Birth Of The Crafts-God

The crowd was stunned silly for the second time in a row.

That was a fifth stage freelancer!

The blocked strike could be explained as some high grade vestige. However, even if Lucas had some defensive gear to keep him safe, the gap was too large to be able to deliver an attack capable of sending the opponent flying. Considering Lucas' strength, unless it was a Grade 5 or 6 vestige, it would be impossible to pull this off.

The spectators stared at the gloves on his hands, as that was never there from the start. They suspected it to be a vestige, but there was no aura of stellar energy on it. Even so, some didn't give up their suspicions so quickly. Lucas was a human with no sign of having refined stellar energy before, yet he was able to go unharmed after two attempts by the young man.

Only Lucas knew the truth. Although the gloves did improve his strength, and with the thirty percent increase to his base strength after levelling up, Lucas' strength only added up to one at the Bone refining step of the Body Strengthening stage. The only reason he turned out superior was thanks to a feature that came out after the system upgraded.

Host Retaliation Function.

Like the Host Protection Mechanism, it was only active within the store. Contrary to the latter however, the Host Retaliation Function was an attacking feature. It only activated when there was a large gap in strength between the host and the attacker. The effect was that it would mimic a portion of the attacker's strength and apply it onto the host's attacks.

Together with the craftsman gloves boost effect, the attack would roughly be on par with his opponent's.

"You bastard…" The young man stood up and prepared to attack again.

Lucas frowned seeing this. The young man was interrupting his business. He had held back with his blow as he didn't want to take things out of proportion, otherwise the young man would have been seriously injured. But if the latter continued harassing him, Lucas would take things seriously.

"That's enough." The lady who came with him spoke up.

The young man glared at her, but she glared right back. Seeing her take her stand, he snorted and drew back his energy. It was clear that he didn't want to go again after she interfered.

"Let's forget about the little disagreement and head back to business, okay?" The lady said.

"No problem." Lucas nodded.

The lady smiled seeing this, then asked, "Can I see the spear?"

"Stand in line. Also, he needs to leave." Lucas blandly replied.

There was no way he was going to give them special treatment, not after the young man tried to kill him. Not chasing them both away was already Lucas being nice. As for letting her see the spear? That was actually no problem as the weapon was already on display, but Lucas easily recalled it into his inventory as such, they had failed to spot it.

After his levelling up, the system's abilities experienced a boost and the inventory was a direct beneficiary. It experienced an expansion and was also now capable of taking in outside-items (items not related to the system in one way or the other).

Finally, as long as he was within the store, Lucas could place anything from the store into his inventory with just a thought, regardless of the distance between them.

The woman was surprised that Lucas was still on this even after knowing they were from the Black Lemon Squad. She guessed it had something to do with their actions, but even then, so what?

"Can you please make an exception for us this time around? On behalf of the Black Lemon Squad, we'll owe you one if we find what we want." The lady pleaded.

Her actions were nice and her words were too, but, Lucas couldn't help but get a chill.

Venomous.

If Lucas were to describe her with one word, it would be just that.

The lady was prideful and this could be seen from the fact that throughout the period of the incident, she made no effort to stop the young man, doing so only until after Lucas had take him down. Despite the actions of the young man, she never apologized even at the end of it all.

She tried to brush it off and still requested they received special treatment, using the Black Lemon Squad's renown to pressure him.

Lucas was no saint, but even if he was one, he wouldn't tolerate such nonsense.

"There's no need to bother. I won't be attending to you any longer." Lucas said.

The lady froze in shock and even the young man who had yet to leave was astounded.

They had already mentioned who they were and decided to drop the matter, but Lucas remained staunch.

"Are you sure about this?" The young man said.

Lucas turned towards him and replied, "What are you still doing in my store?"

At that moment, the young man understood that Lucas was being serious.

This was the first time he had ever been treated like this, what's more, it was in this backwater called the West Wing district.

"Hmph. Fine. Fiona, I hope you're happy now." The young man said to the woman while glaring at Lucas, before he turned around and left.

While he could remain obstinate in the store, the young man was aware that he wasn't Lucas' match. His attacks all landed, but had no effect, whereas all of Lucas' attacks took him down.

The lady glanced at Lucas once and also left the store.

The guests who remained behind could finally breath a sigh of relief, but some of them immediately left the store too. Lucas had offended the Black Lemon Squad, and he was a human at that too. The freelancer who left were weak and didn't want to get caught in the crossfire between the two parties.

After a few seconds, only seven of the previous twelve guests remained. Seeing this, Lucas couldn't help but sigh.

'Running a business sure is difficult.'