It has been one month since Alex bought this house, one busy month. A couple days after buying this house Alex bought 3 more greenhouses for the farm, allowing him to double his daily output of potions. He now makes 128 mana, 51 health and 168 speed pots daily. He now had 4 dealers, Nyana and Jason are no longer dealing, they are now Capos or captains of the dealers. He's making around 2,100 gold daily. Each dealer makes 53.5 gold daily, leaving Alex with around 1,886 after paying them, he then pays Nyana and Jason 75 gold each leaving him with 1,736 gold. He had also gotten Kognum addicted to the speed potions, as they helped him craft his weapons and armor much faster. During one meeting Kognum couldn't pay the full amount and this one time Alex took an alternative payment. Soldiers. Something very few know of Kognum is that he is secretly providing armor and weapons to a group of Dwarf bandits. After he put Alex in contact with them, all he had to do was offer the 5 of them 20 gold daily to work for him. They aren't the smartest and usually aren't needed but Alex has one soldier with each dealer, and occasionally a buyer will attempt to steal if they can't pay. It has yet to end well for them. The 100 gold per days for the Dwarves leaves him at 1,636 gold. Finally the last person working for him in an alchemist Nyana found nearly dead in an alley. He pays the man 35 gold a day, on return the man harvests and makes the potions everyday, of course he had to explain the process to him. This left him with exactly 1,601 gold earned daily. In one month he had earned 48,030 gold, a significant wealth from a large town. He couldn't wait to move his products into a city.

Harvir, the fifth dwarf who didn't shadow a dealer came rushing into his office. He was the most intelligent of the Dwarves, so Alex made him the a Capo of soldiers, usually he was guarding the headquarters or was with Nyana and Jason working with them on better procedures.

"Don we have a problem. A store owner who buys our potions, and while that isn't a major issue, he has sold to a couple guards. A couple of my men have subdued them and covered them in the back of a cart, they are traveling here as we speak." The Dwarf Capo told him. Today might be the first time Alex has to send a message to his buyers.

"We will wait until the soldiers get here with our…prisoners, then we will go deal with this merchant." Alex said. The Capo nodded and they waited. Soon, around 10 minutes later, the front door of the HQ was banged on. Alex went down the stairs to the door before using a utility spell to see through it, both his dwarf soldiers are dragging a human guard. Quickly opening the door both looked up to see the Don.

"Uh..Don sir boss, these are the ones." One elegantly said.

"Bring them to the basement." He said. Once they arrived he ordered. "Remove all their armor and weapons then tie them up. I'll deal with them when I return."

He and his Dwarf Capo left, his Capo leading him to the store. It turns out to the the same store Nyana made her first deal at. The owner was a magic user, however he mainly used Utility Magic, like most store owners. Alex himself had gotten all spells from each sub-branch of Utility Magic to adept. He then bought a fire magic tome and had gotten a couple combat spells to adept. Quickly entering, the man noticed their cloaks and smiled. However that quickly changed when Harvir rushed him and pulled him over the counter, throwing him to the ground.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"What is the meaning of this! Do you know who I am." The man shouted while quickly pulling out his buyer coin.

"The boss wants to talk to you." Harvir said. The man's eyes widened hearing the word boss, he quickly looked towards Alex, of course he couldn't see his face through the cloaks hood. Alex leaned down and grabbed the man's face.

"You fucked up. We already knew you were selling our products, and we let it be for now. Letting your greed go unchecked. A mistake on our part. But selling to guards? How stupid can you be? They would eventually go to the church, who would call a crusade to cleanse this town, as an excuse to steal or destroy the potions. Now you've forced me to make an example of you." Alex told the now fearful man. Alex quickly cast a spell to block sound from escaping the shop for a short while, before pulling out his pistol and shooting the man in the head. The man's foolishness didn't warrant torture, best to get it over quickly.

"Harvir take anything of value from this shop and store it at the headquarters. Call the other soldiers if needed." He told the dwarf who nodded. Alex then stored the body in his inventory before heading back to the HQ. After arriving he headed into the basement, both the human guards are awake and his 2 soldiers are standing behind them watching them.

"Now we can make this easy or hard. It's your choices. Did either of you tell anyone about the potions?" Alex asked while taking the gag out of their mouths.

"No. I swear we didn't!" One said while the other simply shook his head. Alex sighed before shooting the man who spoke in the left knee. Luckily there are permanent sound nullification wardstones in the basement. The man screamed, making his partner flinch in fear.

"I will ask one last time. Did you tell anyone about the potions?" Alex asked in a low, deadly tone.

The man not wounded shouted, "NO! We didn't have a chance to even try them. We just bought them a few hours ago." Alex nodded, before quickly putting a bullet in both their heads. He removed the shop owners body before digging out all 3 bullets. Maybe he should've used a knife? Shaking his head Alex cast a few fire spells, burning all their clothes and most of their torsos and lower body. Only the faces remained untouched. Alex pulled a buyer coin out of his inventory before putting it between the teeth of the shop owner. He then cast some Utility Magic to carve his emblem into the guards. This was a message, he wanted all his buyers to understand. Next he wrote a quick not before pinning it to the shop owner. It simply read:

"He sold what was not his to sell. This is his punishment for going behind the back of the reaper. Now the reaper has taken his soul as payment for his transgressions."

"Tonight, put their bodies in the town center, for all to see." Alex told them before leaving for his office. He would need to push his plans forward earlier then he wanted. Time to recruit more.

/CURRENT INVENTORY/

PLATINUM: 48

GOLD: 629

SILVER: 50

BUYER COINS: Unknown

MANA POTS: Unknown

HEALTH POTS: Unknown

SPEED POTS: Unknown

STORE CREDITS: Unknown

POTION VIALS: Unknown

AUTHORS NOTE: I decided to do a time skip this chapter. I didn't want to fall into the same trap as other authors who drag their story on by writing about day to day activities. Most days not much changes, I'd rather do a quickly "recap" of the major things that happened then to drag the story out for 20 chapters to get to that point. I also don't want to fall into the trap of the MC becoming super powerful in like a week. So many stories are hundreds of chapters but the time relevancy is so shit. Do you guys think this is fine or not? Also you might think that him putting his emblem on the bodies is dumb, but he's getting to the point where if he doesn't make a point then his buyers will think they can walk all over him and his underlings. To those who have voted with their power stones, THANK YOU! Also if you feel like you've read enough to make a review please do so. Id love to know what I can work on to improve the store. Also join the discord dedicated to this story!

https://discord.gg/vRJ333TCev