After looking through the first book for a while until he managed to get the most important information, Eisen looked at the next book that was of interest to him at the moment, the one about multiple different ways to practice magic, but the moment that he flipped this book open, Melissa reacted to something.
"Hm? What's wrong?" The old man asked while the queen bee looked toward the carriage's door, nudging her head in its direction. "You want to go outside? Wait, is it because of the scouts?" Eisen asked her, and Melissa quickly nodded her head before Eisen stood up and grabbed his backpack as well as his sword that was, as usual, wrapped in cloth to make carrying it easier, after changing back into his suit.
This seemed like a weird combination at first, but Eisen chose to wear the suit instead of the Leather armor so that he could make a good first impression, and he really just needed the sword in case things went south so that he could defend himself.
Eisen immediately left the carriage and made his way out of the stables, following the instructions that Melissa gave him to where Komer's brother might be. After a while, they reached a small shop in the outskirts of town with a huge sign above it, reading "Merc's Glory".
The moment that Eisen read this, he could already figured out the name that Komer's brother chose. From what Komer described him as, he seemed to be the kind of person to put his name on the front of his store.
With a loud sigh, Eisen then slowly opened the front door of the shop and stepped inside. They didn't seem to be selling one thing, but instead everything that they could get their hands on.
Food, metals, low-grade potions, and other random items, and the majority of what was being sold didn't seem quite as high-quality as Eisen would have expected. He didn't know whether Komer's brother just didn't care, or if there was some kind of active business decision to choose quantity over quality with this shop.
The moment that Eisen stepped inside, he noticed Melissa fidgeting on his shoulder, and the five soldier bees in his backpack trying to escape. Soon enough, Eisen found the reason for that. In the middle of the shop stood a man with red hair similar to Komer's, just a few shades darker, wearing a navy colored suit and pure white gloves, holding two crushed scout bees in his hands.
With anger starting to boil up inside of him at the sight of someone so easily killing the monsters that his adorable little Melissa hatched and that were so eagerly protecting their queen so far, Eisen closed his eyes and activated his Truth Seeing eyes before holding his hand in front of one of them that he then opened to take a look at the man's level and name, shortly after telling Melissa to immediately hide in his backpack with the other bees.
[Player – Merc]
[Race – Human][Occupation – Combat Merchant][Level - 67]
A Combat merchant? That seemed to be quite self-explanatory to Eisen at first, but what he was wondering about most at the time was the stat distribution. If he was good at physical combat, he would probably have a distribution similar to Eisen's, where he needed to keep his physical stats up for the combat part of his occupation and his mental stats for his merchant side of the occupation.
If this was the case, Eisen definitely had the upper hand if it came to a combat situation, at the very least when you would judge everything purely by looking at the stats
Either way, first Eisen stepped in closer into the shop after obviously deactivating his Truth Seeing Eyes skill and finally caught Merc's attention. The young man looked over to Eisen, letting his eyes wander up and down for a while before lightly grinning. It was quite badly lit, so he probably thought that Eisen was here for a different reason than he actually was, because he looked behind Eisen and saw Caria standing there.
"Ah, are you a customer of ours? Is there anything wrong with one of our products?" Merc asked as he took off his now dirty gloves and laid them down on the counter next to him.
While Eisen was grinding his teeth, Merc stepped further toward him with a bright but sinister smile on his face. "If that is the case, I have to excuse myself. I only took over this business a few days ago, so things are still quite messy."
Trying to play along to a degree, Eisen shook his head as he looked through the shop, trying to find anything that might let Merc think he has been a customer there before. But that's when he noticed something important.
All of the food was already at the very least starting to rot, and there were cobwebs covering the shelves and items standing on them. This is not something that a person like the Merc that Komer described would allow in their shop. If that was the case, then this seemed to be a cover, a fake. The real shop was something else.
"I'm not here to complain, I want to buy something." Eisen then said with a low voice, and Merc nodded as his grin grew even more sinister, waving his arm toward a door leading to the back as he stepped toward it himself, pulling out a bronze key which was used to unlock that door.
"Follow me, please. Whether that thing comes along or not is up to you." Merc said, and Eisen was confused even more. Did he figure out that Caria was a monster? Even then though, she did look 100 percent like a small girl, so the expression 'that thing' seemed quite unusual.
Only a short while later did Eisen find out the reason for such wording.
"What would your price range be? We have low-quality products starting at around 5 Gold Coins, while our product with the highest price is currently at 10 Platinum Coins." Merc explained carefully, immediately leaving Eisen to be confused even further. 10 Platinum coin? That was far, far above what Eisen expected to hear as a price right now. What kind of items could Merc have access to right now? Some kind of ancient relic, maybe?
"Hmm, do you have a general display, by chance?" Eisen asked, carefully making sure that Caria was walking next to him within constant sight, so that he could react whenever necessary. The young man Merc nodded while smiling softly, continuing to walk through the hallway before opening a large door that already gave off a completely different feeling than the shop in the front, as if this was a high-quality luxury store.
The moment that the door was opened, Eisen was met with the sight of cages over cages filled with different creatures. Most of them just seemed to be monsters in the end, but a few of them just looked so much like humans that it was quite terrifying.
This wasn't a regular shop, this was something like a monster shop.
