Chapter 89

But I didn't need to show my card. My face had become so well-known that just showing it was enough for the workshop staff to recognize my status.

Fortunately, it seemed that only a few people knew that I had prepaid a diamond worth ten thousand units. The rest treated me as if they were desperate to provide all sorts of services, thinking I was just a machine that gave tips or filled daily quotas.

Quite a few staff members came in and out of the room, and when the personal shopper brought a recommended list, they often brought the corner's assigned staff along as well.

The personal shopper's list was sufficient, but they tried to sell even more by giving lengthy explanations and even started appealing to Daisy and Bagot.

"Look, Dryads, wouldn't you want to place more beautiful and luxurious furniture inside the Artifact Field? This is a special item that can reduce fatigue even faster."

Daisy, who had such a low desire for material things that she only bought a single alphabet topiary when I sent her shopping with a box of diamonds, just smiled brightly at their explanations.

Bagot, trying to avoid the people who were trying to pique his interest, turned his back and sat there, fiddling with a random box.

The personal shopper had a good grasp of the Elder's tastes. They even found items that seemed like they could be gilded, which was impressive.

Not just simple gold, but items like stained glass windows for houses and emerald-patterned wallpaper that glittered, perfectly catering to the Elder's obsession with shiny and expensive things.

I only had a small cottage in the 28th terrarium where I had planted Daisy2. I had to hope that a house for the Elder would appear in the trading post or in these random boxes.

The workshops rarely sold houses as single items, not even the 26th terrarium. It was a stroke of luck to have bought the Sun Temple house, which would have suited Mesquite perfectly. Houses were always in random boxes. It was frustrating, so frustrating.

The alchemy synthesis commission office, which I had been eagerly waiting for, couldn't bring me any good news. I had used all the material furniture I had bought for alchemy, but the success rate was low, and the rare items were scarce. Some required multiple syntheses to obtain.

Or maybe it was just my bad luck, even with a dedicated synthesizer...

The golden apple tree I had been focusing on had already failed 8 times at the sapling stage. Each failure cost one of the two materials. Diamonds were exploding in the air, a sound our dwarves loved.

Still, it was fortunate that my massive diamond release in the trading post had increased the number of people trying to get lucky with random boxes, so items that were previously unavailable were gradually appearing.

I wanted to install the Sun Temple in the artifact and ask Mesquite to walk there, but I hesitated. The Dryads in the artifact receive my thoughts without any filtering. If the Elder found out about the ten-thousand-unit diamond incident, it would be a disaster. The whining would multiply.

Opening random boxes was also getting a bit boring. I had already seen everything that could come out of them, so it wasn't special anymore.

If there were no trading posts like in the 26th terrarium, the struggle to keep opening boxes until the desired item appeared would have been more exciting. Now, I just felt like I had to buy whatever others opened. I buried my face in a cushion, leaving a pile of boxes untouched.

Daisy, who had stopped opening random boxes, stuck her head next to the cushion where I had buried mine, purring like a cat.

Come to think of it, this place only produced stepping stones, which was sad. Daisy occasionally pulled out something interesting, but this box was a stepping stone box. I had bought stones with diamonds.

When there were items on the list for synthesis, the personal shopper asked me next to the staff member who was selecting them.

"Do you not need the rest?"

"Flower stands and dividers are pretty, but there's no room in the artifact for all the furniture on the recommended list or from synthesis. What should I do with these... especially these stones... colorful stones..."

Stones worth 15 diamonds each. Isn't it a bit much to call flat stones artifact furniture? If I threw them all together in a flower bed, who would think they were artifact furniture? And they have bonus effects. What kind of effects, and how do they work?

The personal shopper recommended that I leave them to be handled internally by the workshop, as the trading post was already flooded with stones and they wouldn't sell.

Okay, I was thinking of throwing them in the trash, but if I leave them, they'll take care of it. Surely they don't recycle them in the random boxes...?

At that moment, someone burst in. It was one of the three faces I remembered from the alchemy synthesis commission office. She looked haggard, with sweat on her forehead and dark circles under her eyes.

"I... I finally succeeded! Here is the Hesperides' Golden Apple Tree!"

"Wow!"

The golden apple had finally broken through the sapling stage and become a tree! Many apples must have exploded during the process, becoming stars in the sky, but it had finally become a tree!

I looked at the small artifact furniture that the alchemist, trembling, handed to me. When I had seen the golden apple trade price, it was 100 diamonds each, so the golden apple tree must be much more expensive than the Sun Temple.

Thinking about how this small item could solve someone's debt or be the price of betraying an organization, it was truly an extravagant luxury. Artifact furniture was definitely end-game content. Perhaps I was the only one who could even attempt to make a golden apple tree.

The apples on the tree, as well as the wood and leaves, glowed yellow. The thick trunk, like an old tree, and the lush, net-like branches, with leaves densely packed like yellow paint dots, and plump, round apples hanging between them, were truly beautiful, like the golden apple tree of the gods in mythology. It was the ultimate luxury. Ding ding.

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

If the mother has blue petals, the Dryad can better withstand the cold.