"Miss Aelia" Back at Michael's house, Raylene was trying to wake up Gaya.
Gaya would always stuff her belly with the food she put in Michael's kitchen but when Raylene saw the food she left last night untouched, she became worried.
She put the breakfast on the table and gently shook Gaya's shoulder to wake her up.
"Wake up, sleepyhead sister" Cindy also accompanied her mother to see Ghost and Gaya. Seeing Gaya was snoring and refusing to wake up, the little girl giggled.
After a few seconds, Gaya's senses picked up the aroma of the breakfast as her nose twitched. Slowly she opened her eyes to see Raylene and the tiny human standing before her.
"Goodmorning Miss Aelia"
"Goodmorning Sister"
Both mother and daughter greeted her while Gaya stretched out her limbs.
"Where is big brother Ghost?" Cindy curiously gawked at Michael's room but when Gaya heard his name, she became annoyed and angered.
"That bastard went whoring, tiny human"
"Miss Aelia!" Raylene immediately covered Cindy's ears. The little girl tilted her head and stared at both of them confused.
"What? She's gonna turn big one day"
"She's still little to know those things, Miss Aelia" Raylene said and looked at Cindy
"Cindy go play with the others"
"Okey-dokey" Cindy laughed and hopped outside happily.
"What happened Miss Aelia? you seem upset" Raylene knew although Gaya had a cold demeanor, she was a warm person inside. It was not like her to scold Michael in front of Cindy and go to sleep without licking the bowls clean.
"Am I jealous? Why am I feeling like this?" ever since she saw Michael and Sadie kissing on the wall, she lost her appetite and was feeling frustrated for some reason.
"That bastard can bang whoever he wants, I don't care" She consoled herself and decided to direct her focus on the delicious breakfast before her.
Raylene was a teenager and a girl like her before and she could somehow tell what's going on inside her mind. However, she remained silent because deep down Raylene knew a mortal girl like Aelia had no chance with a Prodigy like Ghost. She didn't want to fan the feelings inside Aelia's hearts with her words and gave her any wrong ideas.
She was not eating her with her usual speed but still, she kept stuffing her mouth.
"I'll leave you to it" Raylene gave her some space and left the house leaving Gaya with her food.
******************
"See you later" Michael waved off Sadie and stepped out of the house he occupied for the night. Compared to the first time he came here, now River town seemed less crowded because of the Netherel attack. But he could see many people coming back to the town while he was taking a stroll through the streets.
"Master Ghost"
"Greetings Young Master Ghost"
The people on the streets quickly smiled and greeted him. He smiled back and gave a small nod towards them and continued his morning walk.
Before he started the attack on Netherel, some of the Netherels attacked a few buildings and left them in ruins. One of the destroyed buildings was the tavern he stayed in before.
As a citizen of earth, he knew River town is now in for taking and every destroyed building of the town is free real estate. Particularly he had his eyes on the tavern building. For some time he was planning to open up a restaurant chain and make Raylene his head chef. The grocery items needed to run the restaurant were not expensive in the System store and after the upgrade, he had seed packs for a cheaper price. Buying the seed pack and farming the vegetables needed for the restaurant was more plausible than him supplying the vegetables every single day. Even if he bought the vegetables in bulk, they wouldn't be fresh after a few days and freshness was very crucial to run a successful restaurant.
The meat was a whole other matter. The meat he was giving Raylene to cook had Arch Energy infused in the molecular level by the System. However, if he bought the meat from outside, the taste would not be as good as the meat from the System.
If he wanted to control his world from the shadows, he needed money, and businesses like these are a great way to get a stable revenue. Ever since he came to this world with the system, he never forgot to ask himself the question 'What if the system went offline?'
He didn't want to depend on the system too much and in his mind, the next best thing after the System was money. So he planned to invest his money to make more money.
If the system really went offline, it would indeed be a huge blowback from him but with enough wealth, he could survive and continue his path to reach Immortality.
"What should I do for the meat situation?" he kept thinking and walking towards the tavern. He knew the System would have an expensive way to solve this issue but before he asked the system, he picked his mind searching for an Alchemical solution.
After a few minutes of thinking, he came up with the potion to solve this issue but he decided not to go with the potion because it required him to set up an animal farm, growing rare herbs, and search for various ingredients that were hard to get.
"Hey snakey" Just as he was about to ask, he realized she's not with him.
"I do miss that haughty snake it seems" Michael chuckled and continued his walk.
He desired to ask Gaya if there's a way to keep the meat fresh for some time. Considering this world had Arch Energy and many other things that wouldn't have existed back on earth, he wanted to find a replacement for the Refrigerator.
Moments like these made Michael get mad at Abras because Abras had very limited knowledge in stuff like this. He was a very naive youngster who lived a simple peaceful life until the princess betrayed him.
[The system does have a solution for the host's problem] Suddenly Michael heard the system's voice inside his head without even opening the system interface.
"Oh? What is it?"
[System Store Refrigerator, it will keep the raw ingredients and food fresh for two months] In the beginning, Michael would be excited to get a solution from the system but now, he always looked at the system cautiously as he didn't want to fall for any traps.
"How much is it?"
[Just 99,999 badass points only]
The system's reply halted his steps and made him grit his teeth in frustration at the system. Then he took some deep breaths
"System, with enough badass points you can do anything right?"
[Of Course Host] the system exclaimed with a tint of pride in its voice.
"Then one day I'll make you take a physical form and beat your ass down"
[Don't be rude Host!] the system went silent like it was mad at Michael and didn't speak with him.
Eventually, he came in front of the tavern which was now turned into a ruin by the Netherel attack. Before it was a two-story building where the ground floor used to be the tavern and the upper floor was allocated for guests to stay the night. Not the upper floor of the building was completely crushed and the ground floor was missing a wall on the side.
Most of the tables and chairs were missing as probably the robbers salvaged the place.
"Young Master Ghost?" While he was standing before the building, someone said his name and he turned back to see a girl running to him.
He remembered this golden hair girl as the waitress who served him when he was here.
Michael could tell the girl was crying by noticing her puffy eyes.
"Your name... Gloria is it?" Michael remembered her name. The girl was surprised as she nodded.
"Young Master Ghost still remembers me" Even the onlookers who were staring at Michael from a distance were shocked. No Prodigy or a celebrity of Bredia had remembered the name of a commoner before yet, he recalled the name of a waitress like Gloria.
She felt honored and the image of him in many people's hearts grew bigger.
"Young Master Ghost, as you can see the Lucky cat tavern is no more. The next tavern is in Bredia a few hours walking distance from here" He was not a hero who would go save every person in need of help but in this case, Gloria was in luck as he had planned to buy this place.
"Who is the owner of this place and where is he now?" Gloria didn't know what his intentions were as she answered truthfully.
"A couple of rogue Netherels killed him, Young Master Ghost. Poor Bass tried to chase away the Netherels and defined this place, but he didn't stand a chance against those vile creatures."
"What are you going to do for a living now?" Michael asked. In his life, he had some moral codes and he ulstrictly followed them. One of them was, never to help those who don't need help or don't want to be helped and, never to help those who don't appreciate the help, ever.
"I...don't know, Young Master Ghost" he knew no idea about her future was the reason for her puffy eyes and probably she has a family that solely depends on her.
"Then if I want to buy this place, who should I visit?"