Allen and the others followed Dale out of his office and through the large central tent. They stopped near a flap leading to another section of the tent when Dale turned around.

“Well, since we’re here, would you like to browse our stock of typical items,” he began, motioning at the flap of canvas. “The more sensitive items are in a separate tent. We have potions and weapons that every adventurer would consider essential. Many of them are high quality imports at unbeatable prices.”

“Of course, that sounds wonderful,” Christopher said, obviously less on edge at the topic of normal items.

Allen glanced around at his group and got the impression of general disinterest. “Yeah, this is kind of off topic,” he thought. Nevertheless, nobody objected to just looking around.

Dale opened the flap and led the group into a large section of the tent. There were crates and boxes scattered throughout the area. There were many items on display on top of the stacks of crates; everything ranging from weapons to potions to bags and gear was present. Some of it was clearly rare or foreign.

“We have various standard health potions, detox potions, and reconstructive health potions imported from the elves from the Enauvrin Woods,” Dale said. He guided the group to a large stack of crates with a few small glass vials of red liquid sitting on top. “The reconstructive ones will regrow limbs and organs instead of simply accelerating natural regeneration, as I suspect you all know.”

Allen nodded absently as he looked over the potions. They were all about the size of a bottle of five-hour energy, except where most were just a dull cherry red, one had a tri-tone swirl and sparkled a little. That one was the expensive reconstructive potion.

“The standard potions run between five and fifty coppers for a dozen, depending on the potency,” Dale said. “The elven one is a silver each, however.”

“So, around a copper each for a middle-grade…” Allen did some rough comparisons in his head. “Oh Shit, that’s actually a really good deal, the elf potion too,” he concluded. His mood immediately brightened.

Christopher hummed. “We’ll take a dozen medium grade detox potions and two of the reconstructive health potions,” he said with a hand at his chin.

Out of the corner of his eye, Allen noticed Ty look down at the professor with and expression of incredulity. Allen smiled to himself and mentally shrugged. “A good deal is a good deal.”

Dale grinned as well. “Excellent. The detox potions come in boxes of twelve and the reconstructive potions are sold individually.” He reached into one of the crates in the stack below the display and pulled out a small box. The salesman set the box on top of the crates and reached back in. Bottles clinked around as he rummaged around for a moment before pulling out two of the expensive potions.

Then Dale tapped a tag on the box and the two potions with a wand he produced from his inventory. Allen and the others waited patiently as the tags glowed faintly with magic before crumbling to dust as their seals were broken.

“Anti-theft seals, these guys aren’t as small-time as I thought.” Allen thought. “Maybe this is just a small division of the company?”

“Here you are. Two silvers and thirty copper.” Dale said, handing Christopher the potions whereupon they quickly disappeared into the professor’s inventory in the same instant that the coins appeared. Dale smiled. “Feel free to look around. There are many more potions, poisons,

Dale took them through the show room over the next half an hour. It turned out that the salesman hadn’t been lying at all when he had made his claims earlier. They really did have a wide selection of items that normally wouldn’t have been on the shelves in the typical shop or smithy.

Christopher had bought an arcane stylus along with a special enchanted journal with an endless number of pages. Then he had invested an entire gold into a ring of “arcane stabilization,” or something. Allen hadn’t been listening.

He was too busy picking out weapons.

“Shurikens are pretty stupid in reality,” Allen thought, looking over the sets of enchanted throwing needles. “But this does put a smile on my face.”

According to the label, the highest quality needles were made from force-casted adamantium and enchanted with Featherweight and an enchantment combination that would ensure that it flew straight when thrown. The needles themselves were around twenty centimeters long and as thick around as his little finger near the base.

The set of twenty-four enchanted needles was two gold, which was the only reason why Allen hesitated. He also wanted a new knife; the one he had was mundane and boring.

“Too bad I don’t have Identify yet. It takes like a month to unlock that skill.”

There was a very wide selection of knives, but Allen managed to narrow it down to a symmetrical spear-point knife with a twenty-centimeter blade that was about as broad as three of his fingers. It was made from enchanted steel, giving it high durability.

Allen, Ty, and Camila all bought higher quality armor, while Ty got a new expandable tower shield and Camila got a sturdy long sword with a miasma power stacking enchantment.

Overall, the group spent almost ten gold on weapons, armor, gear, and potions. Dale was especially happy as he led them out of the main tent, though Allen was having trouble keeping himself together. The fact that they had payed for everything with the gold they had gotten off Kenneth was very amusing to him. If they found Kenneth somewhere in the camp, then that would mean that the money essentially belonged to the Lanthinus company.

“I’ll take you to the next tent now, if you will,” Dale said. He opened a flap leading outside and the group followed him through.

There were dozens of workers out in the encampment, either moving boxes around or sitting in groups. None of them immediately stood out or seemed particularly interesting to Allen. They looked the part of laborers, though given the right knowledge, one might be able to tell that they were actually well-outfitted bandits and mercenaries disguised as workers. Very few of them looked anything like merchants, and those that did showed the ‘Mage’ class on their nametags instead of ‘Scholar’ or ‘Worker.’

“Okay, let’s try this… Brain blast!”

Allen used Expanded Awareness to see if he could catch any trails. The skill activated instantly, absolutely filling his brain with information. He became aware of every sensation, from the temperature of the sun on his skin to the roughness of the dirt below his feet. His peripheral vision sharpened for a moment, allowing him to see detail where he otherwise wouldn’t have. Even his sense of smell was multiplied by a hundred, which wasn’t all that welcome. Most disorienting, however, was his sense hearing, which expanded in a way that allowed him to make out a few words of every individual conversation and every sound of a crate being dropped on the bed of a wagon or a magicarriage driving through the camp.

“Fuck…” Allen squeezed his eyes shut as the information went through his consciousness in a stream, most of it useless. “Can I just focus on hearing?”

He held his breath and kept his eyes shut before using the skill again. The second time, he was able to actually process snippets of a few dozen conversations that were out of earshot normally. He noticed that while the spike of the skill’s initial activation was instant, he did end up with about a second of boosted senses. Not enough to effectively eavesdrop, but good in battle.

He had almost tripped though, so it would require some practice. Thankfully, nobody had noticed.

The “back tent” was smaller than the main tent and located, shockingly, in the back of the camp. It only had one room inside and nothing was out in the open like it had been in the previous tent.

Dale adopted a subtly conspiratorial tone as he ducked into the tent, followed by the others. “Blood proxy totems will cost you one gold each, and they have a transfer efficiency of eighty percent,” he said, guiding the group to a crate and resting a hand on it.

“That’s reasonable,” Allen supplied. Deflecting eighty percent of incoming damage from the user to an unfortunate sacrifice was worth the price. Blood magic was rather rare, so an item that had the most quintessential function of blood magic was in high demand.

“These totems are resettable though,” Dale added, eliciting interest from Allen.

“Well then I’ll take four,” Allen said with a smile, four gold coins popping into his hand. “Kenneth’s money is really going the extra mile. There’s still like ten gold left.”

He noticed Ty and Christopher giving him strange looks, they didn’t bother him at all. While blood proxy totems were often used in torture, war, and enslavement, they could also be used in a party to deflect damage to the tank and save front liners from dying when skewered through the gut by a boss.

Allen decided he would explain later. He paid for the totems and then used Expanded Awareness again in a brief moment of silence among the group. He wasn’t expecting much from the skill, but it delivered anyway. It was muffled by the canvas walls of the tent, but Allen managed to make out just one word that caught his interest and the direction that it came from.

The word was “Gloom,” and Allen recognized the voice as well.