Chapter 50: Retail Therapy
After thinking through what she had to do, her mind and spirits far clearer, she got to work on the first thing on her list.
"System, run the Gacha!"
[ Initializing Gacha! ]
The wheel spun, round and round, before finally coming to rest on the letter B.
And a small creature appeared before her, hovering in the air. A bee about fifty centimeters long, in every way like those of Earth, save that it wore atop its head a crown of stained glass, like the windows of a church, matching its wings made of the same colored material.
[ Congratulations! You have summoned Anubia, Queen of the Crystal Bees, Rank B ]
"Oooh~ Isn’t she magnificent?"
As if in answer, the queen drifted closer with a cheerful "bzzz~ bzzzz~."
Freya reached out a hand to pet her, and the queen, in return, stung her.
"Ow! Ow! Ow!" She snatched her hand back, caught off guard, while the bee tilted her head to the side, as if to convey she understood nothing of her mistress’s reaction.
"Shouldn’t that be my job? Why on earth are you stinging me?"
"Bzzz! Bzzz!!! Bzzz!! Bz?"
"Ah... I see, that tracks..." she said, holding out her arm, only to pull it right back. "Do you really think I’d cave to that gibberish???"
Anubia, who seemed on the verge of despair, moved closer and brought up her status, which unfolded between the two of them.
[ Status — Anubia ]
[ Unique Skill: — ]
[ Skills: Queen’s Authority | Royal Brood | Mana Honey Synthesis | Crystal Construction | Flourishing Swarm | Swarm Founder | Mana Drain ]
[ Titles: Queen | Tyrant | She Who Slaughtered a Thousand Hornets Alone | ... ]
"Woow, aren’t you impressive."
Anubia nodded at the compliments, proudly folding her legs in front of her.
"And you’re showing me this for the Mana Drain skill, is that it?"
She nodded vigorously, folding a second pair of legs.
"So you need my mana to function and to live?"
She kept on nodding, diligently.
"Fine, I don’t really have a choice, then. Here, take my arm..."
She held out her forearm, and almost immediately regretted it.
Because there was one thing Freya would never have admitted to anyone, least of all the girls, namely that in her previous life, she’d been terrified of insects. The kind of fear that had her fleeing an entire room over a single wasp that had come in through the window, and here she was voluntarily offering her arm to a fifty-centimeter specimen about to feed directly on her.
She looked away, gritted her teeth, and waited.
JAB
The stinger went into her arm, and Anubia started beaming with all her might, insofar as a bee can beam, wiggling her whole body while humming delighted little "bzzz bzz~"s.
"But why exactly are you dancing?"
"Bzzz! Bzzz?"
"Ah, it’s like talking to a wall, never mind."
So she set her new summon aside, still busy siphoning her mana, and focused on what she had to do, starting with a look at her reserve.
[ Mana: 1,266/10,000 ]
The figure struck her as rather low, measured against the 368 she’d had left the day before, and with her 25 mana points an hour, she gathered her faction couldn’t have pillaged much over the course of the day.
Well, it’s something, let’s not be difficult.
She got up, taking Anubia along with her, still firmly latched onto her arm.
She headed toward the back of the dungeon, as far from the entrance as possible, into a corridor that had yet to serve any purpose. Then she walked a little further. Then a little further still, until the corridor seemed to go on forever, before finally laying her hand against the rock, right at the very end, as far as it was humanly possible to go without digging out a whole new floor.
Because there was absolutely no question of those things setting up shop anywhere near her quarters.
"Build the Silkweaver Nest here, please."
[ Spend 300 mana points to designate the construction site and cause the materials needed for the Silkweaver Nest to appear? ]
"Yes..." she said, only half enthused, though the materials and the site appeared all the same at her confirmation.
She then went down to the floor below, where she marked out a wall to bring forth the Silk Spinnery.
[ Spend 300 mana points to designate the construction site and cause the materials needed for the Silk Spinnery to appear? ]
"Yes!" she said, having recovered all her energy and good humor, once she’d gotten past the fact that this was, after all, one hell of a boost for her dungeon.
She finally did the same right beside it for the Weaving Workshop, this one costing her five hundred mana points.
Casting an eye over what she had left:
[ Mana: 166/10,000 ]
Aaah... it drains far too fast for my liking...
Which, come to think of it, was rather a good sign. Mana that drained fast was mana that was working, invested in buildings that would pay her back many times over in the long run, and she knew perfectly well that a dormant reserve had never built anything for anyone.
