Rebirth of the thief who roamed around the world (BOOK 4)

Chapter 703 - Hoarding!

Competition in the potion market was fierce. Everyone was undercutting their competitors in order to seize more market share, so profit margins were low. Even the Starry Night Potion Shop had no choice but to keep their prices low to attract customers. Major guilds were the largest consumer group. They often bought in bulk to save on expenditures. Even if they made insultingly low offers, the ordinary potion shops would still gladly oblige, for fear of losing out on a big order; it didn't matter how meager the profits were. Some shops wouldn't even mind losing money on one order if it meant securing a long time customer. From this, one could imagine how intense the competition was.

The small potions shops couldn't compare to the Starry Night Potion Shop. They sold inferior goods and only survived by offering the lowest prices. This left their Alchemists in sore straits, often working 10+ hours a day for a meagre pay.

Most large guilds also had their own inhouse Alchemists. However, the production output was far from enough to meet the guild's demand. In this sense, the Starry Night Potion Shop was unique. No other guild had developed their alchemy department to such a scale. For the Alchemists of guilds like Angel Corps, God Executioner Sword, and Penumbra Empire to even meet 30% of the guild's demand was already above the norm, let alone sell off their surplus for a profit. They still supplemented their needs by purchasing potions from outside.

Asskickers United had a total of 160,000 Alchemists, all of whom were elites that commanded high salaries. There were several million Alchemists across the Viridian and Satreen Empires. About 100,000 of them were skilled enough to join the Starry Night Potion Shop. Nie Yan's target was these Intermediate and Advanced Alchemists. As for the low rank Alchemists, even though he would still accept a few promising talents, assimilating
all several million would be a fool's errand.

Nie Yan's main focus were the Intermediate and Advanced potion market. There were simply too many low level potions. You could find them selling everywhere in stalls on the streets. Cornering this section of the market wouldn't result in much profit anyway. Intermediate and Advanced potions sold for five gold at the cheapest and up to several hundred gold at the highest. Meanwhile, low level potions normally sold for one or two silver, with the lowest going as low as 50 copper. The added value was hardly worth it. It wasn't realistic to focus on this. As long as he could pull the Intermediate and Advanced Alchemists to his side, he could control this market. As for those low ranking Alchemists, when they reached Intermediate or Advanced rank, with the Starry Night Potion Shop advertising high salaries, he refused to believe they wouldn't be moved.

With all things considered, this market had boundless prospects.

At Nie Yan and Guo Huai's command, Asskickers United started buying up all the Intermediate and Advanced-rank medicinal plants in the market. Low level medicinal plants generally weren't put up for sale because you wouldn't even make back the listing fee.

Nie Yan ran some calculations. If he wanted to buy up 50% of all the Intermediate and Advanced medicinal plants in the market on the same day, he would have to spend about 6,000,000 gold. Players consumed a lot of potions daily. As he depleted the market of medicinal plants, the previous reserves of potions would slowly run out. In another five or six days, it would start affecting the prices of medicinal plants.

The more gold Nie Yan poured in, the greater the effect on the prices of medicinal plants.

Ever since Nie Yan started raising funds, apart from Asskickers United, Holy Empire, Sapphire Shrine, the War God Tribe, Radiant Sacred Flame, and Battle Crazed Alliance chipped in as well. Nie Yan added everything up. Holy Empire had raised 2,200,000 gold; Sapphire Shrine 2,000,000 gold; the War God Tribe 2,800,000 gold; Radiant Sacred Flame 2,000,000 gold; Battle Crazed Alliance 1,900,000 gold; and Asskickers United and its five branch guilds 6,500,000 gold. Like this, they had over 20,000,000 gold, a number that was still rapidly rising.