The Sovereignty System

It was actually a good thing that Cordelia was there to help out with the growing number of daily customers it was getting to be difficult for Ben to help them all without a line of waiting customers forming down the aisle.

Cordelia helped Ben out until the other vendors began to pack up and he gave her double the amount of pay she would normally make per day at the store for her efforts.

She was excited to make the extra money while also having fun selling so many things she had never seen before.

Ben also gave her a large sack of spirit food to take home with her. If she would be selling it in the future it would be good for her to familiarize herself with the flavors and benefits of the different foods they sold.

"Actually I have been a little bored around the house. I am so used to working when I get a day off I don't know what to do with myself anymore. Then when I told my mother that the store was purchased by Marquess King the Spirit Food Cultivator and we were to work for you, she hasn't left me alone for a minute. She is driving me absolutely crazy with questions all day long." Cordelia giggled.

"So if you do not mind I would like to come by and help out. It was fun learning about these new items and foods and being able to help the customers who were all just as thrilled to see and buy these new wonderful foods and items."

As Cordelia was talking she was looking at the formal dresses on display and she would occasionally reach out to touch the different materials on them. Ben could tell she liked them and he began to get an idea about making dresses for his sales girls and Cordelia to wear.

They were all fairly good-looking young women, but they did not have much money to spend on clothing. The dresses that he remembered them wearing when they meet were all rather plain looking.

If he were going to remodel the store and make it look like an upscale designer store, Ben should also provide his employees with uniforms that will fit their upscale workplace.

As Cordelia left to head home before it got dark, Ben packed up his stuff and went back to the store. Even though, he had paid Cordelia a little extra today it was well worth it. With the sales she helped bring in he had his best profits since he began renting the vendor stalls.

[Notice] [Skill: Mercantile has increased. Mercantile Level 7!]

When Ben checked his notifications he found his Mercantile skill had leveled up.

He speculated over the effects of the mercantile skill while walking along and soon found himself back at his store once again.

When Ben unlocked the front door of the store and stepped into the entrance area he saw something wrapped in heavy cloth on the floor. He untied the strings and unwrapped the cloth to find out it was a detailed painting of his nobility crest on thick parchment.

'I almost forgot that the artist was making a copy of my crest for me. It looks like he slid it under the door while I was in the market square. He did a great job on it, this is done well for what he had to work with. There aren't any well-made paint brushes or quality paints obtainable around this city. While the artist was painting in the Chancery 's office I got a good look at the brushes and paints in his artist kit and they were rather crude. That could be another thing that I could one day sell. I could open an art supplies department, I just don't know, would there would be any money in it? How much money can you make selling paint and how many artists are there even in this city to buy it?'

Ben began to almost scrap the idea of opening an art supplies department as soon as he began to think it through.

Walking down the long central hallway he passed the department rooms and walked into his office. Ben looked through the System Store furniture category and found a section called "Executive Luxury Office Furniture".

All the office furniture in this category would fit perfectly in the office of a multimillionaire CEO or even in a wealthy king's personal study. The decorative desks and resplendent leather upholstered chairs, matching file cabinets, bookshelves, and tables all had hand-carved molding with intricate patterns.

'Wow! These office furniture sets are insane! Even though they are more than I originally wanted, now that I have seen them I want to buy them!' Ben excitedly decided.

Baynard's office would also need new furniture now it was empty, so Ben bought two of these incredible office sets. He decided to buy the same set for Baynard as he did for his own office. He had brought in a good sum of money and did not mind buying things that would make the store look lavish.

After he purchased the two luxury executive office sets, he arranged them in each office. When everything had been set up, Ben found a fancy looking thick wood wall paneling that matched the office furniture perfectly. He covered the walls of both offices with the matching paneling and covered the ceilings with patterned wood squares.

The floors were finished with a rich dark hardwood and under the desks and tables he laid out area rugs with earth tone patterns that went well with the new office decor.

Behind his desk, Ben hung the nobility crest the artist dropped off in an ornate wood frame he bought from the System Store. He appreciated the work the artist had put into it and thought it looked great displayed on his office wall.

While he had his hammer and nails out Ben decided to take out a few of the framed paintings and drawings from the store's Warehouse and hang them in the two offices and the employee break room.

Ben went into the men and womens bathrooms and decided to remodel them with black marble tiles for the floors and walls. The black marble next to the white stalls, toilets, sinks, and showers made for an appealing contrast of black and white.

Even though Ben had to rehang the mirrors and the stalls because they had all been firmly attached to the concrete walls earlier it was worth it. The once boring looking bathrooms now would fit with the upscale look of the stores new interior.

With the first floor mainly finished, Ben went upstairs to check on the progress that Remi had made on clearing his stuff out. The second floor was cleared out except for a few large cabinets along the wall. He had probably run out of space in the moving carts and decided to save them for later. Each of these pieces would have taken up a cart just by themselves so Ben understood why they were left behind for now.

