The next day.

Loren opened his eyes and shook his head, ridding his head of alcohol and drowsiness.

There were quite many bottles stacked on the table, and across from it was Jack, completely knocked out with his cheek on the table.

Loren tried to recall what happened the night before, and buried his face in his hands as he remembered Jack going on and on about how he was in love.

The frightening thing was that Jack had kept talking about Nim, the elven hunter, until both of them went down from all the alcohol.

Since Jack was the one buying the alcohol, Loren thought that it wouldn’t be too bad to listen to him talk for a bit. But it started to become a pain after Jack kept on going through the night, and as the bottles piled up, Loren started to feel less and less.

Although Loren had listened to Jack the whole time, he wasn’t sure which one of them fell asleep first.

When he woke up he found himself leaning back against his chair, and Jack was sleeping soundly in front of him.

“Don’t tell me…you were here the whole night?”

Loren turned his sleepy eyes towards the voice that came from the entrance of the bar and saw

Lapis walked in, with the morning sunlight shining behind her.

Lapis, who was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing the day before, walked towards him. Exasperated, she tapped Jack on the shoulder to see if he was still asleep, and then walked next to Loren.

“Umm…Well, yeah.”

“After leaving last night, I remembered that we didn’t get a new room at the inn.”

“Now that you mention it. We had to check out of the inn that the guild let us stay in.”

“I’ve already done it and moved our things as well. Loren, you don’t have much so it wasn’t hard at all.”

Lapis’ words took a while for Loren, who drunk too much, to process, but he eventually grasped what she was saying and glared at her.

He could understand checking out, but if she wanted to move his things, she would have to step into his room.

“How did you get into my room?”

“They let me in pretty quickly once I told them that I was with you.”

Loren wondered if it was fine to do that, but the inn was one of the best ones and was also one that the guild recommended.

There would be times when customers couldn’t come to take their things, and it would be too much work to go through loads of procedures for them.

He didn’t know what the baseline was, but decided that there must be a way to get into your party member’s room using their information and knowledge as a party. If that was the case,

Lapis’ actions weren’t that unusual.

“I got us new rooms at a different inn as well, so don’t worry.”

“Sorry for the trouble.”

“I got the money ready too. As much as I would like to start shopping…what are you going to do about the payment here?”

The number of bins stacked on Loren and Jack’s table was quite high.

They had eaten quite a bit of side dishes as well to go with all the alcohol, and it wasn’t hard to imagine how much money it costed.

Loren was going to let Jack pay for everything, but since he was pa.s.sed out, he couldn’t just leave him here. When he was wondering what he should do, a helping hand reached out.

“Jack, here you are.”

A woman walked in just like Lapis had a moment ago.

Loren and Lapis remembered her thin figure, but while Loren was wondering if that was something he could say out loud, she suddenly kicked Jack, who was still asleep, straight on the back.

A loud noise erupted, and Loren and Lapis thought that it would be enough to wake Jack up, but he didn’t even respond to the kick and was still asleep.

“Nim, right? It’s been a while.”

“Hey Lapis. I don’t think it’s been that long though.”

“Have you come looking for Jack?”

“Yeah. I’ve been looking for this b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”

“Umm well. He was here because I wanted to ask him some stuff, so…”

Loren was the one who came to Jack in the first place.

Jack was drinking even before he came, so Loren wasn’t the reason that he drank all night, but he didn’t want him to take all the blame, so he started to talk, but faltered as Nim stared at him closely.

“Loren is a good boy. Lapis should follow your example.”

“Are you saying that I’m a bad girl?”

“I’ll let you decide that. I’ll tell Ritz that he tried to do something good for his juniors. I’ll pay for all of this too.”

Nim gave Loren a thumbs up as she said that, but it was hard to guess what she was thinking from her expression, and Loren stayed there wondering if it was okay for him to leave. Since he wouldn’t leave, Nim made Loren stand up and pushed him out of the bar.

“Should we go apologize later?”

“I think it should be fine. Rather than that Loren, am I such a bad girl?”

“Don’t ask me that…”

For some reason, Lapis was worried about what Nim had said earlier.

Loren refused to answer her question and started walking towards the shopping district, towards the shops where they were going to buy his equipment.

Although there were many shops there, they weren’t ones that ordinary people would go to.

It consisted of shops that sold items and equipment for adventurers, and it existed in any large city.

Lapis said that she had already researched and found a good place to get his equipment, so he followed her to one of the stores.

“Most importantly, what we need is a weapon and some armor. You can’t live as an adventurer without these.”

The store that they went into sold weapons and armor.

There were many weapons hung on the walls and the place was filled with armors of different shapes, sizes, and materials. It was quite a thrilling sight.

At Lapis’ words, Loren pointed at the leather armor he was wearing, but she immediately shook her head.

