A few days later, my restitution was delivered. I stared at the sum—a hundred million liz in all—stacked on top of my desk. I guess it’s a fair amount, I conceded. Even though he’s the crown prince, we were only engaged, not married.
By Reas standards, a hundred mil could get you a very good piece of equipment, but it was a drop in the bucket if you wanted to buy the best of the best. However, even the best equipment in this world came nowhere near that quality or price. Without high-level players hunting the monsters that dropped the best items, the materials just weren’t available on the market. Even if I wanted to smith the equipment myself, it wouldn’t have been easy to get my hands on the necessary materials.
“I kind of want to blow it all on something fun anyway.” It would feel gross to dip into the restitution money little by little and live off it. “But there isn’t any expensive equipment to buy, and Tarte can make better healing items than anything on the market.” The best use I could think of right now was to stock up on food and materials and keep them in Storage. Spending a hundred mil on supplies was easier said than done, though. Why is this so hard?
While I tried to come up with another use for the money, I heard a voice from the mansion’s front door. I stepped out onto my balcony and saw that Frey, Luna, Lina, and Mio had returned from their shopping trip.
Frey noticed me immediately. “Sharon!”
“Welcome back!” I called down.
“Thanks. We’d like to talk to you about something. Do you have the time?” Frey asked.
“No problem. Do you want to talk in the sitting room?” I asked.
“Sure!” Frey answered.
Once we’d moved to the sitting room and I’d asked for tea to be brought out, I seated myself across from the group. When I asked them where they’d gone, they said they’d browsed some jewelry stores.
Oh, right! I realized. I can use the money on clothes and jewelry. Had I failed as a girl by not thinking of that on my own?
I cleared my throat. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“About Luna’s, Lina’s, and Mio’s jobs. They’re all ready for their awakened jobs,” Frey explained.
“I’ve been meaning to bring that up,” I said. Luna would turn from Wizard to Archmage, a master of elemental magic that could potentially rival the force of natural disasters. An Archmage made a great cannon for any party. As a Chaser, Lina would become a Treasure Hunter, which would power up her scouting abilities as well as make it more likely that she’d find treasure chests and items, including dropped items. At every turn, she had the chance to win big. Mio would switch from Priestess to Shaman, someone who attacked using paper Talismans. It would mean that she’d need to regularly restock her Talismans, but that also allowed her to max out each Skill faster and to acquire more Skills. She could customize her Skill set depending on her preference. Frey, who held the unique Hero job, had no new job to switch into.
“Are all three of you ready?” I asked.
“Of course! We did some sightseeing around Blume, so our goal now is to get our awakened jobs,” Lina said excitedly before looking out into the distance as if in a reverie. “It’s actually always been a goal of mine. I didn’t think I’d achieve it so soon...”
“The real challenge begins after you attain your final job. That’s when you can finally start perfecting your own fighting style! Once you get your new jobs, let’s go into a dungeon together!” I suggested.
“You make it sound so easy...” Lina said. “But you’re right. Okay. We’re going to try our best to be useful in that dungeon. We’ll conquer it together!”
“Thank you!” I was getting hyped. If we go in with a full party of adventurers with unique and awakened jobs, we should be able to beat Holy Maiden’s Trial.
“Then I’d like all three of you to get started on that tomorrow,” Frey said. “Do any of you need help with it?”
Mio timidly raised her hand. “I’m not sure if I need help, but...”
Frey and I looked at her quizzically.
“What is it?”
“Mio?”
“I’m not sure...how to become a Shaman,” Mio confessed.
“Oh, uh...” Frey stammered.
“Oh, I get it!” I said, realizing that the method for attaining the Shaman job might not have been discovered in this world yet—because the Shaman quest was triggered in Arcadia. Everyone had treated Arcadia like a mythical place until we’d actually gone there. It was no wonder Mio didn’t know. If there were any Shamans in this world, they’d probably stumbled upon Arcadia on their own or kept the method of attaining the job a secret—by only sharing how to become one with handpicked apprentices, for example.
“You can become a Shaman in Arcadia,” I told Mio. “You just need to visit the basement of a small tower in the northwest part of town and talk to the person there to start the quest.”
“You really do know everything, Sharon,” Mio said with surprise in her voice, but she immediately agreed to return to Arcadia—a quick trip, thanks to us having registered the Gate there.
Then, I turned to Luna and Lina. Did they know how to become an Archmage and a Treasure Hunter respectively? “How about you two?”
“I’m fine,” Luna said. “I heard you can become an Archmage in Snowdia.”
“Me too! Someone told me to go to Tordente if I wanted to be a Treasure Hunter,” Lina said.
“Great,” I said. They’d been told correctly. Even though we hadn’t registered the Gate in Tordente, it wouldn’t be a long journey by Dragon. “Once you have your jobs and get used to combat, we’re hitting up that dungeon!”
“I’m looking forward to it!” Frey declared.
“We have some work to do,” Luna mused.
“You can count on me!” said Lina.
“I need to start preparing!” Mio added.
They were all as enthusiastic to try their hands at the dungeon as I was.