The Chained Watcher

Backstory: Mysterious Shopkeep pt 3

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Letting the latest group of weirdos leave his shop with their new magic items, Xelqua assesses his remaining stock of failed experiments and otherwise useless items, finding it nicely depleted from its previous excess.

Although, as much as he needed to empty out his storage rooms, and as entertaining as these Heroes can be, he's grown rather tired of encountering them after interacting with so many over such a short length of time. Why, he usually doesn't see one even in a thousand years! And yes, some of that may be due to his own reclusive nature, but even he has to go out to restock his supplies every once in a while.

Ah, if only he could just hook up his monoliths to transmit their loot to his retreat on their own...

He sighs. No, he chose not to do that on purpose. Every entry point is another potential weakness to be exploited, and with how much his monoliths ruffle the Listeners' feathers, a direct teleportation link to his retreat is much too easy to trace. He'll just have to keep doing loot runs every now and then to collect his profits.

Now then, should he do one last randomization of his door's location? Hero luck ought to only bring them here if he has something they want, so being a bit low on swords shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, let's do it.

Laying a hand on the door, Xelqua sends a flick of magic through the enchantment to disconnect it from its current location, giving it a few seconds to reset before pushing a much larger quantity into it in a steady stream, activating the main part of the enchantment. It's pretty fun to try to guess how far from the shop's physical location it's going. After all, more magic doesn't always mean farther distance. It just means the 'interesting occurrence' it finds is less luck-warping. Less interesting, basically.

The time it takes to settle is a bit faster than average. So either a Hero got summoned nearby, or he's found something rather interesting. He smiles. The interesting ones are much less likely to annoy him enough to get kicked out of the shop, since that wouldn't be very lucky for them.

As he settles back into his chair, idle musings drift lazily across his mind. Is this the appeal mortals see in fishing? Casting out a line, waiting to see what bites, not really caring all too much what you catch as long as it's interesting...

Wonder how long it'll take this fish to bite? Hopefully not too long, he's about due for another loot run, and he has a feeling he'll find something interesting stashed away by one of his monoliths.

Sigh...

Is it a good thing he doesn't have a clock in this room? Or a bad thing? It's not like he needs one to measure the passage of time, but there's something to be said for watching the minutes tick by on a physical timepiece. Not entirely sure if that's a good something, but it's definitely something.

Eventually, the door hesitantly creaks open, revealing the lucky Hero of the day. He raises an eyebrow. Oh? It's not often that you see a Hero in their thirties or forties. Normally they're somewhere around fifteen, sixteen, sometimes up to twenty, but very rarely are they in their thirties.

Still, he has a spiel to make. Softly, careful not to overwhelm the artifact suppressing his echoes, Xelqua greets, "Welcome, Hero, to my little Shop of Mysteries. Take a look around, see if there's anything that catches your eye."

They look around the room, and a grimace briefly flickers across their face. "Sorry, I don't think I'm part of your usual clientele. I'm not a fighter, nor do I want to be."

He smiles, amused. "Such is the norm for Heroes of your age. I would not call this a shop of mysteries if all I had were weapons and armor though." He gestures towards the door to the miscellaneous room, inviting, "Take a look in there and see if anything piques your interest. Just about everything in here is for sale, barring what I'm wearing."