The Flying Emporium

Just a few minutes had passed. Severin and Em, while in relatively high spirits, still hadn’t had the time to have an actual break just yet.

When all of a sudden, the door flew open.

Upon entering the small room, Andreas immediately looked around and excitedly asked, “Where is it?!”.

“What?” This was too sudden. A person barging in like that when Severin hadn’t even completely processed his level-up left him slightly confused and unable to respond immediately.

Andreas, on the other hand, simply waved with the black card in his hand as if that was enough of an explanation while carefully scanning the room.

The card in his hands was naturally his V.I.P. identification card. As it listed all the benefits available to its holder, it indirectly also functioned as an announcement system for new products.

He instinctively noticed when an item in his inventory had somehow experienced a change. As far as he was aware, that wasn’t something that should have been possible. But when, at the next moment, he realized which item it was that had undergone this abnormal change and that an additional line was added to its tooltip, mentioning a discount for a service he didn’t immediately recognize, he instantly started running without further analyzing the situation.

In the end, it was Emily who understood and reacted first and pointed Andreas in the right direction.

Although it had already been expanded once in the past, the store was still rather small. So, for Andreas not being able to make out any new addition to the store at a first glance, only left one possible location: the area behind the aisle of shelves located right in the center of the room.

There stood a bright-colored rectangle box, not looking much unlike the machine standing in the far-left corner of the store; If maybe somewhat smaller.

When Andreas finally laid his eyes on the device, his expression seemed to brighten in anticipation.

“What exactly does it do?” he asked, but didn’t actually wait for an answer. Instead, he read through its tooltip and was so absorbed in it he would have missed any answer to his question, anyway.

[Alchemical Item Purifier

When activated, purifies suitable inserted item of inferior quality.

Any resulting items will be bound to the user.]

Just like Severin himself just a few minutes earlier, Andreas suddenly became hesitant. That didn’t sound too impressive. Almost seemed a bit of a letdown when compared to the combinator, which now immediately became the standard against which all other devices would have to measure themselves.

“At least it doesn’t seem to restrict the number of activations for each person,” Andreas said in a low voice to himself. “Either way. Let’s first test it.”

The next moment he had a small hexagonal bottle in his hands and inserted it into the machine before him. The display next to the familiar coin slot, however, remained blank.

“Didn’t you read the tooltip just now? It said, ‘items of inferior quality’.” Severin snickered. He already found out that this new device wouldn’t work with any of his own creations. He was unable to test the machine and its results for himself. Still, this was one of the rare occasions he appreciated the System’s attitude.

With an awkward expression on his face, but without saying a word in response, Andreas fished out a handful of random items out of his inventory. The quality of those items really was too poor. Leftovers. Previously, even a single activation of the combinator would’ve been too much of a waste to spare on one of those items, but with no similar restrictions attached to this new Purifier, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

An especially low-quality health potion soon disappeared inside of the new machine.

Said potion promised to heal the user for a total of two hundred health points, the same as Severin’s most basic bright red healing pot, but not only had this potion cost quite a bit more than just a single gold coin, most importantly it also required a minimum level of twenty.

Andreas was still doubtful when he reached for the item he heard appear in the output tray at the bottom. But that soon changed.

“Four hundred! It doubled!” Andreas called out in surprise. He didn’t even try to hide astonishment.

He ignored the activation cost of the machine in front of him, which he originally deemed somewhat excessive, and without further ado, ‘purified’ one item after the other.

“Reduced level-requirement!”

“Cures additional status effects.”

“Longer duration.”

“Now replenishes other resources as well!”

“Bonus damage!”

Again and again, Andreas’ shouts filled the small room.

At first, Emily and Severin shared the man’s delight. The device might end up making them some money, after all. But beyond that, the actual effects didn’t matter all that much to them. As such, they didn’t get excited at every single one of these items.

With a customer present, no matter how occupied, they couldn’t openly discuss the most recent level up and its accompanying bonuses.

Therefore, they simply decided to start crafting again. One batch of each of the new potions.

Andreas had lost his sense of time. He seemed almost more absorbed with the new machine than Mylana had with the combinator; Too absorbed even to notice what the other two people were doing in the meantime.

Until he once again noticed changes on his black V.I.P. card. Only then did he actually turn to face Severin and Emily again instead of just shouting some random words in their direction now and then, without even realizing that he didn’t receive any responses.

“You got even more new stuff?”

The exhausted Severin’s response was to point invitingly towards the newly crafted items in front of him.

“Upgraded potions? Upgraded potions!” Andreas didn’t even have to look at the items’ tooltips. He had consumed none of the newly purified potions yet, but as amazing as they may have appeared, he still figured those probably wouldn’t share the jelly-potions’ property of having an independent cooldown. But those handcrafted ones? In Andreas's mind, there was no doubt. He had to get his hands on them!

“Give me all of them!” Andreas didn’t hesitate. Even when realizing there was a tenfold price increase. Instead, that only seemed to make him even more thrilled. Right now, in his mind, more expensive clearly meant more amazing.

“A whole new variety even! If I combine these with the alternative quality potions…”

Even disregarding the slow onset of fatigue under different circumstances, Severin would’ve been more than happy about Andreas’s excessive reaction. Even though he didn’t come up with any of the crafting recipes himself and neither did he understand where exactly those strange devices came from or how they operated, seeing people have such a strong reaction towards them, always filled him with a strange sense of pride and accomplishment. That was especially true for completely new products; Not being an adventurer himself, he didn’t want to only rely on some game knowledge to estimate the usefulness of an item. Someone like Andreas raving on about these products was still the best feedback he could hope for. Right now, however, after receiving a small sum of gold, Severin was tempted to directly throw the person out of his shop. The reason was simple.

[Congratulations! You have reached [Shopkeeper] level three.]

The text went on a bit further, but Severin’s eyes immediately jumped over all that and directly landed on one specific line at the bottom.

[Please choose your second subclass.]