He did not mind, because he had given Remi a week and it had only been a couple days now. There was no need to start the second floor until it was cleared out so, Ben went down into the basement and opened the Build Menu.

'Here I am spending money on furniture upstairs when there is a Furniture Maker under workshops category that I can build. I do love that office set though!' Ben thought as he decided to build the Furniture Maker next.

He planned on making a furniture department and selling different types of furniture and wanted to add a few chairs and sofas to the store for customers to get off their feet.

[Furniture Maker]: Produces furniture from any era of Earth or Victus. It also comes with a custom design menu that allows the you to design furniture.

[locked until; built mine-weaver]

[consumes: wood, iron, cotton fabric, hemp fabric, leather, cotton, glass, leather, rubber, nylon, wool, silk fabric] [requires: stone, wood]

While the Furniture Maker was being built, Ben transferred over half the stock of iron, fabrics, leathers, and cotton to the new Warehouse in the store's storage area. This would provide plenty of resources to operate the Furniture Maker and other workshops.

Ben was getting a little annoyed at constantly needing to figure out how much stone or other resources he would need in his store Warehouse to build or upgrade everything around the store and decide he had to make a few changes.

'I guess I have no choice, but to expand down here. Unless I want to be constantly shuffling resources from one warehouse to another.'

He walked over to where the staircase went upstairs and used the tunneling tool to carve out an inclined tunnel deeper into the ground. He replicated the basements first floor with concrete/rebar floors, concrete/rebar walls, and he even used the concrete and rebar tool to make solid supporting columns. With all the money he was investing in his store the last thing Ben wanted was for it to collapse into the basement.

Ceiling light fixtures were spaced evenly around the room and connected to a light switch just like the floor above. When they were all connected to the power plant, he could finally see much better. It was strange though when he stopped to think about it for some reason, he could see much better in the dark than he ever had recently.

He was at least twenty feet underground and it was pitch black while he was cutting out the room earlier but he was still able to faintly make out where he was in the room and what needed to be done. Ben wonder if it had to do with his increasing attributes or maybe it was due to him becoming a cultivator.

With this in the back of his mind, Ben built a scaled down no frills Mine and Stone Quarry on the new lower second floor. Now he would be saved somewhat from having to constantly shuffle stone and iron around.

'If I could make fabrics from scratch here it would help out a lot. I almost need to make the clothing on site here so that I do not have to constantly transfer clothing from the fortress to the store. I could go to the palace offices and ask about buying more land somewhere in or just outside of the city as well. If I can find land within the radius of my warehouse outside the city I shouldn't have any problem building on it just like the store property.'

As the Mine and Stone Quarry was being built by the system, Ben placed a Wheelwright next to the Mine.

[Mine]: Produces nickel, cobalt, iron, gold, silver, copper, platinum and mithril. Production amounts depend on the mines level [requires: stone, wood]. [cost: 200g]

[Stone Quarry]: provides stone by absorbing earth elemental mana and converting it into stone blocks made of condensed mana. [requires: stone-wood]

[Wheelwright]: Produces wheels for any type of wheeled vehicle. It also comes with a custom design menu that allows you to design your own products. [locked until; built toolmaker] [consumes: wood, iron, steel, precious metals, plastic, nylon, rubber] [requires: stone, wood]

Next to the Wheelwright currently being built Ben began construction on a Cartwright.

[Cartwright]: Produces wheeled vehicles that can be used to transport goods. It also comes with a custom design menu that allows you to design your own carts.[Locked until; built toolmaker, wheelwright] [consumes: wood, iron, steel, precious metals, plastic, glass, cotton, hemp, rubber, nylon] [requires: stone, wood]

Ben wanted to provide a delivery service for the larger goods like furniture that would be sold from the store and he also wanted to see what he could create with the custom design menu that the Cartwright came with. If it were possible to build improved carts then he would also make a few models to sell.

Instead of waiting for everything to build Ben decided to head up to the first floor and turn off the lights for the night. On the way upstairs he began to wonder how safe his store would be against burglary when he wasn't around. There were patrols of city guards on the streets at night, but a burglar would just need to wait for them to pass and then break the glass on his door to get inside.

This made him think back to Earth and what store owners did in high crime areas. Ben then remembered there were stores in the inner cities that had security metal shutters that they could pull down and it would cover the entire storefront.

Ben went out front and looked around the streets and found the guards must have been off in another area. While looking through his system store, he found a security category. There were alarms, gates, doors, cameras, and even nasty traps that could kill, capture, or incapacitate intruders.

Ben found an electric rolling metal security shutter that had a fingerprint scanner. It was the ideal security option to protect the store when he wasn't around. Ben had it built to cover the windows and front doors of his store.

When he had it scan his fingerprint as the system owner only he could open it unless Ben scanned someone's print and added them to the security list.

