The Flying Emporium

Even after quite some time had passed, the people on the mountaintop were still excited.

Miriam and a few other curious people had begun to examine the mysterious wooden stakes more closely, trying to find anything that might look like carved in runes or something else to power the defense mechanism.

Tim tried a different approach. In an attempt to bring the barrier back into existence, he continued to repeatedly jump from one side of the fence to the other, earning himself a round of laughter when his robe got entangled and caused him to fall flat on his face.

In response, the boy started to angrily swing his staff at the nonexistent barrier to vent his frustration and started to cry, “Come out, you stupid thing!”

Severin couldn’t help but wonder if Timothy was actually drunk and that he had somehow missed it earlier. Then again, he was curious himself. So, since the System didn’t provide him with any further information, even after the notification had appeared, Severin was tempted to grant his wish. Only temporarily, of course. In the end, after giving it some thought, he refrained from blacklisting the boy even though the thought made him laugh to himself.

At this moment, something else demanded his attention.

[Congratulations on completing the quest [A Business Opportunity]. You have been granted new access privileges, allowing you to adjust the percentage of your personal income.]

Severin was stoked. Apparently, Emily was indeed able to complete quests on his behalf. The completion of the quest meant that Em had just identified Andreas’s third item; Barely starting. Therefore, Severin could take his time to check out the new feature in more detail and didn’t rush inside.

Upon opening the System screen, he navigated to the management settings. There a new slider had appeared with a small and simple caption saying, ‘Personal Income.’

The thing was very much self-explanatory to Severin. At the bottom of the very left side of the slider, it said ‘0%’. Similarly, on the right side was a ‘100%’ mark; One which Severin doubted could ever be reached.

Unsurprisingly, at the moment, it was set to ten percent.

Playing around with the thing, Severin found he was able to adjust the rate to any value between zero and fifteen.

Considering that the quest originally stated that his ability to change the ratio would be ‘very limited’, he was rather pleased with what he saw.

Without hesitating, he increased his income by five percent.

Thinking about money and income, he was suddenly reminded of a different matter he had wanted to check out. Where exactly did Em’s one percent worth of salary come from?

Prior to this, all of his usual customers were either hunting down rampaging, mutated dungeon monsters or, in the case of Samuel, were busy elsewhere.

With no influx of money, there was no way for Severin to know. Not with the amount of information the System divulged.

Severin decided to make things unnecessarily hard for himself. Instead of going inside, where he could observe everything firsthand, he decided to let Em handle things on her own for a bit longer.

He only had the numbers displayed by the System, which from time to time went up, to go by.

These numbers included his own gold balance, that of the shop, as well as Em’s.

‘No [Employee] privacy rights in this world,’ Severin concluded.

At first, he wondered if Andreas’s V.I.P. discount changed anything, but he decided it didn’t.

In the end, after half an hour of observing numbers, drawing calculations on the ground, and wishing for a calculator app he was pretty sure that, surprisingly, the girl’s salary did take precedence even before the System taking its cut.

That meant if they sold one hundred jelly-potions, each costing exactly one gold coin, then her cut would be one of these coins. That would leave Severin with fourteen gold coins and a few silver ones, instead of the full fifteen. Those numbers were obviously already taking his own recent raise into account.

Instead of becoming grumpy and starting to complain, as one might’ve expected him to, Severin took joy in this fact. After all, the System itself was just as screwed by this as he was.

On a more serious note, while questioning the usually coldhearted System’s decisions, he still approved that his [Employees] were looked after. That didn’t mean he had any intentions of further raising their salary, though.

Realizing that the whole identifying business was apparently still ongoing, he finally decided to check in on Emily to see if she needed any help and, if necessary, assist her. It still was his own store, after all.

Upon entering, Emily looked him straight in the eyes and greeted him.

“Hey, boss!” She was barely able to hide her excitement.

Severin’s heart warmed as he saw that.

“Need any help?”

“No. Thanks!” The determined answer came with no hesitation.

“Haha. Don’t worry. She is doing amazing.” Andreas also chimed in and voiced his approval of the girl.

“I’ve never seen anyone inspect items as fast as her. I have no clue how she still has the mana to continue.” He didn’t voice his doubts out loud as he wondered how the girl was suddenly able to use such skills. In return, neither Emily nor Severin revealed that the identifying skill didn’t actually consume any mana. Not keen on repeating a discussion he once had with Samuel, Severin also refrained from mentioning that the skill used was actually[Identify] not [Inspect].

Instead, both the girl as well as the man began to awkwardly laugh at Andreas’s words.

“Ha! Look at you two…” with a smile on his face, Andreas could only shake his head.

Em kept working. She still seemed excited and, every now and then, sneaked some glances towards Severin.

The latter observed her work from the sidelines. When he still, despite Andreas’s words, wanted to help her, she scolded him, leaving him flabbergasted.

Soon enough, however, he found that there really was no need for him to get involved.

Emily had access to the same skill as him. That meant that a simple touch was all it took to reveal an item’s tooltip.

It was actually Andreas who slowed down the whole process. He felt that he couldn’t just take out all items all at once. The keeping track of payments and the taking out and putting away of the various items all took their time. Especially when, every now and then, a particularly good item caught the officer’s eyes.

Severin’s appearance didn’t accelerate things either, as the group of three started to chatter; Everyone else was banned from the store by Andreas so as to not further distract anyone.

“Thanks, you two. With that, we can finally start to distribute the loot! Once we’re done, I’ll start sending them your way again, so they can restock. Well, or maybe tomorrow. Depending on how long this takes. Sometimes this can take quite a while.” After they were finally done, Andreas left the store in high spirits, leaving behind Emily and Severin.

The moment he left and the door closed behind him, the excitement Emily had held back all that time finally exploded.

“It’s amazing, right?!” she said with gleaming eyes.

Severin wasn’t sure what the girl was referring to, but seeing her like that, he couldn’t help but grin.

“The quest I mean! The reward!” That answer surprised him. He paused for a moment before laughing.

“That’s right! Hahaha. I didn’t think you would appreciate it like that.”

‘What a good girl. How excited she is for me.’

“Now if you turn the slider to zero, we can afford the inn even sooner!”

“…”