"The is this way, Manager," Grib said, holding a high.
"But I must warn you. Nobody enters that room by choice."
"Why not?" Kenji asked.
"Because things... disappear in there. Also, it smells like the end of the world."
Kenji nodded calmly. "So it is a normal , then."
Grib pushed the great iron door, and it opened with a scream of old metal.
Kenji looked inside and said nothing for a long time.
Mountains of treasure rose to the ceiling — swords, cups, crowns, and boxes on boxes.
A river of gold coins flowed out from under a broken shelf.
Dust floated in the torchlight like snow that had given up on falling.
"Manager?" Grib whispered. "You are very quiet. Is that dangerous?"
"Grib," Kenji said softly. "Where is the stock list for this room?"
"The... what list?"
"The paper that says what is in this room, and how much of it."
Grib thought very hard. "The room itself knows, probably?"
Kenji closed his eyes for three seconds.
Eighteen years of training kept his voice perfectly polite.
"I see. Then we will make one. Today. All of us."
They started with the swords.
Magic swords, broken swords, and swords were all in one friendly pile.
"Who put the swords together with the normal ones?" Kenji asked.
A skeleton raised his hand, and the hand came off.
"Sorry," said the skeleton, picking up his own hand. "Filing is hard."
"We will practice," Kenji said. "With both hands attached, if possible."
Next came the potions.
Kenji lifted a dusty bottle and read the small letters on the bottom.
"Best before... the Year of the Two Moons."
"Is that recent?" he asked.
"That was one hundred and fifty years ago," Grib said proudly.
"Why proudly?" Kenji asked.
"Because we kept it safe for so long!"
Kenji held the bottle away from his body, like a small bomb.
"Grib, in retail, old stock is not treasure. It is trouble with a label."
At that exact moment, a treasure chest sneezed.
Kenji turned around very slowly.
One chest in the corner had a potion bottle sticking out of its mouth.
The chest froze, like a part-timer caught eating the fried chicken.
"That is Chester," Grib said. "He is a . He, um, eats things sometimes."
"How much has he eaten?"
Grib checked his notes. "This month? Three swords, ten potions, one crown, and a chair."
"The chair was not stock," the skeleton added helpfully. "It was my chair."
"Please make a full list of everything he has eaten," Kenji said. "We will call it research."
Kenji walked over to the and crouched down to its eye level.
The floating label above it read: STAFF? STOCK? UNCLEAR.
"Good evening," Kenji said. "Are you staff, or are you inventory?"
The thought about it and made a small, sound.
"If you are inventory, I must put a price tag on you."
The opened its mouth in pure horror.
"If you are staff, you get a job, rules, and a snack break. A real one, with permission."
The closed its mouth, stood up on small wooden legs, and .
"Welcome to the team," Kenji said. "You are now a storage box. With legs."
Then Kenji gathered everyone in front of the great mountain.
"Tonight, I will teach you the five most powerful spells in retail."
The monsters leaned in at once. Goblins loved spells.
"Sort. Set in order. Shine. Standardize. Sustain."
There was a long silence.
"Those are... chores," said the skeleton.
"They are chores that never lose," Kenji said. "No hero can defeat a clean ."
Somehow, that reached their monster hearts.
"Write this down," said an old goblin in the back. "The human speaks in riddles, but the riddles are true."
They sorted all night long.
The carried boxes with surprising pride, now that carrying was officially his job.
Keep, sell, throw away — three piles, three signs, no mercy.
The goblins cried a little over the potions.
"We say thank you, and we let them go," Kenji said gently.
"First in, first out," he taught them. "The old stock stands at the front."
"Like elderly customers at the morning sale," he added, and nobody understood, but everyone nodded.
The skeleton wrote it on his own arm, because paper was still rare here.
Grib followed Kenji everywhere, writing down every single word.
His notes said things like: "Rule 4: The floor is not a shelf."
Near morning, Grib stepped in front of Kenji and stood very straight.
"Manager. Please teach me everything. I want to be your student."
Kenji looked at the little goblin and his crooked, careful notes.
"In my store, we do not say student," he said. "We say ."
Grib's ears stood straight up. "," he repeated, like a holy word.
By sunrise, the had .
Real , where a person could walk without climbing a single crown.
And under the very last pile of coins, they found a small wooden box.
Inside were pay slips — three hundred and twelve of them, all marked .
Three months. Every name. Every floor.
Kenji closed the box quietly and stood up.
"Grib," he said. "Where does the Demon King keep her money?"
"Um. That is the problem, Manager. There... isn't any."
Kenji looked at the sunrise through the narrow window, with the eyes of a man before a big meeting.
"Then tomorrow," he said, "we talk about payday."