Death March — Fixed

“Tek here, sometimes, doing trial and error when playing games to learn all the secrets is one of the most fun times I had when I was a beginner. Although it’s depressing when I make too many errors--”

I look at the animatedly talking Arisa, and accidentally begin to tune her out as she goes on about the fun of leveling, and ask Liza for her opinion, “Liza, do you want to go to the Labyrinth City too?”

“I will go wherever master goes!”

Oh, she even put emphasis on that sentence, her tail tapped the ground with a soft ‘thud’, as to drive the point home.

“I’m grateful for your deep loyalty, but I would like to hear your opinion. Since I will still be the one who makes the final decision, please tell me your honest feelings without holding back.”

Even if they are considered my slaves, I consider them to be companions, so I will listen to their opinion.

“I would like to go to the labyrinth city if permitted.” Liza responds, after looking down for a second, seeming nervous.

“Hey, I’m having a good speech here, listen--” Arisa says with an exaggerated frown.

“Alright, I’ll listen later.” I reach out to her and ruffle her hair.

She smiles and steps a little to the side.

“So, are there any advantages to going to Labyrinth City? other than leveling of course.” I ask Arisa.

Apparently, the advantages are as follow: Liza and the girls could move around freely, because the discrimination is much less, and all of the girls could level up.

The disadvantages are--none?

Not really. I would be parting from the people that I’m acquainted with in town, like Zena and Nadi. She worried so much about me, and seems to have fallen for me, so it may be difficult to talk to her about it.

“Well, I probably won’t settle down there either, but it would be nice to go on a tour there.”

“Tour? This isn’t like our original world.” Arisa spoke with a sigh, rolling her eyes.

Isn’t it fine though?

A tour of a different world?

“Anyway, where is this Labyrinth City located?”

“I--don’t know.”

Oy, Princess--

“Wait, don’t look at me with those eyes--I do know that it’s in the Shiga Kingdom, but I don’t know the exact location.”

Should I buy a simple map from the bookstore?

My map only displays the wilderness which I used the All Map Exploration on, and Seryuu City, so it’s unusable in this case.

“Master, you have neither horse nor carriage, right?” Arisa asks.

“Nope, but I wonder if the stables that are all over the square near the gate sell any?”

Usually I would ask Nadi, but I’ve just given her a request earlier, so she’s probably not available now.

“Since you can afford a house, then you must be able to afford a horse and carriage, but, for the sake of the journey--let’s look for hidden treasures over there for traveling expenses!” Arisa points over at a nearby Flea Market.

This girl is very cheerful, she seems optimistic--I like it.

The Flea Market has been opened in the same place as where the slave market was yesterday--the widest square in the East District. While the slave traders’ carriages and tents remain were they were, but the food stalls are gone. In their place, dozens of merchants have opened their own stalls, showing off various things lined up on spaces as small as a desk.

There might be more than one hundred of them.

“Master, I have a request before we enter the square,” Arisa asks.

“What is it?”

“I want permission to use two Magics, they are: ‘Discernment’ and ‘Sense Intent’.”

She then explained the effect of those Magic: The former can detect if a Magic Tool is real or not, the second can recognize if someone is approaching with malicious intent.

Since neither seem to be particularly harmful, so I allow her.

Of course, I could do the same things myself even if I declined--but I see no reason to restrict her.

“This! This is surely a find!” Arisa proclaims proudly, holding up a Magic Tool, which is broken according to appraisal.

The name of the tool is: ‘Invitation to the Dream Which Flies Through The Moonlit Night’--what a strange name; and the appraisal result is: “*** but *** in order to ** while *** with ***’. Like usual, for some reason the description for Magic Tools is partially censored--

While the shape itself looks like a musical instrument of music box--the decorations--and description are more than a little ‘indecent’--so it’s probably not something we should buy.

“It looks like it’s broken, so, no.” I sigh as I look at the excitement on Arisa’s face as she holds her ‘prize’.

I leave the stall, after convincing Arisa to put the ‘Magic Tool’, and the shopkeeper started to promote the Tool as a work of art. We begin to look around other stalls, it’s actually quite fun to go around all the stalls and see what kinds of goods, and fake goods, are being sold.

Because I see the same type of short want that I bought from the Alchemist shop for half the price, I bought two of them. Of course, after buying them, I realized that it was a waste of money--but it might be useful for something, some time.

I also bought some other random things like ornamental strings to use to tie Pochi and Tama’s shortswords’ sheath to their belts, and a tassel decoration for Liza’s spear.

Each of them only cost several coins.

In a typical Role-Playing Game, leather products are usually rather expensive, but from what I hear from the shopkeeper, they kill a lot of goats during this season; they do this to stock up on a lot of leather products, making them cheaper to buy.

Because the prices are considerably cheaper at the Flea Market, it’s harder to shop than at normal stalls--because of the number of shoppers.

I didn’t forget to buy a ribbon, to give as a souvenir for Lulu--it’s pink and around fifty centimeters long. The colour is lighter than the shawl I bought for Zena, I wonder if the dye came from this neighbourhood.

A lot of suspicious medicines are being displayed, but according to my appraisal skill, they’re just fake energy drinks with no other effects. Well, I’m interested in the energy drink part, but since my skill doesn’t tell me the ingredients, I refrain.

They’re also selling soap and some hair products, I don’t get any of the hair products because I don’t really like the smell. But, even though the soap is a rather expensive item for this market--around five or six copper coins per bar--I still buy it without hesitation.

