Tyler was able to make it out of the city without any incident, any survivors from the dragon attack were too busy trying to loot, salvage or save anything that they could find. Shop owners were running in and out of buildings, adventurers were listening closely, hoping to get any piece of information they could and begin some sort of quest line that involved the attack. There were small groups of construction classes starting to organize work groups, eagerly planning supply routes knowing the faster they began to work, the faster they could start gaining skill points. Tyler had to fight his urge to talk to these groups and try to organize trade agreements, landing a supply trade agreement in such a large scale was beyond him though, and he would quickly find himself over his head trying to compete with established guilds. He would probably find himself bound to a contract agreement that caused him losses day in and day out for years, the best thing he could do for himself was to hurry out of the city, and hurry and get his shop up and running. Most of the shops inside the capital itself had their storefronts burned away, and by the looks of things, the shop keepers weren't going to have their operations up and running any time soon. With piles of rubble strewn across the streets, the general fear that the dragons could return any time soon, defenses completely obliterated, the work camps outside the city will be the new hot spots for the foreseeable future.

With Noobie Alley, it was the closest developed area to the capital city, being built up because the monsters and gatherables in the area was the most ideal location for low leveled adventurers to start. Combat classes were given a variety of enemies that could help them build up their skills in any number of ways while also providing them with materials that the could sell to production classes or trader classes. Inside the settlement, production classes had access to free work areas where they could take the materials they purchased and create items, which they would then sell back to the combat classes. The work areas were free based on the production classes joining the kingdoms production association, agreeing to sell items within a specific price range, prices kept within a certain range to prevent griefing of new players with little to no gold available to them.

After passing the city walls, he found the road leading to Noobie Alley, and pulled up a tablet from his wrist, showing him the floor plan he created to prepare for his original shop. He looked at the bonuses that he received for his layout, able to charge up to 3% more above the baseline set the kingdom, but also allowing more than 10 people inside his shop at the same time. For a starter shop, he was just short of the ideal loadout for a shop, the only thing limiting him were demands of his partners having a representation of themselves in the shop at all time. Tyler sighed, he brought his hand to the image on the tablet, closing his hand lifting the store layout off his tablet, and made a throwing motion over his shoulder. A pop up appeared on the tablet 'file deleted', shaking his head over the loss of the work he put into his store, knowing that the layout would be completely different.

Tyler looked up from the window, and saw that he was the only person using the road heading in the same direction, everybody else was heading back to the capital city. He heard people talking excitedly about dragons and the destruction of the capital city, some mentioning that their guild ordered them to the city and try to recover as much gear as possible, just in case people couldn't make it back to the capital city in time to loot their corpse. He brought up his inventory, and stared at Property Deed #1, knowing that the item was literally the only thing that made his adventure through the capital so tough. If he didn't have it in his inventory, he would have happily taken a walk, and respawn outside of the city, and likely not had an angry JackAttack hunting him down. Frowning at the thought of JackAttack being even more angry because Tyler managed to sneak out of the city, he had to do something about the item.

Looking at the tabs across the top of his inventory window, he had a thought, and selected the wagon inventory and tried to drag it out, and immediately it obeyed his motions, and was greeted with two inventory windows side by side. He dragged the item from his inventory over the wagon inventory, and he saw that it was happily sitting in the wagon's inventory. He had to hope that the same protections offered in preventing adventurers from moving the cart would cover his items in the wagon itself. At least he had peace of mind in knowing that if he were to be ambushed on the road to Noobie Alley, he wouldn't lose the deed to a random attack, knowing better than hoping some form of AI would step in to save the day.

Relieved with the results of offloading the item and not having to worry about being sent off for a walk and losing what was arguable one of the most valuable items in the Tower. He switched his interface to his messages, and brought up a message from Emma with directions for where their new shop could be found, as well with the password to access management. He could have probably found the store on his own, but without the password, he would have been no different than a customer.

Instead of getting lost in his tablet for the journey, he decided to throw his window back on his wrist, and actually take in his walk toward Noobie Alley. Since digitizing, he had been pushed around from place to place at what felt like a breakneck speed, he never really stopped to really soak in his new reality. Sure, it was completely digital, but he was walking on a path through some woods that bordered the former capital, rather than the endless corridors of the Tower. Taking a deep breath in through his nose, he enjoyed the simple pleasure of the smells of the woods, and smiling at the difference between the synthetic smells of the Tower and the woods that surrounded him.

