LSG Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Hyper-inflation 1.3

When people fall upon hard times and have no income to feed their families, inevitably they can only choose to exchange their most “valuable” items for life essentials. And hence, black markets emerged to fill this gap.

The majority of people have lost their jobs with only a small few managing to stay employed. And very quickly, Su Han entered the former category.

On the afternoon of the 7th day, the proprietress made an announcement as the restaurant workers were finishing up their lunch. “The noodle shop is closing down. Please go look for work somewhere else.”

No more free food? Su Han was rather disappointed at the thought. After these 7 days in the game, she hadn’t even touched the food in her inventory due to the meals she got in the shop. In fact, she had saved up quite a lot of items in her portable warehouse: mainly milk and rye bread from her Nutritionist skill and soap she bought with her salary.

Even after 3 meals a day became 2, she still didn’t need to eat any of her own food. Only about 50 satiety points were consumed per day and 2 meals were plenty enough to completely recover.

And all she had to do was slightly adjust her meal times to 8:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M. to efficiently solve the problem of her satiety consumption.

However. . . if she had no job, how was she to survive these upcoming days? Su Han couldn’t help but fall into a bit of a daze, pondering her uncertain future.

The chef had no visible reaction and said nothing before returning to the kitchen to pack up his things.

Seeing Su Han remain in her seat, seemingly without intention to move, the proprietress let out a long sigh before saying in a rather woeful tone, “Sorry, there’s nothing else I can do. The shop really can’t stay open any longer. I have to leave myself a way out as well.” 

Su Han slightly startled at her apology before faintly smiling, “It’s alright, I understand.” The reality was that she was already very fortunate to work at the restaurant for the past 7 days.

With only a careless wave of her hand to signify her departure, Su Han turned around and directly left without returning to her room.

After thinking for a while, she finally decided to go look around at the marketplace. You never know what you could find. Who knows? Someone might just bring out their precious family heirlooms in exchange for some food to eat.

Although the walk only took around 10 minutes, Su Han witnessed exactly 3 cases of daylight robbery.

First, a disheveled middle-aged man, face full of unshaven stubble, snatched a lollipop right from the hand of a young kindergarten girl before immediately running away.

Su Han, “…..”

Then, a 70-something elderly grandpa was casually walking on the sidewalk and was shoved to the ground. His assailants roughly searched through his clothes, checking every pocket. After finally finding a bit of money, they left, laughing and muttering expletives under their breaths.

Su Han, “!!!”

“Madness, simply madness. Everyone’s gone crazy.” She quietly murmured. Su Han suddenly realized that she had underestimated how dangerous the outside world was. So, as she walked, she attempted to keep to the main roads, carefully avoiding any suspicious alleyways.

Even so, it was too late as she was already the next “victim”.

Su Han cautiously stared at the would-be robbers who surrounded her in a circle: two men and a woman.

She wryly thought: a young girl walking on the street alone was probably their ideal prey. They likely targeted her because she looked weak and rather easy to bully.

The only woman in the group of muggers demanded in a commanding tone, “What kind of good things are you carrying? Hand it over and we’ll let you go!”

In seemingly silent acquiescence, Su Han made a show of digging through her pockets. In reality, she was removing a slingshot and a few steel ammo balls from her portable warehouse.

The female robber was pleasantly surprised by their rather obedient prey’s speedy surrender. So, who would have thought that in the next second, their “prey” would quickly take out a slingshot and shoot a steel ball at them?

With a sharp “clang” sound, a hole was ripped through a can of Coke held in one of the robbers’ hands, the soda slowly spilling to the ground in a fizzling, foamy mess.

All three robbers were dumbfounded.

Slowly and leisurely, Su Han picked out another steel ball, placing it into the slingshot. As she was preparing, she casually said with a hint of innocent savagery, “When hitting people, I like to aim for the face.”

The woman’s face quickly turned pale. If the steel ball could easily pierce the soda can, imagine what would happen if it hit one’s face……

“Run!” She screamed out to her companions before quickly fleeing the scene.

The two men instantly followed. The three of them beat a hasty retreat, not even daring to look back at Su Han.

