Dane told me to return after four days to pick up my order. With the coins I’ve earned from our little bet, my first task was to visit the nearest restaurant to cure my aching stomach. Although the food there does fill your belly, the flavors were bland, especially because the soup was very watery.

I was surprised I could still move after only having water, bread and antidote, because the king had poisoned the things he gave me to eat. But man, the alcohol here is great!

Oops, I got sidetracked and that was four days ago.

I let out a loud ill-mannered yawn. Taking on the view of hills of books I burrowed underneath. Where am I? It took me a while to recognize I was at the library. At first, I couldn’t tell because of the mess I made. Since I exchanged the ability to instantaneous understand the words of this world for information regarding to the war game, I figured I should get to studying with the time I have.

Luckily, this world’s pronunciation are near identical to the previous world. The structure is the same, sounds the same, but how you use it is… meh. But you don’t care, you’ll only see them as gibberish anyways.

In the same manner as I asked Granny to teach me the basics types of brewing potion, the librarian was kind enough to go through a child’s exercise book once then left me to study alone. Though I did get a weird face here and there, I managed to grab an understanding to formulate somewhat broken sentences.

As for the books Granny gave me, I needed to wait until Dane’s finished with my order and find out where Whelty hid them.

“Aight… I think I got the basics. Let’s leave the mess here and go back to Dane.”

My bones creaked at every action I made, feeling my sore arms being stretched for the first time in ages. Being alive like this is a pain, but I don’t want to die a boring death. I’m just a giant hypocrite that’s very picky about what I want to do.

“Yo, Dane-! Ouch!”

As I kicked the door, I felt a strong force rebounding from my foot. On a closer inspection the door wasn’t locked. I confirmed Dane didn’t try locking me out since I could push on it, but he installed a metal door that was painted over with the same pattern as his old wooden one. I should’ve realized when I felt its coldness.

“Hey, what gives!?” I tackled the entrance with all my might, slamming the damaged wall with my body instead of kicking it. “Why the heck did you replace it?”

“Dammit Kid! Stop using so much force on my door! Are you picturing my shop as your mortal enemy or something!?”

“It’s my unique greeting to you.”

“Just greet me with everyone else’s greeting. Be normal. I keep the door unlock because you keep antagonizing my door.”

“Did you just tell me to be normal?”

“You’re right. Sorry. You can’t be normal. You’re the scum of scumbags.” I saw him roll his eyes, going to the back as he grabbed the goods. “Well, you came here just in time. I finished making the parts you drew but you didn’t specify the scale of size so I forged these imagining you lifting it. Go on, show me your magic.”

Over the counter, there was the unassembled box and a shovel with a wooden handle.

First, the shovel. It was custom made to have one side sharpened with teeth for cutting and the other side for hacking. Its bottom was reinforced with a long narrow steel plate.

I gave the weapon a quick swing to test its weight and as Dane said, he did a damn good job imagining an un-athletic person, yours truly, to use this. I felt that it was well made enough to be used in combat of the chance arises. I could slash, hack, and hammer with this, but I won’t be able to stab with this thing. Stabbing is best used with a knife on your opponent’s back.

As for ranged weaponry, I had Dane look into crafting bullets for my revolver I brought into this world. Sadly, his forgery doesn’t seem to be capable of making something as delicate and consistently produce the same quality shells. I can’t risk damaging my gun, so I designed him parts for a spring launched ballistic knife instead.

“Yo, kid. You know those brass cases, bullets, you call them? I opened one and couldn’t wrap my head around how your providers extruded the part very clean. By the way, what’s the powder in it?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot the most important part about that. The blackish grey dust you find is called gunpowder. They’re highly flammable. A spark is all it takes to set them on fire. Does this world have anything like that?”

“The closest thing I can think of are something similar I use to start my forge when I receive an order that uses materials one normally couldn’t be melted by normal flames.”

Dane reached behind for a cabinet in the forge and pulled out a small container of red crystal.

“What’s it called?”

“Dragon’s Spittle, hell of an item. Lots of blacksmiths use it. They can make your room hotter than a sauna if you aren’t careful handling them.”

“So, it’s not magic.”

“It is. I mean it somehow heats itself, right?”

“Sure…?” I’m not going to lecture him. If he sees everything as magic, I don’t want to waste more time to lecture him about science when I could go outside the city. “How costly are they?”

“Pretty cheap as they’re extracted from rock monsters that live in the mountains. Adventurers sell them to the guild, we buy them from the guild then adventurers buy higher grade weapons forged by the heat produced from them. Yeah, a cycle.”

Judging by the description, it seems these crystals are the monster’s core.

“And the cost…?”

“10 silver a bottle.”

