Interspecies Trader
Chapter 180 – Incorrect Target

During the following week, I resumed a sort of routine. Since Suuru was happy just monitoring the workshop construction, I handled food sales in 6. It was going smoothly, maybe even more than in 82. Every day, more people became aware of my stand and came to buy from me. The best part was that it didn’t induce jealousy from other merchants, as the city was large enough that acquiring a few regular clients for myself didn’t make much of a difference overall.

The workshop building was taking shape quickly, especially with the client always looking over the work. Suuru managed to win some points with the workers by providing lunch with drinks for them. It was a brilliant idea, proving that she learned a lot about handling people after her experience selling crops in the market.

Not everything was going well, unfortunately. My job advertisement didn’t attract anyone, in either dome. I had no choice but to remove them at the end of the week since the space rental ended.

Wanting to understand what went wrong, I asked one of the civil servants in 6’s city hall about it. The answer that came back was that I had targeted the wrong dome. While it wasn’t impossible to recruit a selnic engineer in dome 6, and maybe in dome 82 if one was lucky, these places were far from ideal. 82 was a countryside dome and 6 was focused on medicine and pharmaceutical development. If I wanted to find a selnic engineer, I needed to go to dome 2, or at least post a recruitment offer there.

Dome 2 specialized in anything selnic related, including technical universities and engineering schools. They had research centers founded by the government, development teams, and large factories. Overall, they produced more than 40% of all selnic items circulating in the domes and hosted the largest tech companies in humanity.

Strong with this new knowledge, I bought yet another expensive gate ticket and traveled to this new dome. Being one of the single-digit domes, it was as large as 6, and maybe even slightly larger. One of the reasons why it became such a hub for selnic development was that it lacked resources compared to other domes. It was located in a cold place, and farming didn’t bring much food throughout the year. It also lacked any other natural resources and thus had no other choice but to specialize in a highly profitable sector such as selnic production.

Selnic items were critical for the domes, including any technology that allowed for resource recycling. It was believed that without them, the domes would have imploded long ago.

When I reached dome 2, I first went outside the city hall to look at the landscape. The architectural style was yet again different, with buildings having solid stone walls, well isolated from the outside. The temperature was much colder here, and I shivered a little due to having light clothes on. The people were also of another nature, taller than in 82 and 6, and covered by two or three layers of clothing, their breaths condensing in front of them.

I came back inside the city hall and moved sel to my ears. This place used yet another language, and I pondered whether I should learn it or not. For the time being, I asked one of the civil servants to translate my job ad against a small fee before renting space for one week on the notice board.

My efforts proved to be correct. On the very next day, someone was waiting for me in front of the board at the indicated time. Glad that I finally managed to get a catch, I ran a quick check on my potential future employee.

Object: human woman.

Wealth level: wearing plain pants and a simple shirt, 35 and 25 lods respectively. Wealth is impossible to quantify, but probably not leaning toward poverty.

Power level: amount of sel in her body: between 3300 and 3500, rank 3, metal affinity. Muscle power: less than 10. Estimated to be a metal mage. Adding a two-factor multiplier to account for hidden moves and trump cards. Estimated maximum power level at 7500: fledgling thinks they got power. Harmful potential: medium.

She had short brown hair and calm brown eyes, watching me as I came closer to her. Her height was similar to mine, which made her tall compared to her peers. Her body lines were plentiful, proof that she didn’t lack nutrition, at least. She was holding a small rectangular bag in her hand, the kind that possessed a practical design without any unnecessary fanciness.

I gave her my best professional smile as we both put sel into our ears to converse.

“Hello. Are you here for the selnic engineering job?”

“Correct.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Tila Urtek, the person who posted the job advertisement.”

The inner world didn’t have any specific way to greet people, except smiling and maybe nodding at them. There were no complicated hand movements, touching, or hugging as it existed in some of the countries in my world.

“My name is Minsto Baimart. Nice to meet you.”

She didn’t smile and barely nodded, however, something that was quite unconventional. I wouldn’t let such a small detail hinder me from finally having a chance to recruit someone I needed, though.

“I’m glad you found the job announcement. Should we go and talk to see if we’re a good match?”

“Yes.”

“Would you prefer to discuss in a café or a meeting room here?”

Despite food being so precious, there existed restaurants and cafés in the inner world. As expected, they were incredibly costly, and only the wealthy could afford to patronize those places.  I was ready to pay for it if this potential candidate wanted to. As for meeting rooms, all city halls had some for rent for a small fee, maybe because they knew it was a necessary service for a lot of people.

Job interviews would normally be conducted inside the office of the recruiting company, but in case it was located in a different dome or there was no office to speak of, these sorts of services came in handy.

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