“I still can’t believe you did that,” I said, referring to his design choices for Er Yi. I set a pot with an orange flower on a shelf. It made a solid thump against the wood. I wanted the shop to look nice, so I was remodeling it to look like a shop in the woods.

This place used to be a warehouse, so I had plenty of room to work with. The roof was three stories high. Two trees grew in the center of the shop, and their branches reached every corner of the room. Dozens of small glowing rocks hung from the tree’s limbs like ornaments, giving the place light. I even moved a few boulder into the shop to give it a more authentic feeling. Brian was sitting on one of the boulders.

“It’s difficult, being unique,” he twirled, satirizing himself. “But really, you know she hates you now, right? All of my soldiers do.”

“How come?” I emptied racks of dried weed into a box.

“You killed the twin knights, the silver armored ones that attacked the alchemy pyramid. I don’t care, but they do.”

“I can’t do anything about it. What do you want me to do, bring them back to life?”

“I know, I’m just informing you. You don’t need to worry about them attacking you. I told them we’re allies. You can even command them. So. Can you tell me how your ability works?”

“Sure.” I explained the basics while setting up new shelves. I finished my explanation after about five minutes.

He soaked in the information. “So your ability seems complicated with its dozens of skills, each with their own rules and restrictions. But it’s also not complicated at all. To sum it up, you can control and grow plants.”

I shrugged, “Yep.”

He continued analyzing my ability. “You’re nearly unbeatable on your ‘territory’, but less powerful everywhere else. It’s also a powerful healing and mentoring ability.”

“Yep.”

“There’s one part I don’t understand. What limits are there on the designs of plants you can make? Like, why don’t you create an Iphone out of plant material?” he asked.

“I can copy or design my plants. The copying part is simple, I can create any plant I’ve touched before, including ones from the old world. The designing part has loose restrictions - the functions I design need to already exist in real plants, or they have to be very simple. I can go around that rule by spending more time designing it.”

“So no Iphones?”

“No Iphones. Obviously, I also can’t make stuff that break the laws of physics, like a plant that lets me teleport. That’s leagues outside the scope of my ability. Just think of my ability as about plants, and you’ll have an easy time understanding it. No Iphones, no teleporters, no devil fruit.” I looked at the thirty shelves I created. I was patient, but painstakingly filling each of them was a huge task. “Damn, this reminds me of the weekends I spent working in retail. Give me a hand.”

“Sure,” he said, getting up from the small boulder he’d been sitting on. His bare feet touched the grassy dirt that had replaced the stone floor.

“Nevermind, you’ll need eyes for this,” I said.

“Oh…” he sat back down. “By the way, why isn’t that Hui Ming girl helping you?”

“She’s going around the city, assimilating the local cartels into The Family.”

He slapped his thigh and burst out laughing. “You servants are commanding the underworld, and here you are: being walmart’s employee-of-the-week!”

“I have my priorities. They can have their fun playing in the underworld, but that’s not my business. And what are you doing, eh?”

His forehead wrinkled like a crumpled paper, “Well…”

“Absolutely nothing. What’s your title?” I asked.

“The Conqueror,” he replied. I stopped. I was going to use his title to find something for him to do, but I couldn’t do that anymore. I continued organizing my shelves. “I get it. I’m useless, more useless than a walmart employee. Some conqueror I am.”

“Have your motivations been influenced by your title?” I asked.

“Yeah. I discovered a new interest in taking shit over. Don’t worry about it though. It’s like suddenly finding interest in painting or something. I’m not a different person.” He described it perfectly. I felt the same way. I was the same person as before, just with an interest in cultivating. “And,” he continued, “conqueror or not, I hate being useless.”

He pulled a knife out of his robes. I took a sharp breath, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

“You can heal me, right?” He grinned and stabbed his palm. Rivers of blood poured onto the floor. “This gets easier every time I do it.”

“You’re insane!” A vine grabbed a salve and some pills off the racks. I took his hand and spread the thick salve over the wound, plugging the blood flow. I pushed a few pills into his mouth.

“Stop fussing over me. I’m alright. I wish I could see your face,” he teased. “Let me create some helpers for you. Our titles are super compatible. Your medicine can multiply the rate I produce blood, and they also buff my soldiers.”

A muscular man, a full head and a half taller than me, formed from half of the pool of blood. His broad shoulders and meaty hands gave off an impression of a giant boulder. The rest of the blood became a small lady with of sharp eyes. They faced me, “What would you like help with, sir employee-of-the-week?”

I rolled my eyes.

“You can keep them, by the way,” Brian said through a grin. “They’re powerful too. They’re at the fourth stage right now, but they’ll be at the sixth in a few months. Give them around a decade and they’ll reach the ninth. Now imagine you give them pills too.”

I ignored him. I couldn’t deny the usefulness of his ability though. I showed my new employees the parts of the shop and how to organize the medicine, but all the while, I couldn’t help but start to contemplate the ways I could exploit his ability for my own purposes.