HARMONY [LITRPG / ISEKAI / PROGRESSION / OP MC]

He breathed heavily, sweat dripping off his face and neck when he finally decorated the storefront for the grand opening of Raining Treasures.

There were some shelves placed on the walls displaying several goods for sale, a small plaque displaying the prices that Nina already set up.

According to what he learned from his explorations into the city, the prices shown here were slightly higher than average, but the quality was definitely better compared to what he witnessed from other stores. When he looked at the store, he couldn't help but feel a little proud of his work so far, though the appearance of Nina entering through the door made him realize that this didn't belong to him, but to her.

She looked around, nodding approvingly at everything.

“Good work,” Nina said, coming over and slapping Aidan’s shoulder. “I figured you to be a hard worker, but I admit I’m impressed with what you’ve done with the place.”

Aidan hated to admit that it felt good to receive some praise for this. The fact that he did it all while Nina slept was something to be proud of too, which probably meant that Nina was quite the heavy sleeper, even though it had only been four hours.

“Now if you don’t mind, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask you about,” Nina said as she pulled something else out from her spatial storage bag. He became in awe, now that he knew how it worked, as she pulled out what looked like a metal ingot from the pack and handed it over to him. “Show me how you can craft an item using that spell of yours. I wanna see how it works.”

Aidan took it and wondered exactly how much he should show her. When he asked her exactly what she wanted to see, she just responded to make her a hammer for a blacksmith to use. Letting out a sigh, he created the orb of mana his Craft spell allowed him to make, pushing the ingot into the orb.

After several seconds of constant focus and tinkering, Aidan pulled out exactly what Nina wanted–a hammer with a metal shaft that fit comfortably in his hand. It was pretty heavy, considering that Aidan put more focus onto its durability than anything else.

A notification dropped for him to read.

Craft Successful! You have created ‘Blacksmith Hammer’.

You have gained a small amount of experience points.

It wasn't the first time he wondered whether having more variety in materials could have improved the quality of the hammer, such as adding in some good lumber for making a smoother handle.

Nina took the hammer for herself, uncaring about the heavy weight as she swung it one side to the other.

“That's the first time I've ever seen something like this happen. Now I don't have to go through extra work to have other crafters take on jobs. I can just have you make them. Can you improve the quality more if you practice with that Craft spell and increase its rank?”

Figuring that there was no point in lying, he told her his honest thoughts.

“Yes, and I think having more materials on hand might make it increase the quality a bit more.”

Thankfully Nina didn't decide to ask further questions, just nodding in understanding of his explanation. She moved ahead to the entrance door and opened it up. Then she placed something else from her magic pack at the front of the door, marking the words ‘Open’ in the common language.

“And with that, the Raining Treasures makes its opening debut,” Nina said promptly. She put up the hood over her head once more, facing Aidan's direction. “Now I’ll be heading off. I expect you to do a decent job taking care of the place from now on. Seeing how well you’re doing, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Wait, wait, you’re just gonna leave again?” Aidan asked, his hand raised as if to stop her. “That’s it?”

“That should be it,” Nina said as though it was enough of an answer. “I’ll be coming back at the end of the day to see how you’re doing, and if everything goes well, I’ll be asking for a report often to see how the store is going. As long as you do as I asked, everything should be running fine. Right?”

Her sudden question made him recognize that she had no reason to worry as long as he was following her orders. He wasn’t sure whether the contract would literally bind him to follow her orders to the letter for her to act so carefree with him all the time. Letting out a sigh, Aidan nodded in acknowledgement.

“Good. I’ll be back soon.”

With that, Nina went through the door and left Aidan on his own once more. He could tell that she was the sort to lead with a hands-off approach, expecting everyone to follow her demands down pat.

He walked over to the window facing outside, seeing that there were some folks out there deciding whether to enter or not. He slapped his cheeks, waking himself up some more at the incoming tide of customers. These were all the people he talked with about the store to make its opening debut stand out more.

He wondered whether he should make special sales for this occasion, but decided to take it easy for now and see how the day would end up. Bringing himself behind the counter, he prepared himself for the rush of customers.

…..

In short, the day was so-so for Aidan.

When customers began to walk in, they first asked what sort of shop he ran. When he told them that he could basically sell anything that they could think of, they already had some plans in hand as they asked him for some fundamental parts, such as utensils and other things that they can work with.

When one asked for a specific item he didn’t have on hand, he would pretend to look for it in the back and go to the other room, then pick up some materials Nina left over to craft the specific item they requested. Since it didn’t take that long, Aidan would show up with the item in question a few moments later and the cycle would continue.

What Aidan learned throughout all this was that people loved to haggle, and they would never go above a few silver if they could. The concept of currency here was that a copper was basically a dollar in American currency, a silver was worth 10 dollars, while gold was about 100 dollars worth. There was the platinum coin as well, but nobody around here had any gold to use, let alone platinum coins to even own. It might as well be a natural family heirloom from how valuable such a thing was.

So throughout the day, Aidan picked up quite a bit of copper and silver coins while handling his business in the shop, enjoying the simplicity of it all. The people that came in were nice and easy-going, though some did ask a lot of questions as to where he came from and what he did before he settled here.

When conversations would start pivoting toward his background, he would make a quick excuse and finish handling their business before promptly saying goodbye to them while he switched to another customer.

It became clear that Aidan didn’t want to talk about his past, but he would love to gossip about the hubbub in this town as he received nothing but juicy details from them. Thankfully the mood in the shop became more sociable as more than a few citizens came in just to talk about their day, enjoying themselves with the mood. Aidan even started to wonder whether he should include snacks and drinks to go along with the mood, but before anyone could realize it, the day turned to evening as Aidan decided to close up shop as per Nina’s instructions.

