Chapter 152: System Shop

Adam opened the kitchen pantry.

After all the discussions that day, he had no desire to prepare anything too complicated.

But with nine people to feed...

He still needed to make sure he had enough.

So he started by taking out several ingredients.

Meat.

Vegetables.

Some mushrooms.

Potatoes.

Rice.

Fresh herbs.

He placed everything on the large work surface.

Behind him, the automated equipment continued its work quietly.

The sugarcane was being processed.

The coffee was being roasted.

The cocoa beans were being processed gradually.

Adam smiled slightly.

"At least I won’t have to do that myself anymore."

He began to chop the vegetables.

His hands worked almost automatically.

After all the hours he’d spent cooking since arriving in this world, the movements had become second nature.

A saucepan was placed on the stove.

Then a second.

Adam seasoned the meat.

Added some herbs.

Prepared a base for the sauce.

And as he worked...

A thought suddenly crossed his mind.

He froze for a fraction of a second.

"Wait..."

The Shop.

It had been a long time since he’d thought about it.

When he’d first discovered the various functions of his interface after arriving in Valoria, he’d quickly glanced at the Shop.

Back then...

It was almost empty.

Adam continued stirring his sauce with one hand as he remembered.

There were only six items.

A bottle of water.

Some bread.

A small dagger.

The plant he had used to heal Elena.

The multi-tool he owned.

And the fish he had caught.

Six items.

Nothing impressive.

He checked again a few days later.

Same list.

And again.

Still the same thing.

Eventually...

Adam had simply lost interest.

He had come to consider the Shop a secondary function, far less interesting than the Drawings.

But since then...

Something had changed.

Changed a lot.

"I went from level three to level forty-six."

Adam continued to stir the pot calmly.

"And I haven’t checked once since the beginning of the journey."

He smiled.

"Might as well check."

Without stopping cooking, he mentally summoned the interface.

A translucent window appeared before him.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

System Shop

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Host Level: 46

Currently Available Items:

1 081

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Adam’s hand stopped moving.

He looked at the number.

Then at the pot.

Then at the number again.

"One thousand and eighty-one?"

He must have misread.

He checked.

1,081.

Adam lowered the heat slightly under his pot.

"Okay..."

The shop he knew contained six items.

Now...

Over a thousand.

He quickly scrolled through the list.

Weapons.

Food.

Potions.

Materials.

Clothing.

Ingredients.

Tools.

Crystals.

Ores.

Manufactured goods.

Magical items.

And much more.

Adam remained silent for a few seconds.

"Why so many at once?"

His gaze returned to the number.

1,081.

Something seemed familiar.

Not the number itself.

Its structure.

Adam frowned.

"On level three..."

Six items.

He thinks.

Level one.

Level two.

Level three.

Then—

"One plus two plus three." »

He stopped what he was doing completely for a second.

1 + 2 + 3 = 6.

Adam immediately looked at his current level.

46.

He calculated mentally.

Then used the formula he knew perfectly.

(46 * (46 + 1)) / 2

1,081.

Silence.

Then a smile slowly appeared on his face.

"I have it. »

The rule was ridiculously simple.

Each new level added a number of items to the Shop equal to the level reached.

At level 1:

1 item.

At level 2:

+2.

Total:

3.

At level 3:

+3.

Total:

6.

And so on.

Adam mentally conjured up a few steps.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Theoretical progression of the Boutique

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Level 1: +1

Total: 1

Level 2: +2

Total: 3

Level 3: +3

Total: 6

Level 4: +4

Total: 10

Level 10:

Cumulative total: 55

Level 20:

Cumulative total: 210

Level 30:

Cumulative total: 465

Level 40:

Cumulative total: 820

Level 46:

Cumulative total: 1,081

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Adam nodded slowly.

"So she wasn’t blocked. »

He took back his knife.

"I was the one stuck on level three. »

That explained everything.

From his arrival in Valoria to the start of his journey...

Adam had hardly gained any levels.

So the Shop had not received any new location.

He checked again and again...

But obviously nothing changed.

Then he was gone.

Level three.

The Red Forest.

Level nineteen.

The goblin colony.

Level forty-six.

And he never thought to check the Store in all this time.

Adam chuckled.

"I let over a thousand articles appear without even realizing it. »

He began scrolling through the Store again.

But this time more slowly.

He quickly noticed a second element.

A bag of flour.

He had bought some.

Sylvaris mushrooms.

He had just used it.

A piece of meat similar to the one he had cooked several times.

Sugar.

Adam stopped.

"Wait. »

He opened the file.

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Refined sugar

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Grade:

Off Gray — Poor

Price:

3 PS / unit

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Adam looked behind him.

A machine was precisely producing it.

He returned to the interface.

Then he searched:

Cocoa.

Several results.

Cocoa beans.

Cocoa powder.

