Of the six people Emily led towards the store, three were obviously Markus, Mylana, and Samuel.

Severin, as the shop owner, also wouldn’t be missing.

The remaining two were Miriam and Timothy, who, after taking the initiative to promise to behave quietly from now on, earned Samuel’s tacit consent to follow behind as well.

Initially, a handful of Markus’ subordinates who didn’t want to leave their relatively young officer’s side also decided to follow but had to halt when the latter noticed them and ordered them via a hand sign to wait outside.

One reason for this was that Markus didn’t want to inconvenience the fragile-looking woman and the [Berserker] by her side in any way; Even if those two had assured him on multiple occasions already that there was no need to act so reserved in front of them.

The other reason was the store’s size. Even if Markus wasn’t inclined to favor these people with special consideration, with seven people, it would definitely start getting cramped up.

Those newly arrived adventurers were therefore in a slightly awkward position, but Krey, Andreas, and a few of the other people quickly read the situation and walked up to them; They never intended to squeeze into the store, anyway. Instead, they were curious about the new arrivals. It wasn’t just their obviously higher level that intrigued them and caught their interest, but also the fact that they were accompanied by Samuel, someone who they could only respect.

Those people that hadn’t been able to hear Markus’s words as he had introduced himself and his guild to Severin were now asking what guild those newly arrived people were from. In turn, they proudly introduced Markus’ guildmates to the Emporium’s unique wares.

Both sides were utterly shocked.

Whereas Severin only recognized ‘Malcos’ as the name of the Kingdom located to the south of the Golden Mountains, everyone else who actually kept an ear open to all kinds of information and rumors spreading around suspected the Malcos Eagles to be directly backed by the crown.

Rumors also claimed that every single one of their members, not just the high-ranking ones, were granted the privilege of having their souls bound to a Soul Binding Chamber, making it almost impossible for them to really be killed off.

Even more outrageous were the claims that this chamber didn’t actually belong to one of the churches, but instead was directly controlled by the royal family.

But no matter how curious or excited the members of the Lion’s Head guild were, they knew better than to directly broach the subject. At least most of them were, but Xander’s inquiries were only met with silence and angry looks from Andreas.

At the same time, those adventurers who might’ve already exceeded even the ranks of gold-badges, were even more excited. Whether the rumors surrounding them were true or false, they obviously were far more experienced than Severin’s other customers so far, with the exception of Samuel and maybe Krey. Still, nothing, not even their officer’s mysterious comments, had prepared them for what they saw now directly in front of them. ‘Elevate their future performances to the next level.’ What a joke.

No wonder they didn’t use their own artifacts and didn’t fly their flags. No wonder they had taken all that time for all those detours. It suddenly all made sense to them. To them, those items were tactical resources.

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And that was without yet knowing about some of the items’ hidden properties, such as the non-shared cooldowns of the potions.

Some of Andreas’s more quick-witted subordinates directly handed over a few of these items in an attempt to ingrate themselves with these people.

When Markus, who hadn’t even entered the small shop, already heard his people erupting behind him, he knew the cat was out of the bag. He only smiled.

He paid a lot of effort to keep their travels and, more importantly, their destination and purpose a secret as much as possible. But now that they had finally arrived, there was obviously no need to do so anymore. He only felt gratified by the fact that this trip had already proven itself to be quite worth it.

He kept following the others and finally entered the room.

He found that with the aisle of shelves standing in the middle; It was even more cramped than expected.

Upon entering the room, Emily and Severin got behind the counter. Miriam and Timothy also hurried to the side, trying to make themselves appear as inconspicuous as possible.

The other three customers halted and scanned the room. As someone who was already familiar with the store, Samuel was the first to confirm that no other new items besides the elixirs had become available during the time he was gone; Neither did he spot any new magical devices or machines. He wanted to give Markus and Mylana one more moment to look around and maybe check out the shelves themselves when he felt that someone next to him was impatiently poking his calf with a wooden cane.

Not daring to dally any longer, Samuel was about to head towards the machine standing in the corner, but following his eyes, Mylana was now able to find her target on her own. She had already seen that strange-looking box, but it truly looked too ordinary. Now, however, she hasted towards it. Her speed was astonishing. The cane in her hand had already disappeared; It was as if she didn’t even need the thing in the first place. Right now, she didn’t appear frail at all.

‘Unbelievable. Always the same with this old…’

“Waah!”

Samuel’s thoughts were cut off by Mylana’s sudden exclamation.

“Sammy! What’s the meaning of this?”

‘Sammy’ began to sweat. He knew this tone of voice. All those years ago. Whenever he had messed something up.

The mountain of a man seemed almost frozen, only a corner of his mouth seemed to be twitching ever so slightly. He wanted to run. He couldn’t just ignore her, either. In the end, he could only silently lament as he asked, “What is it?”

“Come here! Look at this.” She waved the man over and pointed at a blue floating box. “What do you see?”

“The machine’s tooltip?” He asked, a bit uncertain.

“Right… And what does that tooltip say?” She nudged him on.

The tooltip was visible to anyone who wanted to check it out, so naturally, he was also somewhat familiar with it. Yet at this moment, he felt he might’ve overlooked something important and carefully reread it again.

“…combines two provided, suitable, alchemical products into...”

“And what exactly do you understand under ‘alchemical products’?”

“I mean… potions? Some kinds of enchants. Tinctures. Those elixirs.” He paused for a moment. Then. Suddenly. “Ooh.”

“Right. Ooh.” The woman didn’t even try to hide her annoyance.