A deeply satisfied fox emerged from her shopping outing, contentedly spinning (much to the chagrin of a certain spider clinging on for dear life) and humming to herself.

She found a mostly-empty sitting area in the plaza directly opposite her, several curved benches surrounding a fountain brimming with crystal-clear water as it steadily sprayed upwards.

Digging into her inventory, she scooped out the random crafting materials she’d amassed, all of them still perfectly preserved like the moment she’d picked them. Even the Mushmoons retained their somber blue glow in the middle of the daylight, spongy cap still opened wide.

Shoving random gathered items together like a kid playing with blocks quickly took all of her attention, watching various combinations as she dutifully kept notes on each pairing, trying her hand at her shiny new Crafting skill.

Salve Herbs, unsurprisingly, simply mixed with each other, two of them creating more of her basic HP potion, something she was very happy to be able to easily restock on.

Mushmoons on the other hand were much less cooperative, showing not the slightest interest in mixing together with more of their own kind.

The two together however were much more satisfied to pair off, one of an herb and a mushroom poofing into a basic MP potion instead, smiling satisfied as she popped a few more of them out, her stocks of both quite full already.

“Hmhm, I see, that’s where the mana ones come from, that makes sense…”

“Yeah, it’s not too comp- gah!”

She almost leapt straight up and off of the bench like a startled housecat, the disguised kitsune looking up to find another player’s face roughly three inches from her own, fiddling with an oversized jeweler’s monocle as she zoomed in on her small piles of resources, clearly not too interested in her sudden reaction to her presence.

“Mmhmm, mmhmm, health potions as well, standard fare… a few shiny rocks, not too familiar with these…”

Her… seemingly socially inept observer somehow stood even shorter than she did, maybe just shy of three feet tall as she leaned in close, almost ignoring Monica herself as she studied her collection of random garbage and gathering node chaff.

“U-Umm… I don’t believe we’ve met…?”

The mysterious little guest either didn’t hear her or didn’t care to reply, her gaze falling upon a certain item before her eyes practically shot out of her head, grabbing up a piece of the weird metallic substance Monica had gathered from the dungeon earlier.

She frantically studied the item from every single possible angle, investigating each inch as she smiled from ear to ear, like a kid being given (or in this case, snatching) a piece of candy.

“T-This…! Oh my god I’ve never seen any metal like this I need to get some of this for myself right away is this for sale are you selling maybe you can show me how you made it or wait did you find it you have to take me there right away unless you’d sell it but I’ll need lots more of it just to work with and test out and even then I’ll have to consider the quality of anything made with metal this clearly aged so it’ll most likely need to be mixed with something else as well to increase the durability of the final product but maybe that would invalidate the purpose of this alloy to begin with and and and-”

The foxes eyes spun in their sockets, feeling as if she were taking some kind of damage over time effect trying to parse anything being said at her.

“Err… c-could I get a name first, miss…?”

“Hm? I don’t think I can make one of- oh!”

Her train of thought crashed headlong into the station, her face going flame red as she snapped back to reality. She leapt back a few feet, scrambling with the piece of metal she’d scooped up as she managed to launch it back to its owner as she righted herself, Monica only barely avoiding being cracked over the skull by the projectile.

“S-S-Sorry, I simply, er… I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else bother with crafting at all since I started, so…!”

She took a long, very deep breath, her jeweler’s monocle whirring and whizzing on its own as she tried to gather herself.

“Right!! Aspiring professional crafter, engineer, inventor, scholar, and current storefront owner, Prim Proper, at your service!!!”

Straightening her back and puffing her chest out, Monica could finally tell the other player was a halfling, which explained someone being shorter than the minimum height kitsune. Thin and spindly, her clothes all seemed too big for her. A heavy brown leather jacket sat across her shoulders, covering a mess of harnesses holding a variety of tools and gadgets for easy access, with an equally equipment-encumbered pair of shorts under that, and rough leather boots past that.

“Er, M-Monica. Monica Furdel, Gloom Mage, and… mostly just that, really?”

“A pleasure to meet you, fellow crafter Monica!! Anyone willing to put two sticks together is probably someone worth knowing in my book, so consider us friends!”

It was like staring directly into the sun in summer, and leaving her about as exhausted to boot.

“G-Glad to hear. Nice to meet you as well, Prim. You… mentioned owning a store? I was under the impression these were all NPC operated businesses.”

“Oh! Well, yes, they are, but… it’s not quite a…. actually, it’d be faster to show you than to explain!”

Prim grabbed her by one hand very firmly, the tiny mechanic ripping her forward from the bench, Monica barely having a few moments to regather her set-out belongings as she was forcibly dragged through town by someone who had not even the slightest desire to learn what personal space was.

----------------------------------------

After enough sprinting and pulling along to just about yank her arm out from the socket, Prim finally skidded to a stop, leaving the mage behind her almost careening into the wall in front of them.

“Aaaaaaand… we’re here! Welcome to the personal store run by yours truly!”

It was a bit outside the main crowded shopping district of town, the crowds of people thinning out drastically this far away.

But the building itself was massive, easily dwarfing the more compact stores she’d browsed by earlier in the day. More like an estate than a shop really, it towered over the pair of them with three floors stacked a top one another, and taking up more ground than some office buildings she’d seen.

“No use just sitting there gawking at it, eh? C’mon in already!”

