Chapter 118: Store Sign
It was two hours before the store opened at 12 pm and Jin had a lot of things he wanted to do. He had the store aesthetics to decide, the mobile stall to build, Xiong Da's training plan to create and the trip to Shenzhen Provincial Zoo to take a photo with the Panda Baby.
"I shall deal with the store sign first and after that will be the construction of the mobile stall." Jin thought to himself as he stepped into the Dungeon Maker Instance again.
Jin had initially thought about his store name when he was younger. He wanted the name to be something impactful and perhaps cringy like Monsterevolt but since the system made him adopt the panda theme, he decided to work around that theme instead.
"The app is called Pandamonium, maybe I should follow that naming sense?" Jin thought to himself and tried a variation of names.
"Pandmonia, Pandatorium, Pandamonsters, Pandamonium Plaza, Pandastic Dungeons…Or maybe Pungeons. Urgh, the last one was horrible." Jin thought to himself and felt that Pandamonium was sufficient.
"Actually… no. I feel like I ask the shop customers to decide, but at the same time, if I let the customers choose it, it does not feel as if the shop belongs to me. Maybe I should give more thought to this…"Jin felt a little pressured since he was spending more time on the store sign than intended, and he felt he should work on the mobile stall design sooner rather than later.
So Jin decided to allocate probably another 10 more minutes to thinking about the shop name as he browsed the web for news or images on his phone.
"ooh, the game Dungeons and Dragoons is releasing another expansion at year's end." Dungeons and Dragoons was one of the most anticipated game franchises that many people followed intensely due to its revolutionary gameplay style. Jin loved the game franchise a lot when he was a student.
"Wait…Dungeons?" Jin suddenly had a sudden inspiration and tried writing the store name down. Pandas and Dragoons?…No…Dungeons and Pandas…!
"Sounds simple, cringy and eye catching enough." Jin laughed to himself. Even though Jin wished to use Pandamonium, he felt that he should try to be innovative rather than just using the name the system provided.
Perhaps there was still some mistrust between the system and him. Maybe this was Jin's naive way of rebelling against the system after what it made him go through.
But whatever it was, Jin would continue to utilise the system for his own benefit as much as the system utilised him for its own purposes.
Jin opened the Dungeon Maker interface and started to create a large sign. He purposely used Moso Bamboo as the integral material since it was a high quality bamboo that was not only strong and durable, but paid patronage to the panda theme of the shop. He happened to chance upon it when he was searching on Qiandu. Though Jin was only going by recommendations from the search engine, he did ask Yun, who happened to appear in front of him, for her and the system's opinion. All she did was approve of the recommendation, saying that it was indeed one of the superior choices she would potentially use.
Although Jin did not have the expertise, skill, or patience needed to write Chinese calligraphy, anything was possible with the power of Dungeon Maker…as long as Jin could pay the price quoted by the Maker.
Upon request by Jin, the Dungeon Maker immediately provided tens of calligraphy examples with the words Dungeons and Pandas on it, all of which were fantastic. However, he felt like something was missing.
"It is because this is made by the system via your request and uses the least amount of money. Hence, there is no chi energy and no spiritual force on your signboard. Compared to the work it has done on the third floor, this is like a child scribbles on a piece of paper instead of a beautifully written signage." Yun commented as she noticed that Jin was quite upset with the choice he made.
"So you are saying I have to pay more for the sign if I want the system to imbue spiritual energy into the signage?" Jin clarified with Yun and she nodded as a reply.
"Alternatively, you could do the calligraphy yourself and imbue the spiritual force into it free of charge. However, no matter what you do, I will say that it is important to have high energy chi emanating out of your signage. That way, in the future when you serve higher grade customers, they will respect you." Yun explained the reason for having a good signage board.
"Why don't I just update my sign regularly?" Jin casually asked. He thought that all he needed to do was upgrade the sign every time he went up in grade.
"You can do that too, but what if a random high grade cultivator enters your store and they notice that the signage is devoid of chi energy?" Yun commented.
"Wait wait, what do you mean by emanating chi energy? Do you mean my signage needs to give off chi energy?" Jin was a little confused by Yun's explanation.
"You do know that in grandmaster-level paintings, all you need to do is input a little bit of chi energy for you to feel the deep impressions of the painters and the visualisation of the painting coming to life. This is the same for your signage. While I might have phrased it a little incorrectly previously, my point still stands on how your signage would needs to impress your new customers when they insert some chi energy into it. This is in order to see if your dungeon store is something worthy enough for them to enter, so take it as first impressions do matter." Yun tried her best to explain something new to Jin.
"That was also the reason why I did not immediately ask you for the store's name. Although you did not ask for it either…" Yun seemed a little annoyed when she finished her sentence.
"But since we are at it, the system has placed a new mission for you that relates to your signboard." Yun signalled Jin to check and Jin obliged as he took his phone out to view the new mission. If what Yun said was true, the mission should be difficult since getting a high-end signage would be extremely expensive.
"Complete a Dungeon Takeover? That's it? Sounds too good to be true." Jin became very suspicious when he saw the reward was in fact a Grade 19 calligraphed Signage which Jin could choose at will.
"Take it as an apology from the system for what it made you go through. The system and I were doing that for your sake even though you could say that it was quite heavy handed." Yun subtly tried to apologise to Jin.
"I would still choose a fairly difficult yet still suitable dungeon even if you gave me the choice since I do not have the time to constantly go on takeovers if I have to handle the shop while still trying to gather as much resources as possible." Jin was equally clumsy in his reply as he tried to accept the system's apology.
"Then that settles for the signage, now let's move onto the mobile stall design." Jin saved all the things he had searched for and began work on the mobile stall, beginning from a brand new template in the dungeon maker.