“Now?!”

“Now!?”

Two very upset sounding voices asked the same question; the older one might have even been the more annoyed one of the two.

“Now!” a third one confirmed. “People are already waiting for us to resume business.” It was a convenient excuse, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Severin innocently pointed to a nearby group of gathered adventurers who were quite obviously waiting to enter the store and only refrained from doing so because of the identity of the people occupying the [Shopkeeper’s] time.

Realizing their presence had been acknowledged, the four Eagles shuffled towards the store while paying close attention to avoid eye contact with the two bigshots and Markus, who was their direct superior.

With this, neither the girl nor the woman had any way to rebuke Severin. The former shouldn’t have been outside to begin with. As for Mylana, in front of Severin, her status didn’t count for much and as a businessman, it was only right for him to prioritize his paying customers.

After making sure the group was following him, if slowly and still hesitant, Severin quickly turned around and made haste to reach the inside of his store before anyone else could interfere. All the while making sure Emily wasn’t leaving his side.

“Aren’t you guys already stocked up? What’s so urgent that you couldn’t wait any longer?” While she wouldn’t go so far as to prevent those people from going inside, Mylana still couldn’t help herself but question them.

Markus, as their superior, also couldn’t help but say a few words. “Go ahead. Just don’t make any trouble.” He was still slightly concerned about the previous incident where a bunch of his guys had tried to pressure Emily. Especially now that a product had appeared that almost justified such behavior. Mostly, however, he said those words to undermine Mylana and her questioning ever-so-slightly. Those were his men. It was up to him to question them, not to anyone else. Her, at times, obsessive behavior irritated him, but as he didn’t dare to rebuke her directly, this was all he could do in such a situation.

“Sir. Of course, Sir. We only wanted to make sure to place our orders.” Noticing the strange mood, the adventurer addressed Markus in a more formal fashion than he usually would. Not because he didn’t respect him - quite the opposite- but because, first and foremost, the second-string leader of the Malcos Eagles was simply just one of them. Formal addresses, titles, and direct orders were usually saved for either public appearances or combat situations.

“Right! Haha, we didn’t place any orders yet. Let’s see if he already takes any orders for that new stuff.” Sam, the by far most scary looking of the bunch, was the one mediating and seemed to be in a cheerful mood.

“New stuff?”

“Just follow.”

Seeing that not just their more impatient comrades entered the store, but that they were in fact led by Samuel and Co., even the less brazen adventurers of their squad started to follow.

Soon almost everyone stood orderly in rank and file in front of the store’s long counter, ensuring that Severin would be busy for some time

Mylana’s previous comment, albeit inappropriate, was indeed true. Only a few of the people were actually restocking their potions and elixirs; most were only concerned with placing their orders for the next day as soon as possible.

Originally, Severin wanted to reject the majority of them. It had been his plan that in the afternoon he would only take orders for the first batch of bread of the following day. This was so that he could directly head for the kitchen early on without having to first open the store. For the second batch of dishes of the day, which were only served during midday, this was obviously not necessary.

But seeing the long queue, Severin couldn’t bring himself to turn them all away. Not only because he didn’t want to appear petty as taking the orders now instead of tomorrow wouldn’t really cause any extra work for him anyway, but also because he decided it would be stupid to reject their upfront payment and risk losing parts of his income this way. After all, right now all of them were pretty much guaranteed to order two servings each, while after giving them enough time to think things through they might come to the conclusion that with the comparatively short durability of the salads it might not actually be worth it to order multiple at once.

Just for a moment, the idea of putting up a ‘No refunds!’ sign popped up in his mind but was just as quickly dismissed. Not that he actually planned to grant refunds- the System surely wouldn’t allow that- but it just wouldn’t be a good look. It would have made him seem like a quack and needlessly hurt his reputation.

Maybe because of a slightly bad conscious stemming from this ridiculous idea, or maybe simply to ensure even more money coming his way, he also decided to announce tomorrow’s new product and decided to receive orders for it as well. This time, he even took the initiative to advertise its effects. Not that it really mattered anymore.

Those who had still underestimated the store’s products and therefore didn’t order any salad had learned their lesson today. At this point, they wouldn’t hesitate again and would make sure to get their hands on whatever new products Severin had to offer; and if it turned out to be useless to them specifically, there would still be someone in their guild who could surely make use of it.

A good hour later, the shop was mostly empty again. Apart from Severin and Emily, only a single person sneaked around the Purifier while feeding the machine with coins.

The sight reminded Severin of a gambling addict in front of a Slot Machine.

‘Here’s an idea.’

Now that the tranquility had returned to the store, it was finally time for Severin to start experimenting.

‘I should start with something simple.’ With that, he summoned several ingredients onto the counter.

“What are you doing? Do we need to restock already?”

“I’ll try to create a new product.” > Severin changed the medium of communication as he wasn’t too eager for a certain someone to hear him talk about quests.

>

> he confirmed. >

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>

>

…

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[The worthless result of an amateurish attempt at Alchemy.

Used ingredients are irrecoverably wasted.]