The Flying Emporium

Having confirmed his suspicion that the addition of new shelf space would result in additional resources provided by the System, Severin felt gratified.

He didn’t have the slightest clue regarding the System’s underlying purpose or its motivation; He never received any satisfactory explanation. What he could deduce, though, was that it wasn’t in pursuit of gold. Even if he liked to say that it had already stolen from him, the System’s own share of the profit was still at Severin’s disposal to invest into shop expansions and upgrades. Therefore he didn’t think it very likely that the gold itself was the focus. That being said he didn’t have any doubts that it was in the System’s interest, for whatever reasons, to satisfy as many customers as possible.

After all, that’s what every quest so far had asked of him.

Because of that, Severin had been very confident that the System would support him in this instance. To be able to accommodate more customers he needed more stock. And to accommodate more stock he needed to expand the store.

The conclusion that followed was very straightforward.

“To be fair, that’s the least one should be able to expect of a System.”

Now, with his hypothesis confirmed, he quickly spent another 200 gold to purchase four more shelves and placed those in the middle of the now, largely empty room.

Two of them were placed next to each other, facing the entrance-side.

The other two were positioned in a similar fashion, facing in the opposite direction and standing back-to-back to the other pair.

With that Severin thought things came along nicely. The two empty walls that remained were something he would take care of later. He didn’t intend to fill up the whole room the moment he had opened it up.

Pleased with the result so far, Severin knew he had another busy day ahead of him if he planned to process all the new materials.

But he soon realized that the numbers didn’t quite seem to add up.

‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s enough to completely fill out all four. Maybe just two of them. For future products? Would make sense I guess. I can’t just expand the whole shop whenever I get a new item to sell.

With the amount of experience I earned yesterday, I should soon hit level 10 in Alchemy, anyway. So if I get anything new that should be the time, right? In that case, only two shelves might really be too few. Maybe it’s still too small?’

Severin was getting a headache thinking about those things. Not least because the shop’s balance was now sitting at only slightly below 500 gold; The minimum amount required for any further remodeling projects.

He then noticed another issue.

An ever-increasing range of products, especially if they were as popular as his current ones, would need to be recrafted on a regular basis. In the future maybe even multiple times a day.

‘Please tell me it ain’t so! That can’t be my fate, becoming a crafting slave. Yesterday was already bad enough. Now, today I’ll be at it again. How’s that supposed to end?’

Only now did the consequences of being too popular dawn on him.

He loathed the past time where he found himself vegetating all alone with nothing much to do. But he didn’t look forward to the other extreme, either.

Apparently, only three customers already meant he had to work himself to the brink of exhaustion if he wanted to fully restock everything within a day.

Every other regular shopkeeper would most certainly be ecstatic at the thought of having such business coming their way.

“Fuck that!”

Only grudgingly did he start crafting. But not nearly as fast and efficient as the day before.

He was too preoccupied thinking about solutions for the dilemma he was sure he had to face eventually.

‘I’ll have to check out the upcoming level rewards first. Especially the one for my main class. That should improve things...right? Otherwise, I might just go on strike and take things more slowly if I feel like the System wants me to overwork myself. For no other benefit than being locked up in a slightly bigger cage than before. It’s not like I get any great benefits.

I mean, I don’t even have a real bed!

‘Now that I think about it…let me check again. No, it really does say [Shopkeeper System]. Should’ve been [Sweatshop System], the more I think about it.‘

Severin was lost deep in his thoughts while continuing to level his [Alchemist] sub-class. His hands were seemingly moving with a life of their own.

Out of the blue, Severin was startled by a voice that very nearly caused him to spill scalding hot healing liquid, all over himself.

“Hello, mister! What happened to your store? How did you do it? So fast and sneaky, during the night without us noticing? It more than doubled in size, I reckon!”

“Tim!” Samuel gave the boy a scolding look, before giving an apologizing one to Severin. “Sorry about that. It seems like we came at a bad time.”

Besides disturbing him while crafting, the apology was more for those, in parts, very intrusive questions. They were most definitely touching on sensitive topics concerning Severin’s skills, maybe even his class.

Timothy should’ve known better. It was moments like this that proved him to still be a child.

Secretly, though, not only Miriam, who was also present, but even Samuel himself, hoped for an answer to those questions. In fact, he was probably more curious about the sudden changes than the two others. He knew better than most just how incredible such an occurrence was. A change this big and this close to him wasn’t usually something he would miss.

Usually.

Last night he hadn’t noticed anything. Nothing at all. No sounds. No movements. No magic fluctuations.

Therefore, he didn’t stop his two disciples when they went rushing towards the shop the moment they noticed the changes, but instead followed them, now resulting in a somewhat awkward situation.

Severin didn’t mind the sudden commotion. After the initial moment of annoyance that he had almost burned himself, he turned out rather grateful for the distraction. The sudden turmoil took his mind off his pessimistic thoughts and instead reminded him that there were people whom he might even call friends.

“Hey, guys. Don’t worry. I don’t mind a quick break. Well, I figured with more people arriving soon, a little upgrade wouldn’t hurt.

Also, I needed more space for the new products.” He grinned at the boy, ignoring the question about the ‘how’.

“New products?! Is it another potion? More of the oil stuff? Or something new?”

“Yeah, tell us! And when will it be available?” Even just a cursory glance confirmed that, sadly, the new products in question weren’t available just yet and that Severin was merely teasing them.

It turned out Miriam was the most excited one out of the group concerning the prospect of having new items ready for purchase.

With the addition of the resource potions, the temporary advantage she had held over Tim had already been reversed again, quite some time ago. Now she was in hope of finding another tool that helped her to once again, consistently, best the young mage.

“Maybe something to root enemies in place? Or to increase their mana costs?”

“You wish! The last item was clearly for melee classes, so something for casters would only be fair!”

With that, a scene Severin had already witnessed the day before, of a bunch of adventurers, coming up with imaginary items, repeated itself.

“Ha-Ha.”

Severin answered with an uncomfortable laugh and quickly stopped them in their tracks before their expectations became too high.

“I can’t promise anything. You’ll have to wait and see.”

“It’s ready when it’s ready,” he added for his own amusement only, which earned him some strange looks.

He didn’t want to admit that he might’ve been a bit too hasty with his claim. A new product was, after all, just his own conjecture and not something that was guaranteed to happen. At least not immediately.

But seeing the disappointment in their eyes, he couldn’t help himself and added, “Maybe tomorrow. I hope before the others arrive. Again, no promise!”

“Great, tomorrow it is!”

“Tomorrow! But really not any later than that. Promise!”

“OUT YOU TWO! I think I’ll need to teach you guys another lesson.”

Samuel quickly chased the two of them outside, and once again, apologized for his two mentees, before following behind them.

‘Tomorrow hmm?’