“You’ve been using that for too long. It’s time to get new ones.”

Loren wondered if it was actually that bad, but the armor that he had been using since his mercenary days was indeed ripped in a few places.

When he was a mercenary, one of the members would mend it for him, but he couldn’t after he became alone because he had no idea how to.

“Loren’s fighting style involves getting hit by your opponent quite a bit, so we should think about getting something harder than leather armor.”

But Loren couldn’t think of wearing something heavy like iron plated armor.

It would just get in the way and he wouldn’t be able to fight like he wanted to.

Even so, leather armor with lots of reinforcement wasn’t the best either.

Keeping it in shape was too much work.

That’s why his mercenary group gave everyone leather armor, which is easy to replenish.

“I recommend these. I think this one would look really good on you.”

What Lapis brought him was a long coat, not armor.

Loren didn’t understand why Lapis brought him a coat, but Lapis soon started explaining why.

“It looks like an ordinary coat. But this is in fact a magic item. The cloth was woven with many layers using silk from black widows. This is a great find. Plus, it only costs five gold coins.”

“That’s quite an incredible on you’ve found.”

“A coat that is enchanted with < protection=””>> and < auto=”” recovery=””>> would usually cost ten times this price. Your defense will increase just by wearing this on top of leather armor. We must definitely buy this one.”

“Ten times…Why don’t you tell the owner?”

If what Lapis said was true, the store would be at quite a loss.

Forty-five gold coins was an incredible amount of money, and Loren felt bad about cheating the owner of all that money, but Lapis folded the coat up and pressed it onto Loren.

“It’s the store’s fault for not knowing, so it’s fine.”

“But still…”

Loren looked towards the old man sitting at the counter in the back of the store.

The old man was looking towards them, and although they weren’t talking that loud, he couldn’t help but feel that the old man knew what they were talking about, so Loren whispered to Lapis.

“I think he knows.”

“No, he doesn’t. Even if he did notice, we just need to buy it before he changes the price. It has a price tag, after all.”

The coat indeed had a tag that read five gold coins.

It looked new, and Loren wondered if it was really okay, but Lapis walked around the store, looking for the next item.

“Huh? This is weird. I had my eyes on that…Owner, where did that one go? Don’t tell me someone bought it?”

“Who the h.e.l.l would buy something like that. It was too big to leave out here so I moved it to the back.”

“I’m surprised you were able to move that.”

“That’s my line…’cough’ I had a few people move it inside.”

“I see. Then can you go get it?”

“Wait a bit. There’s no way I can move that thing so easily.”

After the brief conversation, Lapis and the owner walked into the back of the store.

Loren, with the coat in his arms and feeling left behind, decided to walk around the store until the two came back.

The store itself wasn’t that large, but it had a good a.s.sortment of weapons and armor, and Loren had fun looking at all of them.

Although Loren’s wallet was empty and he had to resort to borrowing money to buy equipment, he thought that it might not be bad to come get a secondary weapon once he had enough money. As he noted to himself the location of this store, his eyes stopped at a shelf inside the store.

Propped against it was a sword.

Its scabbard glistened with gold and silver decorations, and its black leather grip had gold and silver ornaments as well. Its straight blade glistened in the dark interior of the store.

Loren didn’t use long swords a lot, but it’s beautiful blade made him want to pick it up. But as he was reaching for it, another hand swooped in from beside him and s.n.a.t.c.hed it away.

“I had my eyes on this. It’s not something that a muscle head like you could master.”

Although the sudden insult surprised him, Loren made sure it didn’t show on his face and turned his head towards the voice, and saw a young man standing there.

He looked younger than Loren, had burning red hair, strong willed eyes, and although his clothes were one of normal people, he had an iron plate hanging on his chest.

“It’s not something a copper rank like you could buy in the first place. Know your place idiot.”

Loren wondered why he had to be insulted by someone he had met for the first time, and younger than him at that, and stayed silent.

He had a feeling that if he said anything the situation would get messy, and the sword only piqued his interest and he didn’t really want to see it that much anyway.

Since Loren didn’t say anything, the young man must have thought that he had won, and took the sword to the counter.

Right as he did that, the owner came out and sold him the sword, while Lapis came out dragging a large package.

“Did something happen Loren?”

“No, not much.”

Only

“Hmm? The long sword that was here, it got sold. That was quite the weapon, but it’s nothing compared to this one that I brou-I mean found, it’s a few ranks lower for sure.”

“You know, your tongue’s slipping is quite easy to make out. I don’t feel bad so I’m not going to stick into you too deep.”

“Sticking into me too deep, Loren you’re such a perv.”

Lapis let out a vulgar giggle.

Loren brought his fist down onto Lapis’ head and looked what was inside the package that she had brought.

“Now this is another…”

The object that came out of the package.

At a glance, a sigh of admiration escaped his lips.