After about an hour on the road from the outer district of the Myneria, he finally began to approach Noobie Alley, the first sign being the lack of mature trees thanks to the constant cycles of adventurers roaming the area. While one would expect the area to be picked clean, there were just as many adventurers who were planting seeds in the ground. Everywhere Tyler looked, there were fenced off gardens for temporary plot claims that could be rented out, allowing materials to be protected from over eager collectors from ruining projects, a Florist requiring all flowers to bloom together to create an art bonus for example.

Tyler slipped into his Shop Keeper mentality he had been working on pre-digitization, he looked around him, calculating how much gold he should keep on hand to buy materials once harvested from the area. After another 10 minutes, he finally made it to High Street, a stretch of road that was the hub for the settlement. As Tyler came around the corner coming from the main road onto High Street, he came to an immediate stop, his jaw dropping. He thought the street would have been busier than normal, he couldn't believe that the street was buzzing with activity, crowds of people were stopped in front of shops. Tyler began to jog up the street, thoughts running through his head reminding him of the potential windfall from the high level characters forming groups before they headed out to the ruins of Myneria.

"Gnomes Rule! Gomes Rule! Gnomes Rule!" Tyler ran past a group of 8 gnomes in a circle, dressed in nothing but their underwear, dancing while chanting away.

"You're nothing better than footballs you little posers!" Tyler screamed at them, not breaking his stride. Even though he was in a rush to get to his new shop, his Goblin pride came to the surface. "Everybody knows that Goblin Engineering really brings the boom!"

Refusing to look back, Tyler continued up the main street, ducking and dodging all the way up. Tyler was still wondering if it would be faster to cut over one street, but decided to stay the course, not knowing if the smaller side street would be any faster or not. Finally reaching the end of the shop row, he saw the building number he was looking for. Finding the letter assigned to the unit, he turned the handle and pushed on the door. Not able to hold back a smile, he stepped through the door, ideas of piles of gold and success, only to be instantly cut short.

"Stairs!?" Tyler was instantly irate, knowing full well that the stairs counted as part of his square footage of his store space. As he climbed up the stairs, each step coming slower as Tyler got more and more angry realizing what his store space would be. Getting to the top of the stairs, he turned to his right, holding onto the stair rail with his left hand, he stopped once he completed the pivot around his hand, a 6 foot wide path past the top of the stairs, then expanding out to 10 feet across after clearing the stair opening. 20 feet away, a small desk spanned from wall to wall, and a small window was directly above the desk opposite of where Tyler stood.

Tyler stomped over to the desk, lifted the end panel and made his way behind the desk, sitting down on the provided Wooden Stool. He pulled a window off of his wrist, and brought up the Store Details page to begin working on the layout, initiating a first time tool tip session.

** New Shop:

Traffic Flow - The more your customers see what you have available will encourage increased spending for your customers. Make sure to ensure spacing for customers browsing your goods, having customers interfere with one another while shopping will have negative effects. Selling threshold bonus 1% per 100 points.

Item Display - The more items your customers see, the more likely they are to tell their friends about where they purchase their goods. The appearance of your store from the outside will entice customers to visit your store. Advertising bonus increase.

Trade Deals - The more deals you make, the more deals come your way, and the bigger inventory space you will need for your storage. +1 store inventory space per 1000 transactions

Store Confidence - Having a loyal customer base, you have proven that you are able to purchase their goods at every opportunity. Buying threshold bonus 1% per 100 loyal customers.

Store Comfort - Shopping safe is always a concern, stores will limit total customer numbers in case of emergency. Customer limit based on review by inspector

Traffic Flow - +150 points +1% selling threshold

Item Display - +0

Trade Deals - +0

Store Confidence - +0

Store Comfort - 8 Customers Path of travel clear to allow two players to pass shoulder to shoulder

Gold Available - 20,000

Tyler raised an eyebrow, looking straight at the gold he had available for fitting out his shop. It was the original gold he had available to him thanks to the pool of gold create with help from Beatrice and Emma. He was more curious about the 80,000 gold that he had left over from his rush of gold from the tutorial windfall, not understanding why it wasn't listed. He checked his inventory, and saw that his total gold available to him was 0, the 20,000 for the store was already in the storage space. Instead of going on a hunt for where the gold was, he decided it was time to focus on buying furniture for the store, and get the doors open as quick as possible.