The fact remained that at this rate she’d need a great deal more of it, and soon, which brought her back to a matter she’d been setting aside for a while.
So she made her way back to her throne, settled in comfortably, and brought up the shop.
[ Inter-Dungeon Shop ]
[ Tanned leather (x37) | Cost: 8 mana points apiece | (Seller: DarkVortex) ]
[ Thick furs (x23) | Cost: 15 mana points apiece | (Seller: Anonymous) ]
[ Violet pepper (x7) | Cost: 22 mana points apiece | (Seller: LustDemonKing) ]
[ Ice mangoes (x18) | Cost: 6 mana points apiece | (Seller: BunnyGirl) ]
[ Ice block 10m² (x48) | Cost: 25 mana points apiece | (Seller: SkyStrategist) ]
[ Empty seashells (x200) | Cost: 1 mana point apiece | (Seller: Anonymous) ]
[ Iron ore (x64) | Cost: 3 mana points apiece | (Seller: FreakyBoy14) ]
Wooow, there’s a lot of new stuff, the shop’s in full swing.
Freya couldn’t help drooling over everything laid out before her. The leather would be useful for the new workshop she was having built, she supposed, anyway.
As for the thick furs, those were an outright dream, seeing as she had literally nothing of the sort left in the entire dungeon, and winter would have to come around sooner or later.
Come to think of it, I don’t even know when it hits around here. I’ll have to look into that.
But what tempted her most was all the rest, empty seashells excepted, obviously.
The ten-square-meter ice blocks, for one, would be perfect in the right circumstances, since they’d let her set up a proper cold room to keep her provisions in.
She gathered from that item, incidentally, that SkyStrategist must live somewhere glacial, information she filed away in a corner of her mind, though with a grain of salt, since it could just as easily be tied to one of his skills.
Then came the iron ore. As mundane as that might seem for someone who owned mithrite, she knew full well that iron would end up running short on her, and at that price, frankly, it was a steal.
Her fingers were already itching, but the worst of it was the last two, the violet pepper and the ice mangoes.
Her mouth was quite literally watering.
Whose wouldn’t be, honestly?
She wanted to taste both, absolutely, without the slightest hesitation.
But no, Freya! Not now! You came here to sell, not to buy, and you need your mana for the summons coming up! These are only magnificent spices, fabulous fruits that exist nowhere else, flavors nobody has ever tasted in their entire life, absolutely delicious wonders from the far side of the world... and you can do perfectly well without them!
...
[ You have purchased x1 Violet pepper, x10 Ice mangoes and x25 Iron ore for 157 mana points. ]
"...Ah... I caved..." she muttered to herself, a little guilty, watching the items materialize one by one on the ground in front of her.
But when she saw the peppercorns, an absolutely brilliant violet, lined up in their little vial, and above all the mangoes, a deep blue, giving off a constant fine mist of cold around them, she couldn’t hold back the stars that rose in her eyes.
She was already picturing everything it would do for their meals, and above all the delight she’d take in surprising the girls with it.
And on that thought, her last regrets evaporated on the spot.
"Besides, mana comes and mana goes!"
So she carried her whole little haul off to the Storage Vault, in several trips, for lack of being able to use her other hand, still occupied by a certain bee who had yet to let go.
Once the task was done, she took a look at what really interested her.
[ Storage Vault — Level 1 ]
[ Mithrite (x119) ]
Guess it pays to have taken the mines up to level two...
She pulled out thirty, which she promptly listed for sale at sixty points a unit.
Last time, her stock had gone like hotcakes at twenty, and from what she could see, if a mere spice and plain old ice blocks were moving at twenty-two and twenty-five points respectively, then a magical ore could very well find a buyer at that rate. And at worst, she lost absolutely nothing by trying.
[ Mithrite (x30) | Cost: 60 mana points apiece | (Seller: Maid) ]
That done, she closed the shop, rather pleased with her little browse, even if she had just sunk the entirety of her mana into it.
[ Mana: 9/10,000 ]
Right... let’s call it an investment.
She settled back against the backrest of her throne, one hand behind her head, the other still commandeered by Anubia, and figured that after all that, she’d earned herself a bit of entertainment.
Now, how about a little trip to the chat~!
"But first... could you let go of me, already????" she asked the bee, still busy siphoning her mana.
The bee shook her head no, arguing the point with a great many "bzzz"s, while Freya was already ignoring her and opening the faction chat.
Can I not get one halfway normal summon, just once? Is that really too much to ask?