Scouting the market

Due to this weapons that had this property were extremely hard to block if you weren’t aware of it beforehand. This was why it surprised me that Bell wanted it on his sword as his style was all about skirting around defenses to leave small but meaningful wounds. If it wasn’t for his aversion to poisoning his blades I would liken his style to one suited for assassination. [Gravity] Was a direct confrontation property which clashed heavily with such a style but if that was what he wanted I wasn’t going to argue.-

Enchanting his weapons took me only a couple hours since I needed to fuse a cursed stone into them and then tie the four chosen properties per weapon to them and into the weapon material itself. This obviously took a lot of focus and cursed energy to do which cost me four potions and two hours of nonstop work. The final results looked no different than before but hummed with cursed energy and radiated a dangerous feeling. Bell was thrilled with the upgrade and almost rushed straight back to the dungeon despite how late it was to test them out.-

The next day Bell went to the dungeon but I stayed back in the city since I needed to go looking for a magic item shop so I can try and roughly price check a grimoire. I of course had some other things I needed to do like create some more experimental cursed tools and replenish our stock of figurines as we were starting to get low. I admit that when I had first started making the things I hadn’t expected to earn so much money from them. But with Hestia selling four a day at a minimum of ten thousand valis each she brought home forty thousand a day on a bad day and even up to fifty thousand on a good one.-

Apparently they were collectors items due to the fact I tried not to reuse the same design twice and even if the character chosen was the same the pose and feel of the figurines were never identical. The funny part was that according to Hestia the people who buy the things were split into three camps. The race camp that went only for the figurines in a particular race. The monster camp that only wanted my monster figurines and the aesthetics camp that only went after figurines that fit the standard definition of beauty.-

Apparently there was even a camp of people pressuring Hestia to convince me to make more erotic figurines as well since all mine were rather modest by covering all naughty bits and they wanted to see them. I was having none of it though as unless I was going to get paid way more for it I wasn’t going to make stuff like that. Even without doing so we were still bringing in a good amount of money everyday after all and it was way too popular for me to see it suddenly stop.-

Anyways the streets of Orario were cobblestone brick and not dirty per se but not spotless either. People walked about freely with some chatting and other focused on their goals. I myself was casually walking down the street towards a magic shop that the girls at the hostess had suggested might have books on magic and possibly even grimoires. To be fair though they did warn me that most grimoires get snapped up immediately despite their high prices as the promise of a potentially game changing magic was more than enough for the bigger familias to spend so much on a one off item.-

It also didn’t help that you needed both the [Mage] and [Mystery] developmental skills on top of being level three at MINIMUM to make one. To put that into perspective there are only five people recorded in the city right now with the [Mystery] skill of which only two also have the [Mage] skill. Both of which were the sole creators of the entire cities supply of grimoires. Supply and demand was so grossly unbalanced that the prices publicly stated for one began at one hundred million valis.-

I didn’t think I would find a grimoire today but I at the very least hoped to be able to get an accurate gauge of the price of one beyond the rumored prices. Eventually I entered a small place tucked out of sight called [The witches secret house]. The shop was a cluttered mess of books and ingredients and behind the counter was a woman who was the definition of a witch from earth. Old, moles, sharp nose, curved chin, pointed hat the whole shebang. The woman looked up at me and grinned a missing toothed smile.

“Oho? Goodness me a new face in this out of the way place, now how did that happen?” she asked teasingly.

“The girls from the hostess of fertility told me I’d find information on magic here.” I said calmly.

“Ah! You must be that young man who has been worming your way into those beauties good graces then! Ah to be young and looking to score, how I envy you!” the woman said with a cackling laugh as I shifted uncomfortably.

I knew her type, the tease you relentlessly type. They don’t mean any harm with it but that didn’t mean it was fun to be on the receiving end of their attention. While it was true that every girl at the hostess was a beauty in their own right I was definitely NOT trying to get with any of them, I valued my life thank you very much.

“You jest but Mama Mia would skin me alive if she even thought I had such ideas, I truly am here for information on magic.” I said honestly.

“Tsk Tsk, no need to try and defend yourself from me I won’t tell anyone I swear. Fun aside I would hope that those girls would have told you my rules, you pay upfront in either valis or with something unusual. If you choose the second route I decide how valuable the thing you give me is and I won’t argue about it. If you try and scam me i’ll boot you from this place in an instant.” she said seriously and I nodded.

According to the girls at the hostess Lenoa here was the experimental type mage and was always testing new things and looking for curiosities to study. I came prepared however with something I was certain would catch the woman’s attention, a cursed stone.-

Placing the glowing stone on the counter the old woman’s features wrinkled further as she looked at it. “A magic stone? No? How is that? What!? You! Boy! Where did you get this stone!?” she started out at a mutter but was practically hysterical towards the end of her speech.

“I believe that wasn’t the game now was it?” I asked with a grin of my own.

“Don’t play coy with me boy!” she shouted angrily.

“Does it matter? I have it now and you very clearly want it, so name a price.” I said with an amused smile.

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