The Flying Emporium

“My gosh, it works! And how it works, haha.” Milly’s initial reaction was one of great delight. But her mood quickly shifted.

“Though I guess that does mean accidents can happen, after all.

Damn, that’s bad, huh? So, what now?!”

Milly was, of course, referring to the fact that she had severely misjudged the potency of that small artifact. By the time the sphere’s timer had run out, there would be no water left. And then what would happen to the pot itself?

She didn’t want to find out, but had no way to stop the [Heating Sphere] from doing its job.

“This is really bad.”

“Under different circumstances it might be, indeed. But at least in this situation you don’t have to worry,” said Samuel with a deep, reassuring voice. Yet it wasn’t him, but Andreas, who had mostly been silently observing from the sidelines, who now acted to defuse the situation. With gauntlets appropriate for a [Warrior] like him, he reached straight into the boiling water, fished for the metal sphere, and twisted its dials back until the thing lost its glow.

“That has to be the so-called resistance stat at work?” Milly asked, fascinated but with a hint of jealousy in her voice. But instead of waiting for an answer, once she realized the sphere had stopped radiating its heat, and not a second later, without a care in the world she had already snatched it back out of the man’s hands and held on to it as if it was a most valuable treasure.

And yet she appeared torn. Amazing and l need to have it were phrases she could repeatedly be heard saying. But so could some of her complaints.

“Now if only that thing…”

..

Everyone else seemed either lost in their own thoughts or was otherwise distracted.

Andreas, though he carefully tried to hide it, was occupied with his sore hands. Even though he was more fire, or in this case heat, resistant, than even most other adventurer’s, given his role as his group’s main tank, sticking his hands into boiling water and grabbing onto a hot and very much active heat radiating sphere with a heat conductivity that had to be even higher than that of diamond, was not a pleasant experience by any stretch of one’s imagination. Especially not when considering that his own gloves did not share the magic property of being able to dissipate heat from one moment to the next when turned off.

Trying to keep up appearances, he was busy carefully tending to his hands.

Jasmin, on the other hand, seemed still hung up on what the innkeeper hat told her about the common folk’s plights.

In particular, the woman’s dismissive notion towards the mentioned heating pipes, which, Severin figured was this world’s equivalent to district heating-though probably far more potent if it could also be used for cooking-seemed to be bothering the [Princess].

And then there was Severin. Who was worrying about her, Jasmine’s, thoughts. Or rather, about the conclusions she would draw from them.

If Milly was so taken in by his newest product and spread the word, he might be in trouble.

And if Jasmine would turn out to be a more caring royal than her usually cold expression made her seem, then…

Unnoticed by anyone else, Severin grimaced.

He had just complained about the fact that no one in their right mind would buy something like that supposedly useless sphere.

But the prospect that it might be the opposite, that demand might instead skyrocket, that people might actually jump on his offer and flood his store, wasn’t much better either.

In fact, being honest with himself Severin came to the realization that of the two options, the latter was what he dreaded even more than the former.

Even with practice producing these things and therefore considerably cutting down on the processing time, earning only half a gold each…the ratio was just off.

And then there was still its counterpart.

He might not have immediately realized the [Heating Sphere’s] benefits, but once being made aware he naturally also understood the potential value of a [Cooling Sphere].

Severin groaned inwardly.

When suddenly all these people, meaning Severin himself, Andreas, Jasmine, as well as Em, Samuel, and Krill, who were also still present, looked up and towards Milly.

Abruptly, the latter had stopped, mid-sentence, her lamenting of the fact that even a full twist of the sphere would not be enough to produce the temperatures needed for anything else than cooking, and maybe heating a bath or making laundry.

The sudden silence drew everyone’s attention.

And what they saw in the innkeeper’s now wide-open eyes was first dread.

Then great delight.

And then her hands started moving again. Twisting.

Half a turn. And another half turn. And another. And another. And a full turn.

And Milly’s hands still did not stop.

Only when she began laughing like a madwoman did the group collectively snap out of it and hell broke loose.

“What are you doing?!”

“Stop! Stop it.”

“Someone get that thing from her.”

“Run!”

Amidst the ensued chaos and the frantic shouts, Severin put his hand on Em’s shoulder and pulled her back as far as the limited space behind the counter allowed for and it was above all to Milly’s own good fortune that just-in-time someone had managed to reach through to the absorbed woman, as Severin was getting ready to blacklist the woman at a moment’s notice and have her removed from the mountain altogether.

With all that entailed.

“Nothing to worry about, guys. I haven’t touched the other dial, see?” She said bashfully and suddenly very aware of the intense looks-frightened and frightening at the same time-the classbearers gave her.

But, as she deliberately and under careful observation, twisted back the metal sphere into its original state, she added, if somewhat subdued, “For half a gold, I’ll buy it.”

Before any deal could be made, however, Samuel made another suggestion.

“I think before that, we might actually want to test its limits. Just not in here.” The last part, he said with an admonishing look on his face. Then he turned around towards Severin to ask, “If you would be willing to clear the sparring area for us?”