Eisen gulped loudly as he stepped into the room, following Merc further in. "This is our general display, filled with Lower-Grade and Mid-Grade products. If you want to take a look at High-Grades, we have a special display for them." Merc explained quietly as he pointed at a few different 'products' that he wanted to recommend to Eisen, who was just looking around in confusion.
If this place was just selling monsters, it wasn't that big a deal, was it? Sure, they were kept in quite inhumane ways, but Eisen honestly expected worse. A shop like this would probably be perfect for all kinds of tamers, and honestly not too bad a concept. For that reason, Eisen turned to Merc with a deep frown.
"If I'm allowed to ask, why do you do that play with the front of the shop? Selling monsters shouldn't be illegal, right?"
Surprised, Merc began frowning back at Eisen at such an unexpected question. "You see, even though most of the products we sell are monsters, every once in a while we have a few that technically aren't. And I'm sure you understand that most officials aren't quite happy with having so many monsters in town that technically aren't tamed." He explained quickly, and Eisen began thinking about part of what Merc just said.
"Could you show me some that 'technically' aren't Monsters, if you have any at the time?" Eisen asked, simply because he wanted to see what Merc meant.
The Merchant nodded his head before pointing toward another door that seemed to be locked again. "We currently actually do have one, yes. It's a young boy, half monster, half human." Merc explained as he slowly unlocked the other door before opening it up, quickly stepping into the room.
Different to the simple cages in the room they were just in, this room seemed to have a number of different cells similar to what a prison may have.
"Here he is, we have his price currently set at a single Platinum Coin." Merc explained, pointing at one of the cells so that Eisen could take a look.
And what he saw was a young boy that definitely couldn't even have reached his teenage years yet judging from looks alone, and through his hair that seemed to be a dark blonde through all of the dirt caught inside of it, a few bright blue strands could be seen.
For some reason, Eisen had a weird feeling in his gut at this, and he placed a hand over his right eye while closing his left and activated his Truth Seeing Eyes to take a look at who that boy was.
[Sky]
[Race – Fey-Kin (Pixie)][Occupation – None][Level - 15]
Eisen immediately jumped once he read through this small amount of information, deactivating his Truth Seeing Eyes. He kept staring at the boy and began to mutter to himself. "A Pixie Fey-Kin that looks that young… That… can't be a coincidence…"
Without once averting his eyes from the boy, Sky, Eisen lifted his hand and placed it around the metal bars, activating his Giant's Strength skill as well as the transmutation ability of his alchemy, slowly removing parts of the bar he was currently touching. The moment that everything was cracked and brittle enough, Eisen pulled at the bar with all his force, throwing it behind him.
Immediately, Merc looked at Eisen in confusion while Sky began shaking in fear at what Eisen just did.
"What the fuck are you doing, old man?" Merc yelled out, losing his cool as he grabbed Eisen's shoulder. Slowly, the old man then in turned around and stared Merc in the eyes with anger deeply buried inside of them.
To further amplify his strength, Eisen then activated his elemental transformation turned toward earth to support his shoulders and upper back, as well as Eisen's arm. "That's what I should be asking you." Eisen said with a seemingly calm voice, grabbing the sword from behind his back and letting the cloth fall off, which immediately led to Merc jumping backward while roots began growing around his legs, causing him to drop onto his back.
"You know what? For a second, I thought you weren't as bad as I heard. But I was really wrong about that." Eisen said slowly as he pointed his sword toward Merc's face to make sure he wouldn't move during what was about to happen.
Carefully, Eisen poured mana out of his hands and began transmuting the ground and wall around Merc to completely cover and as such, trap him. This probably wouldn't hold for a long time, but it should be enough to trap Merc for a while, while Eisen himself got to work.
He first squatted down and looked Merc in the eyes, before immediately being spit at by him. "That's not really nice, now is it? You should respect your elders, Eric." Eisen said with a low voice so that Sky wouldn't hear him, and Merc's eyes immediately shot open.
"You're a fucking Omega too?! What company sent you here to fuck with me?!" The young man and possible heir to a billion dollar company yelled out, filled with anger, and Eisen leaned forward slowly.
"You have it wrong. I'm not an Omega. I'm one of the five that came before you lot. And I'm quite aware of who you are, as you can guess. Tell me now, where is the key to that boy's slave collar?" Eisen asked quietly, and Merc simply spit in his face again.
"Fuck off! Why should I ever tell you fucking bastard something like that?! How much do you want to let me out of here right now? A thousand? Ten thousand? Name your fucking price, asshole!"
"Sorry, I'm not for sale. Now then, how about I get rid of a dangerous situation here instead? Either you tell me, or I kill every single one of the monsters inside of this place." Eisen said with a soft smile that was quite obviously set up, and Merc stared at him with even more anger.
"You wouldn't fucking dare! Fine, take that little ass with you then, the key is in the office by the front shop, so fuck off!"
Satisfied at that answer, Eisen stood up and cracked his knuckles before swinging his Zweihänder over his shoulder and leaving out the door toward the monster display again, while Merc yelled after him, "H-Hey, I told you where the keys are, so what the fuck do you think you're doing?!"
With a light smile, Eisen turned back toward him and winked. "Well, you did get rid of one reason for me killing every one of your monsters by telling me that… But there is another one." With a smile, Eisen cued the bees in his backpack to fly out and land on Eisen's shoulders before he continued to speak. "You killed some of my monsters, so I'll kill all of yours."