Interlude 04
"Well, I'll be damned." That was Lance's reaction to the shop that had no business being where they'd stumbled onto it.
Unlike last time, when he and Rhema had found it tucked between two perfectly ordinary shops, the squat, dark-timbered building now sat in the middle of a sand flat in the middle of a goddamn desert, no road leading to it, no tracks around it, suggesting it had simply spawned there rather than replacing anything that had stood before.
"Nazim's Workshop," read the sign above the door.
Lance glanced back at his two companions.
Rhema lagged a few steps behind, while C thoughtfully led their mounts down the slope of a nearby dune, using it as a windbreak against the harsh desert gusts.
The locals called these mounts trotters, though back in Lance's world, this particular dinosaur breed went by hadrosaur.
Brushing dust off his clothes, Lance made his way inside, the other two following shortly after.
The interior was cool in a way the desert had no business allowing, and smelled of old wood and something faintly mineral he'd never quite managed to name across all the times he'd visited one of these shops.
The shelves were, as always, empty, so thoroughly empty it looked as if centuries had passed since anything last sat on them.
Behind the counter, out of sight until he stood, was the stool, which stayed empty only until its rightful owner climbed onto it, giving him the height boost he needed to work behind a counter clearly built for human proportions.
The kobold looked over the three of them with the expression he reserved for unfamiliar customers, not unwelcoming exactly, more the evaluative patience of a craftsman sizing up raw material.
"Hm, so many customers at once," he said. "Unusual."
"Hey, Nazim," Lance greeted.
"Nice to see you again," Rhema added.
C didn't bother, which seemed fine, since the kobold barely acknowledged the greetings, then got straight to business. "What can I do for you?" His slit-pupil eyes swept over them once, unhurried, before settling on Lance. "One at a time. Please."
"Well, since you want to skip straight to business, I have a request," Lance said.
He reached back and unslung the Goliath-Pattern Single from where it hung on his back, preferring to keep it within reach rather than tucked away in his inventory.
He set the gun on the counter for the kobold to appraise, who examined it without touching it while Lance pulled something else from his inventory, payment to make up the difference for what he was about to ask.
"I'd like this precious baby upgraded."
It was something he’d learned far too late, unfortunately.
The Kobold Shop existed, in principle, for simple bartering: you gave the Kobold something, and the Kobold gave you something in return.
Simple as that. But there was a trick to the shop, one that allowed it to do far more than such a simple transaction.
Since the back of the shop supposedly contained anything a person could want, it was also possible to have an existing item upgraded rather than swapped for something else entirely.
In practice, it worked a lot like trading in a car.
He handed over the item he wanted improved, along with something valuable enough to cover the difference, and got back a better version in return.
The fact that the upgraded gun technically wouldn't be the exact same weapon he'd traded in made Lance a little sad, but he also understood, and accepted, that he needed the upgrade.
The kobold stayed silent, apparently waiting for something, which confused Lance until he glanced at Rhema, whose look, backed up by his own Personal Interface's voice, pointed out his mistake.
"My bad, I almost forgot you hate vague requests.
Let me see," he said, examining the weapon, then listing his terms. "First, I want durability improved, at least fifty percent above its current base. "
The kobold nodded, then asked, "That's all?"
“At least a twenty—no, scratch that. Give twenty-five percent increase in attack power. I’ve leveled up three times since we last met and put five points into Strength.”
“Those don’t even qualify you as a B-tier affinity wielder for this weapon, let alone for the unupgraded version you requested,” the Kobold complained.
It was rare for the Kobold to question someone’s demands. Hearing Nazim genuinely question Lance’s choice was enough to make him pause and reconsider his decision. Even so, after a moment’s thought, he ultimately stuck with it.
"I'll be fine. I've always run overleveled equipment, that’s my whole gimmick. I'll manage with the right buffs, which is why I'm counting on you for potions too."
