I swear, it's always the stories I forget about that get popular xD

I mean, as of writing this, this story has 1,534 views, 80 favourites and 114 follows. That's roughly a 10/15% retention rate since those views are split between chapters 1 and 2, so effectively 750 users viewed the story and 80 fave'd it, so 10% for the faves and 15% for follows. That's kinda nuts, so thanks for enjoying I guess. I really like this story idea, but there's a massive issue with it - most of it HAS to be original content.

Since it's so focused on economics and the original SAO almost completely glosses over all that side of things, I have to make it all original. Making it interesting is doubly-hard because I have to write entirely original content whilst still keeping people interested in an SAO story that might as well be an original story. I can maaaaybe get away with involving Agil because he owned a shop, or Lisbeth for owning a smithy, but that's just two characters. But hey, after over a year of waiting, those of you who still care about this story shall be rewarded with a new chapter and potentially more!

Bow down before your benevolent, word-writing goddess, bow I say! (Also, like a certain familiar water-based Goddess, this goddess is dirt-broke and would appreciate any benevolent donations! What I'm trying ta say is that I have a pat reon and you get benefits for donating to me, 0w0)

Chapter 3

Skye blinked awake, her body immediately jolting upright as she saw the unfamiliar ceiling, before the memories of the past day came back to her and she fell back.

Untangling herself from the covers, Sora took her time getting up and stretching out her arms with a yawn. Lazily, she opened her inventory, taking out a yellow fruit and munching through it. As Kirito had helpfully, if irritably, pointed out to her when asked, there wasn't actually a hunger system in SAO, people ate food for buffs or for sheer pleasure. The fruit she was eating, for example, cost as much as an Iron Dagger in the auction house, and the really good taste reflected that.

She checked her menus for any changes, then exited her room and ambled down the corridor towards the main area of the inn. As she came around the corner, she saw Kirito sitting at a table, apparently waiting for her as he raised a hand in greeting and gestured at the chair opposing him. "Good morning, what's up?" She watched as he took out one of the Anneal Blades she had given him and laid it on the table, raising an eyebrow as she sat down.

"I remember you said you were going to Recall back to the Town of Beginnings to auction the swords off, and since I'm going to be out here doing quests, I thought maybe we could come to another agreement." Skye blinked, then let a small smile curl on her lips. "Since it would waste literal days of time going back and forth for me to sell my loot, or too much money buying Recall and Corridor crystals, I wanted to know if you'd be willing to come and go, taking loot back to the town for me, bringing me supplies, and in return, you'd get a cut of the money for your time and effort."

"Y'know, that sounds like a fair dinkum good deal to me. I'm going to be spending time in the Auction House anyway, so maybe I can jack up the price. If you were willing to split off like 60,000 Cor from the total profit, I could buy out all the Anneal Blades in the listings and force the price up. One-time offer of course, since pretty soon people will be able to buy them for 16,500 and force the price back down to around 20,000, but for now, I might be able to force the price of such a rare and valuable weapon up to maybe 60,000 per sword."

Skye watched as Kirito ran the numbers in his head, smiling all the while. Sure, he was a good fighter, but that didn't mean he lacked for brains, it only took him a few moments of mental maths before responding. "So if you sell each sword, disregarding those you buy from the listings to fix the price, at 60,000, assuming they are all actually bought, all 78 swords would make around 4.6 million Cor. Split that 60-40 and that's still 2.8 million for me and 1.8 million for you."

Nodding, she tapped the sword on the table. "Of course, as I said, after today, these are going to heavily drop in price as people buy them at 16,500 and sell them at a more respectable price, but anyone good at the game with cash to spare in the starter town will definitely accept even gouging prices for an advantage. Maybe a bit...I don't know, scummy to force people to spend so much on weapons that literally could be the difference between life and death, but, well, that's life. Plus, it just means we're more likely to survive this."

Skye hummed idly for a moment as she considered any issues with the plan. "The only issue is starting capital. I'll have to sell some of the swords at the auction house in order to get that starting cash to force the price up. We'd lose some profit, but in return, we force the price up and make back the loss easily. So, we split the loss of that 50-50, then the rest of the profit is a 60-40 in your favour and we've just made literally millions. This does hinge on players buying those swords, but the Anneal Blade is worth enough to players that the extra cost would be more than worth it for the power it grants. Experienced players will know really early that someone has found an exploit and is abusing it, but that means they'd also know that this area is already being farmed, so they are also potentially going to be buying those swords. If we do it fast enough and I advertise it in town, people, especially in groups, will scrounge up any cash they can to buy them." Skye then palmed her chin in thought.

