Chapter 60: Meeting Mia & TheoryMaster69
Aurelius was happy to see the doors of Marrow’s Alchemy Shop open. It meant that Mia and Homer had finally returned from the impromptu vacation.
The timing confirmed one of Aurelius’ earlier suspicions.
Homer had most likely known about the Sunless Sect’s attack beforehand. Their sudden departure couldn’t have been a coincidence.
That, in turn, raised another question.
Had Professor Anna also known about it? If so, why hadn’t she intervened?
Aurelius didn’t believe she would sit still if she knew the full extent of the Sunless Sect’s plan.
After all, the descent of the Lost Sun could very well destroy the entire Blood Sun City.
The Ernst Academy—and Professor Anna by extension—would suffer greatly too.
Shaking his head, Aurelius pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind.
He slid the door aside and stepped inside.
He fully expected to see Mia’s figure standing behind the counter or Homer dozing off with a book in his hands.
The result, though, was unexpected.
"Emma, pay attention to this. Don’t touch anything inside this display case."
"If anything happens to them, don’t expect me to try and save you from my father’s wrath."
Mia pointed at a glass display, while the woman standing beside her nodded repeatedly.
With short red hair that barely reached her shoulders, the woman wore a black jacket and matching pants. She stood just under 5’5 feet, half an inch shorter than Mia.
Seeing her nod with a look of understanding, Mia breathed a sigh of relief.
She was quite satisfied with the employee her father had managed to hire. Her learning capabilities were quite good.
More importantly, she worked for pitiful wages.
Just as she was about to continue guiding the new hire, Mia noticed a figure standing beside the door.
Initially, she believed it was a customer and was about to greet them.
But as the familiar handsome face entered her sight, Mia’s eyes lit up.
"Aurelius!" Mia called, waving as she hurried over.
What she failed to notice was the brief flash of astonishment in Emma’s eyes as she said this... followed almost immediately by excitement.
"Mia," Aurelius nodded in greeting, reciprocating her smile.
"I came to thank you for the items you left behind. I originally wanted to ask you out for a cup of coffee or tea. I didn’t expect that you would be busy..."
"Why don’t you introduce me to this lady?" he smiled, gesturing toward Emma with his head.
"Haha," Mia laughed.
"Emma, come over," she waved and pointed at her.
"This is the latest employee my father has hired. You already know about our shop. Besides my father and me, there was no one else to run the shop."
"I have to attend the Academy. As for my father..." she paused briefly.
"He has been obsessed with some crazy experiment lately. He no longer cares about the shop."
"So, we’ve decided to hire Emma."
As the two were speaking, Emma walked over.
Stopping beside Mia, she maintained her polite smile and stretched her hand toward Aurelius.
"I’m Emma. Nice to meet you."
Aurelius reached out and shook her hand. As their palms parted, the two remained silent for several seconds.
On the side, Mia was confused by their strange behavior.
What she didn’t know was that countless thoughts were racing through the minds of both her new employee and her friend.
Everything stemmed from the hovering interface floating above Emma’s head.
[TheoryMaster69]
"Aurelius, why don’t you come in for the coffee you were talking about?"
Suddenly, Mia’s voice broke the awkward silence.
"It’s still early. I have some free time. Why don’t you come to the back?"
Faced with her invitation, Aurelius nodded.
...
A few minutes later, the one man and two women had moved to the room near the shop’s back.
Aurelius and Mia were seated on opposite sides of a table, with a cup of steaming coffee in front of them.
Emma nervously fidgeted beside them, seemingly afraid to sit down or involve herself in their conversation.
After several attempts to have her sit down with them, which all resulted in her explicit refusal, Mia shook her head and dismissed it.
After taking a sip of the coffee, she looked at Aurelius and smiled.
"You don’t have to think too much about it. It was my father who asked me to give them to you."
"He said it was an apology for trying to scam you the last time you came."
"You don’t have to take this gift too seriously," Mia shook her head.
"I saw what he gave you. They were a bunch of useless items sitting around his workspace."
"Hmph! If it weren’t for his insistence, I would have thrown those damned things away a long time ago. Taking up so much space!"
Aurelius almost spat out his coffee.
The Alchemist recipes inside the wooden box were extremely precious, as evidenced by the role they had played during the infiltration of the Sunless Sect’s stronghold.
The gun was even more valuable.
With only a few shots, it had managed to kill Priest Mayin with ease. Aurelius suspected even Rank 3 Awakeners would struggle to defend against it.
One of the major reasons he had visited the shop today was that he hoped to obtain something similar, or the Relic recipe for it.
Yet these items, which Awakeners would vie for, had almost been thrown away by Mia? Considered useless trash nonetheless?
For a moment, Aurelius had the urge to say that he could always collect her trash for her.
But recalling the sneaky Player standing beside them, Aurelius swallowed these words.
He had to maintain his Protagonist identity for now.
He couldn’t ruin the image he’d carefully built for a short-term gain.
Thinking of this, Aurelius didn’t press any further.
Displaying faint curiosity, he changed the subject.
"I heard that you and your father traveled across the Dawn Kingdom. Even the Imperial City."
"How was it?" Aurelius asked,
Mia’s eyes lit up.
With great excitement, she began vividly describing her journey.
What she didn’t notice was that the ears of her new employee suddenly perked up, listening attentively to her every word.