“I need to see what I’m going to get before considering giving you my bones.”

“You don’t want crystals?” the entire room’s temperature suddenly dropped, “little Silvy told me…”

“I’m speaking about the other hot product you have,” Hye paused, and when the smuggler didn’t say anything, he added, “the priciest thing you are selling.”

“I’m not a merchant!”

“In a way… You are, hahaha!”

“…”

The smuggler went into silence again, and this time he didn’t speak for ten minutes. “What makes you think you can afford what I have?” he finally asked, speaking about the thing Hye was truly desperate to get.

Crystals were something crucial for him, but he got a way to solve this problem. As for the spaceships, this was a thing he’d dare to even steal in daylight if he got a chance.

“I’ll ask you again, what makes you think you have what it takes to buy them?” The smuggler didn’t directly mention the spaceships, but the two knew what they were talking about.

“Let me take a guess… You gained these from little Silvy, right?” Hye betted everything on these words. And surely he had his own reasons for doing so.

First of all, the smuggler seemed to not just be offering his spaceships to the highest bidders, or selling them for a scary price. He seemed to look for people with certain qualifications.

Putting aside what these qualifications were, Hye knew he wouldn’t apply to a single one of them. So he started to think about a way to get his hands over these spaceships, and his words were his way to get them.

From what he learnt so far, it wasn’t that easy to get a single spaceship in the universe. Even big forces would suffer a lot to get a single one. And here this smuggler was, being in such a world threatened by a war, and he was offering spaceships to anyone here.

This didn’t make any sense. The first thing that popped into Hye’s mind was that this smuggler here was trying to make trouble in this war. But which side was he standing on? And the most logical answer was that he was standing on the side of people living in this world.

Having spaceships was like having a mass destruction weapon. And then Hye thought about the means of this smuggler having these spaceships.

The answer presented itself to him when he spoke about Silverlining, mentioning him in a way that told Hye how the two were close to each other.

A smuggler, who was an outlaw, befriending someone who was working in the upper circle of a mighty race? One that was totally hostile to the Hescos coming to invade this world?

Everything became clearer to Hye’s eyes. The Toranks were behind all this, and that made him dare to bet on this. If this was true, then he’d have a great chance to get a few of these ships. And if he was wrong, he wouldn’t get anything but losing a chance to acquire such precious weapons.

As for trying to use his bones, it wasn’t going to work. This smuggler was aware of this, and if his bones would buy him a ticket to own these spaceships, the smuggler would have started speaking about the price instead of repeating his rejection stance like this.

“You seem pretty close to little Silvy to tell you about this,” the smuggler laughed, one that came after a long time of silence.

“It’s not like how you are thinking,” Hye shook his head, “these ships are here for me.”

“For you?!!” the smuggler retorted back, “no way! You don’t qualify to even take a single small one of them!”

As things turned in such a direction, Hye knew there was no going back, “then tell me, who is the biggest ally of the Toranks here? One who is also a big enemy for the Hescos as well?”

“…” the smuggler kept his silence, while Hye shrugged as he added, “you may think I’m weak, useless and powerless, but it’s true these ships are sent here for me. You can’t expect them to just offer these to anyone, and that’s why they placed such hard to achieve conditions in the first place.”

“Then let me know, is there anyone here who satisfies these conditions?” Hye already heard about this from down below, knew that no one ever went up and came down with a single ship.

He hoped these outlaws weren’t lying about this, or else everything he said and acted so far would be for naught.

“That doesn’t mean they are here for you…”

“As for the price,” Hye didn’t give the smuggler any chance to say his logical reasons behind rejecting him, “tell me, who is rich enough to match such a scary price of yours? Of course I’m not speaking about those filthy rich folks from the merchant families in this world.”

Hye’s words’ meaning was clear. The price enforced on everyone trying to buy these spaceships was quite scary. He didn’t know if this price came from the Toranks or from this smuggler, but either way he knew he had the ability to satisfy such a condition at least.

“You aren’t that wealthy to purchase them,” Hye was about to retort back, but the smuggler raised a hand to stop him before adding, “let’s not speak about the big ones, the price of the smallest one is much more than what a human can afford.”

“I’m paying with my bones!”

“Even so… You’ll need hundreds of millions of your bones to get a single ship of…”

“Deal!” Without waiting for the smuggler to continue his words, Hye said, stretching his arm across the table, aiming to shake hands with the smuggler to close the deal.

“You indeed are insane!”