The shadows surged forth. Just like all the tis before, the darkness covered Mathew’s vision, locking him out of what he considered to be his reality.
‘This is really taking a while,’ the young man thought, bored to the hell out of his mind while waiting for the shadows to complete their job.
Thankfully, the ti that Mathew wasted for the subspace to establish itself wouldn’t influence the passage of ti in the real world. After all, no matter how long he would spend within the rchant’s subspace, barely any ti if any would pass in the real world!
“It’s good to be back,” Mathew muttered once the subspace finished forming. And just like all the tis before, there were only a few pedestals with the few items the local rchant offered.
“I don’t an to be rude,” Mathew muttered silently, sohow sure that the rchant would hear him anyway. “But do I really need to go around all three rchants in this location to find out which bonuses they offer upon establishing the fortress?” Mathew asked out loud this ti.
For a mont, the shadowy realm remained as silent as it always was.
“User can request the list of potential bonuses provided by the location of the fortress core,” the usual, tallic voice announced.
“How much would it cost?” Mathew then asked. ‘It might be stupid to suggest a fee in the first place,’ he thought, raising his head around the place out of boredom, ‘but knowing what happened so far, it would cost so cores anyway.’
“User can receive such list free of additional charge,” the rchant’s robotic voice replied, taking the young man by a surprise.
‘No fee?’ he thought, stopping his mouth from opening up. ‘Well, since it’s free, I better not suggest imposing a fee over it,’ Mathew thought, rolling his eyes. ‘Or does it even matter? I could always just go around and manually check it all,’ he realized. ‘I guess it’s just a natural convenience aid at not making hate the rchants.’
“I wish to see this list, then,” Mathew announced.
‘If it’s possible, then I would rather not waste even more ti just going around the area to check it,’ he thought, right as the rchant got to work, producing yet another window for Mathew’s system.
“So that’s how it is,” the young man muttered under his nose as he glanced over the possibilities. “Just like before, I can improve one aspect of the fortress,” he continued to whisper to himself. “Productivity and defense ability I can understand,” he continued to mutter, only for his eyes to lay down on the last option. “But what the hell does capacity ans?”
“Capacity describes the maximum daily output of the local industries,” the rchant’s robotic voice replied, taking Mathew by a surprise once again.
‘So you are not going to withhold the information from , now?’ the young man thought along with raising his right eyebrow.
“How is it different from efficiency, then?” Mathew asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Efficiency describes the ratio at which the industries turn materials into products,” the rchant replied in its usual voice.
‘So that’s how it is,’ Mathew thought, gritting his teeth. He then took a deep breath to calm himself down as he looked up towards the area where the shadows were the densest. “Is there any chance I could get so numbers?” he requested. “It’s hard to decide which bonus is more important if I don’t know their range.”
And then, Mathew waited. Yet, as seconds started to turn into minutes and minutes into what felt like hours, he had no other choice but to accept the fact that the unusual informativeness of the rchant had its limits.
“Which of the rchants offers the efficiency bonus, then?” Mathew asked, ready to get this entire topic over with so that he can move on.
“Efficiency bonus is tied to the rchant user is connected to right now,” the rchant announced, speaking about itself in the third person as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“I wish to take out a thousand worth of cores from the storage, then,” Mathew ordered without any further hesitation.
A window, exactly the sa one that floated to the side of the hood of all the rchants Mathew t so far, appeared within the shadowy realm. This ti, however, rather than reaching out with his own hand to pull out the goods, the window opened on its own only for a huge, shiny core to fall out of it and then float towards Mathew, suspended right at the height of his chest.
‘So that’s how it looks,’ Mathew thought, not expecting his request to be fulfilled in this way. Yet, rather than wasting ti adoring the piece, he simply took hold of it only to raise it in his right hand and close his eyes.
“I wish to…” he said… And hesitated.
‘Back at the compound, all the bonuses appeared to be more or less equal in their overall worth,’ he thought, going back with his thoughts to the options he could choose back then. ‘Not a single one of them appeared to be underpowered or redundant…’
For a mont, Mathew simply froze in his weird position, with the shiny crystal raised high above and ahead.
‘And that ans…’
“Is it possible to establish a fortress here with the bonus from a different rchant?” he then asked while opening his eyes.
The area of the thickest shadow suddenly compressed only for its shadowy entity within to coil around.
“It is possible.”
‘It’s a bet… But following my guts brought pretty far already,’ Mathew thought, closing his eyes for yet another mont, only to open them up and reveal the fresh bout of determination that filled his pupils.
“I wish to establish a fortress in this area with the bonus to its capacity!”
“Processing the request,” the rchant announced without any delay. “Please, vacate the subspace so that the process can continue.”
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