I decided to use Omniscience to look around the storage space behind the store, but I didn’t really see anything I wanted. I focused back on Ariya, who was now looking at a beautiful silver dagger. The hilt had very flashy decorations on it, making it look less practical as a weapon and more ornamental. Let’s take a look with Appraisal.
Mithril Dagger / (Creator: Ardein Warf)
Quality: B / Value: 150000 Dells
A dagger with a high percentage of mithril in it. Primarily used for rituals and decorative purposes. However, it has high magic conductivity, making it great for mages.
Interesting. It wasn’t only high in quality, but it even had a practical use. I thought it might’ve been too flashy for Ariya’s tastes, but maybe not. Perhaps the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. Just like her mother and sister, Ariya may have also had a great love for all things shiny and flashy. That would explain why she was still wearing the flashy dress armor I’d made for her.
“You want it, Ari?”
“Huh? N-No.” Snapping out of her thoughts, Ariya jumped a little at my question. She shook her head and put the dagger down.
“I don’t mind buying it for you.” Having a dagger with a high amount of mithril in it wasn’t bad. Because of the impossibility of making pure mithril items, it was difficult for me to use Armament Craft to make anything like it. With that in mind, I decided to buy both the dagger and gun. Ariya looked like she wanted to say something at this point, but I chose to ignore her.
“Thanks...” said the unenthusiastic clerk after I’d made my purchase.
The price of the items, especially the mithril dagger, was a little inflated, but I had more than enough money to pay for them. For the record, I was in charge of our finances. Half of the requests that Ariya accepted were completed by me, and half of the monster parts she sold were from my night hunts too. To be clear, though, I was not her pimp. She merely served me, so of course I was the one who took care of the money. I wasn’t a miser, but I wasn’t one to be wasteful either.
“Um...” Just as we were about to leave, the clerk called out to us. It was almost a whisper, so I could’ve just pretended not to hear it, but I decided to humor him.
“What?”
“Are you and Black Rose really in that kind of relationship?”
This wasn’t the kind of question a clerk should ask his customer, but I decided to let that slide. I also wasn’t sure exactly what kind of relationship he meant. Luckily, I had Ariya to give me the answer to my question.
“A man giving a woman a mithril dagger is used in novels as a symbol for proposal. It means, ‘if you don’t feel the same way, then stab me.’”
So, by “propose,” she meant like how we’d propose with a ring in our world? Huh. Stabbing, though...? Isn’t that kinda excessive? I hadn’t read about this in any of the books I’d memorized with Photographic Memory, but then again, I hadn’t really read any novels. Maybe I should have, since they would’ve given me a better understanding of this world’s culture. Well, that aside, how was I supposed to deal with this situation?
“Sorry, I’m kind of a country bumpkin. I only bought this dagger with the intention of giving her a dagger.”
It probably wouldn’t have been that big of a deal to leave this as a misunderstanding, but it was probably better to clear things up. At the very least, if I claimed that I came from the boonies, then it wouldn’t have been strange for me not to have read a book or two, since most villages didn’t even have a single book. It went without saying that people like that weren’t familiar with popular culture.
“Oh, I see...”
Looks like I convinced him—but now I was being looked at like I was some hick. You do know that you’re in a remote village, right? You’re not in any position to feel superior to me.
“I know it’s a little flashy, but is this really the sort of thing that people propose with?” I asked the clerk.
“No. If anything, this one’s more of a ritualistic item.”
Hm... Either way, it had to have some kind of use even outside of being a ritualistic item, because of its high mithril percentage.
“Plus, it’s not very sturdy because of the silver it contains, so it’s not even good for stabbing someone,” the clerk added.
Hm? Say what? “It has silver in it?”
“Yes, that’s what gives it that beautiful silver color,” the clerk cheerfully replied.
The only mithril weapon I’d seen that had this strong of a silver color was Aegiana’s Pure Mithril Sword. But anyway, silver was a big no-no. Why would I buy a weapon that had my own weakness in it?
“Uh, so, listen, I’m just gonna return th—”
Ariya interrupted as I was trying to return it. “What a nice weapon you just bought!”
I got the feeling that by “nice” she meant that it’d be easy to kill me with. Or at least, that’s what I suspected, given how quickly she’d done a one-eighty on buying it. So, ultimately, I bought the mithril-and-silver dagger for Ariya. I guess my original intention had been to give it to her anyway, so this was bound to happen. I was happy for her to perceive me as her enemy...but I wanted to be more of a last boss for her, not just a one-and-done, stab-through-the-heart kinda guy. There was probably no chance of that, though... Oh, crap. Hopefully I didn’t just jinx myself.
I looked around the shop for a little longer, but I didn’t end up finding any weapon that fit the bill. Everything useful was a magic tool.
“Maybe I’ll just be honest and tell her that there wasn’t anything useful...” I thought out loud.
“Congratulations on your training getting even worse.”
Ariya was right. No way Sister Sensei’d let me off the hook that easily. Ugh. Why was she so intent on training me?!
“Next store,” I said, pointing at another armorer not too far away. It looked pretty run-down. There were even some weeds growing outside, and it didn’t seem like there was much foot traffic either.
“It’s very dilapidated...”
“Let’s take a look.”
“With so few customers, I doubt it’ll have anything for you... You’re not going in because you’re hoping it’s a front for some kind of secret shop, are you?”
“It might be!” Yeah, I said it. In my peripheral vision, I could feel Ariya’s cold gaze on me as we entered. It felt so comfortable to me now, though.
“Hm...” The inside of the store was just as run-down as the outside. It was pretty sad. There weren’t many weapons on display—it was like looking in someone’s closet. Surprisingly, though, Appraisal showed me that the quality of the things here wasn’t too bad. They were actually pretty decent.
“Welcome,” said an old man in butler clothes, coming to greet us. Hm? Butler?
Ariya and I stared at him in silence.
“What can I help you with?”
Ariya and I continued staring at him in silence.