Chapter 5 #2
“The enchantment is a preservation weave. Workshop work, some thirty years old, and good work at that, which is why I want the book.” Alsen set it gently on the counter.
“But it isn’t Alakazair’s, and it has sat here long enough that the shelf behind you kept its shape in the dust.” He hadn’t scanned the shelf.
He didn’t need to. There was no town of a few hundred souls in any world where empty spellbooks flew off the shelves.
“Four hundred gold, with three quills and two inks.”
“Young master wounds me. The paper alone—”
“Is excellent, which is why I’m here and not at the general store buying a journal for three gold. Four hundred and fifty.”
They worked on each other for a while. The proprietor invoked his hungry children.
Alsen noted the single teacup by the till and the complete absence of anything a child had ever touched, and said so.
The proprietor invoked the dangerous roads that made restocking so very dear.
Alsen agreed wholeheartedly, and pointed out that the same roads kept buyers even rarer than books.
The number came down in small, grieving steps.
They landed at six hundred gold. Book, leather bag, shoulder strap, three quills, two vials of ink.
The proprietor counted the coins with the expression of a man burying a beloved pet. “You bargain like someone who has already buried three business partners, young master.”
“Only collectors.” Alsen packed the spellbook into the leather bag. “By the way, was there a girl here earlier? About this tall…” he showed with his hand, “rich brown hair, horribly dirty clothes.”
“Ah. Yes.” The proprietor’s face performed a complicated maneuver, landing somewhere between fondness and religious awe.
“She bought my finest sleeping bag. I named my first price, and she had paid it before I finished the sentence. I very nearly apologized. Then she asked whether I had anything else ‘this soft.’ I did not. She seemed genuinely sorry for me.”
“I see,” Alsen said. Somewhere between the jeweler and this counter, a picture of his companion’s financial doctrine was assembling itself, and the picture was on fire. “Thanks.”
He left, and went for the rest of the shopping.
The town had stores for adventuring clothes, which went for single gold coins a piece.
He got himself a backpack, a sleeping bag of the sensible wool-and-canvas kind, camping supplies, multiple sets of clothes, and boots.
The listed prices summed to fifty-five gold.
He asked for a bundle price the way other people asked for the time of day, and paid forty.
He returned to the inn, finding Luna feasting on a roasted turkey, the waitress almost cuddling into her as she brought her a bottle of wine.
Alsen sat next to her, tearing a leg off the turkey.
“How was the shopping?” she asked, practically shoving the waitress away from her.
“Productive.” He patted the spellbook’s bag.
She chuckled. “I’m pretty sure I got scammed, in retrospect, just not sure at what step. At least I got the awesome sleeping bag. Touch it. It’s silk-weave interwoven with bear cub winter fur.” She motioned at the rolled-up bag.
“My hands are dirty.”
“That’s the point.”
He touched the fur on the bag. It was so soft and smooth that it felt downright magical. When he let go, the grease vanished within a moment. “Self-cleaning?”
“Yes. It cleans itself of all fluids, including bodily fluids, has space for two, and it has an extra-strong heat-containment mechanism. I can’t wait to sleep in it.”
“Nice.” He bit into the turkey. Wait a minute, she had six gems. He said she bargained him down to two and a half, so that didn’t add up. “How many crystals did you get for the gems from the necklace?”
“Two gems for a crystal at the jeweler. Felt pretty great.”
“I got two crystals for my gem.”
She rolled her eyes. “New world. New scams. Damn it.” Luna tore a chunk from the turkey’s breast with her mouth, straight from the bone. She chomped it down in a fashion so brutal that Alsen wondered how her jaw handled it. “So, you paid two crystals for an empty book?”
“Let’s not discuss today’s shopping, just as we won’t discuss the road encounter with Savnoj.” He focused on the meal.
“Sounds good.”
They got a room after that meal, the only free one in the inn. It was under the roof. They went to the room, and Luna straight up grabbed her sleeping bag and slipped out through the window on the roof.
Alsen got the point. Well, it had heating through a segment of the floor and a large cauldron. For the first time since he got into this world, he could wash with warm water.
It took him an hour to prepare it, but once he sank into the cauldron filled with warm water, he almost fainted from the relaxation.
Oh, yeah, this was the stuff.
He conjured the System menu. Level two, almost at level three. He must have gotten experience for the Savnoj encounter. The System just didn’t bother with announcing it.
Alsen looked over the stats. Today, he understood why all the top mages from Luna’s world were strength builds.
When facing Savnoj, he had a stronger foe in front of him. His best shot was the strongest spell he could muster, fired before the fight even started. Strength was the stat for that.
Intelligence would have worked too, as that allowed him to ignore part of the damage reduction, but spell power also worked on non-attack spells, unlike intelligence.
In a scenario of facing a stronger foe, the key variable was being able to injure them. That needed strength.
And every mage from Luna’s world did, on their path to power, face foes stronger than themselves. They defeated those foes by wielding power far above what they were supposed to.
He put all his stat points into strength, allocated the pathing nodes on the archmage specialization, and chose strength for the stat bonus.
First, he was going to get strength while figuring out his defenses through spell selection and preparation.
He remained in the cauldron, pondering the elephant in the room. The same one Luna had to be thinking about on the roof.
So far, they had traveled together out of necessity. But now, in the city, with gold, the necessity vanished.
Tomorrow, they could each walk their separate ways.
But did he want to?