“I’m here to pick up my weapon.”
“Please wait a minute.” The butler returned to the back of the shop and came back moments later with something wrapped in cloth. “Here you are,” he said as he placed it on top of the counter.
He unfolded the cloth, revealing a massive, rugged long sword with a dull glow.
“Hm.” From what I could see with Appraisal, it was well made. I picked it up. Surprisingly, even though it was huge, it felt comfortable to hold.
I gave it a few test swings. Afterwards, the butler adjusted a few things, and then returned it to me.
“Oh?” It had become even more comfortable to wield, as if it were connected directly to my nerves. It felt alive. I suddenly understood what people meant when they said that their weapon was an extension of their body.
“This is amazing. How much do I owe you?”
“Here you are,” he said, handing me a piece of paper with the cost on it. Wow, this is a lot cheaper than I’d expected. I could pay for it with what I had on hand.
“Kiri...where’d you get that money from?” Sister Sensei asked suspiciously.
“Ariya.” It’s mine, actually.
“That’s not right. I said I’d pay for your weapon.”
“Huh? Really?”
“Of course. I’m your teacher!”
Who am I to stop her if she’s so gung ho about paying? I wasn’t about to thank her, though. This was all her decision.
“Oh—could you make me a weapon too?” she asked, turning to the butler.
But he shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I’m planning on moving this shop out of this town soon. I’ve already begun preparing for that. Sir Kiri will be my last customer.”
I guess business hadn’t been too great here. Then again, he needed to do something about the exterior of his store if he wanted to attract customers to check out the inside.
“Ah, that’s unfortunate.” Sister Sensei seemed genuinely disappointed.
With that, we left the shop.
“So what now? Should we train with weapons?”
Part of the reason she’d told me to buy one was so we could train outside of the town with real weapons. I fully expected us to set out for that, but Sister Sensei shook her head.
“It’d be suicidal for you to suddenly try to fight with a weapon you’re not used to. We’re going to train as usual and just get you used to your new sword.”
Okay... Sheesh, I’m frickin’ tired.
“Mind filling us in on what you need all these rocks for?” Ariya asked.
“Yeah, I’d love to, but...”
To be honest, the problem was that I had nothing to test this out on.
I was almost certain that things would play out exactly as I thought they would, but I needed to make sure that the target I ran my test on was strong enough, otherwise I’d just be unleashing a powerful AOE attack for nothing and learn jack from the experience. That was why we were back to looking for huge rocks just like yesterday instead of testing things out.
I used Conqueror on the boulders that we found while simultaneously compressing them with Armament Craft, shaping them into spindles. Finally, I coated their tips with adamantite before throwing them into Shadow Storage.
“We’re still going? Don’t we have enough?” Ariya asked.
“The more the better. Oh, look, there’s a good one over there.”
“Great...” Ariya looked like she was thoroughly done with all this.
Ow! I was suddenly reminded that Sylph was sitting on top of my head. Could you maybe not pull my hair?
“Here’s another—”
“Master!” Suddenly, I heard the voice of one of my wolf thralls whom I’d stationed to stand watch outside of the range of Detect.
“What’s wrong?”
“You were right,” the wolf responded.
“About?”
“There’s a cluster of monsters gathering on the field,” the wolf answered.
“W-Wait. The Stampede?!” Ariya exclaimed.
Since the newbie from yesterday had been crying about it, I’d decided to have my wolves investigate.
“Fenrir.”
“Would you like me to take you theeere?”
“Yeah.” I hopped on his back and grabbed Ariya’s hand. “Come on, you too. We’re gonna investigate.”
“O-Okay.” Ariya gripped my hand with some confusion.
I pulled her up onto Fenrir’s back, and she wrapped her arms around me.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes, my masteeer!”
Fenrir ran in a straight line, mowing down anything in his way. It was pretty comfortable riding on him. Almost felt like I was on a theme park ride or something.
“U-Uh, Inori?” Ariya nervously called from behind me.
With her chest pressed against my back, I could feel the beating of her heart. And with all the rocking and bumping, I could really feel her chest against me. Yeah, riding like this ain’t bad at all. I should do this more often.
“What’s up?”
“How did you know that the Stampede was going to happen?” she asked curiously.
“As soon as the topic came up at the guild, I knew that the chance of it happening was high.”
“You based that off of the patterns in stories you’ve read, didn’t you?”
“Yep.”
“So this was really just...”
“A hunch. Yeah.”
Ariya let out a sigh of disbelief. Oh, come on. Isn’t it fun when your hunch is right on the money? Also, can you not sigh in my ear? It tickles.
To be honest, though, it wasn’t just a hunch. I have a reason why I thought the Stampede would happen, but I’ll keep that to myself for now. I had no proof of my theory—it might as well all have been in my head.
“Master, we are clooose.”