The Flying Emporium

[To ensure an undisturbed shopping experience for all customers, the remodeling of the store will take place at nighttime. Thank you for your understanding.]

bang

“Fuck!” Like out of reflex, Severin kicked the wooden counter in front of him. He was too upset to pay any attention to the pain.

“Shopping-experience my ass! What customers? Don’t just run with the money.” He felt that this kind of response was a slap to his face. As if the System was taunting him.

Whenever he encountered a situation that might give cause to celebration, it seemed to him the System would pop up and ruin the moment for him. This pattern seemed to repeat itself again and again and by now led Severin to the conclusion that the System’s most astonishing ability was its talent to enrage him. In that regard, it seemed to be even more accomplished than Xander.

Severin took a few deep breaths to calm himself down.

“Well, it’s not like I don’t have anything else to do.”

Looking at the plundered shelves, he knew he had his work cut out for him.

Especially with Timothy’s and Miriam’s occasional shouts reminding him that there were still other people with a demand for his wares. He didn’t want to find himself in a situation where he couldn’t serve a customer. Not after he nearly despaired in the past because of a lack of human contact.

“I’d better get busy then if I want to finish the restocking today. I can’t afford to take things slowly this time. And if my assumptions prove to be true, I’ll have even more work ahead of me starting tomorrow.”

Severin summoned his crafting tools and started to work.

By now he was used to setting up his makeshift lab on a regular basis. Whenever he had to restock his wares. It was too bulky to keep it assembled in such a small store.

That lack of space became particularly striking once he earned a few passive skills that boosted his crafting speed.

When crafting the potions, it took a while for the distillate to cool down and take on its characteristic, jello-like, consistency. Until this point, he could not stack the resulting cubes.

So, when Severin was actually trying, for a change, most of the shop’s space was currently obstructed by his unfinished products which were spread all over the place.

‘Well, from tomorrow onwards this shouldn’t be too much of a problem anymore.’

Being in good spirits and thinking about his upcoming shop extension and the visibly moving experience bar of his subclass, Severin kept working for the rest of the day.

That being said, crafting a couple hundred potions and a handful of the liquid weapon enchants exacted its toll on Severin. But only when his whole inventory was completely restocked and the shelves and stands had been refilled did he pass out on top of his sorry excuse of a bed.

…

The next day Severin woke up unexpectedly early. The exhaustion of the previous day seemed like a lie. Still, right after waking up, he was in a kind of daze. Something seemed strange.

Lying on the service side of the room, the counter obstructed his view towards the largest part of the shop. But what he did notice was that the gap between the far end of the counter and the back of the room seemed to have more than doubled.

After a second of uncertainty Severin finally remembered the shop’s makeover. He jumped up in excitement, now fully awake.

“Let’s see the chan…What the…?” He was dumbfounded by what he saw.

“Maybe it’s not tomorrow yet?” It was difficult to tell the time relying on a magic light source instead of sunlight. But he still knew that this couldn’t be the reason anyway.

Next, he opened the System screen and checked for any kind of notifications.

Naturally, this turned out to be useless.

“Didn’t I…” He then checked the stores’ accounts, trying to make sense of the sight that greeted him. ”740 gold 90 silver. That seems about right. Then why … was only the length expanded?

What about the rest of the room? Don’t tell me the System scammed me again.”

From his point of view, the room looked just like yesterday when he went to sleep. At least in terms of width.

“I didn’t pay 850 gold coins for that!”

Trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the remodeling process, Severin suppressed his irritation. Even he had to admit that it was unlikely that the System really scammed him out of the money. Especially considering that he didn’t pay the cost of this upgrade from his personal balance, to begin with.

He stomped around the counter and suddenly things became very clear.

“Are you shitting me?”

For a moment he felt like an idiot, but Severin quickly turned his annoyance into anger towards the System instead. In his mind, this was not a time for self-reflection.

“Really? Couldn’t just move the shelves? Or store them away inside the inventory? No, of course not. That would be too much to ask for. Transporting a person through time and space? No problem. But a bit of furniture? Has to draw the line somewhere, I guess!”

The room had indeed been remodeled, just like he instructed. It was just that the ceiling-high shelves hadn’t been moved and effectively walled off the newly expanded space; Apart from the 2-meter wide gap at the far left side.

Instead of relief, Severin felt his theory of the greedy, stealing, and infuriating System that just wanted to fuck with him confirmed.

He continued to fume and rage even while inspecting the newly added expansion to the store.

Under normal circumstances, he would be quite happy with what he saw.

But now, after at most 10 minutes of being awake, Severin had already worn himself out with his fit and was almost tired enough to go back to sleep again.

“I won’t let you win this easily!”

The absence of any response or even acknowledgment just further upset the [Shopkeeper] who had talked himself into a rage.

After this short episode, Severin got to work. He wanted to test the hypothesis he came up with as soon as possible, but before that, he now felt like he had to take care of the old shelves first. He moved the big and heavy wooden thing under great effort. One by one he pushed them until they all stood next to the wall.

It would’ve most certainly been faster to just store everything inside his inventory and take it back out at its destination 3 meters ahead. But at this moment he was too stubborn and angry and used the resulting workout to let off steam.

Once he was done, he took a moment to catch his breath and take in the sight.

He was very pleased with how things turned out, but since this was still far from the end result he envisioned when he had decided to buy this upgrade, he soon opened the shopping menu again.

“Now let’s see if this works. Don’t let me down. Please.”

He navigated to the object he had already picked out.

A shelf that looked identical to the ones he had just moved. After a moment of hesitation, Severin decided to be prudent and to only purchase a single one of these things for now.

‘Let’s first test if this really works.’ He wouldn’t take any risks. Not today. Not after the incident earlier on. One could never be too sure about the System and its underlying mechanics.

With bated breath did he pay the required 50 gold.

The item in question instantly appeared in his System inventory.

Severin was facing the shelves he had just repositioned to stand in front of the wall.

They were arranged just like before; If one ignored the hole to the side.

Now he stepped towards exactly that gap and placed the piece of furniture he had just bought.

Plop

“YES! I knew it! I fucking knew it.”

The thing fit perfectly into the corner next to the other shelf.

But that obviously wasn’t the reason for Severin’s ecstatic reaction.

The reason for his shouts and his arm-flailing dance of joy was a small red star within his menu screen.

Something else had appeared inside of his inventory.

A new batch of crafting materials.