After confirming there was nothing else to add to the trade, the kobold rolled his dice, landing on a five and a seven, apparently good enough numbers, since he vanished to the back of the shop with the gun and returned with something similar but distinctly different.
"Goliath-Pattern Single," he said, setting it down without ceremony.
"Won't bother reintroducing it since I already did last time.
I kept the upgrades close to what you requested, when I could've squeezed out twenty-seven percent more attack power, but chose to invest the difference here instead," he said, setting down several boxes of bullets.
"Are these..."
"Improved?"
Lance confirmed with a nod.
"Do you have a death wish? Because that's the fastest way to die from your own gun's recoil," the kobold said, reaching for the box of hand-sized rounds.
"Wait, joking, I was joking, I'll keep those," Lance corrected quickly, checking the variety of ammo the kobold brought over, which seemed to cover about every variant of bullet he could have asked for his pattern single.
"Perfect. Now, before I ask about potions," he added, conjuring another monster core from his inventory, planning to use it for a simple barter rather than an upgrade.
"Can I get a decent secondary weapon too?
Something at my level I can spam without fear of dying.
Ideally a revolver of some kind, something that scales well with my overwhelming “luck”. "
After securing a secondary weapon and two categories of potions, recovery and enhancement, for both HP and SP, it was Rhema's turn to trade.
She'd already pulled everything from her inventory by the time she stepped up, presenting the kobold with a thoroughly detailed list. True to his stated love of specificity, he seemed pleased, even smiling, when the dice landed on double eights for her.
Lance had come to suspect that the Kobold possessed a skill similar to Identification, one that allowed him to gauge an item’s value without even needing to touch it. The only exception seemed to be when something was being brought in or taken out of the back of his shop.
"Let me guess what you’re going to request next," Lance commented. "Scrolls?"
"Obviously. I'm as dependent on these as you are on your potions," she said, not the slightest bit ashamed of the reliance.
To anyone who knew Rhema was a magic user, needing scrolls might have seemed a little absurd. After all, scrolls were single-use items that let their user cast a skill, usually magical, without possessing that skill themselves.
But once you specifically understood what kind of magic user Rhema actually was, a Sorcerer, it made perfect sense.
Her class let her conjure only one specific category of magic: spells.
Spells had one major advantage over other forms of magic: they cast extremely fast, with no magic circle required.
But like most advantages, that came with a cost. Spells lacked the versatility and customization that magic-circle-based casting offered.
A spell skill like Fireball could only ever produce a fireball.
Its user might adjust its size or power by pouring in more resources, but the fundamental result stayed the same.
Fire magic cast through a magic circle, by contrast, could be shaped into a fireball, a wall of flame, a fire arrow, or countless other forms. The trade-off was speed.
Circle-based magic was far slower to cast, but its versatility simply couldn't be matched by spells.
In that sense, what Rhema was doing with scrolls was compensating for one of her class's biggest limitations, giving her access to magic she couldn't normally customize, or casting spells entirely outside her own arsenal.
"Fraudulent magic user," he teased her.
She was about to respond when Nazim returned with her order, carried in a basket, and explained what he'd brought with noticeable enthusiasm.
If the dice landed right, the kobold would always deliver exactly what was requested, but given the nature of the exchange, there were clear cases of change, a surplus.
Since Nazim didn't deal in currency, that surplus sometimes meant he came back with a slightly upgraded version of the requested item, which was exactly what happened here.
"Next," Nazim said, a dozen or so minutes later, once Rhema had gotten everything she wanted aside from the scrolls and stepped back, letting C move up to the counter.
Lance and Rhema both watched closely. Despite traveling together with the strangely named hero for seven months now, this would be their first time actually seeing him gear up here, and there was something about his equipment that had always struck them as particular.
C set his items on the counter, and Nazim barely glanced at them as he laid out his first request: an upgrade to his slingshot.
Lance blinked. Rhema made a small sound beside him.