A couple of minutes later… Liam stood in front of the magic shop. He wondered if he was going to get the answers he needed today or, once again, the conversation would just be a polished no. "Sigh. Dealing with that cunning thief is a lot easier than dealing with this woman!" He scratched his head and walked into the shop. Surprisingly, the fairies inside seemed to be in some sort of hustle and bustle. The shop attendants were busy checking their system interface and running around here and there. It was as if the place had been lit on fire, very different from the normal laid back atmosphere. "Is something going on?" Liam walked in and went straight to one of the shop quest desks. Now that the second wave of the apocalypse was already here, he wanted to know if the quests given out by the shop had been updated to newer ones relating to these isons. He hurriedly opened the system interface and looked at the displayed quests. Bingo! Just like he had thought, there were indeed newer quests, but the only problem was that… "Why are most of these quests asking for the Orichalcum metal?" Liam frowned. There were a few quests that asked for the ison wings and so on, which he immediately submitted, but these were also quickly replaced with newer quests asking for the Orichalcum metal. "What? You don't have any Orichalcum with you?" "No. that's not it." Liam answered absent-mindedly as he was deeply thinking about something. "Then what is the problem? Why don't you just submit the damn quests?" "Hmmm… I wonder if it is worth-" He suddenly stopped answering mid-way as he realized whom he was talking to. Liam looked up with a warm smile at the fairy who had arrived by his side when he was engrossed in the quest details. "Greetings, Miss Tilia. How are you doing this fine morning?" "Hmph!" The store manager unexpectedly gave him the cold shoulder as she scoffed at him and walked away, not even bothering to talk to him any longer. Liam's face twitched. Here he was, hoping not to rile this one up today, but it seemed like she was already in a bad mood? "I wonder why she is upset." He pondered for a second and then looked at the quests again, all of which were now asking for the same Orichalcum metal. "Hmmm…" After thinking it over for a few more minutes, Liam decided to turn this one in at a later time. He definitely had plenty of the metal, which was not the problem, but from the few things he came to know about this new metal using his [Inspect] skill, he could tell that it was a very valuable metal with several potential uses. In this case, would it really be prudent to use it for simple shop reputation quests such as this? Liam couldn't help but think that it would be a waste to do something like this. So, in the end, he decided to hold off on it. Observing his actions from the side, a certain fairy visibly became even more furious. "This bastard!" She muttered under her breath as she stared daggers at Liam. At this point, not just Liam but anyone could feel the clear murderous aura coming from her. Liam was completely speechless. Just what the hell was wrong with this woman? He shrugged it off and closed the system interface. He then walked over to the next task at hand, which was to add all the mana cores to his shop card and then take a look at the skills he wanted to purchase. He approached one of the fairies at the sales desk, away from the woman who apparently wanted to kill him, and started taking out the ison mana cores one after the other. "Can you put this on my store card?" "Sure, Mr. Liam. Give me a moment." The fairy gave a small nervous smile and immediately got to work. While she was busy, Liam gave one more glance at Tilia, only to find that she was still trying to make a hole in his back. 'Seriously, what is wrong with her?' Liam shook it off and paid attention to the fairy, who was now explaining a few things to him. "Mr. Liam, these are top-quality mana cores and hence will be counted at the ratio of 1:1.5, which means every single mana core will be taken as one and a half instead of one. Are you still willing to exchange them?" "Yes, sure." Liam nodded. Mana cores might be valuable, but for now, he really needed to invest in some skill books for the guild. The fairy then busied herself, finalizing the numbers and accounting for all the mana cores Liam had heaped up in front of her. While she did that, Liam opened up the system interface once again to take a look at the available skills. If he remembered it correctly, a basic healing spell was an F-rank or E-rank spell and was available for everyone to see. "Its cost should be about… 1 million mana cores," Liam murmured. The number of isons was definitely a lot, but he was not sure if he could scrape a million mana cores off of just those insects. "Were there really that many of them?" Liam wondered as his gaze fell upon the list of skills available for purchase. First, all the F-Rank ones were listed, and as he went through the skill names one after the other, his eyes casually fell on their respective prices. Liam instantly froze, and he looked up with a shocked expression. The fairy in front of him was still busily working the numbers for him, so he couldn't help but shift his gaze to the store manager, Tilia, standing in the corner and still silently fuming as if she wanted to murder him. However, now… Liam understood the reason for that! All the skills in the shop were listed at a discount price! *** Mass Release Chapter 3~ Please thank Exzistential for sponsoring this mass release!