Bound to Darkness

Sold (Chapter 4)

"I am so poor."

Glancing into my ender chest that had been a gift from Mumbo, I could see two diamonds and a stack of iron. Almost nothing in terms of resources.

What the hell should I do? I could take a few hours to go mining, but that was a lot of effort. I could beg, but that was Iskall's deal.

Wait.

"I could open a shop!"

But what would I sell?

I equipped my elytra, taking off gracefully. I could decide based on what other hermits sold, maybe open new markets. Decided, I travelled to the shopping district to get an idea of prices and items to sell.

The coral shop was beautiful, and the dead coral shop was appealing in its own way. iTrade was tall and big, full of wonderful trades I'm sure, and Mumbo's slime shop was sold out. Tango's rocket shop was nice as well, begging me to buy rockets and fly with the little money I had.

Most shops were selling stacks of blocks for a diamond each, maybe two stacks for one diamond. That seemed like a reasonable price, especially considering the specialty coral blocks were half a stack for a diamond.

Now, what isn't being sold here? One block that I tend to use a lot of is sand, due to the nature of my base. Sand, gravel, maybe quartz? Though selling quartz would be competing against Zedaph's shop... whatever, I'm gonna do it anyways.

Using my last rockets, I flew back to my base and gathered shulkers full of materials. The first two layers were officially done of my tower, and my mess of chests and shulkers was growing. I should organize myself soon... but for now, I loaded up a few shulkers with building equipment and extra supplies, and flew back to the shopping district.

I landed right as my elytra broke, stumbling on the beach. I sighed, keeping the broken wings on for now as I headed to a small corner of the district.

~

I pulled back, taking a look at the finished result. The dark spruce wood of the cart was a nice contrast to the other buildings scattered about, and I thought it looked homey.

I filled up some chests, left a sign with prices, and decided to leave it be for now. I took off from the district, flying back towards my base with a few rockets.

~

A meeting room buried deep below the surface. Nine people were gathered around a circular table, each with their own assigned seat. There was a space between two of the members, one that went unnoticed but was as if something was missing.

"Thank you all for gathering here," The ringleader stood, sliding his helmet off. His dark eyes seemed to absorb any light in the dim meeting room.

"Why did you call us here, X?" Stress was sitting patiently in her chair, hands folded in front of her. Her expression was cool and composed as always.

"This meeting is about our... new member." X waved a hand, and the center of the table projected a hologram of a guy in a hoodie and jeans. "I managed to glean small things off of the Scan before it... glitched."

"Glitched?" Tango leaned forward, red eyes flashing a brighter shade.

"When we went through the Scan, he was under for a few minutes. I got some information off of him, but... as I dug deeper, he moved. He was in pain, that only grew more and more until I broke off the Scan."

Mumbo, from his space at the table, covered his mouth at the thought of his 'friend' in pain. Iskall moved closer to Mumbo, shooting a look over at the two members of ConCorp also at the table.