Mage And Wolf
Chapter 239

Chapter 239: Chapter 239

"You can cast the creation spell?" The male shopkeeper asks incredulously.

"Of course I can, I cast the originals in Arcana, so there’s no reason I couldn’t create a small one for your shop." Karl tells him casually.

"But at what price?" The Junior Priestess asks the important questions.

"Loyalty to the Dragon Gods. I am going to set a lock on the spell so one of you are required to operate it and it will dissipate if moved from the location you pick. As long as all is normal, your shop can be fully stocked every morning, but if you’re attacked or others are attempting to steal it, it can be easily deactivated to prevent theft." Karl says.

"We have a stock shelf in the back where we receive deliveries. It is heavy and doesn’t easily move, but it’s not bolted down. If we put the spell there it won’t draw attention." The White Dragon Priestess says helpfully.

"Normally I’d say a lot about fair pricing and not playing favorites, but you should have learned all that during your clergy training. What does your store usually sell?" I ask as Karl turns to look over the shelf intended to receive the spell.

"Mostly groceries, but we’re a general goods store. See there we’ve got paper and school supplies, dishes, canned food, cloth, Chain, rope, nails, a few tools."

It looks like they really do have a bit of everything in here, they just had a display of produce out front because it is the big seller and can be hard to find in town. Karl has started on the spell already, causing repeated flashes of light as he adds products to the layers in the creation spell. He’s really adding a lot of stuff, or it takes multiple casts per item, but twenty minutes later he’s finished and Karl hands over a handwritten list to the shop owners.

The list appears to be a flyer, or product list. The heading reads "Luther’s Merchantile, est’d 1846" and there are no prices, just a list of items. At the bottom are a bunch of vegetables and meat cuts listed in Karl’s own handwriting.

"That’s everything I put in the spell. At the time I was born that was the only general store in town, and it carried everything people really needed. Back then we grew our own gardens and the town had a butcher and a baker, so I added those things to the list for you." He smiles fondly at the list.

Luther is his family name, so that store was likely run by his parents or grandparents before he decided to run off and be a mage instead of taking over the store. Unless he has other brothers he’s never mentioned.

They pore over the list, nodding their heads at the selection of goods before looking up with questions. "Can this spell seriously make an entire cured ham quarter?" The priest giggles.

"A bit outdated, with refrigerators existing, but it makes an excellent sandwich meat, so I kept it in the list.

"You can also do flour, salt, sugar, potatoes and onions in fifty pound bags. People used to stock up in the fall because it was hard to get around in winter. We didn’t start getting good roads until after the second world War." He adds, pointing to the lists.

"I know cultivators live longer, and my wife has been encouraging me to try, but it really hits home when a man in the young side of middle aged speaks about road construction in the fifties as a childhood memory." The man says, shaking his head.

I take a closer look at his energy circulation and see nothing stopping him but a lack of motivation. He might not be the strongest cultivator, but given thirty or forty years he should make core formation and extend his life span enough to give himself a couple centuries to try for Immortality.

I learned a good basic cultivation technique for humans in the Divine Realm, all the strongest slaves and mortal servants were using it to scrounge what they could from a world lacking in the sorts of energy they could cultivate. I start to circulate the technique through his body in the correct pattern until it forms a steady route.

"Feel that flow? Keep the energy moving in that pattern. Yes, like that." I encourage the shocked man until he’s got the hang of it.

"Keep doing that to gather energy and temper your body through the initial stages. Your wife can teach you to meditate. Work hard at that and you’ll have a long life."

While he works on that, the Priestess has returned to the front of the store to prepare for customers. She is looking over the many bare shelves with the list in hand, planning how to integrate the new items with her existing stock. Karl is more proactive, he’s fed a core that looks suspiciously human to the spell and he’s got a cart full of housewares that he’s setting out on the table in front of the cashier.

Then he brings an entire pallet of flour and sugar to the back wall, followed by a larger one of potatoes. He’s hanging cured ham behind the counter in the wall when the intensely focused cleric notices that he’s reorganizing her store.

""Wait, stop. I don’t know what’s where or what to charge for these new things." She complains and Karl returns with an assortment of tools.

"I really don’t see how that’s my problem." Karl says, putting tools on counters with the larger ones leaned against the wall.

A few minutes later he’s got the whole store reorganized to his liking and he takes the sheet in her hand and turns it to the left.

"The list is written by location. Price things at what the White Dragon thinks is reasonable. If you talk to the cathedral in Arcana they’ll send you your allowance to do charity work, just take it in monster cores." In his mind, that has clearly solved every concern she might have and he goes into the back to make coffee.

Now available from the spell by the pound or ten.

A young boy comes in with a token that looks like the red 5 dollar casino chips from Nevada. He stops to stare around in amazement before gathering his wits.

"I got a tip today at work and I wanted to get stuff for Marissa from the Orphanage to make a treat." The boy says.