The Flying Emporium

When Severin opened the door, he was almost deafened by the noise bursting out towards him; the crowd of people inside the store was much larger than even the big mass of fused dots on his minimap could have prepared him for.

He was momentarily stunned, but since no one paid overly much attention to him- that was of the people who even noticed his appearance in the first place-Severin could take his time to reorganize himself and get a grasp on the situation.

First to catch his attention was, of course, Krill, who stood just two arm's lengths away from him. Despite this, the old man was amongst those who didn’t notice Severin’s arrival, too busy was he. More quickly than one might have expected from a man his age, and without letting his composure slip, Krill served one customer after another, without pausing, trying to fend off the ever-increasing onslaught of new arrivals.

A losing fight, by the looks of it; for every one customer that left the store, a group of at least two or three people seemed to enter.

Severin didn’t want to make the man’s job even more difficult than it already was and refrained from making himself noticed.

Instead, his attention turned to the customers themselves who- ignoring the ever-present crowd surrounding the two vending machine-like devices-could be divided into two groups.

First were those who were actively moving through the store, scanning and combing through the shelves, arguing amongst each other about who saw which product first, which guild they belonged to and which class and level they possessed, about their willingness to take things outside, and who should just obediently wait for the products to be restocked.

Once customers had successfully made it through that stage of their shopping and got a hold of all the consumables they had been looking for, they joined the queue whose end Severin couldn’t even see from the counter, and thereby joined the second group of customers.

Though not quite as orderly as Severin would’ve wished, this group, with their supplies now secured, was far more peaceful, though no less noisy with their conversations to bridge the waiting times; some snippets of which Severin was able to make out even in all this noise and chaos.

“...tries anything funny!”

“...believe it either, but if these potions and elixirs are for real, then-”

“Haven’t you seen the Society office right outside? Of course they are real.”

“Pah. Might just as well be fake. Could all be part of one big scam.”

“A fake Society outpost? Are you...? Argh, why am I even talking to dimwits like you...”

“What was that?!”

“...heard Rhenia’s Riders were pissed beyond believe, and...”

“Of course they were. Just like that, they lost three potential dung-”

“Four! And rumors say there are more to follow. Including some raids!”

“Make sure you got everything, you hear!? Who knows when or if there will ever be another opportunity like this. Malcos sure is bound to restrict acc-”

“Ha, you must be new. Malcos has no control over the Emporium.”

“Wha-?! And… then what about that fortress out there? Haven’t you seen the banners?”

“Have you seen the girl who was restocking the shelves earlier? I heard she is, in fact, the owner of this store!”

“No way!”

“Hmm, and rumors say she has a super high leveled Saurian bodyguard always following her while in stealth.”

“Yeah, yesterday she ordered him to execute a thief!”

“Don’t talk shit! No way there is a portal connecting straight to Hanvia.”

“No? Then how do you explain all these people coming and going over there?”

“Uh… That doesn’t mean anything! A portal? Commercial available? That’s just ri-”

“Bet? Once we are done here, we can just che-”

“… if I were you. Heard the owner of this store will make you disappear if you make trouble.”

“Yeah, and his apparently his potions will simply stop working for you if he doesn’t like you. Don’t tell me we didn’t warn you.”

“No way, the Society would never allow-”

Listening to those exchanges, for an instant Severin was tempted to simply turn around on his heels and abandon old Krill to deal with this mob on his own. Knowing full well that if anything the oldtimer deserved another raise and that he himself was naturally the one who benefitted the most from this influx of customers, Severin, if reluctantly, headed to the far end of the counter where no merchandize was being displayed and therefore currently was the least cramped area of the store.

His sudden movement drew some attention towards him, mostly from the people waiting in line, understanding his appearance as the arrival of more stock and therefore quickly losing all interest in him again.

That was until Severin unexpectedly didn’t leave from behind the counter and suddenly raised his voice, not quite shouting, but loud enough so that at least some of the people in his vicinity would be able to hear him despite all the noise.

“Your attention, if I may!”

With most of these people not actually knowing his identity as the owner of this store, the few who had heard his words seemed more annoyed by his sudden call for attention than anything else.

But alas, that much was more than Severin needed.

Without much ado, he summoned the small but impossibly heavy box onto the empty corner of the counter and unceremoniously announced,

“We have a new product.”

Again, only few people heard his words, but this time their reactions were vastly different.

Their bored and annoyed expressions froze in place and their eyes focused on the strange-looking device whose purpose they did not yet know.

“Truly?”

“Wha- What’s that?”

“A new product!?”

And with that, the news spread like a wildfire through the store.

“A new product!”

“There at the front! Some new device.”

“What is it?”

“Who is that?”

“Out of the way!”

“What? Where?”

“Lemme through!”

“Stop pushing!”

Gratified by these reactions, Severin didn’t seem to mind that in just a matter of seconds, the atmosphere inside the store had become even more noisy and chaotic than it had already been.

Severin simply stood there laughing to himself, smiling and waiting but doing nothing else; if they wanted to know more...

“EVERYONE SHUT UP!”

Severin didn’t know who that person had been, if it was the one with the most sense of all these adventurers or if had been the most impatient one, but whatever the case, just that one deafening and quite possibly skill-enhanced roar was enough to shut everyone up long enough for Severin to make his move.

Ahem, Severin cleared this throat, willed into existence the tooltip of his new gadget, and, well aware only a handful of people could actually get a glance at said tooltip, proclaimed loudly,

“Class Orb removal service. Only Fifty-thousand per activation.”

A moment of silence.

And then once again came the noise.

“Go, quickly! Tell the leader. Hurry!”