But I never had to present the card. My face had become so famous that just showing my face was enough for the workshop staff to know my level.

Fortunately, it seemed only a few knew that I had prepaid tens of thousands of diamonds. The rest treated me like some kind of tip-giving or daily-stipend machine, acting as if they were desperate to provide all sorts of services.

Quite a few clerks came in and out of the room, and when the personal shopper brought a recommendation list, they often brought in the staff in charge of that section too.

The personal shopper’s list alone was enough, but they would give lengthy explanations to squeeze in one more item, and even started appealing to Daisy and Wolfsbane.

“Dryads, look here! Don’t you want to place more beautiful and splendid furniture inside the artifact field? This is a special item that reduces fatigue faster.”

Daisy was an individual with little desire for material possessions, to the point that when she was sent alone to shop with diamonds poured into a box, she only bought a single alphabet topiary, and she merely smiled brightly at their explanations.

Wolfsbane was avoiding people who tried to draw his interest, turning his back to sit and fidgeting with random boxes, opening them one by one.

The personal shopper had a keen insight into Elder’s tastes. They even managed to find items that made one wonder, “Can this be plated in gold?”

Not just simple gold, but for those who purchased a house, they offered products like replacing windows with stained glass, or covering walls with sparkling emerald patterns, perfectly targeting Elder’s taste for shiny, expensive-looking things, like a magpie.

I had nothing but a cabin in the 28th terrarium, where I had planted Daisy 2. I had to hope for a house for Elder to appear from the exchange where I had placed purchase requests, or from these random boxes.

Both in the 26th terrarium and here, workshops rarely sold houses as standalone products.

Buying the Sun Temple house, which seemed a perfect fit for Mesquite, was a really lucky case. A house could only come from a random box. It was terrible, just terrible.

The synthesis alchemy request office, which I had the highest hopes for, wasn’t bringing any good news. I had thrown all the purchased material furniture into alchemy, but the success rate was low, and rare items were scarce in quantity, with some requiring multiple rounds of synthesis.

Or maybe, even with a separate alchemist, my luck was just that bad…

The golden apple tree, which I was intensely focusing on, had supposedly exploded 8 times already at the seedling stage. When it failed, one of the two materials disappeared. Diamonds were bursting in the air—a sound our dwarves loved.

Still, the fortunate thing was that because I had been unloading a massive amount of diamonds into the exchange in real-time, more and more people were opening random boxes in hopes of hitting the jackpot, so products that had no stock before were gradually appearing.

I wanted to quickly install the Sun Temple in the artifact and ask Mesquite to walk it, but I hesitated.

The dryads in the artifact receive my thoughts without filter. If Elder found out about the tens of thousands of diamonds involved in the dwarves’ incident, it would be a disaster. I was scared that the whining about not being taken to the workshop would multiply several times over.

Opening random boxes was starting to get boring now. Having opened them to my heart’s content was already an experience, and it held no novelty anymore.

If there hadn’t been an exchange, like in the 26th, opening them until something appeared would have awakened my fighting instinct. But now, with the mindset of just buying what others open, I left the piles of boxes aside and buried my face in a cushion.

Daisy stopped opening the random box and poked her head in like a cat beside the cushion where I had buried my face, giggling softly.

Come to think of it, this place wasn’t a fence but just kept spitting out stepping stones, which made me sad. Though Daisy occasionally pulled out something amazing, these boxes were stepping stone boxes. I spent diamonds to buy stones.

Beside the employee picking out items from the opened boxes that matched synthesis requests, a personal shopper asked me.

“So you don’t need the rest?”

“The flowerpot holders and dividers are pretty, but to fit all the furniture from the recommendation list and synthesis results, there’s no space in the artifact. How should I dispose of these… Especially these stones… These colorful stones…”

Stones worth a whopping 15 diamonds each. Come to think of it, calling a plain flat stone an artifact furniture isn’t that too much? If I tossed them all together into a flowerbed, who’d think of them as artifact furniture? Huh? And some stones even have bonus effects. What is this, how does it work?

The personal shopper told me that since the exchange was already flooded with stones unlikely to sell, they recommended letting them be handled internally within the workshop.

Okay, I was thinking of throwing them in the trash, but I guess leaving them will sort itself out. They’re not recycling them into random boxes, are they…?

That was when it happened. Someone burst through the door. If my memory served, it was one of the three faces that had been sitting in the synthesis alchemy request office. She looked utterly haggard, with cold sweat covering her forehead and dark circles under her eyes.

“I… I finally succeeded! Here is the golden apple tree of the Hesperides!”

“Wow!”

The golden apples had pierced through the wall of seedlings and finally become a tree! Countless apples must have burst and become stars in the sky during the process, but it has finally become a tree!

