The building was large. Like it would take up an entire city block large. Why the hell was it so large???? Why did the system make everything bigger than was necessary??? Was it compensating for something because that was his only explanation for it! It just seemed completely unnecessary not to mention impractical!

  Perhaps in some ways he was overreacting but the building really was just that big. it probably stretched 50 or 60 stories high so it was more tall then wide but that didn’t take away from the fact that it was still pretty damn wide!

  He turned around to his small entourage of automaton guardians who were standing just behind him. “The E-grades can guard the perimeter of this building. The D-grade can follow me”

  All of them saluted and the smaller ones quickly started patrolling the building while the larger one stood faithfully behind him. “I don't suppose any of you have names do you?”

  “ We do not nor do we require them, if you wish to give us a name so you may better identify us then you may do so via the guardians tab.”

  “Seems kind of impersonal. Don't suppose you have any personal preference towards a name?”

  “ I am indifferent to such matters.”

  “Oh! Oh! I have an idea for a name! Let me name him!” Grey spoke enthusiastically in his head.

  “If I can't think of anything within a thousand years I'll let you name him.” He commented which earned a huff on her part. She likely realized this was his way of basically saying no. For if he was still alive and stuck with her after a thousand years. Then he would have more than enough incentive to kill himself by then.

  Seeing no need to continue this conversation he decided to actually enter the oversized building to figure out what he was working with exactly and how this building was supposed to operate as a shop. If he needed to hire people to actually buy things, well then he was screwed.

  The entrance led to what he could only describe as a grand hall. it was likely as wide and as tall as the entire building With a glass ceiling providing an abundance of natural light despite the height. The floors were of polished granite or a granite looking stone and massive decorative chandeliers hung from the glass ceiling.

  Despite the entire hall feeling like a rich man's wet dream, it was completely empty. No desks, no furniture, no people. However all along the walls were decorative wooden doors and he truly meant all along the walls. Even though the building was completely empty there were multiple staircases leading to multiple levels of balconies that ran along the entire buildings circumference. Every balcony seemed to have the exact same door every 20 Paces or so. He was half tempted to go on another rant about the system just copying and pasting everything but felt that would just be redundant at this point.

  “So, going to assume that these doors are what will lead to the system store?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine but only one way to find out.” He then turned to the D-grade automaton behind him. “Just wait here for a bit.”

  It saluted and Quill headed towards the closest door and opened it, revealing a large room with dim light from no particular origin. This surprised him since given the distance of the door to the outside of the building only really left room for the size of a small closet. So probably more system screwy stuff.

  Once he actually stepped inside and closed the door he got a system prompt.

  Welcome to the system store! Anything you wish to sell or buy will be met with guaranteed fairness. If you wish to put something on the auction be sure to clarify before putting it forward. The system takes 30% credits of everything you sell!

  You can set a price for your items or let the system set a price for you.

  Due to this system store being a D-rank building, you may buy items e-rank or below. Thank you and enjoy.

  Well that seemed incredibly unfair. What the fuck did the system even need credits for??? It was a good thing he wasn't here to sell stuff. For the hell of it though, he did take out an unranked sword from his large stash pile of miscellaneous weapons he had collected from the tutorial. When he put it forward he was promptly given the option to sell it for a grand total of 1 credit by the system assessment but could set a custom price if he wished too. He then tried to put it in an auction, whatever that was, but was given a system prompt telling him that he could not auction the item due to its low Rarity and quality.

  He threw the sword back into his storage ring since there was no point in trying to sell it and decided to look at what he could buy. A large system screen appeared in front of his face and he was promptly bombarded by a ton of information.

  It took a while to sort through and make sense of. If he was correct in his assumption, it turns out the system shop was where anybody in the whole Multiverse could buy and sell things from anybody else so long as they had access to a system shop building. Thankfully there was a sorting/search Tab and a search function so he wasn't just mindlessly going through a bunch of needless crap.

  First thing he did was search up anything that could have some kind of soul purging quality to them.

  “Really? That’s the first thing you are going to look up? Can’t even wait until after the stampede?”

  He ignored her as he began going through the long list of available stuff. Frowning at the price of everything that was offered. He had to guess that soul purging stuff was expensive, much to this annoyance.

  Everything E-grade worthy was too expensive, especially if he wanted to also buy other things so eventually decided to settle on some F-grade pill thing for a little over 30 thousand credits. This was more of a test than anything else. He proceeded to buy the pill and it appeared in his hand like it was nothing.

  “You know I really don’t think you ne-”

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Greys voice cut out when he popped the pill into his mouth and swallowed it. An odd sense of warmth he could not quite describe flowed through him and he waited. The silence seemed to hang in the air as she didn’t make a single noise…. Holy shit. Did it act-

  His thoughts were soon cut off from some light snickering followed by Grey speaking “OH NO!! An F grade soul purging pill!! My one weakness!! Oh the agony! The agony!! What a cruel, cruel world!! I’m melting! I’m melting!!!!”

  “Alright, alright, I get it. Didn’t think it would have worked anyways. Glad to know I am going to need something much stronger.” He grumbled

  He looked back at the system store while Grey continued her theatrics and went with putting some cooking utensils and some extra clothes into his “Shopping cart”. He didn't even want armor, just clothes. He also checked for food and was happily surprised that they sold a wide arrangement of things that he assumed was food. Admittedly he didn't know what any of that stuff was, and some of them just sounded made up like “Yinepal root. F-grade. 45 credits for an ounce.”

