Chapter 2073: Target Markets

While Remi had assumed that everyone would want the potions for the arena, where they could use it to get an edge and show off, the actual influx of customers came from the Immortals who hung out around the dungeon, looking for a group to go with.

The imbalanced composition of many clans left them looking for specific members, to round out their group in case of a particularly nasty draw, and within minutes of the first person announcing that they had a potion that would bump their mana regeneration for an hour it became practically mandatory to get a healer, unless you were a self-healing tank class.

While that worked out perfectly for the Bloodstrike Jackalopes, and their Blood Knight class, they weren’t actually struggling to find groups anyhow.

The moment that one of them showed up, decked out in the Darklight Host’s Epic Gear, they were snapped up by someone, and if they had brought a Priestess with them, there might even be a fight.

Not just because they were bunnies, but because they were fully geared members of the Darklight Host, and always had a surprising range of useful skills that you couldn’t rely on every random member to have.

Especially tanks and healers.

If they were here looking for random groups, there was usually something that they were lacking that made them unable to find a full-time group in their own Clan.

Unless they were independents.

But the Darklight Host was local, so they didn’t have to try to form groups. If they felt like going, they could grab one, or they could just walk outside and ask someone visiting for the dungeon.

That was the great advantage to having the good stuff right at home. Even if your usual group was busy with something, you could always find the extra members from the visitors.

But one thing that others noticed very quickly was the sheer number of healing classes. Druids, Priestesses, Clerics. It seemed that fully a third of the Guild was capable of healing well enough to support a dungeon team.

But they also had an entire team of Supreme Ranked members here, and they were balanced enough to do the run on their own, or pick up a few other Clan Leaders to do a ten-person run.

Finished with his tasks for the day, Karl decided that he would go watch a few fights at the arena, sitting in the regular bleachers with the rest of the audience, instead of in the box seats which were isolated for privacy.

You could learn a great deal by sitting and chatting with people as they watched the matches, and that was what Karl was planning.

They should know more about what was happening in the region than he had been told so far, and things were bound to be changing fast, with all the supply runs that the Blue Elven fleets had been on while carrying Darklight Host gear.

"Oh, you’re the Branch Leader here. Good work with the arena, this thing is amazing. To think, you managed to get a Legend to come all the way down here to the back corner of nowhere to build you a new facility.

No offence to your corner of nowhere," the man sitting a few seats down on Karl’s left announced.

Karl smiled. "I’m glad that you like it. He’s actually family to one of our Supreme Ranked members, so it was more that we put him to work during his vacation than he volunteered to come help."

That made the nearby Immortals chuckle.

Of all the things that could have happened, that was not on their list. They had assumed that he had called in a huge favour to get another branch to send him an elite craftsman. But he had instead relied on family connections.

"Did you have a long trip in for the dungeon? Or did you come specifically to watch the fights?" he added.

"We came over from the Frontia region, where one of the Clans just opened a portal to your city. Things are getting a bit hostile around there, so we thought that we would come here for a bit and wait it out. We’re from a ten-person Clan, without a full territory of our own, so we’re all here."

"You brought the whole Clan? It must be getting wild. Mind if I ask what’s going on?"

The man shrugged. "Nothing unusual, Clan war between two of the larger factions. But they’ve dragged their allies into it and neither wants to launch a full offensive, so they’re just attacking everything that moves unless it’s wearing their side’s mark."

The man in the row in front of him turned around and nodded at Karl.

"Normally, we would just sit home, but with that new portal in Barma, we just made the trip and took it here. Nothing like a good excuse to do a new dungeon, and we’ve got healers in the Guild."

Ironically, that would make it highly profitable for them to stay here for a while, no matter the situation at home.

"I’m sure you heard that we have new potions available at the shop. They’ve got one that will give you mana steadily for an hour, it’ll make life easy on your healers, I would have them grab some before the next trip.

Especially if they’re going out with strangers. That’s always a bit of a risk, you never know if you’re going to get incompetents, big egos, or just slackers that don’t pull their weight and only pretend that they’re helping."

"The last is the most likely. Everyone wants to play it safe and save their own skin, ready to run at a moment’s notice. But they also intend to pick a higher difficulty so that they can hope for better rewards if everyone else does their share of the work," the man agreed.

From Karl’s other side, a woman laughed. "I’ve got a magical device for that. It’s a training device that tracks damage output."

That made the men raise their drinks in appreciation for a masterful play.

There was no slacking off with half power skills when the healer could bring up a display of the damage that everyone was doing. You’d never live it down.

Karl turned his full attention to the woman.

"Actually, can you show me that for a moment? I would like to add it to the store inventory if I can make more. I think that they could be very popular among group leaders."