The Flying Emporium

What followed were three busy days for Severin, making him anticipate but also dread the arrival of Andreas and his mates, which he felt was a bit overdue already.

Even with the current limitations in place, Samuel, Miriam, and Timothy fully utilizing their daily quota for using the combinator resulted in another 90 items that he would have to replenish. In addition to their regular purchases, that was.

Maybe the worst part about that situation was that all the time said limitations saved him from recrafting consumables was instead wasted by two certain annoying customers trying to either beg or argue with Severin about increasing the limit, with Samuel having to intervene more than just a few times.

In that aspect, the first day was slightly more tolerable as said two customers, Miriam and Tim, to a large part, were still occupied discussing and testing various item combinations. If they were bugging anyone, it was Samuel whom both of them tried to get to combine specific item combinations for them.

The probably most important finding during this time was the discovery that all of the new potions created by the Alchemical Item Combinator seemed to share the same cooldown.

That realization came as a huge bummer to everyone.

At first, they were very excited about the thought of having access to six new potions.

Especially to the two [Berserker]’s, who didn’t have to rely on mana or other similar resources, to power their abilities, that would’ve meant they’d effectively have another five consumables available to them; They would just disregard the resource replenishing part and treat it as a watered-down health pot instead.

Because of that, they started to more carefully try to figure out which combinations offered the best value to them.

For Miriam, this choice was rather easy. Her go-to combination would obviously be the one consisting of the two health potions.

As the daughter of two merchants, Miriam was proficient enough in math to realize that the resulting potion was actually more potent than either one of the original ones, given the current size of her health pool.

“15% of max health and a flat 150HP on top of that! That’s amazing. Think about it. It means the moment one has more than about 350 health in total, one is better off with these new ones here. Well, maybe slightly less than 350.

Otherwise, before that, the basic one that heals for 200 is still better.

Now, considering only the uncombined potions, the percentage-based ones obviously were the superior choice so far once your health pool exceeds a thousand. Given that 20% of one thou...”

“Yeah, yeah I get it! Master Samuel has taught me as much.”

But now…” Miriam paused for a moment and closed her eyes, going over Tim’s interruption, while counting with her hands.

“3000. Between 350 and 3000 HP, these here,” She held up a cube that was brownish-red on one side and bright red on the other, “are the best option, if one has the choice. After that, the brown ones become the better choice once again. At this point, the 5% difference starts to exceed 150.

But then again, who has such a…” Miriam’s voice drifted off as she looked towards her mentor.

In the following, she spent a bit more time figuring out the numbers for some of the other possible combinations. Mostly for Tim’s benefit this time.

A mana pool of 6000 would be the threshold at which the basic percentage-based resource potion would be the most efficient one.

Though this threshold was still far easier to reach than the respective health value, Timothy’s own mana pool hadn’t reached this point yet. So, for now, after listening to Miriam’s explanations, two possible combinations stood out for him.

When it came purely to restoring his mana, his choice would be to combine the two purple cubes:

Otherwise, depending on the situation, the fusion of the red potion, which restored a flat amount of health, and the percentage-based mana potion, would be another valid choice for him to make.

Even if the two of them squabbled and fought a lot, both of them felt rather close to each other.

It was more like the relationship between a sister and her younger brother than that of true rivals.

In a situation like this, she would naturally help him figure these things out, despite him being an annoying brat from time to time.

The weapon oils, on the other hand, were something that got much less of their attention. On the first day, they had combined a few of them just for fun, but ultimately to Timothy, they were inherently useless and therefore uninteresting.

Miriam was in a similar position. Until now, she never felt a pressing need to be able to deal magic damage and take advantage of an enemy’s elemental weakness. Much less of two of them at the same time.

Severin, who witnessed some of these discussions, was sure that a certain [Duelist] would have some very strong reactions if he heard this, still inexperienced adventurer's, take on the matter.

It was a much bigger deal than she gave it credit for. Samuel didn’t correct her on this either, as it was one of those things she’d have to realize on her own when the time came.

But sadly, all of these would pretty much be luxury items anyway. Not because of their cost, which was basically a joke to them in comparison to their usefulness, but because of their scarcity.

In the end, just because of that aspect, caused by the daily limitation, the dream of having access to multiple of those new items, all at once, was only wishful thinking.

For Severin, though, on this third day, one of his long-standing wishes finally became true.

Shortly after the first introduction of the new device, Severin noticed something as he did his own math.

The result was that the amounts his customers referred to as a joke, for him, actually added up to a vast amount of wealth.

A combined potion, in total, meaning their individual purchase price plus the cost for activating the device, amounted to 6 gold.

And while that wasn’t too impressive by itself, the same factor of six times the original cost, naturally also applied to the combination of weapon oils.

Considering that a single one of those was 20 gold, the resulting profits were enormous in Severin’s eyes.

Timothy and Miriam might have quickly dismissed the resulting products, even just their little bit of experimenting with a few of the possible combinations already earned Severin a nice sum. And more importantly, it was Samuel who thought it to be prudent to have some more of them on hand.

Therefore, out of the 90 total activations, 12 of them had been used up for the crafting of the temporary weapon enchants. Two of every possible combination of the four latest products.

While that might not seem very impressive, just those 12 items still amounted to more than 1400 gold.

All in all, just these three days were by far the most profitable one for Severin, so far.

But it wasn’t actually the money that made him so excited on that day.

The most important part was the resulting experience.

Even with the experience penalty Severin clearly noticed was imposed on the earnings relating to the magical box, it was nothing to scoff at.

It had taken all of Severin’s self-control not to jump up right after Samuel’s last purchase.

Instead, he forced himself through a round of excruciating small-talk before seeing the customer out.

A level-up.

Not for his sub-class.

A real one.

The day had finally come.

The moment the door fell shut, he very briefly wondered how good the soundproofing of the wooden hut actually was. He couldn’t take it any longer.

“Level 2 [Shopkeeper], here we go!

Let’s see what you got for me!”