Su Han relaxed her grip on the slingshot, storing the ammo back in her portable warehouse, softly whispering to herself, “I really have to get a backpack soon. The portable warehouse is running out of room.”

A bag contained 100 steel balls but once she opened up the bag, it could only be stored as individual ammo and not in the unit of a bag. Hence, another storage slot was taken up.

“If I had a backpack, I could put all my slingshot ammo in there.” Su Han excitedly thought, continuing to walk toward the market with a heart full of anticipation.

Perhaps the other robbers saw Su Han defending herself earlier and knew she wasn’t easy to provoke. Anyways, for the rest of her journey, no one was “ignorant” enough to come to bother her.

Very quickly, Su Han arrived at her destination.

The market was placed in a small park with peddlers setting up stands and sellers hawking their goods everywhere.

“Candles, very convenient to use! Don’t miss out on this great deal!” 

“Matches, lighters, flint, and steel! I have it all! All I want to trade for is a bit of food! Come take a look!”

“Extra thick cotton-padded quilt! Super cozy! Come over if you’re interested!” 

“Nylon backpack! Very durable and long-lasting! I only bought it a month ago, so it’s as good as new!”  

A nylon backpack? Su Han headed toward the direction of the sound and found the stall owner haggling back and forth with a customer. “The nylon textile makes it wear-resistant. It’s very lightweight and easy to carry! Also, the material is very adaptable and breathable, so absolutely no lingering odors!”

The buyer obviously was tempted, but still hesitated for a moment, “2 pieces of bread is too expensive! 1 piece, I’ll buy it.”

The seller immediately grew agitated, “How is it expensive? Back then, I spent 100 shells on this backpack. What are two pieces of bread compared to that? Barely 20 shells!” 

”You can hardly calculate the price like that.” The customer wasn’t fooled at all and very assertively stated, “Look at the economy now. If your backpack was so valuable, you wouldn’t take it out to trade for 2 pieces of bread, would you? Gold may be valuable but food is priceless!” 

Su Han swept another glance at the nylon backpack. It still looked relatively new. Stepping forward, she interrupted the continuing negotiations between the two men.

“Two pieces of bread? I’ll take it.”

The stall owner was stunned for a small moment before quickly becoming overjoyed. “You have a good eye for quality goods!” 

The customer was visibly unhappy, turning his head to give Su Han a disgruntled look. “It’s a bit too rude to interrupt when others are still discussing, no?” 

“If you agreed to pay for the 2 pieces of bread, naturally, I wouldn’t cut in. However, you kept haggling and don’t seem very sincere. So, I intervened.”

“Exactly! He kept bartering like crazy. He probably didn’t even want to buy it.” The stall owner interjected enthusiastically.

“Miss, you’re still buying the bag, right? It’s quite cheap actually, only 2 pieces of bread.” 

The customer was secretly quite angry. He was rather sure that he could’ve haggled down to 1 piece of bread, who knew that this girl would come out of nowhere and mess things up?

Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in his head. His eyes flickered back and forth between Su Han and the seller, coldly sneering a moment later. “I see what’s going on. You guys are in on it together! You’re collaborating to cheat me!” 

Su Han, “…..”

She was speechless for quite a while before calmly saying, “You really think too much.”

“Well, buy it then! I’ll give you this opportunity.” The customer moved to the said, hostilely remarking, “I’m not going to be tricked, this backpack is clearly only worth 1 piece of bread.”

The stall owner was a bit annoyed but fawningly made an inquiry to Su Han, “So what do you think?”

“Since he doesn’t want it, then, I’m going to buy it.” Su Han took out 2 pieces of rye bread from her pocket and gave them to the seller.

The stall owner exclaimed in a delighted tone, “Alright! Here’s your nylon backpack.”

Su Han casually took over the offered backpack, swinging it over her shoulders before continuing to look around the market.

Seeing that scene, the disgruntled customer stood there with his mouth agape in dumbfounded silence for a long time before embarrassedly hurrying away.

Su Han first decided to use 1 piece of bread to exchange for 5 candles before walking to the next-door stall and asking, “How much are your lighters and flint?”

