The marketplace was… a weird place.
In no other part of the city could any mortal feel… so out of place.
This entire place seemed like taken straight from a bygone era of cultivation restorationists.
The people on the streets, just by turning the corner, stopped dressing as one would expect and donned fleeting, ephemeral robes instead.
They wore long, traditional robes of martial artists and spiritualists, making it seem as if I stepped into a completely different world. But then, others opted for a more modern arrangement of their clothes, still following the restorationist vibe but with much comfier and more versatile cuts.
And the girls…
To say that this mystical world was filled with eye candy would be a gross understatement with just how much creative freedom some of the women took with their clothes… Or how the mere effect of handling mana made pretty much everyone on the street a whole league more beautiful than an average mortal.
Still, I wasn't here to gawk at women… even if their short-sleeved and pretty much skirtless haoris left very little to one's imagination.
I gulped my saliva down my throat, leaving the choice at the designated area by the district's edge before stepping into the world of mostly unknown.
Never before have I stepped inside of this world, barred by lack of any Qi of my own. But now, with a mere whisker of it at my fingertips, I could finally sort of step back into the past.
Yet, the very moment I crossed the border and stepped upon the paved road… The air grew thick, dense, and sticky. Just making a single step proved to be a great challenge…
Only for my body to get used to the new sensation within a few seconds, allowing me to regain a proper stride before I could celebrate stepping into this place by planting my face into the road.
'That was close…' I thought, taking a quick breath as I stabilized my steps before I could draw more unnecessary attention to myself. And yet…
And yet, I could notice quite a few who noticed… And then some who smirked.
This wasn't the look of mockery, only polite and opportunistic amusement… But even knowing that didn't make my pride hurt any less.
But I pressed on.
I was here for a reason, after all.
A short walk through the sparsely crowded streets later, I arrived at the doorstep of yet another shop, similarly hidden in the side alley as the one I visited just before. It was a small and dimly lit chamber filled to the roof with shelves… each, quite peculiarly, housing only a single item.
'I know I should be the last person to judge,' I gulped my saliva as I moved my eyes over artifacts of all sorts, most of them alike to what I would expect from a movie prop. 'But isn't this one hell of an inefficient way to store or even display stuff?' I thought, raising my eyes up to the upper shelves of the room, ones even I could only reach with some sort of stool or ladder.
"Hi," deeper from within the shop, hidden behind two further layers of the shelves, hid the clerk of the place. And as I walked across the labyrinth of shelves, a lovely-looking girl in thick glasses looked up from behind her counter.
She rested the side of her head against her hand while keeping her elbow on the fancily decorated wooden desk, allowing her hazelnut-colored, long hair to fall down one side of her face, exposing the entirety of her cheek and ear.
In spite of her lazy pose, the girl's eyes were filled with sparks of curiosity as her lips perked up into a small, mischievous smirk.
"What can I help you with?"
I took a deep breath… Before forcing myself back into the same mindset I developed while constantly smashing my fists against the wood of the practice target. A mindset that I hoped to use to meditate, only to fail for five years long.
Still, in this state, I could easily cut any distractions, be it fear, boredom, pain, or… awkwardness over how to approach a girl so comfortably cute and radiating such easygoing warmth, she couldn't be called anything else but outright beautiful.
"I need six Spircur crystals, two stacks of spiritual essence, and a selection of basic crystals," I recounted the list that I'd committed to my memory moments prior to entering the shop.
"That's…" the clerk's eyebrows jumped up her forehead. Then, a look of certain, awkward uneasiness appeared in her eyes as she suddenly grew more serious. "I'm only estimating here, but it won't come short of three thousand Esecs, you know?"
The clerk raised up and assumed a formal position on her chair.
"Yeah, as long as I don't go above four thousand, I should be okay," I replied with a shrug of my shoulders.
Just like I could sense the overwhelmingly thick aura of the mana of this clerk… She likely could tell how I merely reached the minimum necessary to even step into the world of cultivators. And someone at my age with the pitiful amount of Qi I've gathered… Didn't seem like someone ready to splurge so much!
After all, cultivation was an extremely costly hobby!
