Chapter 12: Sold Out

Words : 1145 Updated : Sep 10th, 2025

Chapter 12: Sold Out Contrary to the slumbering businessman, Deputy Officer Curtis was currently pacing anxiously in the same place. They were currently on Zenith-12, the closest rendezvous point to their last mission. No one should be sweating in a place that was supposed to be covered in ice, but his forehead was covered with sweat—a testament to how anxious and panicked he was inside. Just the other day, two key figures of the Empire's elite almost perished before his eyes. Had it not been for the Crown Prince's inhumane reflexes, the Empire would have lost both the Marshal and the Crown Prince. But the Prince's attempt at saving his uncle's life eventually landed both of them in hot water. They expected their mission to be tedious, but not to this extent. It involved inspecting the border strongholds monthly, and at this time of the month, they usually experienced a surge in the population of corrupted beasts. And they were making good time clearing the corrupted beast tides, only to miss a camouflaged S-grade beast. The fight was gruesome not because of the beasts' strength or their numbers but because of their stealth and propensity to self-destruct. That was what caught the Marshal and the Prince by surprise. Their mechas were caught sitting ducks right when the beast decided to self-destruct in its last bid to take its opponents with it. Prince Aeric decided to coat their mechas with his spiritual power, which worked well enough to save them from the initial impact. But it wasn't just one explosion. They faced a slew of beasts that detonated in succession, greatly damaging their already battered cores. As the pillar of the Empire's security, these two have long faced battles that inevitably left them with physical and spiritual injuries. And these successive energy explosions just exacerbated their already bad conditions. Because of the injuries faced by his superiors, they were marooned at Zenith-12 until the foreseeable future. After all, injuries to their spiritual powers didn't just mean personal death. Damaged cores were like time bombs. A powerful person with a high-ranking core would equate to a more powerful bomb. So, for their safety and the safety of the public, they would have to stay away until a stop-gap measure was found. Now, this would not have been such a big problem some decades ago. But with the endangerment of spiritual flora and fauna came the problem of replenishing and repairing their spiritual cores. And that's exactly why Curtis paced like an anxiety-riddled small animal. Just as he was about to turn in for the night, a rattled subordinate reported a new lead for some spiritually imbued goods. "Sir, we've been monitoring several channels as well as the Star Mall as per your orders, and just moments ago, we caught a whiff of a newly opened store." The soldier immediately projected the store's facade, which had two listings for apples on it. "Apples? What's so special about these apples?" Asked Curtis, and the soldier immediately responded. "Sir, these are spiritual fruits. The apples have been authenticated, and we've even checked the values at least five times." "What?! Then why are they marked with such prices? Is this a scam?" "We're also unsure, but when we tried looking into it, we faced the usual Star Mall privacy barriers and something even more complicated. We opted not to look further as it might alarm the seller." "Have you ordered?" "Yes, sir. We split the orders just to be safe. We also directed them to different locations for later consolidation." "What time are we expecting it to arrive?" "The earliest one should be within the next hour. It's been several hours now, and based on the seller's operating hours, it should be online anytime soon." "Did we manage to buy everything?" Asked Curtis, who had now begun tapping the floor with his restless foot. "Unfortunately not, Sir. By the time we found the listing, more than half of the inventory had already been purchased." "What?! Then, just how many did we get? Did we at least get two?" Anything spiritually imbued was considered extremely rare, especially after the near extinction of such plants and creatures. And they were desperate. They've gone as far as to use the reserves of the Imperial Family, but it still wasn't enough. "That's just it, Sir, we got 120 pieces. We managed to buy the pack of 12 apples ten times." Curtis wasn't sure he was hearing that correctly. "Sorry, what? Did you just say we got 120 pieces of it?" Wasn't this too good to be true? But Curtis wasn't the only one with that question. All over the empire, there were people who bought it for fun because how was it possible for spiritual fruits to be sold at such bargain prices? Something that would normally fetch at least 50,000 Star coins was just sold for 520 Star coins each. Either that was a clerical mistake or a scam, but these people found it funny, so what was the harm in spending a few star coins? And with the goods being marked as authenticated, these new customers simply relished the mistake of the unfortunate seller. "How can the owner make such a mistake?! Don't they know how much money they've lost?" Meanwhile, Luca, who apparently lost a lot, woke up to the thundering of his earlier muted notifications. He forgot that his terminal was set to silent mode while sleeping. So it was a shock to wake up to a sold-out store and a series of complaints about the processing time. "Host, it seems like the shop was a success!" D-29 celebrated with fireworks sound effects ringing in Luca's mind. "I think so too. Now we just have to send the items out." If there was something he really liked in this world, it was the proliferation of space devices. In this modern era, he wasn't the only one with access to a portable storage space. People who were wealthy enough could buy one that would fit their needs. Of course, the spaces were far smaller than his and were literally just storage, but they were still storage spaces. So when Luca handed the goods to the delivery drone, he didn't have to pretend to carry them one by one. He just pulled them out as if he were pulling from some storage device. This was very different from his past life, where he had to make up all sorts of excuses just to pull out a small object from his space. Luca watched as different drones moved out of the Mailroom, one by one, and with them were the packages that could change the world.

Chapter 12: Sold Out

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