“Two swords, please.”
“Oh right, you also fight with two swords, don’t you?” Father said.
Now that he pointed it out, Sakura’s fighting style was totally different from the previous go-around. It meant that Sakura had to stay close to Father at all times for defense. But according to what Father told me, she could fight like a dancing breeze with two swords. In both angel form and filolial form alike, a powerful force, I say. I could hardly wait to see her and Father in action!
“With all that, I’ll also need some cash to finish the job,” the old guy said. “The trade-in won’t be enough.”
“We could also sell this sword we took from the thief,” Father said.
“What about you, Keel?” the old guy asked. “By doing something with a monster claw or fang, I could make something special for you. How about it?”
“I’m not some kinda monster! Sure, I bite, but not as my main weapon or anything!”
“So a human weapon, it is? What kind? I think anything light would work well for you.”
“Nowadays Keel has been using a dagger,” Father told the old guy.
“Yeah! Like one of Sakura’s swords, but shorter!”
“Kiddo, you’ve sure got a lively group here.” The old guy sighed.
So in the end the old guy was going to make four swords, two for Sakura and two for Keel. This was going to cut into our savings significantly. If Keel wanted two weapons, wouldn’t using a monster claw and a fang be the better option? I noticed that she tended to stay in her dog form nowadays, after all.
Father laughed. “I sure do. Oh, I just remembered.” He reached into his pockets. “We got this letter from someone for you. Do you happen to know him? It sounds like he also sells weapons here in Melromarc.” He handed over the letter we got from the axe-wielding mole.
The old guy examined the letter carefully.
“Beats me! Isn’t this from Tollynemiya?” And then the old guy let out a booming laugh and clapped Father on the shoulder. “I expected nothing less from you kids! I really appreciate you doing that for Tolly.”
“Which means that . . .”
“That’s right! They make the weapons that I sell! I owe you kids a little something extra.”
“But you’ve already done so much for us,” Father said.
“Don’t even think about it! I’ll get serious now. Don’t think about the price or worry about me. Just choose whatever you want to do with them. What do ya think?”
“Hmmmm.”
There was no need for indecision, I say! We also had the ingredients that I had collected for Father and that we had given to the old guy. A skilled craftsman could probably fool Father about the quality of a weapon. But the old guy was on our side here. He pulled out a blueprint of a sword design.
“I’ll use the materials you gave me to make swords for the young lady. For Keel . . . I’ll make one dagger and then give you another from my stock as a thanks.”
The old guy winked at me. It was my cue.
I responded by giving a thumbs-up.
“Last of all, we need to get you kids some armor,” he said.
“Motoyasu, don’t you think you should get some proper equipment?” Father asked me. I had some armor that we picked up as a drop item in Siltvelt, and we also had some that we got from the thief. The next step for my armor was to put together some gauntlets for my forearms, I say.
“Father, we must prioritize your armor,” I proclaimed.
“That’s it!” the old guy exclaimed. “Since you guys are around so many filolials, if you gather some filolial feathers for me, I can make great armor for you. I know it.”
“In fact, we’re already making careful use of them,” I told the old guy, showing him my creation: a beautiful cloak sewn out of filolial feathers! So long as I had my cloak, there was absolutely no further need for defensive armaments.
Naturally, I would much rather have made it out of Filo-tan’s feathers. But alas.
I made sure to ornament my armor with feathers from all of the filolials. Every time I put it on, I felt a spark of happiness.
It would be amazingly fun to have a feathered headdress, like something Native American, to put on and dash gallantly as the filolials pull the carriage across the plain, I say! Maybe the old guy could make me something as marvelous as that.
I proposed my idea.
“Well, I’m not sure if I could do something like that . . .”
“And why not? So long as you use filolial feathers, you can’t go wrong. And this is all that I have at the moment.”
In the first go-around, I gathered countless filolial feathers and made many different goods and spare pieces of equipment.
“Hey, Spear Bro, your eyes are really shining now!”
“Just like you, Keel, when it’s dinner time,” Father said.
“You’re telling me I look like that?”
“That’s exactly right. You look like the happiest person in the world.”
“My eyes don’t sparkle like that!”
Armor made from the feathers of filolials . . . there is nothing more beautiful in this world, I say.
If the old guy could make equipment out of filolial feathers, he was nothing short of a master craftsman.
That reminds me of how in the first go-around, Father had a pair of fluffy pajamas that closely resembled Filo-tan herself! I would love to get myself a pair of those. It would be the purest happiness to wear my very own Filo-tan draped around my body, I say! If only . . . if only . . . The problem was that I hadn’t the slightest clue where to get my hands on them.
“Uh, Motoyasu? I’m talking to you! Man, it’s hopeless. Once he gets into his own world there’s no coming back.”
“That’s just the way he is, huh? Well, with these ingredients, I could put together some rough barbarian armor.”
“‘Barbarian’? I suppose we can surprise everyone with how fierce I look.”
“That sounds rad!” Keel chimed in.
“I guess . . . I would really like to get some armor for you and Sakura.”
“I wanna breastplate!” Keel said.