum with a small paragraph of text attached.

"I created this group to trade with the buyers directly. There isn't point in stirring up the currency exchange cycle every time I bring out an exclusive product. You can bid for the item directly using real world currency."

Though almost all of the individuals who had joined this new select group were all elites themselves, they couldn't help but be shocked by this anonymous seller's resourcefulness. The game had just entered its second day of closed beta and players were still struggling to get accustomed to the battle controls, while the seller was already putting up must have luxury products for sale.

"Can we know your identity, mystery seller?" A player called Blind Jericho who Vergil knew would become a major helmsman of the Cities Downfall super-guild asked in a polite and enquiring manner. Vergil replied very simply. "I prefer to keep a low profile. Let us stick to the product." HE then logged out of the server while the others began to quickly began to report to their own guild and company authorities before deciding to make a bid.

Back in the game, Vergil's activities caused another frenzied set of entries of big purchasers and whales in the discord he created, while the public auction of the first clothing set had somewhat cooled down since the major movers found using money much more preferable that procuring in game currency at this point. Vergil expected that and it was a calculated sacrifice to use the hype this product created to set up his sale network.