"Of course, the more experienced players might point out to those who don't know better that those swords are massively price-hiked, but I think we'd still sell off at least most of the swords. Even if we only sold 3 swords at a 300% markup of 26,500, so 79,500 per sword, that's 238,000 Cor. If we have to sell 7 swords at 25,500 to undercut the other swords and buy them out, that's still only like 178,000 Cor, so even if this plan fails horrendously and we sell a tiny portion of our stock, we still make more than we lost, and we can just sell the rest at 30,000 Cor, we'd still make plenty of cash." Kirito nodded as she explained her thinking, and by the end of it, he sent her a trade request.

"I'm trusting you a hell of a lot here, so I want to warn you that if you backstab me on this, I will make it my personal goal to screw with your entire life." Nodding, Skye watched as he filled his trading window with swords, and she traded back the 2,000 Cor he had sent her to make up for the slight difference in value yesterday. Smiling at him, Skye took out her Recall Crystal, returning to the Town of Beginnings.

Not wasting any time, she immediately headed for the Auction House, pushing her way through the NPCs and bringing up the window. She was therefore exceptionally surprised for a moment when she saw that there wasn't a single Anneal Blade available for auction. Then it hit her. Of course, the better players who knew the Anneal Blade area was going to be farmed to hell and back would buy the best Floor 1 sword up from the auction house before anyone else if they didn't intend to go there. 26,500 was higher than it would be later, sure, but once floor 2 was unlocked there would be other things to get that were also good.

Opening a new listing, Skye listed an Anneal Blade at the aforementioned 300% markup of 79,500 Cor. Watching the listing, in about ten seconds time, it was gone. Someone had actually bought the Anneal Blade at 300% of the normal price, which was actually almost a 500% markup from the 16,000 price it would be in the future. Immediately she began listing all the other Anneal Blades, each one at 79,500, and people actually bought them. Some people then listed Anneal Blades at lower prices, but she immediately snatched those up and relisted them at 79,500, making even more money for free.

Each blade she sold gave her 79,500 Cor, and if that same blade got relisted at a lower price, for example, 70,000, and she bought it back then relisted it, she effectively made a free 9,500 Cor profit for absolutely nothing. Over the course of about two hours, Skye sold off all but one of her 78 Anneal Blades for 79,500, bringing her to a grand total of 6,221,500 Cor. But that wasn't all of course, since some people tried and failed to push the price down by buying her blades then relisting them, a stupid idea probably made by people who didn't actually understand how the market worked, but that meant she netted a cool extra 251,600 Cor. Then, on top of that, she also sold the five broken Anneal Blades Kirito gave her for 20,000 each, an extra 100,000 Cor on the dot.

In total, 6,473,100 Cor. Split 60-40 aside from the one blade she didn't sell, she earned 2,541,540 Cor whilst Kirito had made 3,911,560 Cor. Not bad for their quite literally her first day of playing all things considered. She briefly wondered where all that money actually came from, since it had only been a little more than twenty-four hours, but decided to put it out of her mind, figuring that people had simply earned a lot of money when they weren't afraid of death, then pooled it together in order to buy those exceptionally valuable blades.

Now feeling quite scarily rich, Skye purchased a Corridor Crystal for an even 10,000 Cor alongside another Recall Crystal for 15,000 Cor, then exited the auction house, completely aware that several players were following her. Taking out the crystal, a menu of her very barren friends list appeared, consisting of just Kirito and not that asshole 'Kage'. Selecting Kirito, her vision was replaced with a white flash, and after just a few moments, she appeared in the middle of the forest. "Yo." She said by way of greeting, grinning at Kirito.

"That was fast, I figured it'd take longer to get it all sold. I guess people were more desperate for good weapons than we thought?" Her grin widening, Skye gestured and opened a trade request for Kirito. He accepted it, and she put in a very satisfyingly large number. "Woah, that's...a lot. What happened?" He accepted the trade whilst she explained exactly what went down at the auction house, prompting him to smack his forehead. "Of course, everyone would go for the sword when it's life or death, I'm an idiot."

Poking him, she smirked. "No, WE are idiots, we both didn't think about that fact. Not everyone is brave enough to come out here with a starter sword and start absolutely demolishing the monsters, then snowballing because of a really cheap exploit that I don't doubt is probably already patched. My little mass sale of Anneal Blades has likely irreparably fucked over the balance for the first few floors. Won't last obviously, people are gonna be upgrading quickly, but we've already made our profit, so it's not like it matters. So, what were you up to?"

"Well, I had some time to kill while waiting so I hunted more mobs, I have another dozen Ovule's, I'll complete the quest myself as well for the experience. I suspect when we get back to town there will already be other players there, so staying here would just mean attracting attention. I'm gonna go south towards some good quests and go do those whilst everyone else is busy trying to catch up." Nodding, Skye stuck out her hand.

