“I would offer enough materials for thirty tries for one potion. It doesn’t matter if it is the basic explosion potion, the basic wound mending potion or the basic strengthening potion.”

“Thirty? I am willing to offer fifty materials tries for one potion.”

“I only need the basic wound mending potion and the explosion potion, I would trade a couple of potions with a couple of Stone hounds which I have caught in the last couple of days.”

A sentence from the muscular woman stopped the haggling: “I don’t think we have the time to bid for any potions right now.” a short paused enhanced her sentence before she continued: “However I would also love to trade with you Fraser, how about I show you the inner circle room at the outpost? We can trade in a couple of hours.”

Without even waiting for his response the muscular woman waved her hand and a similar dark ball which Magus Sept used in order to guide Fraser appeared.

Fraser nodded before following the dark ball which floated out of the room.

The floating dark ball leads Fraser to a room which was similar to the inner circle room at the Academy as it was filled with couches.

Thus Fraser sat down and started to wait.

Naturally in order to not waste his time Fraser commanded the AI:

‘AI, notify me when the senior apprentices are coming into the room.’

After setting the AI to notify him when the senior apprentices would finish the meeting and come into the room Fraser started to meditate.

Fraser didn’t need to wait that long, within one hour the first senior apprentice arrived. To Fraser's surprise, it was the white masked senior member who exchanged a few sentences with Fraser.

“So what for basic Potions do you have? Also while you are at it give me a price.” asked the white masked senior apprentice.

Instead of answering Emiums questions Fraser started to attempt doing small talk: “Emium, it’s been a long time. Have you fared well?”

“…”

“…”

“…”

An awkward silence filled the room as Emium didn’t reply to Fraser's question.

The only thing stopping the silence is the sound of a door opening.

A couple of concealed senior apprentices walked into the room while asking the same questions as Emium, just with a different tone.

“Give me a price for the basic potions you are able to create.”

“State a price for the basic potions.”

“I hope you have a few basic potions which are useful.”

Surprised that every figure walking into the room would ask an individually question Fraser thought: ‘Every single one of the senior apprentices is asking me for a price individually. Does that mean they are all going solo?’

As Fraser waited for a while the inner circle room got filled with more and more senior apprentices.

The last person to step into the inner circle room was the muscular woman who indirectly forced Fraser to introduce his basic potions.

“All interested are gathered, start with the trading. We will offer a price and you can either agree with it or not.” talked the muscular woman before crossing her arms.

Every single eye looked towards Fraser who now stood in the center. It almost seemed like a group surrounded Fraser.

So Fraser started to talk:

“I have the basic explosion potion, the basic wound mending potions, and the basic strengthening potion. I don’t have anything specific I am searching for, anything I deem interesting sounds fine.”

With this short introduction of the potions, Fraser awaited the answers from the senior apprentices.

The reply came within a moment.

“I want the basic wound mending potion and the strengthening potion. I will give you fifty materials for each of them. In the Academy you would only get three magic crystals so I am adding two magic crystals in terms of material cost.” said the muscular woman.

“How many potions do you want?” asked Fraser, realizing that the woman was extremely direct and probably could be considered as the leader of the senior apprentices.

“I will take thirty portions of each kind. I will send you the materials after you have given me the potion.”

As Fraser successfully traded thirty basic wound mending and strengthening potions for the price of fifty materials each he continued to look at the group of senior apprentices.

“As I am now satisfied with materials I hope that you have anything interesting for me. Except you want the basic explosion potion, then you can trade for materials.” stated Fraser as he continued to look into the crowd.

The first one to come out was Emium and he directly walked towards Fraser.

With a low voice Emium whispered into Fraser's ear:

“I have the notes of an Apprentice, he primarily took notes of Alchemy. I will trade it for fifteen basic wound mending potions and five basic explosion potions.”

Fraser immediately agreed to the trade without haggling.

After Emium started to trade the rest of the senior apprentices quickly walked in front of Fraser and stated their desired amount of potions as well as their price.

Fraser agreed to every single trade, even if it seemed to be a little dumb to trade a dozen of potions for an unknown old potion recipe.

To be honest, Fraser didn’t agree to every trade because he was not smart in business. Instead, he knew that as a junior apprentice he had little to no power in the hierarchy and so he wanted to see who was generous in the list of the senior apprentices and who was not.

After all, Fraser assumed that every senior apprentice knew that he was new and didn’t have a lot of knowledge.

So those seniors who would give him the correct price or above would have a positive image in Frasers eyes.

Fraser didn’t have to be afraid to forget who traded what as the AI saved every information for him and it could be sorted with ease.

As soon as Fraser finished business he would walk back to his chambers and trade the number of potions for the agreed price.

With the basic strengthening and basic wound mending potion being the most popular Fraser only had a few left. The basic explosion potion didn’t seem to be that popular and there was only one mad senior apprentice who bought sixty basic explosion potions with one thousand five hundred black fire eggs and a couple of interesting things like books and even corpses of animals unknown to Fraser.

The trading took almost the entire day and Fraser's private chamber got filled with the entire stuff the traded for. Most of the space got taken by the 1500 materials for each of his three basic potions.

The materials would be stored in a crate while the other stuff would just lay next to the crates.

As Fraser finished sorting the stuff he traded for he immediately went towards the outpost canteen and started to eat.

As Fraser wanted to reach the peak of Knight Apprentice after the time at the outpost he needed to devour more nutritious meals in order to use the Basic Knight Apprentice Breathing Technique a lot more.