Try again? - Chapter 42

Since I didn’t know much about how monsters were ranked I had to ask Fiona about it. Even if I know that the wasps were classified as D rank, I didn’t know exactly what that means.

Her previous ’owners’ happened to be adventurers and she knows a thing or two about it. Apparently, the wasps weren’t that strong but since they could fly, they were classified like that.

Even if I had my bow, that didn’t mean we could go just like that. Even if I could hit them, that didn’t mean that they would die just by that.

’Ugh… What to do, what to do… My first quest, I can’t miss it. But if we can’t get them I don’t know if we can escape since they can fly… Don’t be rash. Don’t get carried away and die pointlessly. You can deal with a normal one to some extent but a flying one…’

*sigh*

” What is it, Lizza. Why did you stop? ”

” Nothing much… I was just thinking about the quest…  If they just couldn’t fly… ” I said and resumed our pace.

” Mm. It’s much harder to deal with the flying types… I can’t do much against them. ”

” Yeah… Anyway, if we can’t do it then we can’t. We weren’t in shortage of money either so we don’t need to risk pointlessly. We just need to wait and… ”

” Mm. You are right… Umm… Lizza, why did you stop again. ”

” Fio. ”

” Mm. ”

” I think that I got a nice idea as to how to deal with them. We can take them easily on the ground, right? ”

” Mm. Very weak on the ground. ”

” Then, that settles it. Let’s hurry since we have to prepare a lot of things to be ready for tomorrow. ”

As we returned I already had a list of things that we must prepare for tomorrow. We had to borrow Erin again to act as a guide for us.

I felt a little guilty since she must be busy with their own stuff but since Sara didn’t want to take money for it, I had to find another way to repay her work.

In the end, we left a good portion of our meat for them to sell and take a share from the profit as payment with the pretense that we had to leave and wouldn’t be able to do it ourselves. She didn’t have any choice but to accept since it was a waste to let that much meat to go to waste.

” Thank you very much. I’ll definitely sell it at a good price to repay you. ” she said with an astonished expression looking at the giant pile of raw meat.

” No need to thank me. We were helping each other in this way. It’s more like a business. ”

” Don’t say that… Sometimes, is better to just receive others gratitude as it is. I know that you wanted to help us so I want to thank you for that. ”

” Uhh… Yeah, if you put it that way I think you are right. ”

While it was true that I wanted to help her, the end result was more like her helping me. I didn’t know how to sell it or where to sell it not even to mention for how much.

We parted with her shortly afterward since we had a lot of stuff to prepare. The first place to stop was a weapon shop.

I had to replace my hand-made bow with something better. We had to pay a total of 25 silver coins for it and since we also took ten bundles of twenty arrows each, we spent another 6 silver and 1 lesser silver on them. To remain without munition in a dangerous situation was the last thing I wanted to happen.

At least the bow was looking quite good although it wasn’t even enchanted yet.

[Ironwood Bow]

Thanks to my [Appraisal] skill I wasn’t worried about buying a fake one either. I just had to do the enchanting thing myself afterward and all was good.

However, I should check about it after we returned since I didn’t saw a single enchanted weapon in the shop. That was quite odd.

The next objective on the list was food supplies. Besides the normal food, I had to make a special trip for Fiona to the place where I took that kebab thing.

The moment I asked her if we should buy some for the trip, she nodded at me with an expression like that was the most crucial thing to take care of. Since the situation turned that way I had no choice but to buy them because I was the one who mentioned it in the first place.

It was nice seeing her enjoying something so I didn’t really mind it either.

After finishing with the food supplies, we moved to the main objective, namely the things I need for my grand plan against the wasps.

As we continued to buy the stuff, Erin started to look at me with a confused expression since, for an unrelated party, these things have nothing in common with hunting monsters.

I couldn’t explain to her for what purpose I had to buy these even if I wanted too. I could not even explain how my rucksack was capable of carrying so much luggage.

Maybe she was thinking that it was a high tier one but the truth was that I stealthy moved a part of the cargo in the ring when she wasn’t looking.

At the end of the day, all the remaining money I had was somewhere around 7 silver coins. I would have to use 5-6 of them to at least enchant my bow and Fiona’s sword so we basically had nothing left.

The sun was already settled when we arrived back so we ate together before to go to our room. As tired as I was after so much roaming around the city, I still had to do one thing before to get in bed. It was still too early to sleep anyway.

” Fio, can you take care as to not be disturbed until I finish this? ”

”Mm. But what do you want to do? ”

” Mufufufu… You’ll see. ”

Shifting my attention from the fluff and focusing on the ring, the newly acquired bow magically appeared in my hand. It was fun to look at it no matter how many times I saw already. Like a magic trick with the exception that it wasn’t a trick but real magic.

’Time to start working again…’

In addition to the bow, I took out several cores and the 7 silver coins. I was a little tense since there was quite some time from the last time I had to do it.

’This is happening when you take breaks for too long.’

Drifting away my useless thoughts I took one of the coins in hand and put the core on top of it. For the first step, I had to draw mana from the core and slowly infuse it in the coin.

The reason we couldn’t use our mana had to do with the differences in the nature of mana. Actually, it wasn’t impossible but the effort and end result wasn’t worth it.

It may sound simple but I had to guide the flow of mana myself in a certain way and take care as to not damage the material in the process. I had to take care as to not move it too fast or too slow and to distribute it evenly since any of these small details would affect the quality.

It was a little easier since my [Mana manipulation] had been upgraded to level 5 when I acquired [Wind manipulation] at that time. I should take my time and upgrade all of them in the future.

As the coin approached his saturation limit I stopped to infuse mana in it and moved to the next step. This was the moment where the true work was starting.

Due to the high mana conductivity these metals had, we could bring them in a weird semi-melted state by charging them with mana and start to shape and draw with it the patterns.

I said melted but the term wasn’t exactly correct since the metal temperature wasn’t raised at all. It was more like moving it along with the flow of mana kind of thing.

What was left after that was just to draw the pattern. Of course, the difficulty was depending on the complexity of the pattern and what kind of effect do you want to infuse in it.

The piece of equipment you had to enchant was important too since to prevent the damaging of the pattern we had to actually engrave it in the material itself to some degree. Without a high enough skill, you couldn’t even work with high-grade equipment.

Since the bow was made from a higher grade material I had to struggle a little before to finish it.

[Ironwood Bow]

In the end, it was upgraded with just a level but I managed to put dexterity on it which was my main aim. Since my performance was directly related to that status even if it was raised with just a bit was worth it.

That was even more important for me since there wasn’t a point on firing arrows with a little bit more force if I could not hit the target. The dexterity was the obvious choice here.

” Pfiu… That was quite hard, to be honest… ”

” Are you okay, Lizza? ”

” Yeah, don’t worry… I’m just a little tired since I didn’t do it in a while. ”

” Did it work? ”

” Yup. I’m very proud of it… Even though I had to use 4 silver coins on it… I planned to use silver for your sword too but since it might not even be enough we have no choice but to use copper. ”

” You don’t have to force yourself… ”

” Neah… Do not worry, I’m fine. I’ll rest a little and start to work at your sword… ” I said and handed her one of the three remaining silver coins.

” Take it and go down at Sara to change it in copper ones. If I’m at it, I might as well enchant the dagger you use to dismember the monsters too… It will serve as training for me since I slacked off in the last period. ”

” Mm. ”