"That's where we part ways then. I'm gonna go back to spawn and see about setting up a shop next to the auction house. I had a quick peek, I can easily afford them, I guess because this is floor 1 and their value is absolute garbage compared to going to a higher floor. But hey, if I have to I can just sell the place and move later on. Whilst everyone is down here on floor 1, having a shop is gonna be pretty good." Kirito, after a moment of hesitation, took her hand and gave it a shake, waving over his shoulder as he walked away.

Quirking her mouth to the side, Skye brushed off his dismissiveness, taking her Recall Crystal out of her inventory. He was probably just confused about why she wanted to run a shop instead of actually playing the game. If it was a normal game, sure, she'd half-and-half her time, but it was a death game, and every time she went near a monster there was a very healthy chance that she would die. By comparison, as long as she didn't leave the town, she literally couldn't die. If and when it came time to move her shop, she'd probably just end up asking Kirito to escort her, or at least asking him to go to a town so she could Corridor her way to him so she didn't have to put herself at risk.

That wasn't to say she was going to completely neglect her combat abilities, but she was going to take things slow and carefully, only hunting mobs she was utterly confident in beating, like the boars outside of the town. Then once she had finished there and was confident, she'd move on to the next mob in line, and then the next, slowly but steadily increasing her power level, though she'd only do it if she had nothing better to do.

Activating the crystal and returning to the Town of Beginnings, Skye spent a moment just considering the fact that she was now, without a single doubt, the second-richest player in the game. She could buy literally whatever she wanted, the best level 4 armour and weaponry on the market, and then go and actually kill things, levelling up and partaking in the fucking stupid 'condition' that Kayaba 'Cunt'ihiko had set for them of clearing the entire MMO.

With everyone being afraid of death and thus, exceptionally cautious, she suspected that getting very far at all was going to take...a painfully long time to happen.

After a bit of property hunting, Skye found her dream little shop.

Two generously spacious front rooms with a dividing wall and an arched doorway, a nice glass front letting in plenty of natural light with a small park on the opposing side of the street not blocking any light, then a sizable back-room and basement. Stairs led up to the second floor with a bedroom, then a living room and kitchenette combo. Attached to the bedroom was a really out-of-place bathroom, because it was a modernized bathroom, but she just shrugged that off. All in all, it was absolutely perfect.

The only real downside was that it was two streets and a few minutes walk away from the auction house, but it was basically perfectly positioned for players coming and going either out of the city or to the auction house from the teleport circle, so she would have tons of foot-traffic. The building cost an even 500,000 Cor to purchase, way higher than other buildings just simply because of the size of the building, the amazing position and the rather beautiful architecture, a nice blend of dark oak pillars, irregular stone wall surfaces backed with solid slabs of stone, then some lacquered acacia floorboards for a nice visual distinction between the darkness of the raw wood pillars, the roughness of the stone walls and then the vibrant brightness and smoothness of the floorboards.

Still, it was well within her budget, and honestly, even if she felt a little bit pained at spending a fifth of her total earnings in the blink of an eye, she knew it meant having a home that she honestly had already fallen in love with from the moment she stepped inside, plus, she reassured herself that she could earn that back if she just put in some hard work. Well, that or finding another exploit to abuse, but that wasn't exactly likely.

After the purchase, she headed back to the auction house and purchased all of the wood up to the 'flat' cost, where the majority of the wood was priced. She then did the same with stone, nails, hinges, fabrics and all manners of other miscellaneous crafting goods. Taking her bounty, she ventured across the city towards the public crafting stations, unsurprised to see that other than a scattered few people it was completely empty. Watching them for a moment, she honestly wasn't sure they were even people, they could have been NPCs with how they were acting.

Heading to one of the many available benches, one for carpentry, Skye started to essentially trade money for skill levels as well as a small amount of normal level experience. Because she could afford basic resources that were in absurdly-high quantities as they were safer things to gather than trying to get mob drops, she could essentially mass-craft things to power-level her skills. Using all of the wood and most of the nails she had purchased, she then moved on to masonry, and replicated her actions, eating up all the stone she purchased to level up masonry, then did the same with tailoring.

Once all of her crafting materials were used up, she simply went back and bought even more from the auction house once she had a rough grasp of how much she would need, spending maybe 200,000 more in two more visits just on those materials to level up. Once she was satisfied with the quality of what she was making, she made her final purchase, buying some holly and walnut wood to use for making shelving, pedestals, counters, tables, racks and other kinds of shop furniture. The masonry would help to reinforce the furniture from within and maybe even make a few stone bits of furniture, whilst the fabric she had bought would be used to make carpets, drapes and other soft materials to make the shop more comfortable.

