Chapter 693: Earning Money
The Gravitas served a ton of customers on their first day, and in total, it made a profit of a little over 30,000 Immortal Stones without counting the incident with the Runner.
This didn't sound like much, but that was only the first day with a lot of discounts. When more people knew about the speed and quality of the Gravitas, more people would come to check it out. This was only the start, and it would only get busier with time.
The average prices for weapons depended on the Cultivation Realm of the client. Generally, weapons for someone in the Initial Unity Realm would cost five Immortal Stones. At the second level, the price would rise to 10, 15, 20, and finally 25 Immortal Stones at the Peak Unity Realm.
An Initial Nascent Nourishing Realm weapon cost 100 Immortal Stones, which would become 200, 300, 400, 500 at the subsequent levels. Law Comprehension weapons started at 1,000 Immortal Stones and would reach a price of 5,000 at the Peak Law Comprehension Realm.
Of course, all of these prices were only for standard weapons comprised of an average amount of materials with an average rarity. If someone commissioned something like a spear, shield, or a big club, the price would rise since more materials would be needed for these kinds of weapons. Additionally, materials had different rarities and were useful for different Laws, which also changed prices.
Yet, one important thing had to be said about the profit of the Gravitas. The policy to sell more weapons by offering to buy them back for 80% of their price later was a massive factor in why the Gravitas earned so much money.
It was very possible that, in some years, several of the customers would return to sell this weapon and buy another one, but it wasn't certain that they would directly buy a new one. It could be that the customer would use a weapon they found or commission a different forge.
This meant that the Gravitas had to keep ahold of enough money to buy back all the weapons at 80% of their price. Due to that, one could say that the Gravitas only made around 6,000 Immortal Stones profit.
In the short term, this seemed like a stupid decision, but the effect of this policy would only show its results in the long term. Most customers would sell the weapon and immediately commission a new one, which only increased the amount of money that the Gravitas had in its coffers. This would probably also continue for the next couple of purchases.
Yet, the crucial part was something else.
Cultivators died.
For example, when a Cultivator purchased four weapons for different levels, the Gravitas would make 20% profit from the first three weapons and 100% profit from the last one. The Gravitas wouldn't buy their own weapons back from someone that didn't purchase them, at least not at 80%.
This had no negative impact on sales since the buyers of the weapons were not affected by this policy and also weren't interested in reselling these weapons. After all, they could sell the weapons back for far more than they could get by selling these weapons themselves.
One last point was the fact that, when the Gravitas bought the weapons back, the weapons didn't just vanish. The weapons were still there and would be sold again for the normal price. Gravis only had to do some minor maintenance on them, which only took a second and cost no money.
Of course, over time, the number of weapons that the Gravitas owned would rise and rise since they created new ones and bought back old ones.
But Gravis had a ton of space in his Spirit Space. Storing all of these weapons was not an issue.
In actuality, having so many weapons just lying around was incredible.
Cultivators generally wanted custom-made weapons since they had very specific fighting styles.
Yet, from time to time, there would be weapons that just happened to perfectly fit them since someone else had used a similar or maybe even identical fighting style to them before.
And that was the critical part.
This could be likened to Gravis' comprehension of the Initial Elemental Laws. Back then, he hadn't been able to use these elements but could still use the Composition Laws to counter the enemy. Of course, if the enemy didn't have one of these elements, the Law would be worthless.
But when one countered every element, the specifics were not relevant anymore. The same thing was true for weapons. At some point, the Gravitas would have weapons for nearly every conceivable fighting style for every level on every Realm.
At that point, Gravis wouldn't need to forge anything anymore. He would only have to maintain the weapons, which took one second each, to get another 20% of the weapon's worth eventually. At that point, the Gravitas would transform from a forge to basically a weapon lending store.
What if the weapons broke?
Simple, then they just wouldn't buy the weapon back. After all, it's broken, and that wasn't Gravitas' fault since the weapons had the best possible quality for the materials.
With all of that said, Gravis now had an additional 6,000 Immortal Stones he could spend without having to think about it. Of course, usually, he would have to pay Yersi and Orthar, but they had a different agreement.
Gravis would get 50%, Orthar 30%, and Yersi 20%. Of course, the split of earnings wasn't as important since they would mostly spend money on the same stuff. They were planning to rent one place, and everyone would pitch in. The only difference in spending would be the comprehension of different Laws.
The first day of business of the Gravitas was over, but it didn't close. One shouldn't forget that this was a world of cultivation. No one needed to eat, sleep or even breathe. Because of that, the shop would be open permanently for the next century with maybe some breaks here and there.
After the first day, the next couple of days saw a decline in profits. Yet, by the fifteenth day, the profits reached the same amount as on the first day again, and they even continued climbing.
After the first month, the profits became higher and higher. The reasons for that were two things. One reason was the policy, and the other reason was the speed with which Gravis forged the weapons. Many people didn't like waiting, and they were even willing to pay more if their weapon was finished faster. Of course, with the low prices of the Gravitas, ordering from them became an even better option.
By now, Yersi was very experienced in dealing with different customers, and she managed to process them in an orderly and efficient fashion. Orthar didn't need to help out since there were not nearly enough customers to overwhelm Yersi. Weapons were generally the most expensive things a Cultivator bought for their Realm, and they would only buy one per level.
This meant that weapons were rarely bought but would cost a ton per purchase. One could compare this to when a mortal would purchase a new home or a new carriage.
The Gravitas continued booming, and it would only become crazier from here on out.