Michael’s body was still damp when he left the shower.
He changed into casual clothes after drying his body and put the heavyweight combat suit aside for it to be cleaned thoroughly.
Afterward, Michael turned to the door to leave without saying a word.
“Wait a moment,” Kaleb’s voice rang out from behind.
Michael halted in his tracks and turned back to the young Zenovia.
“Are you sure that you’re fine?” Kaleb asked reflexively when he saw the impatience in Michael’s eyes.
Until the last minute of Michael’s battle against the Barbaric Couple, everything had been fine. But after that, the pressure he exuded was heavy, and being around him felt weirdly uncomfortable.
Kaleb was not sure why but he felt like their spar had turned into a desperate life-and-death battle. That was how Michael had fought; as if his life depended on it.
“I am fine,” Michael responded emotionlessly before he turned back. The next moment, he opened the door and left.
Kaleb didn’t say anything else. He pressed his lips together and glanced over to Frederik and Jacqueline.
The Barbaric Couple, which was known for their barbaric actions, bad temper, and rude attitude, was now silently staring at the ground in front of them. They had been tended to, but they had yet to clean up the dried blood covering their faces.
Their stare was blank, and Kaleb could imagine that their mind was empty as well. Or they were thinking about their fight against Michael.
Kaleb was not sure what was worse; Michael’s indifference, or the couple’s shaken confidence.
‘Well..whatever…’ He told himself before he entered the shower to freshen up.
Once he was done, he put on his fashionable clothes and left the changing room, leaving the Barbaric Couple alone.
Only after everyone else left the changing room did Frederik and Jacqueline breathe out heavily. They looked at each other and blurted out in unison.
“Fuck…”
**
Now that the training session was over, Michael could finally focus on his initial mission again. With that in mind, he made his way to the spaceship’s shop.
However, he was also a bit confused.
Michael knew that he lost control of himself near the end of the battle. He didn’t feel bad for beating up the Barbaric Couple because they deserved to learn a lesson, but it was not as if he had purposely planned to beat them into a pulp before. It…just happened.
He was lucky that his opponents had been the Barbaric Couple. Punishing them for being spoiled brats and arrogant jerks was better than beating up someone else, who had never done something bad before.
This thought put Michael at ease, but it didn’t change the confusion troubling his mind.
‘Is it the stress of being a Lord in the Untamed Jungle?’ Michael wondered, but he couldn’t answer for sure. It might be the case, but it might be something else as well.
Confused and deep in thought, Michael was happy to reach the hallway filled with shops. The shopping hallways of the Dekalos-Class spaceship were most certainly enough to distract him. He had a mission to complete, after all!
“Hello Sir, how may I help you today?” A young staff member greeted him at the entrance of the first shop.
The young man wore a vibrant professional smile on his face, which Michael tried to reciprocate, only to fail miserably.
“Hello. I want to sell a few rare blueprints, and I’m not sure which shop will provide me with the best rates,” Michael revealed honestly.
He was about to ask where he should go when the young man nodded his head understandingly.
“I haven’t seen you before, so I presume that you don’t know how the shops in the spaceships all over mankind’s territory are managed, right?” The young staff member asked in an amiable tone.
Michael nodded his head. He had heard some rumors, but he never had the time to research the truth. The only thing he was certain about was that every ship above the Dekalos-Class had, at least, one shop to access.
“That makes it much easier. I will transfer a small file to you with all the detailed information. If you want, I can also summarize the file for now, and you can read the detailed information later. How about it?”
“That sounds great. Please share the file with me, and help me out with the summary!” Michael responded, glad to have found a forthcoming staff.
The young staff member seemed nice and ready to go out of his way to help him. That was rare to find in this age and era.
“To summarize the file, all shops are handled by different corporations. The spaceships at the Dekalos-Class and above have one shop managed by the government, but every other shop is managed by the big corporations of mankind. The shop I’m working at is managed by the government, but the shop on the left is managed by Olympus.
The shop left to the Olympus is managed by Pandemonium, and over there is a shop affiliated with the Bartholomew Corporation. There are quite a few corporations, and all of them are managed by an Adventurer.”
Michael found himself nodding weakly as the young staff member continued to explain the system behind the management of shops within spaceships. It was very interesting, and the wild thoughts of his spar against the Barbaric Couple slowly turned insignificant.
“An Adventurer has to manage the Shops, but why?” Michael asked quietly, just before he realized something.
His eyes shot wide open and the young staff’s smile widened.
“I think you got the gist. All Adventurers have to be Adventurers in order to enter the Origin Expanse. This is not the case for every organization, but most merchant corporations have one big place where all shop managers are gathered. They may say that their headquarters are somewhere in the solar system, but it is actually in the Origin Expanse,” The staff member took a short break.
He took a deep breath to continue speaking and provide further explanation when Michael interfered.
“If I were to sell 100 rare blueprints, the shop manager would bring them to the headquarters where they would be distributed among the shops all over mankind’s territory to make the highest profit. At the same time, if I were to request 2000 Summoning Scrolls, but the shop in question has only 500 in stock, the shop manager would visit the Origin Expanse and bring the Summoning Scrolls I’ve asked for.”
All in all, Michael felt that the managing system that combined the Origin Expanse and the outside Universe was very intriguing.
The only problem in the managing system was that the shop manager had to find a way to travel through the Origin Expanse and make his way to the headquarters of the corporation he worked for. Once the Runic Gate’s anchor was set up, everything was fine, but to get that far was a long journey for some.
Under normal circumstances, that may not be difficult because most humans spawned in specific regions, and not as far from mankind as Michael. People as unlucky as Michael would have a hard time becoming a shop manager. Fortunately, becoming a shop manager was never something Michael had wished for. His dreams had always been other things.
“You can put it like that. It is a little bit more complicated, but I’ve shared the files with detailed information with you, if you’re interested in understanding the mechanism and logic behind the managing system,” The young man said as Michael received a notification on his crystal watch.
Michael smiled in return.
Suddenly, he recalled something the young staff member had said earlier.
‘If there is a branch of the Bartholomew Corporation…they wouldn’t decline my Golden Membership Card right?!’
**
If you want to support me use your golden tickets and powerstones.
You can also write me a review to share your view of the novel!
More character images and nice chats about the HideVerse:
https:///EdsDgFVWwZ
Link also in my description.
Do you like it? Leave a review and add it to the library!