The Flying Emporium

Everyone had their ears perked up, trying to listen in closely while at the same time doing their best to avoid looking towards the corner of the room with the combinator in it.

As much as they wanted to know what everyone, not just Samuel, had apparently overlooked, they feared making eye contact with the [Berserker]. He was obviously not just some random low-level adventurers one could easily afford to offend, but right now, he was being scolded like a little child. The situation was just too awkward.

Only Mylana acted as if nothing was wrong.

“What a missed opportunity. But I guess the machine won’t run away. We can always try at a later time.” Mylana still sighed with regret.

“Uhm. Would you mind explaining…” Severin’s heart jumped when the girl next to him suddenly opened her mouth. He wanted to scold and praise her at the same time. On one hand, he didn’t think it wise to draw any kind of attention to oneself, in this situation. On the other hand, he was just as curious.

Mid-sentence, however, the girl’s courage seemed to leave her as the old woman turned with an annoyed look on her face to see who had interrupted her train of thought. Seeing it was the tiny girl standing behind the counter, Mylana’s expression softened considerably.

“When my airheaded disciple brought me over to take a look not only at your wares but, most importantly, at this machine here, I was left under the impression that it was only able to combine two different consumables into a new one with shared properties. I say ‘only’ but don’t get me wrong, that alone would already be very impressive.

“Yet here I am and see that it is not just consumables that can be combined, but any two suitable alchemical products. You, unlike others who should,” Mylana once again glared daggers at a helpless Samuel, “may not know, but consumable items such as your potions and elixirs and so on that you are selling right now aren’t the only kind of alchemical products. A certain kind of, let’s call it, pre-processed materials also fall into that category. With metals being the most common.”

Emily, not having received any formal kind of education, didn’t mean she was stupid. She immediately understood some of the revealed implications. So did the others; Most importantly Severin, who could already see himself counting heaps of money in the near future.

“The properties of those preprocessed materials then naturally become a part of the end product. Just that so far, no one was able to fuse multiple of those together. Just imagine what could be possible if one was finally able to…”

Cough

Mylana caught herself drifting off. “Anyway. Who knows what even constitutes as ‘suitable’? That’s something we’ll have to find out further down the line.”

Severin turned away and suddenly seemed very interested in the empty counter before him. If anyone was supposed to have an answer to the woman’s question, it was surely him. Luckily, Mylana was more than eager to finally operate the machine in front of her.

With a wave, she signaled Samuel to come over.

Samuel immediately stepped forward with two small hexagonal-shaped bottles, which he had bought when his mentor was talking, in his hands. He opened the combinator’s lid at the top and placed the two elixirs inside. He was just about to insert four especially large golden coins into the combinator’s coins lot when his hand got rudely slapped away.

“I got this!”

Samuel opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He suddenly remembered why he hadn’t visited his mentor in quite a long time.

Quickly, Mylana used up all ten of her daily activations. She had been most interested in the combinations of various different items. Therefore, she had ordered Samuel to take out some of the consumables they had previously decided would be wasteful to spend their activations on. No more activations left didn’t mean she was done, however.

Now it was Samuel’s turn to activate the machine; And he didn’t have much choice in the matter, either.

When previously the woman was mostly enjoying the novelty of the machine and was paying attention to the resulting end products, now she examined the device itself more closely.

“Next.”

She was all but kneeling on the floor, pressing one ear at the machine, and listened intently when she gave Samuel the order to start up the machine once again. The cane she sported earlier appeared more and more like a joke.

“Next!”

This time, she opened the lid at the top and witnessed the two items inside suddenly disappear. If she didn’t see it with her own eyes, she would’ve never believed it. She didn’t feel a thing!

“Again!”

She didn’t even shy away from putting her arm down the output tray at the bottom, appearing like some thief trying to get free items out of a vending machine. At least she didn’t shake and smack it.

“There really is no fluctuation whatsoever. No vibration either, it seems. Truly incredible.”

“Next!”

Like this, she continued on and on. The old woman slowly but surely seemed to become obsessed.

“Again!”

At some point, she even took out a tool that looked like a small crystal and moved it along the combinator. But whatever the device was supposed to do, it was to no avail. No color change, no sounds, no vibrations, no nothing.

If Severin wasn’t confident in the System’s ability to hide itself and leave no traces of its workings behind, he might’ve actually been very upset by now; Wasn’t this woman effectively trying to unveil his secrets? In the end, he only smiled bitterly to himself and said nothing.

“Next!”

Mylana didn’t want to give up. By now, this machine seemed almost disturbing to her. Not because of its unheard-of functionality, but because she didn’t sense any magic coming from it. No matter what she did and how hard she tried.

The thing almost was like a black box. Mylana felt more and more like a class-less person who was blind to any sort of magic. She hated it.

Samuel was just glad he never mentioned that this phenomenon wasn’t just restricted to this machine. In the past, entire buildings had appeared overnight without him noticing.

“Next!”

When Samuel’s ten activations were finally also used up, it was Markus who obediently stepped forward.

“Next.”

Until his charges were spent as well.

Miriam and Timothy, who were at a loss for words, had already used theirs earlier. So now when Mylana was still not satisfied with her non-existent findings and was set on continuing to observe the machine while it did its magic from all possible angles, probing with the useless crystal, there was only one choice left.

“Call in the others, would you? The guys that arrived together with us. Tell them to come in one by one.” Samuel not only gave his two mentees something to do, but also gave them the opportunity to escape this madness.