When he touched the small sensor with his index finger the metal shutter unrolled down to block off the front of the store and locked itself into multiple locking mechanisms that the system had embedded into the concrete tiles.

Ben asked the system if it was possible to dig the locking mechanisms out of the ground. The system said the locking mechanisms were connected to a buried ten-foot long steel bar shaped like an upside down letter "T". The upside down letter T steel bar worked as a long anchor. If you had and a jackhammer it would still be a long difficult task to dig out these locking mechanisms with those anchors in place. It now looked like a large steel wall was covering the only way to get into the store.

The only other way to get into the store now would be to try and knock a hole in the outer walls or ceiling. Anyone who tried this would have to deal with one-foot of concrete that had steel rebar grids all throughout it. There would be no way some could bust through his walls in a single night.

Ben opened the new security shutters and went back inside and locked the door behind him. With the show room lights off, he went downstairs to the Furniture Maker and began picking out sofas, chairs, tables, beds, cabinets dressers nightstands, and end tables. Most of what he picked out was elegant furniture.

Unlike Remi, he had no desire to sell low-end furniture. If he was going to sell something he wanted it to be different from what everyone else had. Ben was going to Sell furniture that had elegant contoured wood, fancy upholstering, marquetry inlays, spring cushions, and spring mattresses. If you looked all around the city, he just knew that nobody would have anything like this because his furniture used concepts developed from back on Earth. When he was happy with the furniture being produced, Ben made his way down to the lower basement second floor.

Down on the basement's lower second floor, he began to explore the Cartwright custom menu. He found he could make an enclosed front cab on a cart but would still need to leave an open section in the back to haul items. The custom menu would give him errors if he tried to make a fully enclosed cart. He wanted to make a cart that looked like a carriage, but then it would cease to be a cart.

After playing around with the custom menu options he designed a cart that looked like a boxlike wooden pickup truck. It had an enclosed cab with side hinged doors that would latch shut. There was a glass windshield and a small glass window behind the front seat to allow the driver to look behind him. Behind the enclosed cab was a cart bed with two-foot high side walls and a tailgate that could open and swing down.

The cart driver could slip the horse reins through a slot in the front of the cab and control the horses from inside the enclosed cab. It was the first time someone would be out of the foul weather when traveling by cart. Inside the enclosed cab, there are a front and back spring cushioned upholstered bench seats that would allow six people to ride comfortably out of the rain and snow.

The surface wood used for the cart was gloss stained with decorative patterns etched into the wood that flowed with the contour and shape of the cart.

Ben had also copied a leaf spring that he saw in the System Store which were suppose to go on a stagecoach and added it to his new cart design. This way the people in his carts would have a smoother ride on bumpy terrain and the goods would not bounce all over the back of the cart.

After making his pickup truck style cart he also made a regular open style cart that had a hand lever break that locked the wheels in place, three upholstered spring cushioned bench seats and had the leaf springs suspensions installed to provide a smooth ride.

The second cart did not have an enclosed cab, but it would allow nine people to ride comfortably with a small area in the back behind the seats to still haul things around.

This second cart used the same style of gloss stained wood and etched patterns to give it a luxurious look.

On the front of both of these newly designed carts, Ben had his family crest engraved into the wood and painted gold. The crest was six inches by six inches and located where most automobiles would have a company emblem.

Ben set the Cartwright to make four of each style for now and shook his head when he saw that they went into the store Warehouse and could even be transferred to his inventory.

It just looked strange to see a big horse-drawn cart go into the Warehouse for some reason. It was a good thing that they did or it would be difficult to get them out of the basement and outside the store.

He decided that he had enough building for the night and didn't need to spend every gold coin he had on him.

Instead of cultivating he wanted to try out an idea he had from earlier. Ben turned off all the lights on both basement floors and sat on the bed with his eyes open in the dark. When he was thinking how he could partially see in the dark earlier he began to get an idea and wondered how he could improve his vision.

He put on some music and sat in the dark thinking about things that still needed to be done around the store and fortress. Ben was wondering how everyone was doing back at the fortress and if they were all safe and had everything they needed.

Over the next few hours, his eyes not only adjusted to the light but seemed to allow him to gradually see everything around him a little clearer. When he had spent close to six hours sitting in the dark just looking around the room, he saw the familiar notification icon begin to flash.

[Notice] [You have learned a new skill! Night Sight Level 1!]

[Night Sight]: This is a passive skill that can be toggled on or off. It will allow you to see in any low light conditions. The higher the skill level, the further the host can see through the surrounding darkness.

'Yes! This is what I was hoping for the classic RPG night vision type skill!'

Ben activated his [Night Sight] skill and it was like someone had flipped the light switch on. He could see his surroundings in detail and could not believe he was still in the same pitch black basement. Only when he looked toward the far wall did it appear that part of the room was still covered in darkness.

'This must be because the skill is still at level one. After, about fifty feet everything looks dark. I just need to keep it activated at night and it should start to level up quick enough.'