The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1462

As much as Ves wanted to snap up numerous samples of medium to high-grade exotics, he restrained himself as much as possible.

He only converted a certain amount of his money into firthals, and intended to reserve most of it for the acquisition of P-stones, F-stones and other spiritually-reactive exotics.

Nonetheless, his resolve wavered numerous times when he carefully brushed his gaze past exotics with useful applications.

Now that he was in the process of assimilating Senior-level Metallurgy, he recognized a wide variety of metallic exotics with known applications. He memorized their most relevant properties and also gained a sense of their prevailing market values.

Prices fluctuated considerably here. Not every exotic was sold at a bargain, and not every bargain offered a lot of savings. Part of the reason for that was the intense bargaining taking place.

Whenever a customer wanted to buy a product, they entered one of the nearby negotiating chambers administered by the Circle of Mota and bargained as if their lives depended on their efforts!

Both the buyers and sellers negotiated aggressively, so much so that a lot of people who finished their transactions stomped out of the negotiating chambers in a fit of fury!

The use of negotiating chambers to conduct transactions in relative privacy benefited both sides when they engaged in expensive transactions.

Their presence made it difficult for Ves to gauge the level of trade that went on. While all sellers drove hard bargains, he was unable to gauge which one was better at ripping off their customers than others.

Meanwhile, the buyers also maintained discretion. None of them looked forward to showing off the amount of firthals they carried to the unscrupulous guests of the Circle of Mota.

After trawling the stalls and shops for half an hour, he abruptly found his first lucky score.

When his spirituality brushed over a black chunk of rock, he immediately encountered the tell-tale reaction of a P-stone!

Ves casually raised his hand with one finger pointing upwards. It was his signal to Nitaa that he encountered a good that he really wanted to obtain!

Considering the extremely sharp bargaining abilities of the sellers, Ves did his best not to show his interest in the exotic.

Just like before, he approached the stall selling the P-stone slowly, expressing interest at other goods before considering the P-stone.

Though the dance stretched on for twenty agonizing minutes, he eventually managed to purchase the P-stone in exchange for the measly price of 7 million firthals!

For an exotic that possessed the rare property of storing his spiritual energy or spiritual entities while protecting them from decay, this was an absolute steal!

Of course, considering the P-stone’s lack of properties, the seller didn’t find this price to be so low. Unaware of its true applications, the P-stone had been mislabeled as a marginal low-grade exotic with unknown properties!

In a place like Centerpoint where an enormous amount of wealthy mech designers and other people came to shop, the vendors there jacked up the prices of such unknown exotics to a ridiculous degree!

In the Circle of Mota, such practices didn’t fly as well here. The clientele was a lot poorer here. The sellers also couldn’t afford to wait for years or decades until some random mech designer arrived and snapped up the goods at a ridiculous premium.

Ves was under no illusion that all of the firthals he paid would fall into the hands of pirates and other unsavory organizations.

Each and every guest of the Circle of Mota directly or indirectly facilitated the pirates each time they completed a transaction.

They did this through purchasing their sometimes ill-gotten gains, thereby placing a lot of firthals into their hands.

The visitors also supplied the pirates with valuable goods and services that were very difficult to come by in the Nyxian Gap but were essential to sustain their deplorable activities. _{fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm}

Nonetheless, even though Ves knew he indirectly enabled the pirates when he purchased the P-stone, he didn’t care. Spiritually-reactive exotics were simply too valuable for him to let his conscience get in the way of empowering himself!

In fact, he was even willing to give the Five Scrolls Compact a hand if they bribed him with P-stones!

"Who knows if I’m already doing so." He quietly muttered as he received the floating container that held his third P-stone.

Though Nitaa still hadn’t ascertained whether the Circle of Mota was tied to the Compact or not, they had only been able to explore a portion of the underground marketplace.

Most notably, the center of the city was closed off to most visitors. Only a small proportion of close associates of the Circle of Mota gained permission to enter. Ves had no clue what happened inside, but he had a feeling that more than just a couple of incidental trades took place in the core region.

If the Compact really had a hand in the Circle of Mota, then gaining entry to the center was the best way to obtain evidence!

It was times like these that he hated his mother’s incredibly inconvenient appropriation of his Devil Tiger.

A masterwork mech was incredibly valuable! If Ves arrived at the Circle of Mota with such an incredibly valuable mech on offer, he might have gained enough regard from the organization to enter the inner marketplace. Who knew what he was missing out on now that he lost his only means of leverage.

He consoled himself with the acquisition of his third P-stone. Just like his first two P-stones, its appearance and physical makeup diverged as well. Yet even though it consisted of completely different materials, it possessed the exact same properties as the other two P-stones.

The addition of yet another P-stone in his arsenal was of immense value to him! Not only did he increase his external spiritual energy storage capacity by fifty percent, he also gained an extra container to hold living spiritual entities!

The appearance of a P-stone in the Circle of Mota confirmed his suspicion that the Nyxian Gap likely held more. There might even be a major deposit at one of its asteroids or larger satellites, just waiting to be excavated!

Filled with hope, Ves tried to restrain his urgency as he resumed browsing the shops and stalls. While the somewhat quiet and restrained bazaar failed to match the exuberance of normal bazaars, Ves was having the time of his life!

This was because he encountered three more P-stones!

Three!