Originally, I only intended on buying one, but Arisa desperately pleas, “This is very good!”--so I ended up buying the entire stock, which was only seven bars.

“Master, this! Buy this.” Arisa speaks excitedly, offering me a pair of--glasses. Since they don’t have lenses, it’s just a frame.

“What do you want this for?”

“Of course it’s for Master to use! There aren’t enough cute boys wearing glasses in this fantasy world! With this, I shall start the spreading of such a culture (fetish)!” Arisa speaks quickly, and about strange things. But if she has that kind of fetish--who am I to judge?

The shopkeeper looks over with an amused smile on his face, waiting for Arisa to finish speaking, before saying that they only cost one silver coin.

I can’t turn down Arisa’s pleading gaze, and since it’s such a simple request, I buy them--she has a mixture of amusement and barely concealed lust in her eyes as she carefully places them on my face and steps back to inspect me.

***

The neighbouring stall is selling what looks almost like a chess set.

According to Appraisal, it’s an item that has been passed down from the ancestor of Seryuu City’s Earl, from the Ancient Yamato era. It’s not a Magic Tool, but it seems to be under the effect of Preservation Magic--the market price is ten gold coins.

“Customer, you have discerning eyes, this toy is from the Ancient Empire.” The shopkeeper starts talking.

Arisa interrupts them, “Eh, how do you play with it?”, while looking playful.

Ignoring the shopkeeper who starts spouting some random things, I’m fascinated by the pile of papers in front of me. There are five thirty centimeter tall stacks of books and papers tied with string--and for some reason, one among them is worth one hundred gold. It’s abnormal compared to the other bundles, which are only valued at around four or five coppers.

“How much is that toy?” I ask the shopkeeper, after waiting for a lull in their conversation.

“It’s normally three gold coins, but for the cute lady here, I’ll give it to you for seven silver coins--how about it?”

I pretend to be interested in the chess set and listen to him--his asking price is around half that of the market price, I could get some profit if I resale it, but it would be bothersome to look for the customers.

Arisa lost interest after she heard the price--she seems to have wanted it because it’s nostalgic, but she didn’t really want it that much.

“That’s a bit expensive. How about these bundles of paper, are they some kind of reading material?”

“They don’t have any value, but since they’re made from paper, burning it would be wasteful; so I’m selling them in bundles,”

When I casually ask him about the paper, he says that he was sorting things for a certain wealthy person. He wanted to sift through them for usable books to be sold later, but when he found that most of them are just paper that would be useful only for scribbling--so he gave up and decided to bundle them all together.

“How much is it? It looks like most of the papers can be used to write on both sides, so it should be able to be used for the children’s writing practice.”

“Right then, I’ll give you one bundle for three copper coins. If you buy them all, I’ll make it twelve copper coins.”

I decided to buy them all. I’ll use the unnecessary papers for Lulu and the girls to learn letters.

After I put the papers into the side pouch of the bag I took out before coming to the Flea Market, I gave it to Liza. I was going to carry half of them, but Liza refused again, saying it was a slave’s job to carry their master’s belongings.

“Customer, if you want to teach reading, how about you use this item here?” He shows me cards with the Shiga Kingdom’s words on one side, while the back has a drawing of whatever the word was. For the more abstract cards, the picture can be a little confusing--and on the ‘Water’ card, I don’t know what the drawing is--but, luckily, there are only a few like this.

A single set consists of one hundred or so cards. They’re written with ink that looks like it’s from a pen, instead of being carved or placed there by Magic, each one is obviously made one by one with care.

They must have been an enormous effort, but the market price is only one silver coin.

“Those are some interesting cards.”

“This is something that I came up with myself, I was thinking of using them to teach the children in my hometown.” There was a slight tone of pride in his voice, then he told me that they were originally created from wood waste and ink.

He thought that he could sell them afterwards, so he earnestly asked a painter, who was his acquaintance to make a single set; then he heavily promoted it heavily to the Chamber of Commerce, but the production cost and selling price were too lop-sided--it seems that the production cost is four silver coins, while the Chamber only wants to pay one silver coin for it.

“So they were drawn one by one?”

“Yes, of course it was--” The shopkeeper looked a little confused by the question.

I was just about to ask why he didn’t use printing, since it should drop the cost by a lot, when Arisa stops me; she gently taps my arm and puts her finger on her mouth.

Looking at her, I ask in confusion, “What?”

“Weren’t you about to suggest printing?” She raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah--is there something wrong with it?”

“When I was in the castle, I never saw printing--even in the expensive books in the Royal Library. It’s dangerous to carelessly introduce technology, you know?”

“Even though there’s casting, they don’t know about printing?”

“The technology here seems to be like that,” Arisa, who had failed once, insists--I will take her advice and not mention printing.

I apologize to the shopkeeper for having a private talk during negotiation.

“I want to buy one set, how much is it?”

He cites four silver coins, which is the production cost.

“Are you sure that’s fine? Won’t you not make any profit from the deal?”

“It’s fine--if I can give this product to a person who understand its worth, it will be fine.” He sounds a little melancholy.

It’s a good idea, it would be a shame if it just disappeared.

“Why don’t you think of a way to produce them next time? Since there should be a demand, you could consider the price afterwards. You could look for cheap material, or a way to mass produce them--it can be fun to do trial and error.”

I expected that he would think that what I said was just some needless words that a customer would say during payment, but maybe because he found someone who could understand his will to invent, his expression relaxed.

After telling him a quick goodbye, and wishing him luck, I leave and go towards the other stalls.