The shop was quiet.
Ward stood behind the counter, listening to nothing in particular. No chime. No customers. Just the faint creak of old wood settling and the distant hum of whatever kept the torches burning without smoke.
Two customers in one day. Both gone now, walking toward fates he couldn't see. Twenty-five gold toward his quest. Seventy-five to go.
He checked his wristwatch. Still ticking—the one advantage of a mechanical watch over digital. 7:23. He'd been here roughly four hours, give or take. Assuming time passed at the same rate here as on Earth, which was assuming a lot.
For the first time since arriving, Ward had nothing immediate to do.
He looked around the shop properly. Stone walls. Wooden shelves. Dust on surfaces that probably hadn't been cleaned since before "Station 7 went dormant," whatever that meant. The front door, currently showing nothing but darkness beyond its frame. The counter where he'd been standing for hours.
And behind the counter, in the corner he'd been studiously ignoring while dealing with customers—a door.
Not the front door. A different door. Small, wooden, utterly unremarkable. Ward couldn't remember if it had been there when he arrived or if it had appeared at some point during the chaos of tutorial quests and death timers.
He approached it.
───────────────────────────────────
DOOR DETECTED
Location: Shopkeeper's Quarters
Status: Unlocked
Access: Granted (Probationary Shopkeeper)
The system notes this area was included in your employment package.
You're welcome.
───────────────────────────────────
"Employment package," Ward muttered. "Right."
He opened the door.
The room beyond was small—perhaps three metres by four—but surprisingly modern. A bed against one wall, simple but clean. A wooden wardrobe. A small table with a single chair. And in the corner, a door that could only lead to—
Ward pushed it open and found a bathroom.
A proper bathroom. Toilet, sink, and what appeared to be a shower with actual plumbing. He turned the tap experimentally. Water flowed—clear, clean, and cold.
"Huh."
He'd been expecting medieval squalor. Chamber pots. A bucket and a well. Instead, he had running water and what looked like reasonably modern sanitation in a stone building that predated his entire civilisation.
The shower even had pressure.
Ward stood there for a moment, processing. Then he returned to the main room and sat on the bed. It was comfortable. More comfortable than his flat in London, if he was being honest. Clean sheets, decent mattress, pillow that didn't smell of anything concerning.
His stomach growled.
The sound was startlingly loud in the quiet room. Ward pressed a hand to his abdomen and considered his situation.
He'd had breakfast before the hike. That was... hours ago? A day ago? Time was difficult to track here. He'd given his trail mix to Mira. The rest of his Earth snacks had been rejected by the system as "substandard" and presumably disposed of.
He had no food.
Ward walked back into the shop and examined the shelves. Common Rations—5 gold. Adventurer's Trail Mix—8 gold. Food existed. Food was right there, within arm's reach.
He picked up a ration pack.
───────────────────────────────────
INVENTORY ITEM
Common Rations
Price: 5 Gold
Status: For Sale
The Shopkeeper cannot consume store inventory.
This policy exists for obvious reasons.
───────────────────────────────────
Ward set the rations down. "Obvious reasons."
He tried the trail mix.
───────────────────────────────────
INVENTORY ITEM
Adventurer's Trail Mix
Price: 8 Gold
Status: For Sale
The Shopkeeper cannot consume store inventory.
The system appreciates your persistence.
───────────────────────────────────
"So I can sell food," Ward said to the empty shop. "But I can't eat food."
No response.
"What exactly am I supposed to do about sustenance? Photosynthesize?"
───────────────────────────────────
QUERY RECEIVED
Shopkeeper sustenance is addressed in Section 14.7 of the Operational Manual.
Current access level: Probationary (Level 1)
Required access level: Standard (Level 2)
The system suggests focusing on achieving promotion. Reminding the user that there is no sun in the store.
───────────────────────────────────
"Brilliant." Ward dismissed the window. "The answer to 'how do I not starve' is classified."
He was tired. He was hungry. He was trapped in a magical shop with no way home and two customers whose fates he couldn't influence wandering through dimensions he'd never heard of.
But he had water. And a bed. And presumably, since the system had seen fit to provide living quarters, some mechanism existed to keep him alive long enough to be useful.
Presumably.
Ward returned to the back room and sat on the bed again. He still had his rucksack—the system had let him keep that, at least, even after rejecting its contents as unsuitable for sale. He dug through it. Hiking gear. A spare jumper. His phone, dead and useless. A water bottle he could refill from the tap.
No food.
He'd have to solve that problem eventually. For now, he had other concerns.
Ward focused on the space in front of him and thought, very deliberately: Menu.
───────────────────────────────────
STORE OVERVIEW
Dimensional Provisions Supply — Station 7
Shopkeeper: Ward (Probationary)
Energy: 100 / 10,000
Status: Operational (Minimal)
Next Threshold: 500
Active Quest:
Shopkeeper Quest: Sell 100 Gold worth of items
Progress: 25 / 100 Gold
[Inventory] [Customers] [Buildings] [Upgrades]
───────────────────────────────────
There it was. The full picture—or at least, more of a picture than he'd had before.
Ward pressed [Buildings].
───────────────────────────────────
BUILDING OPTIONS
Current Energy: 100
Required for unlock: 500
Available at ??? Energy:
- Inn / Rest Area
- Forge / Smithy
- Training Grounds
Available at higher thresholds:
- Apothecary (???)