“Ah!? That’s expensive!”

“Not as expensive as buying it from a guild without an armor smith licence. I bought them for 5 silver and if you buy it at full price, it costs 50 silver a bottle. Be grateful I’ve compromised and gave you a discount on it!”

“Why don’t you just directly buy it from adventurers?”

“Cuz that’s the way this economy works. It helps the guild get the funding they need and let us post request of materials we usually aren’t able to purchase from the market. Us blacksmiths can stay alive because adventurers need equipments every so often.”

“Okay, you’re the expert at that. Hand them over.” I sighed as I toss a couple of silver coins onto the desk. At least I got my hands on some interesting thing I could research as I’m out of the city.

With the bag I assembled, I hid bottles of Dragon’s Spit in the secret compartment. Knowing if I don’t mask it with fabric, it’ll make a rattling sound and attract attention which is what I don’t want it to do. The key to this secrecy department is with a hook where you have to turn and push at a specific angle to unlock. I’ve designed the appearance to be a normal sack with a hard bottom.

“Well?”

“What?”

“How does the shovel feel? Does it match your requirements?”

“I guess, but what’s with the guard sticking from the back?” I knocked on the metal rod that curved into the middle of the shaft. As he pointed to the hinge connecting the neck of the shovel, I didn’t believe he was able to add this feature. “Hot diggity, you actually fucking did it.”

I swung it vertically down and it made a very powerful click noise. The head of the shovel shifted perpendicular to the handle to look like a hoe. The guard that I question transformed into a pickaxe on the opposite side of the head. The transformation was smooth, with the spring he installed, it reduced the rigidness when transitioning its different forms. If I wanted to reverse the form, I only needed to unlock the pin that locks the head.

“Heh, took me a couple of tries to figure out what the heck you drew. It wasn’t easy implementing it. Now that I somehow fitted without it breaking, I liked the design so much, I might steal and copy it for other weapons. Of course, I’m not a scum like you to not reimburse the kid who thought of it.”

“Keh, naturally.”

To be honest, I didn’t want to carry too many tools so that’s why I needed Dane to made this. It might as well be a long trip to the other Kingdom to fulfill my contract with the King and since I began with nothing, I would need to gather materials outside the city and manage own my equipment.

“Anything else?” Dane asked.

“Yeah, I’ll take that dagger off the junk pile. As long as it can hurt stuff, it’s good.”

“Boy, a huge patron you are. A demanding one that is.” Dane exasperated. “Kid, I’ll throw in a whetstone since you obviously look like you’re leaving the city soon. Where you going?”

“Remember when I told you that I got in trouble? I killed a bunch of the king’s guards, freed a dangerous criminal caused a bit of havoc in the slums-.”

“Hang on, you WHAT!? You killed- you killed the king’s guards!?”

“Self defence.”

I’m not entirely lying.

“The point is, I’m alive because the King still thinks I’m a possible candidate as a Hero even though I don’t have a crest. He fucking confiscated most of the things that was with me. Now I’m forced to take on a contract and kill two enemy Heroes from the other Kingdom.”

“Kid, good luck. Illiad is on the opposite side of the world.”

“I know, I spent the last four days in the library and thanks to that, my phone rang out of batteries.”

“You should get some sleep, your bagged eyes are as creepy as usual. One more thing. What are you going to do tomorrow?”

"I might go stroll around outside the city to see what trouble I can make. I’ll be finding ingredients for the recipe books I got for free."

“Somehow your free isn’t what I’m thinking. So herb hunting right? In that case can you do me a favor? I'll make sure to repay you handsomely, since you helped my business."

"Using that business partner advantage to bribe me, I'll take it. What do you want me to do? Kill, steal, threaten, gather information, spreading rumors, I could do all those things if you need me to."

"Hey, slow down. I just need you to find a merchant whose skipped out delivering the things I ordered. It’s been a few weeks and there's been no sign of an apology letter at all."

"So blackmail it is!"

"All you ever think of is how to hurt people. I suppose that would work-, hey did you hear about that rumor that there is a devil inside the city's library?"

"Yeah, it was me. I'll come by to get details of your job tomorrow. I'm going to get some sleep."

Dane facepalmed himself as I left him speechless with more surprises.

It's gotten dark outside before I knew, and I decided to rent a room by the stables for the night.

My head is filled with ideas on how to create mayhem in this pure city. I have the general idea how to do it. Unfortunately, I don't have the resources right now, that plan would have to wait, plus the timing would be wrong. I'll wait, I have patience.

Until the contract with the king is done, I’ll hold back my urge.

-

I was lost, surrounded by tall trees the next day I used my Visa to leave the city.

“Haha, fuck.”