Back when Emily brazenly claimed the Emporium’s potions had their own independent cooldowns, Ingar and Krey had to give it their all to not act rashly. Now she had gone even one step further. Luckily, the girl seemed to be done with her presentation, as the two men couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Only one gold coin each!?”

“A potion that is able to replenish all kinds of resources?!”

The two men looked at each other doubtfully and hesitated. Under any other circumstances, they would’ve already…

“As you said, it’s just a single gold coin. Why don’t you just try it?”

“Right!” Ingar quickly flicked over two gold coins. Without any more delay and without bothering to first consume his own antidote, he downed the more bluish of the two purchased potions. The next moment, his eyes widened in shock.

Seeing this, Krey leaned over and wanted to grab the other, more magenta-colored potion.

Slap

“Get your own!” Ingar, whose original intent was, indeed, to share one of the cubes, suddenly became very possessive.

Krey was taken aback and stared at the man. He wasn’t so much bothered by his subordinate’s perceived rudeness as he was awed by the speed at which the other cube disappeared into the man’s mouth. The next moment…

"Hahaha! This feeling! I’m invincible. No one can defeat me now.” It was impossible for Ingar to hide his excitement; Not that he tried to. Even without having to ask, Krey had a pretty good idea of what was going on. And it was not because Ingar was able to consume the two potions in quick succession.

Being able to see people’s classes as long as they were within the shop’s premises, and remembering a discussion he once had with Samuel, was enough to allow Severin to also make an educated guess concerning his customer’s sudden outburst.

Mana was far from being the only resource the different classes used; Even though it was probably the case for the plurality of them. The resource used by a class didn’t say anything about its rarity, nor did it dictate its strength. Generally speaking, however, mana was the resource that was easiest to handle.

The size of a mana pool was influenced by both levels and gear. Mana-pools in the thousands or even ten-thousands, therefore, weren’t unheard of. The higher level the caster, the more spells they could cast before needing to rest; That tendency was true even when considering that the mana costs of spells also tended to increase with the caster’s level.

Another aspect was that mana naturally regenerated over time. Even with no potion at hand, if a mana user was spent, a bit of time would do the trick.

Last were the just mentioned mana potions.

On one hand, the ingredients to brew a mana potion were not all that rare, to begin with.

On the other hand, the large number of mana users pretty much guaranteed a large enough demand for both merchants and alchemists to be motivated to eagerly focus on finding ever better mana-replenishment options while at the same time offering very competitive prices.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Ingar was a [Monk]. He used ‘focus’ as his resource. None of the abovementioned benefits applied to him. In fact, on the continent of Galira, there were few known classes for which the management of their resources was more troublesome than this class.

A [Monk’s] focus was fixed at four hundred. No matter the level.

Not only that.

Where a mage entered combat with a full and naturally regenerating mana pool, focus was a resource that steadily degenerated instead. It had to be somehow accumulated infight. In the case of the [Monk] class, the user had to build up their resource by continuously hitting their opponents with a series of comparatively weak attacks.

The longer this streak was held up, the more focus each and every hit would regenerate.

But if they missed even just a single hit or took too long in between, they would have to start anew with the ever-present degeneration rendering huge parts of their previous efforts void.

Of course, several of their skills didn’t require any focus to use at all, but their most impactful skills all required an amount of focus that was a multiple of one hundred, with their most devastating skills only being available if the [Monk] spend a complete four hundred focus all at once.

Even the most experienced [Monk’s] could count the times they were able to unleash those attacks on both hands. And in almost all these cases, they would’ve needed to rely upon the help and teamwork of a group of others.

So, where most other classes were expected to be proficient in the use of all of their skills, a [Monk] being able to activate their ‘Destruction Fist’ was actually a big deal.

It didn’t help that the [Monk] class wasn’t all that common. Almost no one would bother researching and producing focus-replenishing potions. So not only were these items exceedingly rare but therefore also prohibitively expensive. Most importantly, though, they were rather inefficient; At least for [Monk’s].

Just as all kinds of classes used mana, focus wasn’t exclusive to [Monk’s] either. So, the best potions, which were able to replenish fifty focus, depending on the class, could be sufficient. For Ingar and his class, however, it wasn’t even enough to reach the first important threshold of one hundred.

Even disregarding the fact that by the time the user of such a potion was able to attack again, after consuming the potion, their focus would’ve already degenerated down to forty or even just thirty. It was hardly worth it.

Knowing all this, Ingar’s jubilant behavior was all too understandable. The first cube he had just consumed replenished eighty focus. For a fraction of the usual price. In fact, the price was laughably low. With the matter of cooldowns added on top of this, Ingar’s previous reaction could almost be considered reserved.

As for the second jelly cube…

“It works! It really works! My focus is completely full. Quick! Give me more! Give me all the stock you have left! I take every last of them. I’ll pay you whatever price you want!”

At this point, Ingar wasn’t able to get a clear thought.

To Krey, his subordinate's display, however, was enough to convince him of the store’s magical products and dispel all the doubts he had left, even after consuming the elixir.

In hindsight, for a store that sold the already tested stat boosters, it didn’t make much sense to try and scam people out of a single gold coin for a potion, to begin with. He was almost a bit ashamed.

But that didn’t stop him from asking, as he thought back to Em’s advertisement.

“So what’s that ‘product customization’ about?”