After all this time and with his business becoming more and more lucrative, fifty thousand gold coins weren’t nearly as prohibitive an amount anymore as it had been when he had first accepted the quest. So by now he could’ve easily had finished the quest already; especially since a good amount of progress had already been made due to all the upgrades and expansions he had purchased. It was simply due to his own stubbornness and inflexibility that Severin was now filled with regret and the feeling that he had missed out.

“I could’ve had this... weeks ago… no, maybe months… the amount of money I could’ve…” Severin stammered to himself as he couldn’t stop thinking about all the riches he could’ve had accumulated already.

“Andreas’ and Markus’ groups… in total, that should be around fifty people or so. If all of them…” He didn’t dare to finish the thought. Instead, he forced himself to calm down.

“No. Don’t think about that. Just don’t think about it!” he told himself repeatedly. “Just focus on ‘what is’, and how to proceed from here. Think things through calmly.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

After a minute or so, when his heart didn’t feel like it might at any moment anymore, he opened them again and started looking through all the relevant System notifications and menus.

“Okay, great. There doesn’t seem to be any withdrawal function. That means once the money is deposited, it truly is mine and can be used freely. In the worst case, it is just some kind of prepayment to get things started.

Just as important is the fact that I don’t have to do anything in return. The System and the combinator handle things on their own. No additional work on my end. It’s just free money, it seems.” Severin kept analyzing the situation to the best of his ability.

“Also, in the long run, the deposits will probably only make up for a small amount of the total income generated by this new feature. The majority will come from the extra fees and the additional purchases that come with using the combinator. Especially if I can offer even more potent and therefore more expensive products. It’s almost as if the deposits only serve the purpose of accelerating me getting ahead.

Sadly, there aren’t too many people up here right now,“ Severin almost started complaining again, but caught himself just in time, “but I guess with a bit of advertising I should still be able to make enough to work with. At least enough to not have to worry about money issues once I’m in Hanvia.“

With that thought in mind, Severin got up and headed for the door. But stopped after a few steps.

He then fiddled around with the System settings for a short while. Only then did he continue outside, where he once again found Samuel sitting in the cafe, as if he was waiting for something.

With little hesitation did Severin approach the man, and, with an uncharacteristic loud voice, so that even the two ex-guards who were sitting a few tabled over couldn’t miss a single word he said, started peddling his newest available service that ‘was perfect for everyone planning to go on an extended trip’.

After that, he procured another two custom made signs to set up near Emily’s counter and the combinator, where a certain old woman was creeping around, respectively.

Severin then, with a self-satisfied expression on his face, headed back outside and started waiting for a couple of thousand gold coins to roll in, without him having to lift a finger. During that time, he once again started browsing the System’s store.

But not the commercial half of it.

Luckily, just in time, before he had left his room, he had thought about adjusting the gold conversion rate. He was now taking a look at a variety of safety and defense-oriented clothing and accessory options that were only available to him and his [Employees] and could only be purchased with their private money. The shop’s balance couldn’t be used; and neither could those items be resold to Severin’s customers later on.

Two particular items caught his eye, only one of which he would be able to afford.

First was a white, long-sleeved, and generally ordinary looking shirt that would grant the wearer an additional +200 HP and +10 Armor; Severin was pretty much clueless when it came to evaluating the worth and potency of the provided Armor, but just knowing that this piece of equipment would effectively triple his meager health pool was very tempting.

The second option was a silvern ‘Ring of Flicker’ which promised to save its wearer from incoming damage. The caveat was that it had a cooldown of one hour and would apparently break once a total of five hundred damage had been negated.

Severin had to make a decision, and was mulling over the advantages and disadvantages of both options. One was clearly geared more towards dealing with a longer encounter during which he would get hit multiple times, with the armor providing some degree of damage mitigation, effectively boosting his survivability.

The other item was quite the opposite. It might save Severin from unexpected and otherwise certain death, but would leave him pretty much defenseless afterwards.

Severin was racking his brain about this matter, when suddenly some excited shouts tore him from his thoughts.

Startled, he looked around and saw three people leaving the building belonging to the Society.

‘Might be leaving even sooner than I thought,’ came the realization.

The shouts were clearly coming from two of these figures. The third-he noticed even at that distance-appeared rather gloomy in comparison.

All three of them made their way over.

“Seems like they already did it,” Samuel noted approvingly, though slightly surprised. “Both of them.”

It was one thing for Timothy to pass the evaluation, but it was a whole different matter for Miriam.

Even if some of the tests and thresholds they had to pass were class-specific, it still had to be ensured that their overall combat-effectiveness was on par with that of other adventurers of the same rank. As such, the girl that had a common class that was notoriously hard to manage, especially during the early levels, was at quite the disadvantage. Samuel, of course, knew this firsthand.

Soon the young [Berserker] and the [Chaos Mage] were showing off their newly earned badges to their mentor and reminded him of his promise.

Severin watched the situation play out from the side, when he felt a cold shiver go down his spine.

He turned around and saw the third person standing right in front of him, with a strained smile on her face, giving him a death-stare.

“We need to talk!”