In the end, the entire group, including Samuel, moved back into the store. The three people carrying an emblem depicting a lion’s head, either on their shoulder or their chest, quickly went to replace the potions they had just wasted and stocked up on the less potent, bright red health potions they had looked down upon just a few minutes prior. The [Berserker] also took the opportunity to buy a full stack of the damage-conversion oil.

After that, the guests were finally ready to leave and make haste back to their main camp. For real this time.

None of them could await their return. Two members of the group were mainly concerned with how these gains would affect their personal combat capabilities, and maybe how it would benefit their dungeon group. But most importantly, they wanted to head straight into battle. They wanted to familiarize themselves with the new consumables that would surely become staples in their repertoire as soon as possible; And just as surely it would change the way they would fight in the future.

And while at it, one might as well try to show off a little…

The third person was more diligent and bound by his sense of duty towards the betterment of the guild as a whole. He wanted nothing more than to report back and come up with plans to take full advantage of the new items.

In high spirits, Andreas went so far as to assure Severin of future business with the Lion’s Head guild.

It wasn’t technically up to him to make such promises on the guild’s behalf, even though he was an officer. The mission they were sent on never mentioned anything like that. It was to scout the shop and its wares, make contact with the store owner and evaluate the overall situation before returning. Nothing more.

Under normal circumstances, he would never overstep his authority like that, but in this situation, he felt it was the best course of action.

Not only was their return all but guaranteed, but he felt it would also help to get on Severin’s good side and, maybe, more importantly, give him the chance to restock his wares as soon as possible. He was very confident in his decision and was ready to take responsibility for it.

Samuel took this opportunity to show more of his goodwill towards Severin and reminded the others that the shop owner was also very proficient when it came to inspecting or identifying items, going so far as to personally vouch for the mastery Severin had over his skill.

Severin was appreciative of that behavior but also blamed himself at the same time.

‘Why didn’t I think of that myself? I only need to identify another three items to complete the quest and be able to adjust my personal income rate.’ The promised quest reward was a great motivator for him.

If one believed the counter in the system’s menu, the identifying quest was closer to completion than his other quest that demanded a total number of 10 served customers. Even with the arrival of Andreas and Lynn the progress of the [Building of a customer base] task was still stuck at six out of ten.

Nonetheless, based on Andreas’ promise Severin thought it was more likely that he completed the latter quest first.

‘Who knows if they’ll bring unidentified items with them. As I understand it, they should be able to take care of these things locally. Either in a trusted store or maybe even by a guild member. It’s still not impossible, though. But I guess getting four new customers seems more likely. Especially after all that talk.

Well, why not both!?’

Thinking about that, he couldn’t keep himself from getting excited. It wasn’t very likely, but there was still a possibility for him to complete two quests at the same time!

‘I just hope the mysterious ‘???’ reward doesn’t suck!’

Thinking about possible rewards, Severin came up with his own idea.

‘If the other quest reward supposedly allows me to adjust my income, then maybe the other reward will allow me to adjust the product’s prices. With the way they are set so far, the system might as well give them out for free. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

On the one hand, one has to consider how special the products apparently are. But then, on the other hand…with such a greedy system.’

Severn still got upset whenever he thought back to what he thought was the system snatching his own personal wealth, back when he had revealed the tooltip of Samuel’s cloak. Being reminded of the 500 gold the [Berserker] had just casually handed over at the time, he could only lament the system’s injustice once again.

With his mind focused on such amounts of money, he came to a sudden realization and jolted up.

‘The business just now should’ve made quite some money as well!

Damn! With the gold just instantly vanishing into seemingly thin air, it’s easy to overlook that this was easily my biggest transaction so far.’

He quickly willed open the blue screen to confirm the numbers.

“Just the four stacks of oil add up to 400 gold. Plus three people buying 80 po…no 83 potions. That’s another 249 gold. If such amounts will be the norm from now on…that would also mean…”

After a short glance at this experience bar, Severin quickly returned back inside. He had been sitting outside once again, after having seen his customers out for the second time.

He ignored the unstable-looking flying basket in the distance, that slowly chased after a swiftly disappearing dot.

Once back indoors, he first took inventory of his remaining stock and then inspected the shop as a whole.

‘’Three customers at once, and things are already getting stuffy. That’s for human-sized people…with Samuel…

Then there’s the matter of supply… Well, first things first.”

He opened the system’s store and verified the balance of around 1600 gold coins in the store’s accounts before proceeding to search for a specific offer.

‘There it is.’ Severin didn’t have to search for long, as it was one of the offers, he had already carefully considered the last time he expanded the plot of land belonging to the store.

Tap

Severin picked the corresponding option and was first greeted by a System notification.

[A minimum purchase amount of 500 gold will be required for any transaction.]

He quickly confirmed this alert window, which scared him off previously, and the actual window he had been looking for appeared in its stead.

He was greeted by a rough top-view sketch of the Emporium and its outside area. It, most importantly, also included the stores' dimensions.

This window would allow him to purchase additional space and extend the store itself.

“It’s so handy. Like some apartment-planner app. I can just pick out the area I want to add to the store. No matter its shape or form, as long as it’s somehow connected to the already existing building. Buying completely new buildings should be another option in the store altogether.”

Severin played around with the ‘app’ for a while and found that, as expected, the square meter price fell once he selected to build onto the fenced outside-area that he had already bought.

He didn’t actually have any intentions to expand into that direction as it was only for testing purposes.

Severin soon came up with the final layout that he intended to purchase.

The original 5meter wide and 6-meter-long room was to be expanded to match both 8 meters in width, as well as in length.

Because of the way the counter split the room, just the increase of width would almost double the retail space already.

‘Together with the change in length, it should give me enough room to work with, for now. Nothing too fancy.’

Overall, Severin was rather happy with the design he had come up with, even if it was somewhat simple.

The cost for 34 square meters would amount to a total of 850 gold coins. 25 gold per m².

Considering that he would still have over 700 gold coins left after that purchase, he convinced himself that the deal wasn’t too bad.

Before he could change his mind, he immediately confirmed the acquisition.

Kaching