Bringing up the store interface, he navigated his way into the default store display options, opting for premade displays rather than hiring a Carpenter to custom make things for his store. He figured it was better to buy the premade display racks since they would appear instantly, rather than wait a few days and get items that would provide higher display scores. The added advantage was to use the cheaper prices offered by the default pieces offered to new players that typically didn't have a pool of gold.

** Welcome to the Store Interface. The follow items have been filtered based on your floorplan and gold available

Basic Shelf - This is a basic shelf, it takes up a minimal amount of floor space that can be used to create a new path to create new paths of traffic. This shelf can hold a variety of items, small equipment items, potions or plants. Minerals can be displayed in this rack, but there is a high chance of the entire shelf breaking due to weight.

Length - 3'

Depth - 1'

Height - 6'

Cost - 100 gold

Desk display - This is a basic item can display any small item on your desk.

Diameter - 1'

Cost - 100 gold

Weapon Rack - This item will hold weapons while mounted to your store walls.

Sizing variable based on weapon inserted in mount, will adjust to suit any weapon type.

Cost - 500 gold

Armor Rack - This item will hold armor while mounted to your store walls

Sizing variable based on armor inserted in mount, will adjust to any armor type.

Cost - 500 gold

Mineral Display - This display case is built with extra framing to hold the heavy weight of minerals. Glass door on top will allow users to view minerals while offering minor security.

Length - 2'

Depth - 2'

Height - 3'

Cost - 2500 gold

Planter Box - This specialty display will mount directly on to any ledge available in your store, and includes soil to keep harvested plants fresh. Can hold up to 3 plants.

Length - 3'

Depth - 1'

Height - 1'

Cost - 2500 gold

Tyler had plenty of experience in doing a store layout, it was one of his hobbies while out walking, so he was quick to come up with an idea to quickly set up his store. The most important thing for Tyler was creating a layout using all the methods he knew of making gold. He purchased 5 basic shelves, 3 weapon rack, 1 armor rack, 1 planter box and 1 mineral display. Already deviating from his old layout, he went from a store layout that forced customers throughout a small maze to creating a waiting room for people to look at some fancy weapons they didn't know they needed.

He switched the tab over to the floor plan of his shop, and the items he just purchased appeared on the side of the window. He selected the basic shelves, and he tapped his finger along the wall opposite the stairs, then once behind the counter top under the window. The item disappeared from the list, then when Tyler looked up, some small fairies materialized through the window, and began to dance in the air above where Tyler tapped his finger on the window. After two minutes, the fairies did a spin above the newly construction shelves, then flew out the window to return to the carpenter that was contracted to build the furniture.

Tyler moved over to the shelf closest to the top of the stairs, and decided to put his low value healing potions, as these were the most likely item adventurers would be looking to buy. After they picked the items they were looking for, adventurers would be more open to picking items they weren't originally looking for, increasing the chance of Tyler selling an extra item or two. On the bottom shelf, he placed 3 basic healing potions side by side, on the middle shelf, he put 3 basic health potions, and on the top shelf, he put 3 basic fortification potions. The first were potions that would give a healing over time option, the second gave an immediate boost in health but less overall than the first, and the last gave a temporary increase in the users health. He moved the shelf to the left, and loaded it up in a similar manner to the first, but replacing the healing potions with health potions, and repeated again on the third shelf with stamina potions.

Satisfied with his layout of first shelves, he moved to the last one in front of the counter top, and used this as a glorified advertising space for his trade goods. With the endless amount of different crafting materials, it was next to impossible for him to display everything that was available to him. On the top shelf, he put a small bag of wheat on the left, a bag of hops in the middle, and on the right he put a small jar of glucose syrup. On the middle shelf, he put a small pile of nails on the left and a small pile of screws on the right, in the middle he put a small sign down which read ''please see Shop Keeper for full list of trade goods''. On the bottom shelf, he put a bunch of dried sage on the left, 3 crafted sticks in the middle, and an empty vial on the left.

Tyler stepped back, and took a look at the shelves along the wall, and nodded in satisfaction. He would have liked more advanced shelves, but spending more money on bigger shelves would have left little to no gold to go in the safe box of the shop, meaning he wouldn't have been able to buy any items from future customers. He turned towards his counter top, and as he walked to the last shelf, he pushed his finger down twice in front of the counter top placing the planter box and mineral display, and tapped four times in front of the counter top along the exterior walls placing down the three weapon racks and armor rack.

