On the day after the match, when Arvia came to teach me, instead of going with the usual lesson, she had a proposal to make.

"I was thinking that today we could go at the market, so that you can listen to some actual conversations that aren't about fighting in a yard and also get an idea on how things work around here. What do you think?" she said.

"Sure. Just let me grab my coins," I said before going to lift the mattress to get the pouches of gold coins hidden underneath it.

When Arvia saw the bags of coins her eyes bulged out. "Holy shit, girl! How much money do you have?!" she shouted at me.

"Ehm… just under a hundred gold coins from the arena matches and bets, plus ninety silver coins from sparring with the guards. Why?"

She facepalmed and shook her head. "Damn gladiators." She let out a sigh before looking back at me. "We need to go to a bank first. You can't just stash all that money under your bed."

"It's a lot of money, huh," I said, feeling the weight of the coins in my hand.

"That's putting it mildly, it would take me ten months of teaching you to make that much. And my services aren't cheap."

I looked at the coins in my hands. "I probably need to go to a bank, huh?"

The bank Arvia guided me to was situated not too far from the bathhouse. Seeing that it was in what was the upper district of the city, and that there seemed to be quite a bit of traffic, it was probably one of the more trustworthy in the city. She further recommended it, saying how they had an office in any city and large town of Emester, and that their bank notes were almost always accepted even by banks outside the kingdom.

When it was time to enter, Arvia told me to wait outside and went in by herself, even though the large doors of the bank were tall enough to let me enter. Her reasoning was that the nobles and rich of the city might not want someone who could splatter them against a wall like a mosquito to be queueing behind them, at least until I had a good enough reputation.

She returned a few minutes later with a tall, slim man in his forties who was wearing fine cotton clothes. He introduced himself, and, with Arvia's help, asked me to follow him to the back of the bank.

I accepted and he guided us around the building to a small yard where a few carts were being unloaded. On a side of the yard, away from the busy workers, a small round table had been prepared for our little meeting. Around the table there were two chairs and a sturdy bench, which was obviously for me, and a gazebo shielded it from the sun.

He invited us to sit and we did so. When we had made ourselves comfortable, he explained, through Arvia, how the fares of the bank were a bit steep compared to most other banks, but that they served to ensure a level of security that no one else in the kingdom could provide. Said measures were the registration of a client's magical signature which he said was so precise that even a doppelganger wouldn't be able to get through the safety measures of the bank, and the fact that all transactions were magically communicated in real time to their central office, so that clients could keep their movements in check. He then said how the bank would assume full responsibility of any mistake or loss of money.

As for the price, it was a full gold coin to even open an account, and any transaction would have a fee of two silver coins, except for transaction under one gold, which were free but had a limit of one every two days to avoid scams. Finally, there was a yearly fee of fifty silver coins.

He made a point of ensuring that I had the money to pay both the registration fee and the fee for the first year before continuing with the registration. When I took out two gold coins and put them on the table, he nodded and gestured for one of the workers in the yard to come at the table. He told him something and sent him into the building, before getting out some papers from his bag.

A few minutes into the tedious filling of the documents, made even longer because of the language barrier, a girl came out of the bank with a tray containing a few pastries, both sweet and savory, fruit juice, and a weird device made of glass and metal. She deposited the tray on the table, gave us a small bow, then went back into the building.

In the end, it took us half an hour to get through all the documents, which made the treats even more welcome. At the end of the procedure, he had me prick my finger with a small nail and drop a few drops of blood on a section of the weird device, which soon came alight with shades of white and azure. After a few seconds, it spat out three metal cards, which he explained contained the details of my magical signature. One was my copy, one was the working copy of the bank, and the third was the safety copy, in case the other bank copy went missing.

With my account now set, I proceeded to put the pouches full of coin on the table to make my first deposit, making the clerk give me a wide smile.