Chocolate mix.

Even some products he had made himself appeared in the Shop.

Adam frowned slowly.

"So this isn’t a completely random list."

He searched again.

The fish.

Present.

The multi-tool.

Present.

The medicinal herbs he had used.

Present.

Several weapons he had wielded during his training.

Present.

Crystals he had handled at the Tower of Mages.

Present.

Ores shown by Elaria.

Present.

Ingredients purchased at the market.

Present.

Potions he had already seen or handled.

Present.

Adam gradually understood.

"All the available items have something in common."

He had already encountered them.

Not necessarily for long.

Sometimes he had used them.

Sometimes only handled them.

Bought them.

Cooked them.

Observed them directly.

Or owned them.

But none of the items he browsed seemed completely unfamiliar.

The Shop, therefore, didn’t give him access to just any item in the world.

It seemed to select its new items from among the things he himself had already encountered.

Adam smiled.

"Okay... now this is getting much more interesting."

The more he traveled...

The more he discovered.

And the higher his level...

The more some of these discoveries became permanently available in the Shop.

This also meant something important.

"Even if I can’t find something normally anymore..."

He looked at the interface.

"If the Shop has registered it, I can potentially buy it back."

He immediately thought of rare materials.

Ingredients.

Potions.

Hard-to-obtain items.

Then he calmed down.

"Provided I have enough Satisfaction Points."

And then...

The prices became significant.

Adam opened the filters.

Price increasing.

The list reorganized.

The first items were particularly simple.

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Examples — Off-Gray / Poor

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Ordinary Water Bottle

1 BP

Common Fruit

1 BP

Plain Bread

2 BP

Table Salt

2 BP

Refined Sugar

3 BP

Common Culinary Herbs

3 BP

Ordinary Fish

5 BP

Simple Small Tool

6 BP

Ordinary Metal Utensil

8 BP P.S.

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Adam nodded.

That made sense.

Ordinary products.

Easy to find.

With no exceptional properties.

Their price generally ranged from one to nine Satisfaction Points.

He moved up to the next rank.

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White — Common

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Observed Range:

10 to 40 PS

Examples:

Minor Recovery Potion

10 PS

Treated Bandages

12 PS

Good quality iron dagger

18 HP

Small ordinary mana stone

25 HP

Reinforced crafting tool

32 HP

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Adam paused over the potion.

"Ten points..."

Cheap.

Especially now that he had over ten thousand HP.

But he immediately forced himself to change his perspective.

Upon arrival...

Ten points meant something.

And above all...

Buying fifty or a hundred potions would quickly become expensive.

He switched to Green.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Green — Uncommon

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Observed Value Range:

40 to 150 HP

Examples:

Standard Recovery Potion

50 HP

Decent Quality Mana Crystal

65 HP

Uncommon Medicinal Herb

80 HP

Low Magic Quality Monster Core

110 HP

Enchanted Crafting Component

140 P.S.

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Adam nodded slowly.

"So the regular potion costs fifty."

He continued.

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Blue — Rare

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Observed Value Range:

150 to 2,000 HP

Examples:

Medium Recovery Potion

200 HP

High Capacity Magic Crystal

320 HP

Rare Monster Core

480 HP

Rare Alchemical Catalyst

750 HP

Superior Enchanted Weapon

1 200 PS

Specialized Rune Component

1,850 PS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The range was becoming much wider.

Adam understood why.

Two items of the same rank didn’t necessarily have the same utility.

A consumable potion used only once...

And a magical item that could function for years...

Obviously couldn’t have the same price.

The rank, therefore, primarily defined a general range.

Not a fixed price.

Adam moved on to Purple.

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Purple — Epic

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Observed Range:

2,000 to 10,000 HP

Examples:

Major Potion of Recovery

2,500 HP

Major Potion of Stamina

2,500 HP

High-Density Mana Crystal

3,800 HP

Epic Alchemical Catalyst

5 200 PS

Complex Magical Component

7,400 PS

Specialized Artifact with Limited Use

9,600 PS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Adam stopped.

"Two thousand five hundred for a Major Potion..."

He happened to have several Major Stamina Potions he’d obtained previously.

He mentally checked their value.

Ten potions.

If the Shop valued them at the same price...

25,000 PS.

Adam blinked.

"Okay. My old Pulls were really profitable."

He continued.

Orange.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Orange — Unique

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Observed range:

10,000 to 50,000 PS

Examples observed in the Shop:

Exceptional Mana Crystal with Stable Structure

12,500 PS

Unique High-Purity Magic Material

18,000 PS

Specialized Artifact with Complex Function

27,500 PS

Extremely Rare Magic Component

41,000 PS

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Adam remained silent for a few seconds.

Starting from Orange...

A single purchase could completely deplete his current account.

His 10,474 PS suddenly seemed much less impressive.

