Emily greeted them with a smile. She noted that Nikola was carrying his bottomless bag.
Her smile dimmed.
"You know, I need to sell stuff as well, not just buy," Emily said, even as Dimitri smiled his disarming smile at her.
The very same smile that could get Nikola to make him pancakes in the middle of the night.
"We have mana stones for sale. A lot of them," Nikola said, as he placed the bottomless bag on the counter. "And we don't have any idea to whom we can even sell them."
The shopkeeper nodded, opened the bottomless bag, and then pulled out a crystal.
"Good quality. For blessings," she said, as she placed the crystal on the counter.
Now, how was she supposed to tell them that even this crystal alone could empty her cash register?
"Look, I simply don't have enough money for it all. I can take just this one. I do need to have something in the cash register when a real customer comes!"
Dimitri nodded. But Nikola was not ready to give up.
"Do magical clothing exist?" Nikola asked. He had an idea how he could get the most of his money.
Timmy was small. The summer won't last forever.
He knew that the baby had to be protected from the elements.
"Yes, there are. I know a couple of seamstresses. Would you like their contact details?" Emily asked, thinking that she was let off the hook.
"No, actually, I would like to place an order through you. For baby clothes. And something for my family as well."
Emily's eyes lit up. Then she blinked.
"Did you adopt?" she didn't think that Dimitri and Nikola had known each other long enough to take this next big step.
"Timmy is a coffin birth," Dimitri told her, as he took out his wallet and showed her the baby's pictures.
"He has red hair!" Emily exclaimed, as she looked through the pictures. "And this tiny smile! I could eat the little joy!"
Nikola looked at Dimitri.
His silent question of whatever or not Emily really wanted to eat Timmy was answered with a shake of the head.
"Oh, if it's for the baby, I will be happy to help! Magical clothes are not cheap to make, though. I need at least twenty more of these crystals! The baby has to have animal onesies! He must!"
Nikola nodded, a bit relieved that he wouldn't be forced to go and search for the seamstresses by himself.
He fished twenty mana crystals.
But that didn't solve his main problem. He still had crates upon crates of the stuff.
"I would have gladly helped you," Emily said, as she opened the cash register and began to count the sum for the one mana crystal. "But this is a small business. You know, there is something you can do with the stones, though!"
Nikola smiled at that. Finally, a solution to his problems!
"You can grind them into dust and use them as fertilizer!"
"Wait, even a single one is worth a thousand dollars, and you say that we have to turn it into fertilizer? Won't I lose money?"
Emily shook her head, handing him the notes.
"No, look, if you make fertilizer out of it, even the most desolate landscapes will become gardens! People in the desert will pay an arm and a leg for something like that!"
"But the mortals will wonder where that bounty came from," Dimitri said, as he was looking around.
He saw a cat toy, which could even be used for babies.
Dimitri took it.
Emily sucked in a breath.
"You don't want that! Put it back before it imprints on you!" She hissed, as Dimitri hastily placed the toy on the shelf.
"Why even show it off, if you don't want to sell it?" Dimitri asked.
The lady sighed.
"Look, I would have loved to sell it, but the spirit of a man-eating puma is in there. I tried everything to get rid of it, but didn't manage. Just leave it where it is, ok?"
She turned to Nikola next.
"But I have something for you. You can have it for five mana crystals," which sounded a bit like a rip-off, but Nikola still nodded.
Emily went to the backroom. The two men could hear as she rummaged around, cursing under her breath.
"I don't like this," Dimitri said. "The last time, she had to get something from the backroom; I was cursed with a weakness to sunlight for a whole year."
"So, you got to be a real vampire?" Nikola teased.
Dimitri swatted him on the back.
"Something like that."
When Emily came back, she was holding a small chain with a very strange symbol on it.
It was a tree in a circle.
"You are a druid, right?" she asked. "This is a magical artifact passed down from druid to druid. It connects one with the World Tree!"
"Wait, that is no myth?" Nikola asked, as he took the necklace.
"Oh, it's not," he heard Tangra's voice next to his ear. The deity had been silent for the past couple of days. "But I wouldn't suggest speaking to the tree. It speaks with one word per minute."
"So, I shouldn't buy it?" Nikola thought, for he didn't want to appear insane in front of Emily.
"Sure. If nothing else, your spirit will be able to be restored to your body should someone kills you."
"I'll buy it!" Nikola said.
The system, something that had left him for quite a while as well, pinged:
"New Quest unlocked: Make the world green! Blame it on global warming! Accept? By the way, the answer is Yes!"
Nikola sighed. Of course, the system will wake up the second Tangra remembered he existed.
"Well, ok then," he clicked on the yes. "I just hope that no one minds the extra rain."
He placed the necklace around his neck. Only to hear voices in his head.
"It's too hot!"
"Water! I want water!"
"I… am…"
Nikola figured that the last voice, the slowest one, was the world tree.
He snapped his fingers. Storm clouds began to roll over the town for the first time in a month…