  All unranked food was being sold for one credit and seemed to be by the crate while G-rank food was getting sold with less quantity and between 1 to 15 credits. The pattern continued up to e grade and he had to assume it would continue past that as well if he could check.

  He wondered if there was a difference between the taste and for the hell of it bought a F-rank piece of fruit for 27 credits. There was a brief flash in front of him and a lumpy looking piece of fruit sat on the floor in front of him. It looked kind of like an apple, if an apple had a bunch of bumps around it. The thing didn’t look appetizing if he was being honest but he had already spent his money so and for a penny and for a pound.

  He picked the fruit up and tentatively took a bite of it. It then took every ounce of willpower after not to spend all of his credits on buying f-grade food. Words could not even describe how delicious this fruit was. Were e-grade Foods even better??? If there was any kind of motivation to get stronger it would definitely be to find out how delicious and S-grade food was.

  “An odd motivation but hey whatever works right?” Grey spoke out, seemingly done with her little performance.

  He just ignored her as he debated about getting some E-grade food but reluctantly decided against it. As tempting as it was he was pretty sure he would start spending way more credits than was necessary on food and would probably screw himself over in the long run.

  Instead he bought his cooking utensils and various sets of clothes all unranked. He wasn't sure how good the quality on G, F, and E were but probably far better than unranked. Still, it felt like an unnecessary purchase and he was a cheap bastard. Especially since he didn't know how much he would be spending on material.

  “You know you never did tell me what your plan was.”

  “Why would I need to tell you? I'm not hiding anything from you anymore so you should already know.”

  “Sure, but I still want you to talk to me.”

  He managed to resist sighing this time. “I am currently operating under the assumption that all the Buffalo will be coming back via the ridiculously long strip of land between the ocean and the e-grade zone. I intend to use my trap making abilities to make a very very long trap pathway that will hopefully take care of most of the Buffalo or at the very least make the buffalo decide it's no longer worth coming here.”

  “Ah! trying to go for that genocide achievement but with a more hands off approach I see. Still a shame that you didn't get something like that when you killed off all the roaches.”

  “ I will now also be making some non-lethal traps just so I don't get such an achievement, assuming it exists.”

  “Damn. I really need to watch what I say until you stop becoming such a party pooper.”

  He began going through the list of various things that he could buy that should work for trap making. Since the Buffalo were made of steel he figured pitfalls would be good and explosions could also be beneficial, both because of his skill and also because he just wanted things to go boom.

  He did briefly consider going with g-rank material but he felt like a F-rank would be a minimum requirement and while it was more expensive, he did think it would be a good idea. If for no other reason then he didn't want to make a bunch of useless traps that are only capable of pissing off the buffalo.

  It was a little interesting that most sellers he was buying from seemed to be anonymous, or perhaps the system store acted as a warehouse where people just sold it and it held on to the thing until somebody bought it.

  The auction pages of these stores were different and whatever was being listed had the person who was selling it name and the leading bidder of whatever item. However nothing really interested him in the auction area so he chose to ignore it.

  Once he had gotten about 10,000 credits worth of stuff Including some extra pairs of clothes and cooking utensils he confirmed his purchase and the room expanded before a quick flash of light and he had to take a couple of steps back for fear of the Mountain of stuff that had just appeared would topple onto his head.

  “ Man, you really lucked out with that storage ring of yours. probably should have bought those cooking utensils and clothes separately though as they are now likely buried within all of this stuff.”

  “Yeah, probably should have occurred to me.” He quickly started throwing everything into his storage ring with the plan to sort it later. He was actually surprised that the moment he started willing everything into said ring it all just disappeared despite the amount of stuff that was there

  Deciding to not question how he was able to throw it all in so easily, he looked inside the contents of his storage ring. It was actually starting to get a little full so he considered whether or not to throw some of its contents out and just sell them. He didn't think he had much need for all the jewels and coins that he collected from both the Roach King and Rat Kings hoard so threw all that out onto the floor. He then realized he still held a bunch of the cursed sins hands from the last one he killed so threw those on the floor too, wondering if he could sell that. He then threw the murderous seagull corpse, and bullet shark corpses that he had in his ring. With that over and done with he confirmed with the system to sell all

  Some items you are trying to sell cannot be sold via system store. Would you like to place them in auction?

  Well that was weird, he didn't even realize such a thing would happen. “Don't suppose you can tell me what items can't be sold by the store?”

  Hands of a cursed sin of gluttony cannot be sold via system store.

  He read the prompt and shrugged. He didn't see why that was the case but who knew with the system. Either way he decided to throw them into the auction as he would at least get one credit and he was mostly doing this just to free up space from a storage ring anyways.

  Set a time limit?

  He chose 8 days for the hell of it and in a quick flash of light, every item he had taken out was gone with Quill getting a small influx of a little over a one thousand for everything. Somehow he felt like he got cheated as he did drop a ton of stuff but that was also in line with the system and complaining wasn't going to get him anywhere.

  With all of that done, he left the room, ultimately happy about his purchase of the system store. He would likely have to make several more trips to continue buying various things but hopefully he would be able to create his mass hallway traps.

  When he stepped out of the room he spotted the D-grade automaton standing dutifully by the entrance.

  “Alright big guy. You are going to be coming with me, we have a lot to do and very little time to do it in.”

  The automaton didn't speak, merely saluted. But that was good enough for him.