I looked at the small artifact furniture the alchemist handed me with trembling hands. When I had chance come across the trading price of golden apples, one was 100 diamonds, so the golden apple tree was clearly far more expensive than the Temple of the Sun.

Thinking that this small item could amount to someone’s debt settlement or a price for betraying an organization, it was truly an extravagant luxury. Artifact furniture was undoubtedly endgame content. I wondered if perhaps I was the only one who might even attempt to turn golden apples into a tree.

Not only the apples on the tree but also the wood and leaves shimmered in yellow. The thick trunk like an old tree, the richly net-like branching branches, the leaves packed densely like countless yellow dots, and round, luscious apples hanging among them.

It was truly as beautiful as seeing the golden apple tree of the gods in myths. An ultimate luxury item. Tap tap.

I examined the bonus effects attached to the golden apple tree.

In the case of a dryad whose mother body has sky-blue petals, it can better withstand the cold.

“Um… None of my kids have sky-blue petals.”

Wolfsbane is a deep purple.

“The one I want to give this gift to is a white elderflower, a normal field recovery type. Can I change the bonus effect?”

The golden apple tree itself was pleasing to look at, but it would be even better if it helped my dryad.

The alchemist said they could change or add bonus effects through recombination and disappeared crying, along with the golden apple tree I had handed over again. From outside the half-closed door, I could hear shouts: “Hey, man, cheer up. You’ve already hit your target research funds!” and “The price of golden apples has gone up! Aim for a life turnaround!”

After the golden apple tree was paired, other alchemists soon came to visit and thoroughly asked me about the dryad before leaving.

I said I was giving certain furniture to someone and had no particular desired bonuses, but anything beneficial would do. They bit their dry lips and left the room with solemn expressions.

The sofa was spacious enough for me to lie down with Wolfsbane and Daisy on either side. Waiting became boring, so I ended up dozing off like that.

After enjoying a short nap, I woke up to find that one of my targets, the ‘Radiant Oasis’ artifact furniture, had arrived. This was for decorating Mesquite’s desert field.

On one side, a temple of the sun; on the other, an oasis filled with clear water sparkling like opals. I had also aimed for the sun god’s chariot to match the temple, and just as the golden apple burst forth at the seedling stage, the chariot seemed to be putting on quite a fireworks display as well.

“I’ll stop here for today. Staying here is getting boring too. I’ll probably be staying here for a while, so keep the requested items posted!”

I can’t just sit still either. I wanted to see Mesquite and Elder. And I felt hungry after waking up.

As I left the room… I felt like I was watching <Charlie and the Chocolate Factory>. The sight of people plopping down in empty spots and mechanically opening boxes resembled the scene of unwrapping packages to get a golden ticket from the chocolate factory.

Perhaps because I was buying the items at high prices, even getting a dud would allow them to break even or profit, their hands tearing open random boxes without hesitation. With so many boxes being opened, the clerks looked busy, frequently going in and out of what seemed to be a warehouse to restock.

Hmm… Amazing. Go for it! Please, do your best for my items!

Before I knew it, I saw more people at the Synthesis Alchemy Office. Is this really that honey of a part-time gig for making research funds? Sweat was beading on their foreheads, but their mouths were smiling, as if to say just that. However, the first three looked like vampires who had lost their blood.

“Ah, right. I need to tell them I delivered all the signboards.”

Let’s go complete the quest! I asked them to deliver all the artifact furniture to the inn I’m staying at. My footsteps felt light both coming and going.

When I came out of the shopping store, the day had grown a bit dim. It felt like I’d spent my time quite productively. Then, a girl who had been distracted at the snack corner spotted me and came running over in a hurry, without even wiping the sugar powder off her mouth.

“You could have taken your time and eaten more.”

“No! What if someone steals the donation box while I’m away? That would be a disaster!”

You talk well. Looking at the spot where the kid was, it seemed she’d been slacking off there for quite a while.

“I brought all the signboards back!”

She handed me the scroll I had gotten when accepting the quest. The stores I had visited were crossed off. The girl wiped her hands, covered in snack oil, on her skirt before taking the scroll.

“Wow! Thank you for helping me! Thanks to you…”

Her mouth, coated in white, caught my attention, so I tapped my own mouth with my finger. The kid finally noticed and wiggled her lips and tongue. The sight was so cute that I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Thanks to you, I’m relieved! Here’s the promised reward. I hope it helps you, Druid, on your adventure!”

The kid took out a black box from under the table where the donation box sat. After dealing with the artifact furniture random boxes, now it was an accessory random box. Why does this damn world have no certainty, no certainty at all.