12 Pimping out the shop~
A/N- Please tell me if you find any errors! and happy reading.
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After Alvar walked Hephaestus home, he returned to the workshop.
As Alvar closed the door and ensured there wasn't any way for anyone to peek inside the workshop by using the necessary equipment and magic, he let Stardust come out and float around.
"Are you excited too? After the workshop gets fixed, we can start experimenting and travel deeper inside the dungeon for more items," he said while petting Stardust's head.
(^‿^)/
Alvar smiled at Stardust as he spent some time 'measuring' the entire place and making some furniture for the rooms. Then, he used water and wind magic to thoroughly clean the sales area first, dusting off the surfaces and 'mopping' the floor to a polished shine. He dismantled the old racks and replaced them with sturdy, ornate weapon racks. A robust table with glass casings on top, for enchanted jewelry or accessories, was placed in the center of the sales area. A counter was made and placed in front of the doors that lead to the smithing and office areas, with a small trap door to walk out behind or out of the counter.
The place was decorated with a banner that bore Hephaestus' symbol and a couple of others to give the area an adventurous or heroic feel.
The office received the same treatment, with the small table and chairs removed and replaced with more comfortable, sturdy chairs and a larger table. Cabinets were installed for all the documents and blueprints, while paintings depicting adventurers fighting monstrosities adorned the walls.
In the smithing room, the old smithy was removed for a more state-of-the-art forge. Alongside the forge were a few purple-tinted anvils and sturdy workbenches. Chests were placed around with labels indicating the types of metals inside. The entire place was enchanted so that most people wouldn't be able to spy on it, though some deities still could, as this room wasn't the place made for crafting the more... special weapons.
Alvar placed an invisible teleporter in a hidden spot inside the room and then dug a huge room underground to set up the second teleporter. The entire place was set up with anti-surveillance items to ensure no one could peek in, and if someone were to find this place, they wouldn't have a good time.
Inside this room was a high-tech forge called Draedon's Forge, with built-in workstations and anvils. On the walls were racks holding swords, including some with a rainbow blade and a cat face as the guard, and a sword with a galaxy-like blade that almost looked like scissors.
Alvar made a side room and planted some ore and gem trees with automatic machinery to increase their growth speed and gather these metals from the trees. An auto smelter and auto hammer were set up to automate the process of turning them into bars, along with setups to make normal blades automatically if the need arose.
Another room was made with rows of planter boxes, each with different colored soil, and an Alchemy Table placed in the corner. Machinery was set up to auto-farm the plants when needed.
The last room had multiple separate rooms interconnected, each with a different theme; some looking similar to the outside world with grass growing, while others had a more hellish theme. The main similarity was that they all had bodies of water inside them, with one having lava and another with honey. Alvar threw some roe inside each body of water to see if they could be used as fishing ponds, and some auto feeders were placed inside each of these ponds.
With all of this done, Alvar felt like only one room was missing and had a thought. 'I wonder if I can have my own dungeon in my room... and if I can make it spawn creatures of my own world?' A grin slowly formed on his face. 'This calls for some experimentation.'
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Alvar was now in the smithing room, standing at one of the workbenches, taking out some more common ores and bars from the chests and placing them on the table. Stardust wrapped around his neck, asleep.
'A promise is a promise,' Alvar sighed as he started smelting the ores and creating a few high-quality swords, daggers, spears, and so on. None had any special properties, much to Alvar's dismay.
'I can't give Hephaestus a headache this quickly.' He took out some leather straps and hide to make some armor, while also adding some metal inlays here and there, including some bracers for archers and some armor suitable for them.
"This should do it for now. Time to add them to the sales room and then deck out the entrance of the store," he smiled.
Alvar added all the weapons to their racks and some shields too, along with a few armor stands with their suitable armor. Accessories were placed inside the glass boxes for those who wanted to buy them, and so on.
Moving outside as it was turning night and not many people were around except for the adventurers heading towards the Hostess, he cleaned the storefront and added the stall additions so that he could sell some items to wandering adventurers the next day. He changed the hanging sign to 'Pandora's Box' with a symbol of a box next to it, with the Hephaestus symbol drawn on the front of the store.
