Nyxfall 7: The Veilbreakers-Chapter 62: The Online Shop

Kai knew the formula for making a Minor Poison Arrow, but he had never bothered to learn the formula for an antidote to any poison. There were many available in the player-operated shops all over Stonebinder cities, so he never felt the need to learn it.

Even though he didn’t know the exact formula, Kai had seen the list a few times in his last timeline circulating on online forums. Based on that, he gathered some ingredients from market: Bloodroot, Wyrmspine Bark, Ashcap Mushroom, Crystal Aloe Gel, Distilled Water, Quicklime, Serpent Venom, and the Stings of Mutated Horn Creepers.

After wasting a lot of these, finally—based on pure instincts and a familiar crafting process—Kai made a makeshift formula. He infused Wyrmspine Bark and Distilled Water to get an extract, into which he added ground Bloodroot, producing a thick mixture. He had to distill it to get the pure version. Then he infused it with ground Crystal Aloe Gel to make it slightly thicker, added a trace of Quicklime, and let it ferment for a few hours. In the last step, he added a few drops of poison extracted from grinding the sting of Mutated Horn Creepers and got the dark green, slimy-looking potions.

He could only make three bottles at a time, so he had to grind away for hours to get at least twenty of those. Hopefully, no one gets poisoned more than twice.

Since he was crafting, Kai also made Crippling Oil (a weapon coating), a Fire Resistance Charm, an Explosion Arrow, a Minor Poison Arrow, and a Blinding Arrow. Crippling Oil should be useful against those Mutated Horn Creepers. Not everything was for the dungeon, though—Kai needed some funds to further his plan.

So the Fire Resistance Charm, a few Blinding Arrows, and some Crippling Oil—he also added a few Poison Resistance potions to the list to things to sell, just to see what price he could get for this specific potions, only useful for this one dungeon, probably—he planned to put them up for sale tomorrow.

The shop was going to open at 12 noon.

After crafting and sorting all the things he wanted to get ready for the noon, Kai logged out and fell asleep around 4 AM. He texted his mother to wake him up before 12 tomorrow. They were all still running dungeons or doing missions or trying to get the horse, like Kai and Bella.

However, when Kai woke up the next day, there was a person beside him on the bed. For a second, Kai froze as his eyes widened, but then he recognized Mimi’s face and sighed.

"Hey! What’s with that lame reaction? Don’t you feel blessed that your girlfriend came to wake you up so lovingly, first thing in the morning?" Mimi said, snuggling inside his sheets and hugging him tightly.

Kai ignored her and grabbed his holo from the side table. It showed 11:06, Sunday. He didn’t want to sell his things right as it launched, but he wanted to keep an eye on what others put up for sale so he could buy some nice things at low prices, since there were no market price set yet.

Kai tried to get up, but Mimi pulled him back and wrapped her legs around his. "Am I making this uncomfortable for you?" Mimi asked with a wolfish smile.

It was morning, and as a healthy boy in his teenage years.. Kai indeed had some morning excitement, which normally he had learned to ignore. The sly girl knew very well what she was doing.

Feelings aside, Mimi was not an average looking girl by any means. Kai had received quite a lot of stares whenever she was close to him in school. Unknowingly, he had made a lot of enemies. Well, all that was childish, and he was not young enough to get flustered by such things now. He had, for better or worse.. experienced things on the offline planet.

Kai stopped trying to get up and instead rolled back, surprising Mimi as he got on top of her. At first, she could just guess it—now she could feel it. Her eyes widened, and her cheeks reddened a little, though she was still trying to hold strong.

All her pretense of toughness broke, however, when he lowered his face, holding her two hands beside her head, without changing a single expression.

Her shaking eyes and increased breathing were quite fun to see. When there were only a few centimeters between their faces, she could not bear it any longer and forced her eyes shut. It made him smile.

Kai stopped there, letting her get flustered. Then, moving slightly up, he kissed her pretty forehead. Before her surprised eyes could gather enough courage to open, Kai had left the bed and her, and stood up.

Before going out of the room, though, she finally looked at him—and Kai just smiled, making her slightly red cheeks go full red in realization of how he was just messing with her.

Kai got refreshed, took a shower, and was in the middle of his breakfast when finally Mimi came downstairs. When his mother asked what happened, she just glared at Kai with an angry face—angry for her. To him and his mother, it was like seeing a puppy puffing its cheeks.

He probably shouldn’t have done that. It was hopeless to assume that would scare her into keeping her distance from him.

While chatting about this and that, Kai finished his late breakfast and opened his holo to access the shop through the Nyxfall site. The good thing about the official shop was that they didn’t need to log in with a VR headset; one just needed an account created through the unique Nyxfall VR ID.

Kai waited for the last few minutes to pass, asking his mom and Mimi about their dungeon experience last night, while scrolling through forums to see what people were thinking about the shop and all.

"After exhausting one dungeon entry for the Grimhorn Den, we only did the Beast Hollow, and even in that, any of us rarely cleared it," his mother said. "That pretty girl only managed to do it once with some stranger team."

"Bella.. She is quite good. How are people good in both studies and gaming? That is so unfair," Mimi murmured from the side.

"They simply put more effort into not failing.. They are scared of it. It becomes kind of a trap once you excel at something. People always have high expectations, and when they do average—well, it’s just sad to see people raise kids in such a way even after we have made so much progress in other aspects of life.. Basic psychological help is still something most people lack," his mother said.

She had a habit of often saying such things in the most casual of manners—it left many scratching their heads. Even right now, she was just cleaning the kitchen while muttering these things. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Mimi was used to it though, After living most of her life with them. She just went on and on about Bella, though both his mom and Kai mostly nodded and paid little attention. It was clear she was a little jealous of Bella’s fighting skills for some reason.

Soon it was 12 PM.

The shop finally went live, and in just a few seconds, the homepage was filled with all kinds of items being sold. Everyone was excited to try it out, even though barely anyone knew what it really did. And it wasn’t just humans who could access it—many alien civilizations had posted the weirdest and most random things they had found in-game for sale.

Not all planetary civilizations truly understood the game world as well as humans could. It was, after all, their game. So things like uncommon pants with barely any good effects were put up for sale going for even 100 and 200 gold. Everyone was experimenting with currency and shop features, so it was expected. The human comments under such weird items were the most hilarious things to read.

Kai quickly scanned for some of the good items that were being sold at lower prices and saved those listings. The buying worked like betting: whoever offered the highest price for the limited time it was on sale, the item would belong to them. Kai would see if buying them was worthwhile or not till the end, before putting in an offer.

After checking the shop—in which thousands of items were being added each second—Kai put up all of his selected items from the inventory and storages he had rented. They were available for him to list from this online account. Any item not in his inventory, or in chests for which he hadn’t paid rent, would not be available to be sold. There was also a limit of listing; only ten items per person until some of them sold, at which point those numbers could be replaced with new items. There was a trick in it, though: Kai used all the low-level items as a bundle instead of going separately.

He also used full sets of uncommon and rare equipment, class-specific, as listings so he wouldn’t have to do item after item. In under an hour, he was done with all ten of his listings. He kept the price relatively high—as everyone was doing—taking advantage of the chaos, and would just have to see how high it would go. The items he had crafted himself, he had inscribed with his own logo: two swords crossed behind a dragon in a circle. It was the logo of the last surviving human guild in his last timeline. All humans, in the end, had joined under this one banner for their last battle against Deimos. He hoped someone would recognise it, he did not reveal his name in the shop listing so it would not reveal his identity.