ART Of Survival - Chapter 10

“I am worthy?” Mal said as the chunni thoughts from before started to surface in his mind once again.

*Slap* Mal slapped his cheeks harshly making Natalia startled, ‘Is this man a masochist’ she said inwardly and took a step back.

Unaware of what she was thinking, Mal himself was thinking about something else entirely and that was the old otaku nature of him that was just going to pop out of him, and he didn’t wanted to be like his old self.

“That was close” he murmured as he moved his focus towards Natalia who was looking at him with a look of disgust.

“Um…Miss Natalia, is something wrong?” Mal asked with an innocent face.

“Yes…everything…” She said in a low voice.

“Hmm?… Did you say something? I didn’t get you,” Mal asked

“No!… Nothing’s wrong” She said while smiling, but her eyes were not.

“I will sign the contract, but first I want to know everything about you and this shop and also how you are living here and no one’s aware about that?” Mal decided to sign the contract as everything in the contract was good for him and also after signing the contract, he wouldn’t have to worry about people stealing from him or scamming him, and he was a bit curious about the mysterious young-looking 5000-year-old loli, that’s why he put up a condition.

“Oh! It’s just that! that’s easy, would you like to hear about it now?” she asked him with a nonchalant expression.

“Is it okay to tell me? Aren’t you worried about me telling everyone about your shop?” Mal asked her questioningly.

“After signing the contract, a person with a brain will pray that no one gets to know about the shop and if you are a psychopath which possibly you are, even then you won’t be able to tell anyone as the contract will prohibit you from telling about the shopkeeper or the shop to anyone and yeah! Not anyone can find this shop,” Natalia said leaving Mal speechless, “I am a psychopath? How” he was questioning his life right now, but he was also relieved after hearing what she just said, as he himself didn’t wanted anyone to know about this shop.

A particular thing caught his attention in what Natalia just said, “Not anyone can find this shop…does that mean this shop is invisible or something?” Mal asked curiously.

“No, the shop is clearly visible from the outside, it’s just that this shop is not on earth.” She said while smiling mysteriously.

“Not on Earth? Does that mean I am outside our solar system?” He said outside the solar system and not outside the Earth because according to NASA is no other livable planet in the solar system except Earth.

“It’s not that simple, where you are standing is on Earth, yet not quite on earth, you don’t have to worry about these things for now at least as in the future these things will make a lot of sense to you,” Natalia said while shaking her head.

“Nevermind then, I won’t ask you these questions anymore, but you haven’t answered my question of ‘who are you?’” Mal said as looked at her with curiosity in his eyes.

*Sigh* “As I told you before, my name is Natalia and I am the shopkeeper of this shop.” Natalia moved her eyes away from him as she said this.

“You don’t want to tell me, do you?” seeing that she was not willing to tell him about anything else about her Mal said as he sighed. “Nevermind what I said just now, give me the contract I will read and sign it,” Mal said as he moved his hand forward, demanding Natalia to give him the contract.

“Who are we cave people? I need your ID tag, which you can find in your information panel, I will that mail you the contract,” she said with disdain in her eyes.

“There is such a feature in the palette? I didn’t know about it!” Mal tore a piece of paper from his drawing book and wrote down his ID tag on it.”There you go…” After giving the piece of paper to Natalia, Mal opened the ‘Pallette’ and start looking at it curiously, while also waiting for her to send him the contract.

*DING!* a notification bell rang inside Mal’s head which scared him for a second, but he quickly pulled himself back to reality and saw an exclamation mark on the thumb hole of his Pallette-styled information panel. Mal quickly opened the contract and started reading it. After some time, he let out a breath and looked towards Natalia curiously, which made her shudder.

“What!” She screamed while covering her non-existent chest.

Mal ignored her as he said “I want to ask you about something. It is said the contract between you and the shop and not Natalia, aren’t you also a part of the shop?”

“I am but at the same time I am not…” Natalia said softly.

“But then why?” Mal asked her again.

“Just like you, I have also signed a contract with this shop, but my contract was like a slave contract that bounds me as the caretaker of ‘Alchimia’ for 10000 years.” She bitterly smiled as she told Mal about her situation.

‘10000 years?!!’ This number was a nonsensically huge number for a mortal-like Mal.

‘I forgot, there are some races in the fantasy novels I used to read, they used to have some races who were capable of living for tens of thousands of years, maybe she is one of them?’ Mal thought but then he quickly shook his head, I don’t have anything to do with her, I should focus on what’s important.’

“Okay, I have signed your contract, now will you buy the herb?” Mal asked her with a hint of excitement in his eyes.

“Of course I will!” Natalia was also in a good mood as it was the first time in almost 2.5k years since she had last served someone in her store.

“You want to sell the sun-moon grass right?” she was back to her little girl’s demeanor.

“I have more of those and also some other herbs as well, please buy all of them,” Mal said as he took out all the herbs he had prepared to sell before coming to the hunter’s market.

“This…” Even someone like Natalia was stunned upon seeing such rare herbs on a low-level planet like earth. If it would have been another planet system, then she wouldn’t have reacted this way but this was different.

“The total for your herbs comes out to be 3 high tier ether crystals or 30000 middle-grade ether crystals. Would you like to cash everything out or you would like to barter it for some other things?

“….”