- Enchanter's Tower (???)
- Employee Quarters (???)
- Quest Board (???)
The system notes your current energy level is insufficient for any unlocks.
Keep trying.
───────────────────────────────────
Quest Board at ??? energy. Ward appreciated the transparency.
He pressed [Upgrades].
───────────────────────────────────
UPGRADES
Current Access Level: Probationary (1)
Available upgrades: None
The system notes that upgrades become available as the Shopkeeper demonstrates competence.
Competence is measured by customer outcomes.
Good luck.
───────────────────────────────────
Helpful as always. Ward dismissed the window and pressed [Customers].
───────────────────────────────────
CUSTOMER INFORMATION
Customers Served: 2
Total Revenue: 30 Gold (5 + 25)
Average Transaction: 15 Gold
Active Quests:
1. Mira (???)
Quest: Herb Gathering
Status: In Progress
[View Details]
2. Chen Liu (???)
Quest: Spirit Cave Mushroom Retrieval
Status: In Progress
[View Details]
───────────────────────────────────
Ward's finger hovered over Mira's entry. He pressed [View Details].
───────────────────────────────────
CUSTOMER QUEST STATUS
Customer: Mira
Origin: ???
Quest: Herb Gathering
Stakes: Trivial (×0.25 energy multiplier)
Status: In Progress
Last Update:
Customer traveling through ??? forest en route to gathering location. Consumed gift item (Trail Mix, Earth Origin). No complications reported.
Items Purchased: Common Rations (1)
Items Gifted: Trail Mix, Earth Origin (1)
Detailed viewing requires Shopkeeper Access Level 3 or Quest Board facility.
───────────────────────────────────
Trail Mix, Earth Origin. His sad little bag of nuts and chocolate, now immortalised in the system's official records. Ward wondered if Mira had noticed the chocolate—if she even knew what chocolate was. Probably not. Where she came from seemed medieval, and cacao wasn't exactly a temperate crop.
"No complications reported" was reassuring, at least. Herb gathering. Low stakes. She'd bought rations, received trail mix. She'd probably be fine.
Ward pressed back and selected Chen Liu.
───────────────────────────────────
CUSTOMER QUEST STATUS
Customer: Chen Liu
Origin: ???
Quest: Spirit Cave Mushroom Retrieval
Stakes: Low-Medium (×0.75 energy multiplier)
Status: In Progress
Last Update:
Customer approaching destination (Whispering Depths). Proceeding with increased caution. Environmental factors present.
Items Purchased: Basic Health Potion (1), Standard Rope (1), Common Rations (1)
Detailed viewing requires Shopkeeper Access Level 3 or Quest Board facility.
───────────────────────────────────
Environmental factors present.
Ward stared at the phrase. In tabletop terms, "environmental factors" was GM-speak for "I've placed something nasty here and you haven't rolled Perception yet." Chasms, unstable terrain, maybe a lair. The kind of thing a dungeon master mentioned casually before the party walked into an ambush.
Given that a hundred-year-old magical mushroom had been sitting there unmolested for a century, Ward wasn't all too surprised.
Chen Liu had bought a health potion. Rope. Rations. No weapon—he couldn't afford one, and he'd said he wasn't a combat cultivator anyway. His plan was to evade, not fight. Use the rope to manoeuvre, the Azure Mist movement arts to escape if things went wrong.
It wasn't a bad plan. Ward had seen worse character builds at the table. Players who dumped Constitution and then wondered why their wizard kept dying.
But Chen Liu wasn't a player. He was a person. A young man who'd bowed politely and called Ward "esteemed shopkeeper" and admitted he hadn't considered the possibility of guardians until Ward asked the right questions.
Proceeding with increased caution.
At least the questions had helped. Chen Liu was being careful. That was something.
Ward dismissed the window and lay back on the bed.
The ceiling was stone, like everything else. Unremarkable. Solid. It had probably looked exactly like this for however long Station 7 had been dormant—decades, centuries, he had no way of knowing.
He thought about his flat in London. The water stain on the ceiling that he'd been meaning to report to the landlord for three months. The pile of laundry he'd left on the chair. The stack of job applications he'd been drafting before the hike, each one more desperate than the last.
Senior Product Manager, 8 years experience. Made redundant due to restructuring. Available immediately.
Not available anymore, presumably. He wondered if anyone would notice he was gone. His hiking route was posted on the fridge, but he lived alone. No one would check the fridge until his rent came due. That gave him... three weeks? A month?
By then, the cave would have been searched. His car would have been towed. His flat would have been cleared out by whoever handled these things—the council, or a distant relative, or no one at all.
Ward, 34, disappeared while hiking. No body recovered. Case closed.
He closed his eyes.
Two customers out there, walking toward fates he couldn't control. A shopkeeper quest asking for seventy-five more gold. A food situation that was "classified" at his current access level. A system that answered questions with more questions and treated his survival as someone else's problem.
But he had a bed. And water. And tomorrow—there might be more customers.
The light through the small window was fading. Whatever passed for night in this dimension was approaching. Ward pulled the thin blanket over himself and stared at the darkening ceiling.
He'd survived one day.
That was something.