“Aww, well, you’ll open up tomorrow right?” an older man said, picking up a basket containing some of the usual items a common person would have such as rope, wax for candles, and various other amenities for their home. “I’ll come by with some of my friends. Feels like this shop has everything we need.”

“That would be great, sir,” Aidan said with a grin. “Please, invite all you know and let them know that Raining Treasures has everything you’ll need. If I don’t, I promise you I’ll find something in the back.”

“It really does feel like you got everything,” another man said, staring at the door where Aidan would go into for his crafting. “Feels like you got one of those spatial storages in there. Is that true?”

“I’m afraid that’s a secret I’ll keep to my grave,” Aidan joked, leading the man to laugh aloud.

Soon the shop emptied out, the usual buzz of the store dissipating into a low hum. Aidan let out a long breath, his exhaustion reaching its apex after dealing with so many people at once.

When he was going to consider taking stock of everything he sold and writing it down into a ledger he had on the back of his counter, the door opened up to reveal none other than Nina walking through. She looked around the shop, possibly already noticing that many of their customers left.

“For someone with minimal store handling experience, you really outdid yourself.”

“Not much of a choice when I gotta do as you asked,” Aidan said, sounding a little groused from his exhaustion reaching its peak. “Are you done with your own business?”

“I am, and I’m glad to see that the store ran well. You did very well for yourself and the Raining Treasures. If you keep this up, I believe I might find something else for you to do to put your talents to use.”

“My talents…” Aidan glared. He didn’t like how that sounded in his head.

“Don’t be so wary,” Nina said with a grin, finally taking her coat off of her body to reveal her slender form wearing leather armor with a skirt and pants combo. She put the coat into her pack by her side, completely disappearing into it despite the difference between the sizes of the coat and pack. “It’s basically information gathering with extra steps.”

“And what exactly do you want me to find?”

“Nothing of note for now,” Nina answered simply, opening the door to switch the sign from open to close. “Just remember that this isn’t your only job. But you’re done for tonight. Go ahead and take a rest. You’ll find the fridge stocked up for tonight, so have your fill. I’ll be expecting you to do this again and rake in some cash flow through here.”

Aidan had started to expect that there was a shadier reason why Nina opened up a store here, and that was probably to make some sort of front so that she can make her own illegal gains without anyone batting an eye, and Aidan is the source of that public wealth. Was she using him to launder money?

Eventually she went out the door, promising to come back again for another checkup on the store. Leaving him behind again, Aidan considered how this would go on for who knows how long, so he decided to make up his own plans.

He didn’t want to just follow her directions and man the store for the rest of his days. With his abilities, he was capable of so much more, so he went and did something that he had been plotting for the past two days now as he closed up the shop and put aside everything, locking the door for the night.

Going up to his bedroom, he rested on his bed after he took a nice bath and ate a hot meal for his work. He was thankful that Nina at least did as she promised and provided some extra food for him, though he wished she did that earlier so he didn’t have to resort to stealing for sustenance. Perhaps she wanted to see how he was able to handle things on the fly? Either way, it seemed rather irresponsible of her.

Laying on the bed, he closed his eyes and entered into Soul Meditation. His ghostly form floated up from his physical body, all the weight of the material world passing through him as he levitated around the room, expanding on his Sense Vibrations as far as he could muster.

He passed through the walls of his room, out into the open world beyond his house. It was difficult at first, trying to make sense of everything he was looking at through the use of Sense Vibrations, but his explorations from earlier made things easy to patch up now that he understood the fundamentals behind each building and wall that he had physically seen. Plus, having his skill rank up throughout the day was also beneficial as it didn’t tax his mind as much as before.

Floating through the air, he really was like a specter that wandered aimlessly through the night, surveying the landscape below with its flickering lights and a small number of people making their way through the empty streets. He spotted guards patrolling more than usual than at the daytime, some looking wary and alert while others looked ready to keel over to sleep.

He recognized some of the guards, at least the alert ones, from passing through the store today. They were probably starting their shift to patrol the streets for the night. He whipped past the guards, his floating ghostly form making not a single sound that caught their attention. He tried passing through a person, though he felt nothing and saw nothing as he needed to focus more on the interchanging vibrations a person created with their soul rather than it being a still form like the environment around him.

It was a funny feeling throughout it all, but it did expand his surroundings farther which was nice to know. Considering that he hadn’t received anything of note to do outside of manning the store, after all.

There’s gotta be something I can do to get stronger. I can always sneak out at night, and I can just hide whatever titles I had from Nina to avoid going against her order. But I can’t exactly disappear without telling her, and who knows what she might do if she finds the store empty.

He had an inkling of an idea floating through his head, something that he once did while playing a video game where the player was in charge of adventurers who he sent into the dungeon to gather loot and take down monsters while the owner reaped in the rewards. He didn’t like how he had to hire others to do the work, but he enjoyed the idea of having something to do the hunting for him while he manned the store.

Or at least do so in the middle of the night while he was sleeping in his bed. The way he was using Soul Meditation was practice for that. Deciding to take the chance, he flew up into the sky and headed off into the direction where he recalled he was at before, back at the forest where he first landed.

He strained a bit more, going far enough that his Sense Vibrations had to work overtime to filter out the details, but he managed to get out of the city walls and into the forested area, covered in dense trees and the familiar darkness he was used to when he first arrived here.

He drifted across the trees, scanning everything he could with his eyes and seeing the notifications fill up his head from everything he scanned, including the creatures that lived there. There weren’t just the horned wolves that once tried to hunt him down, but several other beasts that seemed ready to kill in the farther off areas. If he had to say anything, it was as though they had their own turf, just like how the gangs have their turf in the city.

Seeing all of this in mind, his plan started to form. Now the question was… how exactly can he gain experience from killing the creatures while keeping himself in his house?

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