“It’s as lively as ever here,” I said to Ariya as we strolled through the town. Our destination was an armorer, but I wasn’t sure which one. “Where do you think we should go, Ari?”
“Hm... A few places have been recommended to me, but I’ve never been to any of them.”
That made sense. Even I knew what shops were famous around here from the rumors I’d picked up at the bar, but I’d yet to visit any of them. As such, I had no idea which shops were worth the hype.
“Let’s just walk around, I guess.”
“Oh—I’ve been told that the shop over there is good.” She pointed to a place that had weapons drawn on its sign. I’d heard about it before too.
“Let’s check it out then.”
“Okay.”
The shop seemed to carry pretty standard-looking weapons, and a lot of them, at that. Some were leaning against the walls, others were hanging from them, and there were still more that were displayed on stands. They were all neatly organized by the type of weapon. Most likely, they kept different sizes of each weapon in the storehouse behind the shop or something.
The floor was strangely dirty, which was probably because of all the customers tracking in mud, dirt, and god knows what with their shoes. However, the corners of the store were clean, so obviously there was some level of cleaning being done.
Just looking around, there seemed to be a decent selection. Appraisal confirmed my thoughts. Each of the weapons had a quality level of at least B. Looks like we’d hit the jackpot already—a shop like this was perfect for our purposes.
“Welcome...”
Yelp review: 1 star. Terrible attitude. Staff has no idea how to greet customers.
As soon as the clerk saw me, a sour look washed over his face. Apparently my bad reputation had spread farther than I’d expected. I hadn’t done anything to piss him off...well, probably...so there was no need for him to show me any animosity. Well—I guess even if it wasn’t sincere, he did end up greeting me. Honestly, though, I didn’t care that much—I’d known that it was coming.
I wanted to get started trying to choose a weapon that suited me...but I didn’t know what suited me. Pretty much every last one of the weapons here was a magic tool. In this world, “weapons” was basically just another word for “magic tool.” Those that weren’t magic tools were just practice weapons. In the right hands, magic tools were powerful assets, but in mine, they might as well have been junk. And I doubted that Sister Sensei would allow me to choose anything that’d be trash when I used it.
Since she knew that I couldn’t use magic tools, she probably intended for me to choose a weapon that I could actually use. She’s really asking for the impossible.
“Oh—what about this?” I asked, eyeing a scythe that was resting against the wall. It was about as tall as me and had a huge, black-luster blade. I would’ve loved something like this back in my edgelord phase. Plus, it didn’t seem to be a magic tool.
“Are you serious? Don’t pick based on what’ll satisfy your stupid fantasies.” Ariya immediately shut me down, forcing me to reconsider my selection.
“I only chose it because it wasn’t a magic tool, but okay...”
“A training weapon would be infinitely easier to use, and more effective.”
I’m with you there...but why not the scythe? It wasn’t like I’d be using it as my main weapon. It would just be for show.
“Pick wisely. You don’t want your training load to increase, do you?”
She had a point. There was no doubt that I’d earn myself more training if I went down the scythe route. Would anyone ever buy this scythe, anyway? I was starting to think that it was only for display.
“Well, you should pick something out too,” I told her. “You can’t keep relying on a certain sword, can you?”
“You’re right... I’ll look around.”
The “certain sword” I’d mentioned was, of course, Shadow Zekkinotachi. I generally had her avoid using it or showing it to other people. Not only had I created it by infusing it with dark magic, but it was also an Artifact. It’d cause a commotion if people saw it.
At the very least, though, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to find a weapon that she could actually use. It was me we needed to worry about. Aside from the scythe I’d seen and training weapons, pretty much everything was a magic tool.
“Now that I think about it—you don’t use guns, do you?” Ariya asked, pointing to one.
Even though I was kind of in a medieval Europe-themed world, guns existed. They were much more primitive than the ones in our world. Put simply, they were similar to muskets or arquebuses. The bullets were round and the barrels of the gun didn’t have the helical grooves that’d help the bullet spin. Of course, the guns were also not automatic, so you had to constantly reload them. Their power and accuracy were also lower than that of a bow and arrow.
I was sure that if more technological development was invested into guns, they’d jump up the power rankings of weapons—but then again, why would they focus on guns when they already had the powerful offensive projectile capabilities of magic? Plus, with the way the bullets were designed, you could maybe kill some of the weaker monsters, but there was no way you were killing anything bigger than that.
As it turned out, guns had apparently been developed by the previous heroes. Way to pave the path to more violence. Then again, I guess they had enough wisdom to have realized that teaching them about cartridges would be dangerous. Or maybe they didn’t know how to make them. Even if they’d known about cartridges, it would’ve been hard to replicate a detonator.
Ariya had probably asked me about guns because they weren’t magic tools. Nobody had tried to make them into magic tools before, because what would have been the point? If you were going to go out of your way to turn a magic tool into a gun, you might as well have spent the time and energy on a support item to assist your spellcasting instead. That would be hundreds of times more effective than a gun.
“I think it’d go well with your magic, Kiri.”
By “magic,” she was probably referring to Puppet Master. If I used Conqueror on the bullets, I would solve the biggest flaw of the guns in this world, because I could guarantee that my shots would never miss.
“I guess you’re not wrong, technically.”
“Just technically?”
“Well, either way, I’ll get one.”
I wasn’t going to show this to Sister Sensei, though. Instead, I was going to try practicing with it at night and see just how useful it could actually be.
I surveyed the rest of the store to see if there was anything else here that I could use. If not, we’d go to the next place. Then again, I got the feeling that no matter where we went, it’d all be the same. These stores were more like magic tool shops than anything else.
However, Ariya was still looking around. She had a lot more to choose from, since she could easily wield magic tools. Even if she chose a weapon she wasn’t used to, her Genius Divine Blessing would allow her to pick it up quickly. I didn’t mind her taking a little bit to decide, but I wasn’t really in the mood to be the guy who waits for years while the girl dillydallies about what to get.