Kiara accepted the heavy glass bottles, her sharp eyes scanning the liquid before she securely tucked them into the deep pockets of her cargo pants to keep them safe.
She looked back up at Julien, her hand remaining stubbornly extended in the space between them, clearly waiting for the rest of the massive drop that was supposed to help them sell.
"Okay, five tier-one defensive consumables are a great starting sample," Kiara said, nodding approvingly at the high-quality craftsmanship of the glass.
"That will be absolutely perfect for a live demonstration to hook the desperate crowd and drive up the initial bidding price once we get there. Now, bring out the actual inventory items so we can pack up and get moving."
Julien stood there, his hands dropping awkwardly to his sides as the confident merchant persona he had been projecting completely crumbled into absolute dust right there on the dusty floorboards of the shop.
"That's... that's actually it," Julien muttered, taking a very deliberate step backwards just in case the genius teenager decided to strangle him.
"I gave a whole batch to Milana as a promotional sample to test the waters last week, and those five glass bottles are literally all that's left of our current stock."
Kiara froze instantly, the faint ambient noise of the street outside seeming to fade away completely as she stared at him with a mixture of profound disappointment and rising anger.
"You are telling me that you were planning to drag me down to a syndicate-run underground market with exactly five items?" Kiara asked, her voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm register that made Julien want to run and hide behind Chris.
"Boss, you aren't just failing at business; you are actively insulting the very concept of system efficiency. What else is in that catalogue of yours? Open your interface right now and read me the list of products you can actually pull from the nothingness."
Julien swallowed hard, immediately summoning the glowing gold interface of his Merchant class that bathed the shop in a warm, ethereal light. He scrolled past his empty bank balance, navigating to the expansive Tier 1 item registry that he usually ignored because he never had the funds to purchase the base stock to begin with.
"Alright, let's see," Julien read aloud, his eyes tracking the glowing golden text. "I have access to basic restorative health potions, minor mana regeneration elixirs, standard-issue iron daggers, reinforced leather gloves, and some low-grade stamina pills. It's a lot of highly useful survival gear, but I have to pay the system an upfront extraction cost in Credits to manifest them into reality."
Kiara pinched the bridge of her nose, letting out a long sigh that seemed to drain the youth right out of her.
"You have a dimensional shop connected to a limitless void, and you're running it like a children's lemonade stand. How much of this Tier 1 market have you actually unlocked? Is there a cap on the quantity you can summon?"
"I honestly don't know the exact limit," Julien admitted, gesturing helplessly to the golden screen floating in the air in front of him. "The system classification is literally called the 'Infinite Warehouse', so I am assuming the supply is exactly that, infinite, as long as I have the money to pay the fee."
Kiara's eyes widened a fraction, the sheer magnitude of that revelation hitting her brilliant brain like a runaway freight train, completely rewriting her entire understanding of supply and demand.
If his supply was truly infinite, they weren't just low-level merchants scraping by in the slums but undiscovered gods of the local economy, capable of entirely flooding the market and crashing competitor prices on a whim.
"Do you understand what you are holding?" Kiara whispered, her mind visibly racing through a thousand different business models in a matter of seconds.
"But we have a massive bottleneck right out of the gate. We need a huge sum of liquid capital to buy those products from your system before we can flip them in the Black Market at a premium, and you just told me back at the table that we are broke. We need an angel investor, and we need one right now."
She pulled a heavily cracked comms device from her pocket, her thumb flying across the shattered screen as she pulled up a specific encrypted contact.
"I'm calling my uncle," Kiara announced, pressing the device to her ear with a look of utter resignation.
"Wait, hold on a second," Julien interrupted, his brow furrowing in deep confusion.
"Didn't you tell us earlier that you absolutely hate your uncle and don't get along with him at all?"
"Oh, I despise the man with every fibre of my being," Kiara replied without missing a single beat, her lips curling into a hardened smirk.
"But he likes me. In fact, he thinks the sun shines directly out of my ass, and more importantly, he has exceptionally deep pockets."
Before Julien could question the morality of extorting a family member for startup capital, the call connected, and Kiara's entire demeanour shifted in the blink of an eye.
The gritty, tough-talking street delinquent vanished, instantly replaced by a sickeningly sweet, overly dramatic persona that made Chris physically cringe in discomfort.
"Hiiii, favourite uncle in the whole wide world!" Kiara chirped into the receiver, her voice practically dripping with fluff.
"Yeah, it's your absolute favourite niece. Listen, I know we haven't talked since that massive argument last month, but I am in a tiny bit of a situation here at a shop in District 9, and I desperately need a massive loan to start a completely legitimate business venture. Uh-huh. Yes, I promise it's perfectly legal this time. Look, just bring your chequebook and maybe your armor because this sector isn't exactly friendly. Don't be late, or I'm telling Mom you forgot my birthday again! Love you, bye!"
She ended the call abruptly, letting the sugary facade drop away instantly as she shoved the cracked phone back into her cargo pants with a disgusted shudder.
"Well, that was physically painful," Kiara muttered, crossing her arms and leaning back against the shop's front counter. "Now we wait. He said he'll be here in an hour, assuming his guild master lets him off his leash."
The next sixty minutes dragged by with agonising slowness, the heavy, oppressive atmosphere of the looming Red Gate hanging over the district like a suffocating blanket.
Chris spent the entire time nervously polishing his massive wooden shield, his eyes darting toward every shadow outside the window, while Alice floated in slow circles near the ceiling, occasionally complaining about the peeling wallpaper and lack of aesthetically pleasing decor.
Julien simply paced back and forth across the floorboards, his mind racing with terrifying thoughts of what Kane's syndicate enforcers would do if they showed up to the market without enough product to justify their existence.
Just as Julien was about to suggest they abandon the plan entirely, the low, powerful way of a high-end vehicle cut through the distant ambient noise of the sector.
A heavily armored transport vehicle that looked completely out of place in the grimy streets of District 9 rounded the corner, its massive tyres crunching over the broken glass and debris, before it smoothly pulled to a halt right outside the Apothecary's front window, and a figure stepped out.
He was dressed in top-tier, custom-fitted Hunter armor that practically hummed with contained magical energy, his entire presence screaming of wealth, power, and high-rank authority.
As the man stepped fully into the flickering overhead light of the apothecary, his familiar face was finally illuminated, causing a wave of absolute shock to crash over the party.
Julien's jaw dropped open, all the air rushing out of his lungs in a single, stunned breath, while Chris gripped his shield so tightly the wood actually groaned in protest.
Standing there, looking mildly annoyed but undeniably dangerous, was the very last person they ever expected to see answering a family distress call.
It was Blaze.