As the fairies entered the shop again and began to dance in the air, Tyler loaded up the last basic shelf, using it to display his ability to acquire higher end goods compared to other stores in Noobie Alley. He put intermediate health potions on the top shelf, intermediate mana potions on the middle shelf and intermediate stamina potions on the bottom shelf. While they couldn't compare to higher leveled items that high level raiders had access to, many of the adventurers in town would be surprised, and would likely ask Tyler what else had to offer. If he was displaying these items, some people would be curious to find out if he had something even better stashed away, giving Tyler the chance to talk up some extra sales. Tyler spent another 1,000 gold to buy a glow effect for the shelf behind the counter top, helping draw the attention of anybody entering the store, bringing them to the desk and closer to Tyler, giving him more opportunity to talk more gold out of potential customers.

Tyler moved over to the mineral case, deciding that minerals weren't his strongest point, he wasn't going to try and pretend that he had an abundance. He put a chunk of copper ore and a chunk of tin ore, noobies would be interested in the items, but the current customer base he was currently aiming for wouldn't look twice at the case. The point of the mineral case was for the aesthetic of the store, showing that Tyler would be interest in business of any sort. He stepped over the planter box, and wanted to set himself apart from other noobie shop keepers, and hopefully spread the word of the new shop. He pulled out a Lemming House and placed it in the middle of the planter box, the item would allow a Lemming to live in the house, and the Lemming in turn would take care of any plants in the box. He paid a hefty amount of gold before digitization, but would avoid the requirement of hiring a herbalist to ensure his plants to grow to it's peak condition. On either side of the small house, he planted some lavender and vanilla. While the plants weren't the most valuable thing he could plant and still sell over the long haul, the smell of the two plants would put his customers at ease.

He looked up at the armor and weapon racks he placed on the walls, that were mounted about 10 feet off the ground, and reached into his inventory space and pulled out 4 items.

** Bow of Clear Lights

Damage: 10

Attack Speed: 2.0

Special Effect: Triggers the next fired arrow to light up upon impact, lasts 5 minutes.

Cooldown: 30 minutes **

** Mace of Smashing

Damage: 54

Attack Speed: 2.4

Special Effect: Attacks will randomly decrease armor values for 5 seconds. Effect can happen only once per 10 seconds **

** Dagger of Stabby Stab - Custom Made Item

Damage: 36

Attack Speed: 1.4

+1 to Dexterity

Special Effect: Triggers next attack to ignore armor.

Cooldown: 20 minutes **

** Greaves of Sure Foot

Armor: 15

Durability: 45/45

Special Effect: Trigger to give user 40% resistance to movement impairing effects. **

Tyler used the store to place the items in the proper racks, but didn't really care about which weapon landed in which rack, they were doing their job just by being on the wall. Adventurers just needed to see weapons on the wall, something to look at in case a line developed, something to get them thinking. The longer they looked at the items, the more likely they were to get thinking that they needed an upgrade to their beginner set, or something to replace broken equipment. The most important thing to Tyler though, was that anybody passing through his store would think about spending money, because when they thought about spending money, it would be a lot easier for him to get them to spend gold in his store. Tyler bend his head to his side, stretching out his neck, and brought up his store statistics.

** Traffic Flow - +95 points +0% selling threshold

Item Display - +75 +.5% chance talk of your store will carry on the wind

Trade Deals - +0

Store Confidence - +0

Store Comfort - 6 Customers Potential of customers knocking into display cases while browsing shop

Gold Available - 9,500 **

He sighed, seeing the drop in his selling threshold, but accepted the change. A far cry from his original plan for a shop, but at least he had gold in the strong box, and the chance for his store to be heard randomly out in the world, he had a good opportunity to sell off some high valued goods. If he was really lucky, he could bank enough money to sell the current shop, and upgrade into a better floor layout somewhere inside Noobie Alley. Tyler took one more quick look around his store, and he nodded, it was a start, and he got it up and running a lot faster than he originally thought. It was time to open.

Just as Tyler started making his way to the front door to make the adjustments to officially open his store, he heard the door slam open, Tyler feelings the vibrations through his feet. He wasn't expecting Beatrice to make it to the opening of the store, she had much more important things to be doing than to see a shop in Noobie Alley open. Even if she wasn't grinding out skills and stats, a trip to the now ruined capital city of Myneria would have been a better use of her time.