All in all, just from trading and then buying rarer materials that she doubted anyone had actually gathered and were probably just put there by NPCs, she had spent 250,000 Cor. Added to the 500,000 for buying her home, she had, rounded down for simplicity, 1,770,500 Cor left in her inventory. That would be plenty for doing some auction-based trickery. Her basic plan was to buy valuable things at the auction house whenever they popped up, then list those in her shop at a high markup and sell them on to other players. On top of that, the second plan was networking. She was most definitely going to stay in touch with Kirito, her intentions being to convince him to sell any items he got to her for a cost above what he'd get selling it to an NPC, but lower than the auction house. She would then sell it on to other players for a little extra and make money from it. The benefits for him were that he didn't have to go and list the items at the auction house, plus he got the money immediately.

Plan number 3 was to level up her crafting skills and put her own items up for sale. If she levelled up weapon and armour-crafting skills and made good gear, people would come and buy from her, and whilst there, they would buy other stuff as well. Plan number 4, if her shop completely fell through, was that she would just become an auction-goblin, staying at the auction-house buying and relisting anything she saw that could be relisted at a higher price, making money from that. In the end, if it came down to it, she could literally just laze about her home all day since she didn't actually need to make any money, there was no need for food, water or anything like that aside from personal pleasure, and since she had outright bought her house, she owned it until she sold it, so she wasn't concerned about getting kicked out or anything stupid like that.

Using the materials she bought, Skye began making everything her shop would need. Racks for armour, weapon stands, shelves and tables and helmet posts, all manner of things she crafted using her now-acceptable level of carpentry, masonry and tailoring skill. The crafting worked by effectively allowing her to model what she wanted, and if she had a high enough prerequisite skill she was able to make it, saving that model then as a 'blueprint' she could use to recreate it easily. As such, she first made a frame in the shape of the object she wanted out of stone for support, then covered that with wood since wood looked prettier. Finally, she used fabric to add padding and surface-breaking features as well as extra colours.

With this, she created the designs for the different things she wanted, and then crafted multiple of each. Aside from the shelves, which required a slightly higher masonry skill to create, she was able to build every other object she intended to place in her shop, and did so, the experience from crafting those items as well as making a few more miscellaneous items allowed her to then craft the shelves at the end, leaving her with an assortment of light and dark-coloured furniture she could use in her shop, all customized with fabrics of various sizes, shapes and colours.

Smiling, she took a step back, and immediately bumped into someone. Turning to apologise, she didn't even get a word out before he spoke. "Hmm, I figured I would find you here." She recognised the voice, but it still took her a second or two to identify who it was. Though, she didn't really know more than 2 people in SAO so it really wasn't hard to narrow down exactly who it was, even if he was taller, a bit less good-looking and definitely more portly around the waist.

And so, Skye folded her arms over. "And what's that supposed to mean? We're literally in a death game now, I'd rather take my time and not literally kill myself. Plus, I'm not that interested in killing monsters and clearing dungeons, I'll leave that to the game-fanatics." She said with a hmph, turning away from Kage just to hop up onto the bench she'd been using and sit on it, looking at him. "What do you want? I woulda thought you'd have left to go power-level."

"Well, I was going to warn you not to waste your time here. You'd be better off waiting until you have some actual money to spend before you start trying to level your crafting skills up. But from the looks of it you've probably already wasted your time and money doing exactly nothing so that's a moot point. Then I was about to offer to let you join my party and level up with me in return for a percentage of the money earned from drops but you clearly have better things to do."

Skye tried to control herself, but couldn't help but smirk at him after he finished. "Riddle me this then, how am I level 13?" She said, her smirk widening when his eyes narrowed in pure suspicion. "Might a weapon called the Anneal Blade be familiar to you?" His eyes then widened, widening further as she equipped the single blade she had kept for her own personal use, drawing it and giving the weapon a lazy twirl. "As it just so happens, I and a new friend of mine managed to find a way to make plenty of cash from these blades. Oh, what might that be that I see by your hip? Well, it just couldn't be, could it?"

She feigned surprise at 'spotting' the very same blade in her hand sheathed at his hip, smirking at him. Apparently not happy to not be able to lord his position and knowledge over her, he stormed off, leaving her to grin openly at his back at having gotten revenge. Maybe if he'd been nicer and actually accepted her attempted friendship before she would have been more friendly, but he seemed fully inclined to be an unbearable asshole, so she would give him exactly what he gave her.

And if he wanted to get revenge, well, he'd be waiting a long time for that.