The First Store System

The sun rose on the Anga continent, and with it, ten other suns rose across the following ten continents spread across Visteerna, dispersing the darkness and bringing light to the lives of countless citizens.

As the sun rose, a store in the midst of a newly-developing Kingdom opened, with a queue of several millions of people waiting outside it.

Despite there being so many people, there was silence permeating the area, so much so that the sound of the store’s door opening broke the silence and brought looks of excitement to all the people’s faces. Some had a mixture of nervousness and excitement on their faces, some were beaming with joy, and some had determined faces as if they were going to do the thing which demanded all their determination.

As Aakesh opened the door, he came across a large number of customers waiting for the store to open. Aakesh didn’t let them wait for any more time as he turned around and went to his chair while the crowd outside poured into the store like a tide.

The scene looked as if an apocalypse was happening, and people were running away from dangerous creatures. But the smiles on the faces of the people in the crowd defined something else.

In no time, the area of a few thousand miles turned empty from being overcrowded a few moments earlier.

The customers who owned any of the three cards straight away went for the portal room as usual, while those who didn’t own any of the three went to Aakesh and joined the queue to buy their entry into Panagea.

A few minutes later, the store hall had turned empty as all the customers left for Panagea after paying for their services.

Aakesh couldn’t see any new customers approaching. But he still didn’t close his eyes and began another of his relaxation session since there were already several customers who went straight to the cultivation arts room. Since there were more than enough virtual portals for several more million people to enter Panagea, they didn’t worry about waiting for Panagea like in earlier days. They found cultivation arts more worthwhile than Panagea in the current situation._.

As for when the number of customers would grow to match the number of virtual portals, they didn’t worry about it.

Time flew by, and around a minute had passed.

Only a minute had passed since the store hall turned empty, and Aakesh could already see a customer exiting the cultivation arts room.

The customer in question was a female human. Her face was neither attractive nor ugly. She had the appearance of an average human. She had her cheeks slightly red as she approached Aakesh.

Aakesh didn’t care for the redness in her cheeks as he expressionlessly looked at the virtual book floating next to her.

The next moment, all the primary details of the cultivation art the woman had selected appeared in his mind.

“Store owner, I want this cultivation art,” The woman shyly and respectfully requested Aakesh as she passed over the page to Aakesh.

Aakesh took the page from her hands, and the next moment, it dissipated into several light particles.

“You need to pay three hundred billion supreme Primal stones,” Aakesh then expressionlessly told the price the woman needed to pay after the preview cost got deducted from the total cost of the cultivation art.

The woman nodded. The next moment, a mechanical alert appeared in the woman’s head, asking her whether she wanted to pay from the card or not. The woman thought yes in her head, and soon the required amount disappeared from her supreme card.

“The cultivation art is yours from now on,” Aakesh expressionlessly told the woman as the system informed him of the successful payment.

The next moment, the virtual book floating next to the woman suddenly started materializing, and in no time, a physical form of the book appeared in the hands of the woman.

The woman had an excited expression as she looked at the cultivation art. She had already spent ninety percent of her lifetime saving, so she felt excited and nervous at the same time, thinking of her future.

“Thank you, store owner,” The woman then bowed and respectfully thanked Aakesh.

Aakesh only expressionlessly nodded and waved his hands, gesturing for the woman to leave.

The woman respectfully turned around and left. Her face had a different expression than earlier.

The woman only came this early since she had already selected the cultivation art yesterday. But since the sun had set, the store owner had asked her to leave and buy the cultivation art early tomorrow morning.

It was only in front of Aakesh, she was downplaying the effect of spending more than ninety percent of her lifetime savings, but now that Aakesh wasn’t looking at her, her actual feelings came out. Despite having more than nine hours to make her decision, she still didn’t make herself determined enough to stop thinking about the Primal stones.

Fortunately for her, she was a regular customer and coming in the store for decades, or she wouldn’t have even forced herself to buy one cultivation art, despite not having enough stomach to spend that amount of Primal stones.

The woman then took a deep breath as she turned toward the portal room and proceeded in that direction. Panagea had become too important to miss for even a day, so she went there and entered Panagea since there were more than enough empty virtual portals.

Time flew by.

The following customer, purchasing the cultivation art, only came several minutes after the woman.

“Store owner, I want this cultivation art,” The man had no virtual book floating next to him as he didn’t buy the preview option. The reason for it wasn’t the lack of money. The man trusted his intuition so much that he decided to buy the cultivation art just from reading its name and a little summary, despite it costing several million superior Primal stones.

Time flew by, and several hours had passed.

The man left after his purchase was done. Like the woman, the man went toward the portal room to enter Panagea.

Before entering the portal room, the man bought mental healing pills using his card and then left in the room’s direction.

Time flew by.

Like the past two days, a queue had gathered in front of Aakesh to buy cultivation arts.

The queue contained several regular customers, and one of them was Maria. Maria had been holding herself from buying a cultivation art for the past few days as she had been busy on a quest in Panagea. She didn’t want to waste even an extra second on something other than thinking about how to do the mission.

Now that she had successfully completed her mission in Panagea and had already spent her eighteen hours in Panagea, she decided to finally buy a cultivation art for herself from the store.

Since Maria was a Tao Palace level cultivator, she could buy a Mythical-grade cultivation art for herself. Maria already had a top-quality cultivation art that helped her go to the late Tao Palace from peak Nascent Soul in only around fifty years.

Despite such a high level of growth, as soon as she learned that the store was now selling cultivation arts, she knew what to do. Her trust in the store and respect for the store owner was second to none. In fact, if Aakesh were to order her to leave Panagea, she would do it in just a blink of an eye.

Earlier, she felt she had romantic feelings for her, but as time passed, Maria learned that she was wrong. Instead, it was a respect for Aakesh, which was outside the bounds of any romantic feelings. As time passed, the respect turned into reverence, then belief, and now it was faith.

If Aakesh were to be a cult head, Maria would get considered a brainwashed supporter of him.

After searching for a while, Maria finally found a cultivation art that she was willing to buy and replace it with the current one she used. Even though it cost several times the original price of her current cultivation art, Maria found it not to be an issue. In fact, she got excited. She knew one fact about the store. The quality of the store product grew exponentially with the increment in cost.

Sometimes a product costing a few superior stones felt more expensive than paying several million supreme Primal stones for a store product.

The cultivation art Maria chose used a similar principle as the current cultivation art she had, but comparing the content between them was like comparing the sky and the earth. Even though the rules it laid out were more complex than anything Maria had seen in her life, and yet it was the most simple thing she could think of to understand it easily, without attacking her head.

The cost difference between the current cultivation art and the store one was almost tens of thousands of times, but she happily decided to buy it.

After selecting her cultivation art, Maria exited the room and couldn’t help but get a surprise.

It had only been a few minutes since she entered the cultivation arts room, but the people in the queue had already jumped by hundreds of thousands of people.

Maria had no choice but to join the queue, as she knew that despite Maria being the store’s first customer, Aakesh wouldn’t bend any rules for her and allow her to jump the queue.

Maria didn’t feel long in the queue as she reminisced of herself in the past days when she had only entered the store for the first time and had witnessed the store owner playing with his pet.

***

A/N: Sorry, only one chapter today. Since it’s a festival here I had to travel and couldn’t get enough time to write one more chapter.

The mass release is on 15 August. Please show your support!