Birth Of The Crafts-God

After the call with Kelvin, Lucas made the decision to officially fire him and the system revoked its privileges to Kelvin. Unfortunately, the latter wouldn't even be aware of this and Lucas had not notified him of them in the first place.

Originally, Kelvin would have found out on his own about the system skills, as long as he got into trouble within the store. However, there was no incident that had occurred warranting that. Even the event with the extremists had ended with Lucas interfering at the last moment.

As such, Kelvin had no knowledge of the power he held. Nonetheless, it didn't matter at the moment.

After removing Kelvin, there was now one free slot out of two on this employee page. Melissa was registered as an employee within the store simply for her safety. Speaking of Melissa, she was still in the Mertens family's custody, but Lucas had made a phone call and asked for hed to be sent over the next day.

The next day came around, and Lucas had a visitor to his store. Just as he had expected, it was the Mertens family, or to be specific, Vergil, who showed up.

"Yo~" Vergil smiled as he stood at the front door.

"Look what I got you."

Melissa, who was being held by Vergil, dashed towards Lucas almost immediately.

"Big brother!"

Melissa hugged Lucas tightly as she wept.

"You're safe now. No need to be scared again." Lucas hugged her back and patted her back in an attempt to calm her down.

"Please, don't leave me again." Melissa muttered.

Lucas felt his heart break from those words. Although the situation wasn't exactly his fault, Lucas felt miserable that he wasn't able to take care of the little girl even though he had promised to do so. Seeing her like this wrecked him, and he felt guilty for everything.

"I won't. I promise."

At first, Vergil wanted to have a small conversation with Lucas, but seeing the reunion between the two, he decided against it.

"Well, I'll be leaving you guys now." Vergil closed the door and walked out of the store. He might be a playboy, but that didn't mean he had a low EQ [1].

After a short while, Lucas noticed that Melissa had fallen asleep in his arms and he couldn't help but sigh. Although he was confident that the Mertens family wouldn't treat her badly, it was most likely that Melissa was restless and depressed throughout her stay there. Having lost her memories after a severe traumatic experience, she still developed disorders from the event. As such, Melissa found it difficult to adapt to other places or relate with other people. She could only trust Lucas, who had been with her ever since then.

'I guess I'll postpone our departure a bit.' Lucas thought as he carried the little girl to her room.

"System, what do you think of my idea?" Lucas asked the system.

It was the first time he had spoken to the system since he was released.

Truth be told, Lucas still had negative feelings towards the system for what it had done back at the Mertens family estate. Despite the fact that the system stated it was for his own good, Lucas disagreed with it.

"Host's idea has been judged to have a high success rate, however, the status of the main store cannot be changed."

Lucas raised an eyebrow at the statement, but was unbothered nonetheless. If anything, this was good as it would give him a return path back to the city.

"What if they try to force their way in once I'm gone?"

"Host underestimates the system's defence mechanism. Even a Sage has no way of forcing their way in, so the host needs not worry."

A Sage was someone two stages ahead of the Apertures Opening stage. The Sage realm was also known as the Moon Walker realm because at this level, it was possible for one to survive for a very long time in space even without oxygen or food. Individuals at this level could utilise rules on a planetary level.

What this meant was that Moon Walkers could manipulate a planet's gravity or even exhibit gravity on a planetary scale, can create super typhoons or even super volcanic eruptions, and so on. Of course, their powers or effects would differ depending on the innate superpower they unlocked after the tenth level of the Apertures Opening stage.

For instance, suppose one's superpower was frost, they could easily recreate the ice age and freeze an entire planet with a wave of their hand. If they were even stronger as a Moon Walker, they could create an ice planet. However, their abilities were limited to planetary levels and physics. In other words, the Moon Walker with a frost ability would be unable to freeze time.

Nonetheless, as long as they could break to the next stage, Star Lord, freezing time wouldn't be a problem, but that was very difficult. A star lord was essentially the ruler of a star region, and a star region would have anywhere from at least twenty (20) solar systems to ninety (90) solar systems.

Since the system assured Lucas that not even a Sage could break through the store's door, he wasn't worried about anything.

A few hours later, Lucas, with Melissa who has already woken up, walked into the work-station. It was time for them to leave Baylands City.

Prior to this, Lucas has already designated one of the buildings he has bought to be the new store branch using his Branch Manager system skill. Together with the current store, theg were the two branches of the Seven Sparks Forge store. However, to prevent being discovered, Lucas had it named as something else, and the system had no problem with this.

The Branch Manager system skill had an auxiliary skill called Branch Travel, which could allow the host as well as the employees of the store to move between branches through a teleportation point.

To the skill, distance was not a barrier as long as the destination was a branch store. However, while Lucas could open a branch on another planet, he didn't know much about this world yet. As such, it would be quite reckless to move to a different planet. But there was also another reason for not wanting to relocate so far. It was because Lucas planned to make his comeback eventually and pay back all the forces who forced him to run.

Lucas wasn't a nice man, and was someone who rewarded his foes in a more vicious way. Just from how he dealt with his opponents during his fights, one could see how ruthless Lucas was to his enemies. It would be a lie to say he didn't bear a grudge to the top factions of Baylands City. Hence, he has to stay close and plot against them.

Inside the work-station, a new door appeared just like with the system shop. When Lucas opened the door, a mysterious black-white wormhole appeared befofe them. It looked somewhat terrifying and mystifying, yet alluring and peaceful. It was a strange feeling, but Lucas didn't think much about it. Instead, he could vaguely spot some strange runes and inscriptions within the portal.

Lucas tried to comprehend those runes as he felt it would be valuable to him, but he failed to even sense then clearly.

"Where are we going?"

Although she was young, it didn't mean that Melissa wasn't smart. She could faintly sense that they were going somewhere far away and might not come back soon. She wasn't bothered about that though, as long as she was with her brother.

"Somewhere far away. Just for a while."

Right after that, Lucas held her by the hand and they stepped into the wormhole.