The Tales of Draconic Warlock

We decided to leave the city but had no proper idea about the routes of the empire.

Sure, we bought maps of the empire routes, but that doesn't mean we know everything about those routes. The locals would know what lays along the oute more than us.

So, we decided to take a Caravan Quest.

The Caravan Quest is a guard quest.

Not everyone has space rings in which they can keep everything they have while travelling, nor can they use the teleportation system to transport goods over large distances easily. It would cost a lot that way.

Teleportation is quite costly, and by teleporting, merchants would lose rather than gain profits. To make profits they would have to increase the prices of the goods, and that would mean the demand for the goods would decrease, atleast for teh goods that they bring.

If there are other merchants who sell goods for lower prices, people tend to go there to buy the goods rather than spend a large amount of coins.

The reason why teleporting goods was considered costly was because merchants don't just transport from one end to another end. Sure, there are some goods that would be directly transported like that and for that, teleporting the goods would be safe and cheaper.

Merchants tend to trade along the path usually, and that means they have to stop at every telportation station, which would cause a lot of coins in that way.

For example, teleporting from A to D would cost less than teleporting from A to B and then to C, finally to D, even if B and C are along the path from A to D.

This is how it is. So, merchants won't use teleportation unless what they carry is very valuable and can't be lost no matter the cost.

They can use space rings to transport the goods, but that would only attract even more greed from others. People who can use space rings are usually wealthy, and if they are weak, then others who are attracted by the space ring would act to get their hands on them.

The greed was not for the space ring but for what was inside.

Though the space ring is costly, it can not be eaten, nor can it be used to improve their strength.

A weapon can be used to attack, armor can be used to protect from attacks, and treasures can improve strength directly, but what can a space ring do?

It is just for convineience. It does almost nothing. Though they can be sold for quite a large amount of money, it would be rather problematic for the ones who stole that ring.

Stolen goods can't be sold out in the open. If anyone tries to do that, it would certainly land them in serious trouble. If the items were common items then it wouldn't matter much as no one can guess their origins, but there are certain items that can be easily traced, such as the space rings.

These are not things everyone would have, even in the empire. Though they are of no use directly in a battle, they are very important.

One can store weapons, armor, and even potions that can help during battles.

If you keep potion bottles on the outside, the chances of them getting damaged are one hundred percent. Inside the space ring, they would be safe as long as you didn't let the space ring get destroyed.

Most of the time, even the enemies would not try to destroy the space rings as they would be considered part of their spoils. Once they were destroyed, that would be it for the items that were inside the rings.

Once the space ring gets destroyed, the items inside would disappear into the universe. No one knows where they will end up. So, enemies would never knowingly destroy them, but the ones who can take away space rings are pretty powerful, and they most likely were not interested in the gains that those space rings would give them.

So, they would be just tsored but for bandits that was not the case.

They would need every coin that they can amass. Many join to become bandits because either their talents are not good enough to rise in the society or simply they are pure evil who want to destroy and enjoy the spoils.

When I say enjoy the spoils, eat and drink wine while enjoying women. For that, money is required. So, the goods are always sold, unless they are food that can sustain the members.

So, the black market is the only place where transactions regarding items as precious as them could take place. Nowhere else would be as safe as the black market, at least while inside the black market. Once you leave, that is a different question.

Selling a space ring there would definitely attract attention, two kinds of attention.

The families that can afford space rings are not idiots. If any member of their family dies, they know that the black market is the place that the murderers would go to sell the items that they got from the kill. So, they would send an agent to keep eyes on things in the market, and if any particular item that was with the dead member shows here, they have their murderer.

The second attention would be from the greedy. Even bandits were prone to be robbed by other bandits.

So, not everyone is dumb enough to sell items like space rings, even in the black market. So, for bandits robbing ones with space rings might appear very good but also a death sentence.

---

Anyway, since those two methods were quite costly, merchants could only use caravans to transport their goods as long as they were not costly items.

Caravans are susceptible to dangers. It would be quite large and slow. This means anyone can attack them at any time, and the merchants can't just run away. If they wanted to, they could only do so by leaving the caravan, and that meant losses for them.

So, whenever there is a caravan moving across cities, there would be a quest regarding that.

It was to guard the caravan during their travel from one city to another. As long as the caravan reaches the destination within an acceptable range of damage, then the quest can be considered completed.

The quest we just took is like that. We need to guard them until they reach their destination. We would be in a different city and complete a quest at the same time.

It's a win-win situation for us.