(Pandora's Box symbol)
"Now then, I think everything is done here. Tomorrow, the Loki familia will return, and chances are high that they will visit the Hostess. I wonder if they would stop by my shop or if I would meet them at the hostess... After that, the Denatus will happen and things are going to get interesting there... either that or extremely boring depending on how these deities act," Alvar thought as he moved back inside the shop and sat down in his office, taking out all of the blueprints about the dungeon's circuits.
He started retracing the symbols on another piece of paper to see them better and potentially figure out a pattern. "Some symbols are repeated across the floors, while some suddenly disappear and reappear. The repeated ones don't look exactly like the previous ones, and they instead slowly look more refined than before. Either this could show what monsters spawn on the floors and the refined shows how they are stronger. The way the symbols show up more often across these floors could indicate that their spawn rate increases," Alvar tapped the back of his pen onto the desk as he speculated.
"But there are more symbols than there are monsters, so that might have a different meaning too. Either that or the symbols are for monsters and something else like the structures-property. Hmmm, I'll test out the first floor's pattern underground and see if I can replicate it to a certain degree. If nothing happens, then it could be related to the material the dungeon is made out of, or a key part is missing... These symbols could also be a part of this world's language or magic system too... I'll ask Hephaestus tomorrow when she helps me with the weapon costs. After that, I should also ask about the falnas and how they work. It's going to be fun messing around with these properties once I learn how all of them work."
After storing all of the blueprints, Alvar made his way back to the Hostess and walked to the back to see how May was faring.
He leaned against the door as he saw her expertly work with all of the dishes. There were some problems with her footwork and preparations, but all of that could be fixed with experience.
Alvar walked up to her and joined in again, but this time he didn't show her anything new.
He simply helped her fix the preparation flaw and showed her how to fix her footwork to lessen the burden.
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"This works so well-nya~!" She laughed. "I feel a lot less exhausted than before!" Her smile was radiant as she looked at Alvar, who was smiling back at her. He walked up to her and patted her head, but he was careful not to touch her ears since he didn't know how sensitive they were.
"You did well. The only other thing for you to learn is to make your own dishes that can be added to the menu. But I won't be helping with any of that since that is something a chef should come up with themselves." May lightly nodded her head as she looked determined.
"I will make the best dish that you have ever tried-nya!" Alvar took out a book from his 'backpack' and handed it to her.
"I will look forward to it. Now, before you start making anything, this book won't spoil anything that you should follow on your own. It's more of a guideline of what ingredients not to mix, since sometimes you can accidentally create a poison instead of a good dish. So, this will help you with what types of herbs and spices not to mix. Most of them aren't really in this book, but their properties should be listed so you can mess around with that." May had stars in her eyes as she took the book.
"Thanks- Nya!" She yelled as she excitedly ran towards her room to study the book.
The book didn't have any herbs from Alvar's world listed, only the properties of certain herbs and what types of properties they shouldn't be mixed with.
'I'm starting to want a kid of my own,' he thought as he saw May running to her room. 'I wonder if it would be just like this?' He sighed as he cleaned up the kitchen and walked back to the rest of the waitresses and helped them clean up too.
"So you finally showed yourself-nya!" Chloe yelled while pointing at Alvar. "I got a bit busy exploring the city is all," Alvar shrugged.
"Is that all you have been doing?" Syr asked, curiosity evident in her voice as she stared at Alvar.
"That and dungeon diving, although I am still on the first floor since I am unsure if I really want to be an adventurer. That's why I am wandering around the city too, for the chance that some inspiration might hit me," he said softly.
"That makes sense. What were you doing before you got to Orario? Perhaps that can help you figure something out," Syr asked while tilting her head.
"I was helping my village with cooking, which is why I help May whenever I arrive back at the pub. Not sure if that is what I want to do for my whole life though," Syr nodded her head lightly, her eyes having a small magical glint while staring at Alvar this entire time.
"Can you stop staring at me like that? It's unnerving," Alvar said with a wry smile as he cleaned some of the tables. It's true that he didn't have to help out, but having a good impression from the other workers is much better, especially if all of them have special backgrounds.
Syr chuckled apologetically as the faint glow left her eyes and she said, "Sorry, I am just very curious about you like everyone else."
"It's fine and I understand what you mean," he smiled back and took the plates back to the kitchen.
Chloe started sulking as she got ignored because Syr started asking questions.
'I am so going to give you trouble at the Denatus one way or another... but ho-' A small smile appeared on Alvar's face. 'I think I know how,' a sudden lightbulb started flickering inside of Alvar's head.
