[Hearth Market now Available!]
Finn clapped his hand and a shit-eating grin graced his face. At the side, Pang nodded with a smile, similarly impressed.
Finn checked his stats to see how much he could use on it.
[Status]
Name: Finnick Altheus Solthar
Race: Human
Class: Innkeeper, Chef
Level: Dormant
Awakening Type: N/A
Affinity: Unknown
...
VITALS
HP: 100/100
Mana: 100/100
Stamina: 100/100
Wallet: 201 Gold
Hearth Points: 2150 Points
...
Skills:
Active: [Ingredient Scan] [Dish Analysis]
Passive: [Blade Proficiency - Growth Type (Lv 1)] [Monster Instinct]
[Strong Stomach] [Improved Palate] [Fire Resistance]
Condition: Normal]
Including the 100 gold and the several hundred points he earned from Syl, he now had more than 200 gold and more than 2000 Hearth Points to spend.
Although, he had experienced extreme poverty before so he did have some hoarder and miser tendencies.
He had a rule of keeping at least a month’s living expenses in savings. Since this world had a different currency, he just picked an arbitrary amount to leave 50 gold and 500 points behind, deciding on his budget like a proper adult.
He then headed to the living room, preparing tea before what he felt would be a long reading session. Tea had the image of being a ’smart person beverage’. Maybe he’d get the scholarly wisdom he needed for the long read.
He also had some snacks ready (hidden from Pang) in his space. When he made some for Syl, he naturally made them in batches.
Anyway, chewing something while studying was also said to help retain what you read. This was what he was doing.
Snacks after breakfast were purely for academic purposes, yes.
He opened the new icon and soon another magic circle of sorts appeared in front of him. His hazel eyes widened at the sheer amount of options.
There were six main tabs: [Inn Improvements], [Innkeeper Equipment], [Innkeeper Consumables], [Innkeeper Skill Scrolls], [Special], and [Sell].
Crunch
He looked at the Panda, who was now right next to the coffee table, his chonky paws grabbing his snacks.
"What can we sell?"
"Mostly the energy source of this world," he said, recalling Syl’s lectures. "So, for this place, it should be cores."
Finn nodded. "Oh, that’s good," he said. He was relieved he could sell something at least. Although the monsters were scary, it was still nice to know that what he had in abundance—i.e. Monsters—could be used to buy stuff (assuming he or the customers killed them, of course).
"Don’t be too happy to sell though. The buying price will be quite a bit lower than the core’s actual value."
Disappointing, but it made sense. It could probably sense that he had a lot of supply around, regardless of whether he could actually access the resource or not. By law of supply and demand, this meant he had a lot of the former.
Finn checked the [Sell] tab first. He’d needed to secure funds to buy much anyway. Regardless of whether he’d sell anything, it was good to know the value of what he had in case of emergencies.
To sell, according to Pang, one just had to hold the core and utter "sell". He didn’t have toughened cores anymore so he chose one of the awakened cores in his space.
[Estimated Value is below minimum transaction amount.]
He pursed his lips and added another core.
[Estimated Value is below minimum transaction amount.]
"..."
And another.
[Would you like to sell 3 x Awakened Essence Core for 1 Gold? Yes | No]
He pursed his lips and said ’no’, for now.
Anyway, he decided to go over the items first. He decided to familiarize himself with each tab. He wasn’t in a rush anyway. Cores were, for now, difficult to procure, and he didn’t want to undersell them. He had a feeling Pang wasn’t kidding when the Hearth Market bought cores for a much lower price.
The [Inn Improvement] tab sold a huge array of things. There were three subcategories: Furnishing, Food, and Farm. These would have things like furniture, appliances, food, recipes, and so on.
Under [Furniture], it sold things like sofas, rugs, tables, beds, double beds and the like. There was a note that he didn’t have purchase limits under this tab, not that Finn could afford to splurge on these items for now. He knew he would buy someday, however.
The rooms were effective, but when there was more than one person there, the effect would be divided amongst the occupants.
Since he could only build so many rooms, he wanted to have multi-bed rooms. To balance things out, he hoped to buy good furniture with some effects so that both occupants of the room could get good regeneration effects.
Anyway, the beds, sofas, and other things came in different sizes, shapes, appearances, and effects. Some had an aesthetic that would fit the inn, while others were just odd. He didn’t know much about the academe, but some of these looked like abstract art to him.
Under the furnitures’ descriptions, there were also indicators of how much Inn stat like comfort, ambiance, and cleanliness, the item would add to the inn.
Interestingly, similar furniture could give different stats. For instance, one sofa could add +2 comfort and +1 ambiance, while another could give +1 comfort and +3 ambiance.
There were also smaller and loose items that could add stats. For example, a colorful gaudy-looking vase could add +2 ambiance, while a rag could add a bit of comfort and also ambiance.
It was really interesting.
This was quite interesting and comforting to him. He had been wanting to get some of those Inn Functions, but they required a large amount of these stats. Regardless of whether he was buying now, it was a comfort to know where he could just buy them. It was nice to know the options were available as soon as he had enough money!
This was one of the joys of window shopping: the (illusion of) choice. And Finn was eating it all up.