Rise of the Nightmare Crestmaster

"Good, good, just two red essence orbs please." Uldin said.

"What?" Aldrich asked in confusion, "I didn't see anything."

"That's the fee to access the first level of my stock."

"Two orbs just to look?! You can't be serious!" Aldrich fired back. "If you want essence orbs so much why don't you go kill a few of those bastards outside."

"I would have, if I could." Uldin said full of lamentation.

"What do you mean you can't? You're powerful enough."

Aldrich suddenly thought of something and said, "wait, you actually can't. You wouldn't get any orbs?"

"That's right. Well I've grown tired of saying this by now but, only Lost Ones can. Otherwise how could I rely on you guys?"

Now it made sense why this powerful being would trade goods for essence, he himself was unable to collect any, which gave Aldrich an incredible advantage.

"Okay, goodbye, I'm leaving. I'm not paying two orbs just to take a look."

"Fine, have it your way. But wait a moment, here take this," Uldin opened the zipper of his comically huge bag and pulled out a beetle. A metallic beetle.

The beetle was shiny and it was as wide as three fingers and as long as one, the center was empty intentionally as there was a circular opening.

However the beetle wasn't entirely metallic, the various limbs both front and back were actually made of flesh and pinkish red in color.

"This is a clockwork injection beetle, it's truly a work of art. It combines both clockwork and fleshbending magics to a wonderful degree."

"What does this thing do?" Aldrich was disgusted by the appearance of this thing but as long as it was useful then…

"Have you ever faced a problem when you tried to consume a potion during an intense fight but ended up dying? Was that not frustrating? Well that ends now! With this clockwork beetle as long as you bond it and install your potions it will inject you in a timely manner with but a thought. And I am giving it to you for free as a token of my friendship."

Uldin was giving a passionate pitch, how would he react if he knew that Aldrich had never consumed a potion?

"Well, show me how it works."

"Certainly, it just needs a drop of blood."

Blood again? Ugh, Aldrich was getting tired of this but he didn't refuse free things. So he pricked another finger and a drop landed on the creepy beetle.

As that point it seemed to come to life, it started wriggling and the sound of various gears grinding against one another rang out. It turned on the palm of the merchant looked in his direction.

Aldrich felt some kind of connection between them and didn't know how to feel about that.

"Now you choose a potion to install in it. This model can only carry a single potion so be careful what you choose."

Uldin took out three flasks and told Aldrich to choose one of them to install in the beetle.

Aldrich used his Eyes of Insight on the three flasks: 1) healing potion, 2) stamina potion, 3) giantification potion.

Giantification? A potion that turns you in a giant? Seriously?

"Does this potion really have that kind of power?" Aldrich asked as he pointed at the golden liquid in the flask.

"What power? I haven't explained what these potions effects are yet." Uldin seemed confused.

"Ah," that's right, Uldin didn't know about the Eyes of Insight, "I think I've seen an illustration in a book before."

"Alright…" Uldin didn't look convinced but he didn't harp on the subject, "the red potion, is a healing potion, it could heal any minor wounds in ten seconds and it could heal a heavy injury in an a hour or so.

This green one restores stamina, if you feel tired out in battle use it and in just a minute you'll be back to tip-top condition, no problem."

When Uldin got to the golden potion he had a fake shocked look on his face as he explained, "the last one is a giantification potion? What's this doing here, this is a level two potion I must've taken it out by mistake."

Aldrich couldn't help but feel frustrated, this crafty asshole put on an act of generosity to entice Aldrich, worse still it was working. If he wasn't in a desperate need for every orb he would have fallen for the ploy.

"Ah, this is so embarrassing, my reflexes got dull after my slumber, let me get the right potion."

Uldin opened the zipper of his comically large bag and returned the golden potion and replaced it with a swampy green one, but this one had many tiny frogs swimming together like a school of fish.

The new potion was interesting but even more interesting was that Aldrich didn't see anything from the opening of the zipper, the bag was just dark and seemed to contain nothing.

Also just now when Uldin replace the potion he didn't move his hand too deep in the bag, it looked like the potions just moved independently. Wouldn't he have to look to find the things he was looking for in such a large bag.

Moreover how could these glass flasks be lumped casually in a bag? They needed to be carefully stored lest they break right?

"Did my Bag of Holding catch your attention? Mine is a little special but I have some smaller ones in stock if you like."

Uldin took out a small pouch the size of his hand, it was simply too different from Uldin's own bag.

"A Bag of Holding? How does it work?" Aldrich asked since he was indeed interested.

"Well, to put it simply it's like carrying your own storage, you can put anything that doesn't have a complete spirt in it. Weapons, armor, arrows and even food. The food won't go bad in the bag, and you won't feel the weight at all."

Aldrich was stunned, if the Bag of Holding was really that insane then it was worth any price.

The most crucial aspect was the weight part, if Aldrich could use it to transport goods from the nightmare realm to the real world and vice versa without having to pay for the weight penalty then it was a divine item.