NeoRealm - Staring back into the Future

Over the next few days, Jason spotted more than one giant electric salamander. Being the local apex predators they didn't exactly hide. They weren't worth the risk though and so Jason made sure to take the long way around. Not too much of a hassle and soon enough he had moved past the area with all the water features.

This led to an annoying if safer, fight. It started with a noise coming from above, which sent Jason dodging towards a nearby tree for cover. Good thing too, as right after a crane with a body as large as him landed where he had just been standing. The bird turned its head towards him and then took off.

Jason watched the crane fly above the forest's canopy and sighed. He had a guess which was soon proved true as he tried to continue onward. Whenever he was under a thinner part of the cover, the bird would try to attack him. Worse, it wasn't committing to the attack.

If it had, Jason would have been more than able to win a quick fight. All it would take is a small dodge and then a counter attack. While things like magic helped break the rules of what can and can't fly, a broken wing would have grounded the crane easily. Instead, Jason was caught in an hours long game of hide and seek as he tried to figure out how to at least drive the bird away.

Any attempts to attack it as the bird came down was met with the crane aborting its dive. His throwing knives found the legs too tough and the feathers were more than able to ward off a blow. Even attempts to take a hit so as to counter with an Energy burst failed as the bird detected the build up of power.

Suffice it to say, Jason was quite annoyed at the bird, especially since this isn't how cranes generally hunt. Though in the end he would never learn why the bird was trying to attack him so directly before the day was done, he came upon a small goblin camp. Not wanting to double his trouble, Jason quickly backed away from that mess before being seen.

However, as he was getting out of sight a familiar sound was heard. Except, of course for the fact it wasn't right overhead this time. No, going by the noises behind him, the goblins now found themselves with a new annoyance to deal with.

Jason took this as a hint to run. The crane monster was distracted and more than likely to eat its fill, so now was the perfect time to lose it. He wasn't certain why it spent so much time trying to attack him specifically, but was more than willing to pass his troubles onto those goblins.

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Though just to be safe, Jason made sure to camp out next to a tree over the next five nights. Not out of a worry that he would be attacked, but just so the bird didn't spot him and decided to continue the chase. Sure, he was walking along at a decent clip, but he wasn't going to try to outpace a flying monster. That just wasn't in the cards at the moment.

What was in the cards though was a town. Not the biggest place, but there were more than a few players there looking to hunt the salamanders. Jason didn't particularly care about them. It did however mean this was just the place he was looking for. Because where there is profit to be made, merchants won't be far behind. At a safe distance, of course, but what could be safer than the town nearest to hunting grounds?

So once in town, it doesn't take long for Jason to find a shop that was set up by one of the big trading firms. There were other shops in the town of course, but everything else was locally run. Sure, they might have the money to buy the hide off of him. It just wouldn't be as much as going right to the proper place as the town's inhabitants don't need the hide. No matter who he sold it to, the axolotl hide would just end up with the trading firm, anyway.

This wasn't the smartest plan, and Jason admits that. While the other shops wouldn't be offering the best price, it would have at least given him an idea of what the hide is worth. It was just that Jason didn't care. As long as it fetched at least 50 gold, he was fine with it.

Maybe it was his last life, maybe it was his mother. Whatever it was, he just didn't really value gold all that much. In his eyes, anything of true worth wouldn't be priced in gold. Sure, gold was the main currency of both worlds at this point, but the top end of any market would always be controlled by bartering high end goods.

For a while, people did get a little crazy about having everything valued in currency. That, however, led to some dark times. After all, even in the poorest home, there are just some things you can't put a dollar amount on. Though those tend to be more emotional while what Jason is thinking of are things like natural treasures with one-off effects.

In a world like NeoRealm and his last life, sometimes you just come across a strange tree with a single fruit that for some reason can grant unfathomable things to you and only an idiot would try and sell such a thing for gold. Even if you need gold, the correct answer was to hand it over to an auction house with enough reputation to not just disappear you. Then at least you would likely end up with a number of special goods of which you could trade one or two for the money you need.

Not to say that Jason didn't haggle over how much the axolotl hide was worth. He knew that the thing couldn't be all that common and so made sure to go back and forth enough to make the shopkeeper sweat a little. Though he hadn't expected to get a nice and even 200 gold for it, especially as he suspected, he could have gotten more.