The Flying Emporium

The moment Severin made the final decision, he felt a lot of his tension suddenly disappear; tension he hadn’t even really noticed before.

That, however, didn’t mean he would immediately lock in his choice with the System.

For that, he waited until the evening of the next day.

During that time, Markus and his fellow guildmates checked out some of the dungeons and raids in the immediate vicinity.

No one believed their inhabitants would pose any kind of danger or challenge to them. The rewards, aka the drops, wouldn’t be worth it to a group of such caliber either. But after an extended period of traveling to reach this place, those guys were starved for some action. They couldn’t sit still any longer, so despite the training dummies probably being more worthy opponents, they looked forward to fighting with a real, live enemy while at the same time taking this opportunity to play around and get used to the new toys they had purchased at Severin’s Emporium.

Since this was more of a pastime activity than real dungeoneering they didn’t need an officer leading them. Those that wanted to join the fun would simply split into small groups of four or five people and together set off in balloonlike flying artifacts, which soon disappeared either at the horizon or beneath a sea of clouds.

Samuel spent more time on the training grounds than he would normally care for, as he indulged his two mentees. Soon those three also began to disappear for the duration of several short trips to who knows where.

Mylana, on the other hand, spent a lot of her time directly in Severin’s store. Not being dependent on other people and their daily activations any longer, she basically claimed the Purifier for herself as she fed it with one magical item, appearing out of nowhere, after the other; her stock of consumables seemed limitless.

Meanwhile, Andreas and Harold were busy either drilling their subordinates or making last-minute adjustments to their battle tactics to account for the group's most recent gain in overall strength.

On the morning of the next day, right after paying Severin one last visit, the Lion’s Head guild, fully stocked, finally left and headed for their long-awaited expedition back into the Harrowing Plains.

This time, after having witnessed the Eagles coming and going on multiple occasions already, not even Xander was thick-skinned enough to flaunt his personal flying artifact and instead directly joined the others on the guild’s ship.

Severin wanted as few people as possible to be present when he officially confirmed his choice to become a [Cook].

His latest [Alchemist] level-up had taught him a lesson.

One guild group less was already a huge improvement in this regard. But Severin still decided to wait.

Depending on how things would play out, Andreas with his V.I.P. card might very well still be the first person to learn of Severin’s expanded product range; even before Emily, as Severin wanted to surprise the girl.

Therefore, he decided to wait long enough until the [Warrior] was well on his way, as to not tempt him into simply turning around.

Knowing that their trip was expected to last several weeks, Severin might’ve waited even longer.

Now, Krey’s presence was the biggest thorn in Severin’s side.

He didn’t dislike the man who spent most of his time talking to whoever was available and who had seemed to have lost a lot of his previous sternness.

The problem was that Krey’s presence reminded him that another delegation sent by the Society might appear at any point. So, he couldn’t wait for too long.

‘Then again. Any further delay is wasted money, anyway. Which is wasted experience.’

In the evening, not quite at night, but with business being relatively slow, Severin finally deemed it the right moment to confirm his choice of a second subclass and gave Emily the rest of the day off.

[Please confirm the location and layout of the new facilities.]

Following that unexpected notification, another window popped open. The System’s layout planner. It was the tool through which Severin had bought up the available plots of land, expanded his existing store, and which allowed him to model Emily’s housing before purchasing.

Now, it also showed the outline of a new building with two rooms.

It measured five meters in width and six meters in length. As Severin knew, those were the same dimensions the store originally had when he first arrived.

Among other items, a stove, an oven, and a sink were vaguely identifiable. Much to Severin’s pleasure. But it also made him wonder.

‘How is it that it comes with a dedicated kitchen? I mean, I didn’t get a laboratory or some other kind of alchemy room either. Is it because the alchemy tools are more suited to be transported? If I had chosen [Cook] back then already, would I have immediately gotten a second building to go with it?’ He, as so often before, wondered about the System’s innate rules and workings, if such things even existed in the first place, but didn’t dwell too long on it. There were more exciting things to do right now.

For example, playing around in the editor before him.

While moving a building and remodeling its layout would cost Severin some amount of gold coins, this fee didn’t apply to buildings that hadn’t been placed yet. As such, he didn’t need to hold back when moving things around in the editor. He placed the new building underground at one moment and put it on top of his existing store, the next one.

Interestingly enough, he found out that expanding his premises upwards wouldn’t require him to purchase any additional airspace, only a nominal fee to (re-)move the pitched roof.

Of course, those things weren’t really viable options to him. Severin had already something else in mind. After a few minutes, he turned serious again and imported the schematics of an inn.

‘’Let’s see. I should be able to place the kitchen in such a way so that in the future I can easily integrate it into the inn. So maybe I should directly make it larger.”