Volume 5 - CH 5.14

I am also going to need to change Roxanne’s equipment for the better in order to make her even more ferocious in battle, and if I am going to be buying things for Sherry, then I might as well buy them for Roxanne as well, since I need to buy more than one item in order for my thirty percent discount to trigger properly.

「When you go to the craftsmen, make sure to ask his wife if she is looking for a good Amber Necklace, okay?」

「Yes, we will!」

First thing’s first, I took out Roxanne and Sherry’s Amber Necklaces, handed them out to them and send them on their way to Palmasque to get two more Palmasque Mirrors for the Duke. Even though this thing has also become somewhat of a daily routine for us, it is the one that I would like to get over as soon as possible in order to get all of the money that we possibly can from it, and we still have as much as four mirrors left to go!

After finishing up the business in Palmasque, we went to the Labyrinth so that I could get all of my spent MP back, and once that was done, we returned back home to have some breakfast. Afterwards, Roxanne started doing the dishes while Sherry continued on with her Master Smith training, and later on all of us went on a quick trip to the Armor Store.

「Excuse me, what is next, or one tier above Leather Jacket on the list of protective pieces of armor? If that going to be a Hardened Leather Jacket?」

I asked the man at counter with whom I have become quite a good acquaintance with as of late. We are currently in one of the bigger Armor Shops located on the main street of Quratar, where I started coming to in order to sell all of the items that Sherry has been creating recently and we are not going to be using due to them being somewhat inferior to the equipment that we currently have on ourselves, and the guy is always offering me some pretty preferential prices for them, so I cannot really complain about it.

「For the people fighting in the vanguard, the next best thing would be a Mail Hauberk. It is about equal in defensive capabilities to armor made out of Hardened Leather and it is cheaper than Hardened Leather, but it does come with a downside of slowing the wearer’s movements to a certain degree.」

The guy at the counter answered my question.

Opposite to the shelf that has Hard Leather Jackets on it, there was the shelf that had Mail Hauberks put on display.

Mail is a type of armor consisting of small metal rings linked together in a pattern to form a mesh. When I took it into my hands to see exactly how it would feel, the first thing that I noticed about it was how heavy it was. This would surely provide the wearer with a very stable defense, but I have to wonder, would it really be possible to run around and move quickly through the hallways and the corridors of the Labyrinths? Because somehow I doubt it. If you would be wearing this on your torso and then all of your other equipment on top of that: helmet, gloves, pants, boots and a weapon, the it will really become impossible for you to be moving at quick enough pace to be able to fight and avoid the attacks of the monsters properly. For that exact reason, this piece of armor is absolutely prohibited for Roxanne to wear, because in battle, she relies exclusively on dodging, so if she were to wear that thing, it would affect her greatly, taking one of her biggest strengths away from her. So instead…

「Roxanne, are you going to be fine with a Hardened Leather Jacket?」

「I certainly should be fine with it, but are you going to be fine with that, master?」

「Yeah, I do not mind.」

Our current equipment is essentially the same as the most basic one, so we should not sweat too much over such a small upgrade as the one that we want to do this time. We should just grab whatever we can in order to make ourselves stronger and harder to kill for the enemies.

「Sherry, the same question for you: are you going to be fine with the Hardened Leather Jacket, or perhaps you would have liked something else?」

「Well, personally, I do not think that it is going to make too much of a difference to me if the armor that I am going to wear is going to be light or heavy.」

Saying that, Sherry picked up the Mail Hauberk and examined it thoroughly. Does that mean that she is going to pick up the Mail after all? Well, I mean certainly, with her strength as a Dwarf, she should be more than able to handle its increased weight properly, but I am going to ask her about it just in case.

「Do you not think that it is going to be too heavy for you?」

「It certainly is heavy, but I would say that it is not all that different in comparison to the Leather Jacket that I am wearing now, so I think that I am not even going to notice the difference.」

Well, id Sherry is saying so, then I guess that she is really going to be fine. After all, who else but her can know the limits of what she possibly can and cannot do? All Dwarves seem to be inherently strong, probably due to some kind of Passive Skill for their race, but I cannot help but to wonder just how heavy the armor would have to be in order for her to actually feel how heavy it is and for it to limit her ability to move?

Hardened Leather Jacket, Armor

Skills: Empty, Empty

Mail Hauberk, Armor

Skill: Empty

I take a look at other Mail Hauberk and Hardened Leather Jackets to appraise them more closely.

However, is seems that the best that the Mail Hauberks can do is one Empty Skill Slot, while on the other hand, Hardened Leather Jackets seem to have up to two Empty Skill Slots, so overall, Hardened Leather Jacket appears to be a better piece of equipment for us at the current moment.

But there seem to be only a few Mail Hauberks in here, so who knows, maybe if we went to some other Armor Shop, they would actually have Mail Hauberks with two Empty Skill Slots in stock?

「Alright then, be sure to choose an armor for yourselves from one of these right here.」

I pick more equipment with Empty Skill Slots and pass to Roxanne and Sherry. If I left the choice to them, they would have probably ended up picking something that does not have any Empty Skill Slots in it whatsoever, but now that I have suggested to them from which they should be picking, I have essentially made sure they are going to choose only from the selection of those Hardened Leather Armors that have two Empty Skill Slots in them.

Well, it is not like they can tell the difference, so my guidance in that regard is the best thing that can possibly happen here. If they ended up choosing something without any Empty Skill Slots in it, I think I would have straight up refused to pay for it until they would choose what I advised them to pick, but at the same time I know that Roxanne enjoys looking over all of the things that the store has to offer before she makes up her final selection, so at the very least I did not want to take that simple pleasure away from her, and that is why I only gave them a hint instead of outright saying: you should pick this or this or this or this.

While they were deciding which piece of armor they should be going with, I took a look around the store to check out all the other pieces of equipment that were for sale. Among all of the equipment that was made from Hardened Leather, there were also Hardened Leather Helmets and Hardened Leather Gloves that also had Empty Skill Slots in them. I wonder if all pieces of armor made from Hardened Leather have two Empty Skill Slots in them, or is it perhaps nothing more but a coincidence? It would definitely be nice of that turned out to be the case, because these things are an obvious improvement over the equipment that we currently have, so maybe I should work on improving our situation with these pieces of armor next?

Nah, I think we should be good for now when it comes to them.