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"I mean... Thank you?" I muttered.

Not really sure how I was supposed to respond to her tirade; I opted for the answer as random as her litany of insults was random for me.

"What the hell are you thanking...!" The girl sharply turned her head my way and threw me a furious glance, only for her face to freeze as some sort of enlightenment flashed in her eyes. "Don\'t tell me, are you into humiliation or something?"

From the total shock, confusion, and agitation, the shopkeeper\'s face turned into one of apprehension.

"Huh?" I leaned my head over to the side. "What makes you think so?" I refuted before shaking my head. "But yeah, I\'m not. It\'s just..."

I shook my head again.

"Judging from your reaction, I did something really... bad?" I raised my eyebrow while allowing a hint of confusion on my face. "So, for stopping me and then hiding me in this shop, I want to thank you. But, on that point," I crossed my arms over my chest, "would you care to elaborate on what I did that upset you so much, miss?"

For a moment, the girl stared right into my face before heaving a deep, long sigh and then resting her elbows against the counter before hiding her weary face in her palms.

"Where do I even begin?" the girl wailed, her voice slightly muffled now that it had to conquer not only the air between us but also the embargo established by her hands.

"Okay, let\'s do this," the girl said as she lowered her hands and raised her already tired face. "First off, I\'m going to give you a tiny bit of a leeway. Judging by your..."

The girl raised her eyes to my face... Only to freeze for a second before gulping her saliva down.

"Okay, nevermind, that\'s going to be another point... But yeah, first, judging by the quantity of your mana when you visited before, I guess you are not unionized a guild, right?" she asked while raising her eyes to my face again as if to confirm the answer through my expression.

And, in the kindness of my heart, I opted to make this job easier for her by shaking my head sideways.

"I\'ve heard about cultivation guilds before, but unionizing..." I shook my head. "I can only associate this world with the workplace unions or something..."

"As I thought," the clerk sighed as if my answer perfectly filled the shape of what she expected it to be. "That\'s why, at least for now, I need you to just trust my word and refuse invitations to any guilds that happen to approach you. I don\'t care for the reason, just... don\'t sign any papers or anything, okay?"

Feeling the girl\'s burning stare on my face... I gulped all my embarrassment down my throat along with my spit.

\'Is this how popular guys feel?\' I thought, trying to turn my shyness and lack of ability to socialize a bit more bearable with an innocent joke like this.

"Aren\'t you going to explain everything to me before letting me go out anyway?" I still countered the girl\'s request. "Judging from how you framed it, you are going to explain this request of yours, just not now but at the end of your lecture, right?"

"R-right..." somewhat shaken, the girl blinked her eyes a few times before hanging her head on her hands as she lowered it over the counter. "Sorry, I\'m tired and I\'ve never expected this to happen, so I might not be thinking exactly straight..."

The young shopkeeper took a few breaths to calm herself down and regain some of her non-agitation-borne vigor.

"Okay, moving on," she said as she raised her face again before giving me an intense stare with those lovely, brown eyes of hers. "First thing first, combining science and cultivation, even in such simple and outright crude form..."

\'Shots fired...\' I thought as her honest words cut into my soul.

Sure, I knew that the creation I made with my own efforts was anything but nice and tidy or even well-made... But knowing it and hearing someone give it to me so straight were two different matters altogether!

"... is something akin to breaking the taboo. If any of the traditionalists were to see you with it..."

The girl only shook her head.

But I wasn\'t an idiot. Just her grim expression and her pressing her lips into an extremely thin line were enough of an elaboration on the consequences of such an event happening.

"On the other hand, if anyone unassociated with the traditionalist were to see it..."

This time, the clerk\'s expression wasn\'t as grim, but more like... screaming \'unfortunate\'?

"They would steal the concept?" I attempted to guess, only to have the clerk nod her beautiful head to confirm it.

Both of her concerns regarding my creation were... perfectly valid. And, while my knowledge about the world of cultivation was pretty limited to what was well established in the common media... What I\'ve just learned aligned with said common knowledge pretty damn well.

But...

Yeah, there was always some sort of but. And in this situation, it was staring me dead in the face, begging to be touched upon.

"But what\'s your end in warning me about all of this?" I asked outright.

Sure, some could say it would be smart to push this topic for later, pretend I didn\'t notice it for now, and try to squeeze the answer to it without revealing my intentions or suspicions...

But I wasn\'t that kind of a complex, plotting man.

Years of slamming my fists into a block of wood taught me how to be straightforward and consistent, not shady and scheming!

"I..." the clerk hesitated for a second, her face twisting as she looked away while a look of uncertainty flashed in her expression.

She then sighed out before slumping over her counter.

"Back a few years ago, I thought about bridging science and cultivation too, you know?" the girl asked, a vivid sense of nostalgia and regret appearing on her face, only to vanish as she refocused her eyes back on my face literally the very next second.

"But my hands..." the clerk said as she raised her arms from the counter and stared at her perfectly fine, smooth hands, free of any sort of calluses that would indicate extensive training.

Those hands... were the complete opposite of my own hands, fully covered in marks left after five years of extensive training.

"Those hands of mine are great at wielding sword or drawing formations, but when it comes to crafting something precise..." she shook her head before forcing a small smile on her lips.

"That, and by the time I realized what was going on, I was already affiliated with a traditionalist guild that would break my whole cultivation and make me into a banite if I ever dared to break the taboo with my own, incompetent hands."

I squinted my eyes, finally able to make sense of why this girl reacted the way she did when she saw me come in with the device I\'d crafted.

With those squinted eyes of mine, I saw the forced smile on the clerk\'s face soften up and turn into a slight but true smile.

"And that\'s exactly where you come in," the girl threw, only for her cheeks to suddenly cover with blush. "On that note, what\'s your name again?"