The stall owner immediately perked up. This girl was clearly quite a wealthy patron, casually trading bread without batting a single eye!

He passionately began promoting his goods, “Dear customer, you have excellent taste! This is a limited edition lighter, very expensive!” 

Su Han was once again made speechless before shooting the seller an exasperated look, “Stop. I only need a lighter to start a fire. I don’t care if it’s a limited edition or not.”

Of course, a limited edition was probably more aesthetically pleasing and had commemorative value. But, the quantity of lighter fuel would probably be less. . .

The seller didn’t know what to say after being cut off by Su Han.

“An ordinary lighter is fine, quote a price. Also, I want some flint as well.” Su Han said patiently.

One should note that lighter flint is a very useful object, primarily composed of cerium and lanthanum. Once combined with iron, the resulting alloy is both hard and brittle, creating a small burst of sparks after being struck.

If paired with some magnesium shavings, it would be almost effortless to start a fire.

So, although a lighter was pretty good, the fuel would be used up after a few tries. A flint fire starter was comparably much more reliable and long-lasting.

The stall owner pursed his lips a few times before finally saying, “I can definitely give you the flint stone fire starter. But the question is, what price are you willing to pay?

Su Han answered with another question, “How much are you asking?”

Although she had a lot of inventory in her portable warehouse, she hardly was willing to be taken advantage of and led like lamb to the slaughter.

“First tell me what you have to trade.” The seller persisted in asking.

Su Han coolly replied, “Quote a price. If it’s reasonable, we can talk. If not, I’ll find someone else.”

Unreasonable. . .find someone else. . . This sentence couldn’t have been more effective in changing the seller’s attitude. Although he opened the stall for about half a day, there really weren’t that many people interested in his fire starter items.

The reality was that when bartering goods, everyone no longer placed that much significance on the original “value” of items. More often than not, it was all about demand. The more people that wanted it, the higher the prices would skyrocket. However, if there was no interest, no matter how “valuable” it was, it wasn’t going to get bought.

The seller licked his lips nervously before finally giving in, “5 ordinary lighters, 1 flint stone and I’ll add in a magnesium strip for free. My price is 2 pieces of bread, I won’t go any lower than that!” 

Su Han quickly glanced through her portable warehouse and helplessly said, “I don’t have any more rye bread.” Although she still had a few buttered meat floss buns, she was unwilling to use them to trade.

No bread? This girl’s wasting my time! The stall owner rolled his eyes in annoyance as his face became rather sullen.

However, Su Han continued, “How about 1 bar of soap and 1 bottle of milk?“

Soap?!! The stall owner widened his eyes in surprise. He knew that soap was scarce these days. 1 bar in the black market was able to sell for 2 or even 3 pieces of rye bread.

“Deal!” The stall owner immediately agreed.

With the exchange completed, Su Han placed her all purchases into her backpack before leaving the marketplace.

Naturally, her “generous wealth” had attracted the attention of some rather unsavory characters nearby. Some even secretly followed her steps, hoping to find a good, hidden corner to rob her.

Su Han kept at her leisurely pace, the corners of her mouth lifting to reveal a mocking smile. She couldn’t help but think of that old saying . . . money is the root of all evils. And of course, in this world, food and daily necessities were even more valuable than money.

Perhaps the average person would be much more cautious than her, choosing to travel to different markets to avoid attention and buying goods in small batches. However, Su Han . . . wasn’t your average individual.

She had learned self-defense techniques before and specialized in the slingshot. Due to frequent and continuous exercise as well as her love for both camping and hiking, she was in excellent shape. She even had quite a defined abdominal V-line despite looking rather delicate. In other words, she was an extremely independent and resilient adventurer . . . a survivor.

Su Han thought in her mind, perhaps she stayed too long in the noodle shop and unwittingly forgotten about the ugliness of human nature. Most of the customers were rather civil beings, only reflecting the kind and peaceful side of society.

Maybe, it was time to capture- Ahem –find one of these “unsavory” people and have a good, long discussion about the current degree of moral corruption within the dregs of society.