"Four thousand…" The look on the girl's face mellowed down a little as her eyes lost their focus, making her seem as if she was lost in her thoughts.
Then, the clerk's full lips curved up in a slight smile.
"I think I can do that, give me a moment."
Rushing up from behind her desk, the girl dove between the shelves, collecting all of the requested materials as quickly as she did gracefully, all the while giving me one hell of a show of her clothes.
It was by no means provocative or even slightly erotic in nature.
The show was strictly all about just… her presence.
The way her brown-red robes fluttered on the stale air of the shop, how every step she made somehow appeared profound and full of innate wisdom…
'It's like observing some sort of fairy,' I thought, enchanted by the sight…
Only for the cute clerk to suddenly materialize right before my eyes with a comically huge stack of boxes stacked from her arms all the way above her head.
Clearly struggling, the girl took another step… before dropping the boxed merchandise down on the counter and heaving a deep breath.
"Just when did you…" I couldn't help but mutter, taken aback by how, in a single instant, she went from gracefully checking some tags on some shelves to suddenly carrying a huge load of boxes!
"Did you like it?" Raising her slightly sweaty face, the clerk smirked as I twitched.
"Huh?" I could only take a step back.
There was a limit to how long my well-practiced sense of calm could hold against such an assault!
"My clothes!" The girl let out a sweet, innocent bout of laugh that quickly devolved into a friendly snicker as she hid her lips behind her hand. She then raised her face and then her arms, as if to show off the fancy robe that seemed to mysteriously bend the space around it now that I took a closer look.
"You see, the world of magicrafting can be really fun…" The clerk's eyes suddenly gained an extremely distant look as her smile faded and her hands started to quickly unpack the boxes and bring out just a few pieces from each of them.
For a moment, the girl's face remained blank, strangely contrasting the vibrancy of her clothes. Before long, however, her lips perked up again as she forced out a small, almost pleading smile.
"So even if you fail, just don't give up, okay?"
I squinted my eyes a bit, more in confusion than in shock.
'Just what is this pleading look in her eyes?!'
For a moment, this remained but a mystery.
But then, the clerk's face devolved into a much less profound and much more honest look of silent but not absolute desperation.
Just the level of it that would make someone do things they never would have considered doing before but not strong enough to make them do things they would consider unthinkable.
And then, it dawned upon me.
I've already seen that look… And it was on the face of the shop owner of my past part-time job when the big franchise of small, local groceries took over the area and then outright bought out his shop.
"Because if I do, your sales will remain as bad as they are, I guess?" I somehow found myself daring enough to ask.
In return, the girl slowly raised her suddenly tired eyes up from where she somehow ended up planting her face against the counter.
Rather than replying, though, she simply looked away with a hurt look on her face.
And again, right at this moment, it dawned on me.
This wasn't some sort of immortal jade beauty who ushered me in her grace… But a young shopkeeper, either a part-timer or someone who inherited the business, desperate as she was forced to watch her source of livelihood… collapse.
'In all honesty, I can sympathize.'
While this girl had to watch her shop crumble due to the unforgiving reality, I had to watch the same happen to my life.'
I shook my head a bit.
"I wouldn't splurge so much if I planned for it to all go to waste," I shook my head before forcing a small smile on my lips. "And on that note, would you mind if I came by later to ask your opinion on something I want to make?" I shot my shot, eager to possibly gain contact with someone who could take a look at my creation and judge its validity within the reality of the world I only knew so little about.
"Huh?"
My words finally broke the girl free from her momentary state of depression.
"I can't say for sure if it will be any good and it will take me some time to earn enough to shop here…"
"It's fine," a small part of the lights from before reignited in the girl's eyes. And as she produced a small, strangely restrained smile, I could feel yet another source of motivation root the idea of crafting into my soul. "I will be looking forward to your next visit, then," she said with a smile…
All the while producing a terminal from below her counter, using just one hand to type something on it before passing it over to me.
"That will be three thousand, eight-hundred and fifty Esecs," she properly conveyed the price before putting a wide and perfectly professional smile on her face. "Would you like to pay with cash or a card?"