At night when Severin was finally done, everyone else had long been asleep. So, it was no wonder that the next morning he woke up as the last of the people gathered on the mountain top. Way later than usual. When he finally did open his eyes, however, one thing immediately caught his attention.

“What’s going on out there?” Habitually his eyes were drawn to his minimap. There, a large number of white dots were overlapping each other, forming one big blob. Next to it was a smaller cluster of dots, one of which was blue. Only after taking a moment to fully wake up did he realize that the two groups were located at the newly built training grounds.

“Ha. Seems to be well enough received. Better than expected, even! Maybe I shouldn’t have waited that long. Well, that’s assuming they’re not just gathered there because of its novelty.”

Severin was in a great mood. No better way to start the day. If his investment caused even just a few of the people to regularly compete, and as a result use more of his consumables, it would’ve already been worth it.

In good spirits, he stood up and started to smoothen out his clothes to make himself a bit more presentable.

He was just about to start business hours and join in the fun when he noticed something else.

Severin’s mood became even better.

“A red star! Don’t tell me you have developed a conscience after all.” Severin said into the empty room. As usual, the System didn’t answer, but that didn’t stop him from continuing.

“Yesterday I complained about not receiving a new quest for such a long time, and now this. You’re starting to grow on me!”

He stopped in his track and for a moment envisioned all the possibilities a new quest could bring with it. But just for a moment. With a swift motion, he tabbed the floating screen and opened the updated questlog.

“Let’s see…’Spend money to earn money’.” The grin on his face suddenly became very strained. Just reading the quest’s name dealt an immense blow to Severin’s mood. He had a bad premonition.

“Say it ain’t so.” He steeled his heart and continued.

“’With the help of the System’s integrated store, invest a total of fifty thousand gold coins to improve existing facilities or to build new ones.’” His voice was shaky from anger as he read the description. “Reward…doesn’t say. Of course, it doesn’t say!” He took a few deep breaths and tried to calm himself down. Even if he knew what the reward was, he wouldn’t be able to afford it right now, anyway.

“Nice try, but I don’t care!” Severin tried to convince himself. “And I won’t spend even a single coin before building the inn, hear me?! You won’t make me waste any money because of some vague promise.”

As upset as he was, contrary to expectations, he didn’t totally explode. He instead walked a few rounds around the aisle of shelves in the middle of his store in an attempt to calm himself. Only then did he set out to leave the store and tried his best to banish any thoughts concerning the System. ’Getting upset is exactly what it wants! But not today.’

BOOM

The moment he opened the door, he was greeted by the thunderous sound of an explosion, which instantly cleared his mind. The accompanying flash of dazzling lights was almost blinding.

“…said burst-damage! Use your cooldowns! Reapply debuffs!”

Bzzzz

“…that all you got?”

“Sir!”

“…moment…”

Severin was only able to make out a few scattered words before, in the distance, a constant bombardment of various sized magic projectiles, hailing down onto a single poor target dummy, drowned out most other sounds.

Once he got over the initial surprise and realized what was going on, he walked over to the direction of the newly purchased training dummies. He halted twenty meters away, where already a group of spectators was enjoying the show. Not Just Em, Timothy, Miriam, and Krey, but also a few members of the Lion’s Head guild sat out on the conducted training session.

The few people who noticed his arrival greeted Severin with a nod. He returned the gesture in kind; It was too loud to even try to exchange words.

About a minute later, the frequency of explosions became lower and lower until another half a minute later, they had stopped completely. This was the largest display of magic Severin had ever seen so far. If he didn’t know it any better, he would’ve sworn it had to be some kind of special effects. Despite the volume and his own jealousy, he quite enjoyed the show.

“Better, but not good enough! Five percent. That’s how much more damage we need in the five minutes we have when fighting the [Stone Giant]. Do you know what that means? That means we would be meat paste by now! And this is us just standing still for the most part, with no need to evade any falling spikes that will split your skull. So, make it ten percent instead. Minimum. Probably closer to fifteen. Twenty even! So tell me now whether or not you guys think you can do it because we might as well stay here if that’s all you got!”

This was the first time Severin had ever witnessed Andreas displaying this kind of attitude. More noteworthy, however, were the grave looks on the faces of the people standing in front of their officer. Not even Xander was in the mood for stupid jokes. Instead, he answered earnestly, “I know we got what it takes. Let us try again!”

His words were met with clear approval from everyone else.

“Prove it then.” Andreas was about to continue when he saw Severin. As a result, he cut his speech short.

“Alright. Ten-minute break. Wait for your cooldowns to get ready again and replenish your mana or whatever. And please! Keep an eye on the debuffs. You guys know who I mean. Just a few seconds with one less armor- or resistance-reducing effect on the target loses us an enormous amount of damage. More than any individual’s damage can ever make up!” With that, the man turned around.

Seeing that they were dismissed, for now, and that Andreas was finally leaving, the reprimanded group immediately started to chatter among themselves. This also seemed to be the sign for the group of observers to join up with their mates and to reapply all the expired buffs. As these people ran past the approaching Andreas, the latter finally revealed a satisfied grin that only the remaining non-guildmembers could see.

“I’ve never seen something like that! I truly can’t thank you enough!” The timing was simply too auspicious. In Andreas’s mind, there was no doubt that the sudden appearance of this piece of training equipment wasn’t a coincidence. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how Severin was able to acquire something like this, but its purpose was obviously to help the Lion’s Head guild prepare for their upcoming expedition. And not just a single one, but three at a time! The respect he felt for the shopkeeper rose immensely.

Severin was at a momentary loss for words, but a sudden barrage of questions prevented the situation from becoming awkward.