She was once again not given any say in the matter as her excitable new friend took her inside.

The interior was every bit as spacious as the outside was, a huge storefront sprawling out before her. Tall shelves and massive display tables were all arranged just right, several display areas angled such that the front window could advertise them to any passers-by that happened to look inside.

It was an incredibly well-build shop she had here. But there was… one issue.

“There’s… nothing here?”

Every single shelf, rack, table, counter, and other surface was currently completely empty, without as much as a single potion or anything else to be seen.

“Well… I did say aspiring! I was lucky enough to get this place but, well… to be quite honest I have no idea what at all to sell here. I mean, the game is a day and a half old, I haven’t exactly figured out much in the way of generating supply or crafting anything worth using, ehe… B-But! It is still my store, and soon you’ll be buying anything you need here, crafter’s honor!!”

“I’ll… be sure to remember that, then!”

It was a lot like trying to have a conversation with a jet engine, but in her own way she was fairly charming. And she wasn’t trying to kill her yet either, so that made Prim her favorite other player she’d met yet.

“How did you get this place to begin with, anyways? I wasn’t aware players could buy housing or anything in this game yet.”

“Oh, well, they can’t! I think the infrastructure is there for later, but this place was all mine for free!~”

She smugly pulled out a piece of parchment from her inventory, holding it aloft.

[Shopkeeper's Deed] (0/10) UNIQUE

- User gains access to a private estate, equipped for running a store.

- Account-locked.

“Ooooooh… this is from the release lottery then, isn’t it?”

“Sure is! Looked into the game after hearing how deep the crafting and customization was in the beta, so I couldn’t help but buy in to peek. And after I got that, I knew they were telling me to get out there and craft my lil heart out, and that’s what I plan to do!”

“Well, I can certainly respect the sheer enthusiasm for it.”

“What about you?”

“The lottery!! Judging from that fancy stick you’ve got, you’ve been playing since day 1 too, so you definitely got something off that wheel, right?”

“W-Well…”

The incognito fox broke eye contact, shuffling nervously about the empty space. Her last experiences with anyone seeing her had gone… less than ideally. But, Prim seemed nice enough, if a bit too much like an excited puppy.

“Hmmm… must’ve been something real good then if you’re hiding it…”

“Just… no telling other players if I show you? Crafter’s honor?”

“Fine, I’ll accept your terms. Crafter’s honor!”

Sighing, Monica fiddled with her robes for a bit, her paired tails popping out as she stretched the sore things out after they’d been curled up for so long, removing her hat to let her squished ears pop free as well as they fluffed up again instantly.

“…! T-That’s… that custom race item! Wasn’t there only the one of those total?!”

“Mmhmm, one-of-a-kind as far as I know. I think I might be the only kitsune in… well, the entire game, probably?”

“Incredible… what are the stat effects like? Special skills? Unique questlines only you can do, gear only you can equip?

“I-I don’t think so? I can’t imagine they’d lock anything to just the one player ever- actually no, I guess these dungeon rewards are exactly that huh?”

“These dungeon rewards? Don’t tell me, you’ve done that dungeon people are on about already too? How’d you get around the assfaces sitting in front of the door?”

“Night Castle, was it? They weren’t there when I got there, so I just kinda... wandered in and cleared the place out.”

“Wait, if you got there before them, then… y-you’re not gonna tell me you cleared that dungeon first, are you?”

“...Guilty as charged!”

Monica played it off like she’d just found a five dollar bill on the sidewalk, whereas Prim stared agape at the living statistical anomaly standing in her shop, eyes spinning like slot machine wheels.

Thud.

“C-Chk…”

In the commotion of being dragged here and the earlier time spent shopping, an extremely deflated Silk collapsed off of her back and out of her robe, rolling across the floor in a head, every single eye spinning from exhaustion as they flopped across the floor.

“Oh, hell, I forgot you were hanging back there this whole time…!”

Monica rushed over, immediately dropping next to them and attempting to nurse them back to consciousness again.

“W-What is- let me guess, they’re also yours?”

“You mean Silk? Yeah, been with me since the tutorial quest, why? I kinda assumed plenty of people would have picked up one of these.”

She held up a hand, flashing the Beastmaster’s Sigil at Prim as she worked at resuscitating her KO’d spider. The shopkeep scuttled over unsettlingly fast, her monocle studying the ring and Silk themselves with a worrying amount of detail.

“Hmm… this dropped from the tutorial, yes?”

“Uh huh.”

“This… has a negative drop rate, if that’s the enemy you dropped it from. You’d need a LUC higher than I have now to get this, and that’s without leaving the tutorial!”

“...Is that bad?”

“…...You’re some kind of luck eating black hole, aren’t you?”

The fox thought on that for a while.

“I feel like most of this has been bad luck so far, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, I look forward to turning that bad luck into profit from here on out, partner!

The fox’s hand was forcibly pulled up and shaken rapidly, the force behind the halfling’s grip almost enough to crush her whole arm.

“W-Wait, what do you mean by prof-”

“Consider yourself hired, friend! The two of us will get this place up and running in no time flat, won’t we? Now, scoop up- Silk, was it? -scoop up Silk there and let’s go out and get gathering now!”

As her protests fell on deaf ears and she was dragged back out from the cozy little shop, Monica couldn’t quite help but feel as if she hadn’t had much of a say in her sudden conscription into her newfound party.