"So I can theoretically buy certain Orange items..."

He looked at his total.

"Only once."

And probably not the best ones.

Then came Gold.

Adam already knew what he wanted to find.

He mentally entered:

Minor Luck Gem.

The result appeared.

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Minor Luck Gem

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank:

Gold

Grade:

Legendary

Effect:

Permanently increases Luck by: +1

Price:

75,000 P.S.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Adam froze.

"Seventy-five thousand."

He looked at his total.

10,474.

Then the price.

75,000.

Then his total.

"Okay."

He almost instinctively closed the card.

"Not today."

But this information was extremely important.

The Minor Luck Gem seemed modest when you only considered its effect.

+1 Luck.

Yet...

It belonged to the Legendary Gold grade.

Adam understood why now.

An item capable of permanently increasing a particularly difficult-to-improve stat couldn’t be treated like a simple potion.

Even with a numerically small effect...

Its function was exceptional.

He consulted several other available Gold items.

They were rare on his list.

Very rare.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Gold — Legendary

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Currently observed range:

Above 50,000 HP

Confirmed example:

Minor Luck Gem

75,000 P.S.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Adam then searched:

Red.

No results.

Mythic.

No items available.

Then:

Black.

Still nothing.

He remained thoughtful.

"So I have no reference for the Mythic Red and Divine Black grades."

He could only imagine their price.

One hundred thousand?

One million?

Ten million?

Impossible to determine.

And Adam didn’t like inventing rules without data.

So he left the question aside.

He went back to the lower grades.

Then he compared several similar items.

Two potions of the same grade.

One cost fifty-five HP.

The other one hundred and twenty.

Same color.

But not the same effect.

One simply restored a small amount of mana.

The other acted faster and was more effective.

The same goes for weapons.

Same grade.

Different prices depending on:

Quality.

Materials.

Complexity.

Durability.

Number of uses.

Purity.

True rarity.

And above all...

Function.

Adam mentally summarized what he had just understood.

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Current Shop Price Estimates

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Off-Gray — Poor

≈ 1 to 9 PS

Common goods, common food, simple raw materials, items without special properties.

White — Common

≈ 10 to 40 HP

Higher quality items, minor potions, enhanced tools, very simple magic components.

Green — Uncommon

≈ 40 to 150 HP

Standard potions, less common materials, small magic items, modest cores and crystals.

Blue — Rare

≈ 150 to 2,000 HP

Medium quality potions, enchanted weapons, good quality crystals, rare or specialized components.

Purple — Epic

≈ 2,000 to 10,000 HP

Major potions, complex artifacts, extremely rare materials, high-level components.

Orange — Unique

≈ 10,000 to 50,000 HP

Items with exceptional functions, unique materials, artifacts very difficult to reproduce.

Gold — Legendary

≈ Over 50,000 HP

Items that can produce extremely rare or long-lasting effects.

Example:

Minor Luck Gem

75,000 HP

Red — Mythical

Price: Unknown

Black — Divine

Price: Unknown

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Adam studied the grid.

"This is probably not a hard and fast rule."

A bottle of water and a piece of ore weren’t valued the same simply because they might share a color.

Rarity determined a category.

Function then determined a large part of the actual price.

He mentally considered the example of the Luck Gem.

A small stone.

A single effect.

Yet it cost seventy-five thousand HP.

Why?

Because the effect was permanent.

Because it affected Luck.

And because obtaining that stat naturally was extremely difficult.

Conversely...

A Major Potion was powerful.

But consumable.

Only one use.

Therefore, only a few thousand points despite its high rank.

"The store doesn’t just value raw power."

Adam smiled.

"It also values ??utility, the rarity of the effect, and probably the difficulty of obtaining the item normally."

That was something he would have to study later.

Much more precisely.

He could compare several items.

Observe the variations.

Determine if quantity linearly influenced price.

Testing the materials.

Seeing if purity directly affected the cost.

And above all...

Discovering exactly what brought an item into the Shop.

A simple contact?

An analysis?

Temporary possession?

Use?

He already had enough leads to spend several hours on this.

Yet Adam looked at the saucepan in front of him.

Then the meat.

Then the vegetables.

Then the interface.

"No."

He closed the Shop.

All the windows disappeared.

"Later."

He had just discovered a function that could potentially become one of the most useful of his power.

A list of over a thousand items he could buy directly.

An expansion rule linked to his level.

A selection seemingly based on what he had already encountered.

And a price hierarchy clear enough for him to begin to understand the true value of the rewards he was receiving.

But all of this had an immediate problem.

Behind him...

He heard Selene laughing in the living room.

Then a voice:

"It’s starting to smell good."

Adam looked at the food.

"And I have nine people to feed."

He turned up the heat slightly.

Picked up his knife again.

Then he started cooking again.

The shop could wait.

Dinner, much less so.