"FEE! FII! FOE! FUM!" A deep male voice boomed out, each word combined with a slam on each stair. "I've caught you with no place to run!" Tyler recognized the voice immediately, JackAttack was in his locked store.

"How did you....."

Before Tyler could even finish asking how JackAttack got into his store, he got his answer. "Don't you know how big my guild is? Did you not once think that your partners couldn't easily been paid off to go along with whatever we say?" JackAttack was standing at the top of the stairs, holding a piece of paper in his hand. "I didn't even need to invite them to my guild to get them to go along with what I told them. But you know what? I invited them anyway, just so they don't go back to help you out after I'm done with you."

"How did you even know they were my partners?"

"How? Really?" JackAttack folded his arms while smiling. "We're the Tippin' Top Hats son, we have members everywhere, all I had to do was put out a bounty on any information regarding Syrix, the Goblin who got JackAttack arrrested. Almost as soon as I got word out, one of my trial members looking to get in the good books of the guild said they were in a bar in some trash village with a muscled woman bragging about how she was business partners with that very Goblin."

Tyler groaned, putting his face in his palm. "Oh B, you should have known better to keep your mouth shut."

"Yes, she should have, but even though she's got a big mouth, she's got potential. After talking with her for a while, I learned of her leveling plan, and even offered her some extra tips to make things more efficient. Next thing I know, there is this tiny little Fae asking about tips for Alchemy, and if we had any rare plants for sale." JackAttack laughed out loud. "I didn't even need to put any pressure on them to give up this crappy little shop ownership. I just said they should join the guild, and they can use the shop as their buy in, and they just jumped at it."

"I don't even understand why you are so set on getting revenge on me, I didn't have anything to do with your arrest, that was your own doing!"

"Oh I know, but I'm the leader of the Tippin' Top Hats, and I have appearances that I need to maintain. It wouldn't be good for our guild if the guild leader was arrested for bullying noobs." JackAttack unfolded his arms, and was no longer smiling. "I was going to let things slide with sending you for a walk once, I was even going to make it up to you after the fact. But now, after what I heard you pulled off in Myneria, and letting everybody think that we had Property Deed #1, I can't just let that slide. We now have bounties on our entire guild until the property is claimed, and nobody can get their hands on the deed. You and your clever mouth got our guild into an uncomfortable situation, we can't raid, our crafters can't set up shop in any place that has adventurers running around without an escort."

"Well, if your guys didn't attack my other friends, and chased me through the city...."

"SHUT UP! I don't care what right you thought you had, or how you were being chased through the city while dragons were attacking. I. Don't. Care." JackAttack drew out the last three words, making it clear that Tyler should keep his mouth shut. "No, you have distrupted the actions of a high level guild. You, a complete noob, and a shop keeper at that, have managed to actually damage our guild."

JackAttack started walking towards Tyler, and the hostility in his eyes froze Tyler to the ground. Even if Tyler had a way to escape, the fear that he felt was coming from a combination of skills and the armor JackAttack was wearing in his full PvP loadout.

"No, I'm not going to camp your corpse, because that's a waste of our time, and will make it easy for anybody looking to make some gold to find us. With this deed, everything in this shop is now mine, your items, your crappy weapons, your shelves, and your lockbox of gold." JackAttack reached over his shoulder, and drew a large two handed broadsword, it was dripping with greed liquid, and had a red glow surrounding the blade. The pommel had a large black gem, and lights could be seen stabbing outwards, it was the most beautiful weapon Tyler had ever seen. "What we are going to do after this, by we, I mean my guild, your former business partners included, will find out whatever shop you open, and we will make sure you don't sell a single item. We will chase off any customers, and if we can't chase them off, we will offer better items for a cheaper price, we are going to end any potential life you could make in HYTOMA, and make sure you spend as much time as possible walking. You probably didn't intend to cause so much trouble for my guild, you probably thought that you would lose us after leaving Myneria, but that doesn't matter. You can post wherever you want, tell as many adventurers as possible about how the Tippin' Top Hats are ganking a noobie Shop Keeper, it doesn't matter, you crossed our guild, and we have to make sure everybody knows that you don't cross the Tippin' Top Hats."

Tyler looked up at JackAttack, hoping he was showing defiance in his eyes, but likely only showing terror. "I found a way to escape your guild before," his voice cracking under the pressure, "I'll do it aga..." Before Tyler could even finish, JackAttack brought his sword straight down, cleaving Tyler in two, sending Tyler for a walk.