Chapter 320 - 310: You Can Sue Them

The decor inside was very much like a luxury boutique—the kind that looks incredibly expensive at first glance.

And in fact, it really was incredibly expensive.

When Moira Lynch had been remodeling her own shop, the system had offered her several design plans, and the one before her now was among them.

It was also the most expensive plan of them all.

At the time, Moira Lynch had thought the design wasn’t practical at all. It offered poor value and was ridiculously expensive, so she had decisively passed on it and chosen the cheapest, most cost-effective option instead.

Moira Lynch began to browse around the shop.

She had seen most of the items here before on the shopping platform.

If she had to use one word to describe these things, it would be: expensive!

’Looks like this shop’s owner is going for the high-end market.’

As she thought this, Moira Lynch glanced around and noticed most people were just window-shopping with no intention of buying anything. This only confirmed her suspicions.

Back in the game’s earliest days, plenty of wealthy people had been buying up Game Coins.

Back then, a single copper coin was being scalped for as much as 50,000 dollars, and the prices for silver coins and Gold Coins were even more outrageous.

The one-thousand-Gold-Coin entrance fee was clearly a way to screen customers.

As she walked on, Moira Lynch suddenly spotted something up ahead that looked very familiar.

She walked over for a closer look and was surprised to see it was nutrient liquid.

She checked the price: three copper coins, the same as what she used to charge.

A price like that was completely out of place in a store like this.

On top of that, there was a special "Buy Three, Get One Free" offer, apparently to encourage sales.

But...

Moira Lynch glanced around again.

Anyone who could get in here had at least one thousand Gold Coins.

People like that weren’t wanting for food or drink in real life, so why would they ever spend money on this disgustingly foul-tasting nutrient liquid?

Furthermore, Moira Lynch inspected the few bottles of nutrient liquid on display. There were five in total, each a different flavor. But three of them were close-to-expiry products.

She checked the dates. They were going to expire in just three days.

It was important to know that this wasn’t like regular food expiring. For things like canned goods, "expired" just meant it was past its peak freshness, so it could often still be eaten safely.

But when nutrient liquid expired, the nutrients it contained would rapidly degrade until they vanished completely.

Consuming this kind of nutrient liquid might give you a feeling of fullness, but that feeling was merely an illusion.

It was like how someone who ate nothing but rabbit meat for every meal would eventually starve to death.

If someone drank this kind of expired nutrient liquid every day, they would ultimately starve.

As for the five flavors, they were Flora-Grass, Fresh Fish, Fresh Meat, Flora-Fruit, and Original—the five most common nutrient liquid flavors.

’The only difference between the five flavors is the one between "disgusting" and "even more disgusting."’

Don’t ask how she knew.

The sight of these five nutrient liquid flavors dredged up some painful memories for Moira Lynch.

In fact, the reason Moira Lynch was so knowledgeable was that, if she hadn’t suddenly received that message, she had been planning to make a trip to a nutrient liquid factory herself.

She had originally been after the close-to-expiry nutrient liquids, but she abandoned the idea after Patience explained things to her.

This was because the nutrients in the liquid didn’t just start degrading on the expiration date.

The interstellar standard for classifying nutrient liquid as "expired" was when its nutrient content had degraded by more than seventy percent.

In other words, the nutrient content of these close-to-expiry liquids in front of her was at most forty percent, and possibly even less.

That was why Moira Lynch had completely given up on the idea of using them.

However, a nutrient liquid factory had more than just nutrient liquid; it also had the machines used to produce it.

It was just that her plan had been temporarily interrupted.

After looking around the store, she’d thought there wouldn’t be anything she wanted. But to her surprise, she actually found something.

[Season Converter: A device developed by the Mirage Group for planets with only a single season. It can be set to different seasons and temperatures according to the user’s needs. Effective range: ten to five hundred square meters.]

Moira Lynch was extremely tempted by the Season Converter.

She checked the price. A single Season Converter cost a whopping one and a half million Gold Coins.

After seeing the price clearly, Moira Lynch asked Patience, "Patience, how much does a Season Converter typically cost in the interstellar market?"

[Season Converters come in various price ranges depending on their functions and size. The cheapest ones start at five hundred thousand Gold Coins, with no upper limit.]

"So what tier is this one?" Moira Lynch asked.

[It’s the most basic model. The interstellar retail price is five hundred thousand Gold Coins.]

[According to interstellar law, when reselling a common-grade item with no collection value, the price may not exceed one hundred and twenty-five percent of the original price. This person is in serious violation of interstellar law. Master, you can report him.]

"Report him for what? He doesn’t even have an Interstellar Citizen ID Card. He’s not an interstellar citizen," Moira Lynch said, rolling her eyes.

[According to Federation Law, failing to possess an Interstellar Citizen ID Card, or using an invalid or fake one, is punishable by a fine of fifty to one thousand Gold Coins. The person who reports the violation will receive a reward of the same amount—fifty to one thousand Gold Coins.

In cases like this, where they lack an Interstellar Citizen ID Card and are maliciously price gouging, the crimes would be compounded. They could face hefty fines and imprisonment. The whistleblower, in turn, would receive one-thousandth of the total penalty fine.]

Hearing this from Patience, Moira Lynch felt a little tempted.

All it would take was one little tip, and she could get a huge pile of money.

The thought flashed through her mind but was just as quickly dismissed.

’Better not,’ she thought. ’It would be bad if Caelus’s location was exposed.’

Besides, aside from the Interstellar Citizen ID Card issue, it seemed like she was guilty of some of the other things Patience had mentioned, too.

Her gaze returned to the Season Converter.

She could afford the one and a half million Gold Coins, but Moira Lynch had no desire to be a sucker.

She turned and left the shop. After collecting her deposit, Moira Lynch relayed the information to Redlight. She wasn’t going to get involved in what happened next.

On the other end, Redlight grew excited the moment he received the message from SoySauceDrunkard.

After all, he was always the one sending messages to SoySauceDrunkard, not the other way around.

After reading the message’s contents, Redlight immediately grew serious.

They already knew that another special shop had appeared in the game.