I was pretty excited as we walked towards the item shop next to the Adventurers' Guild. What would they have for sale apart from potions and teleports? Were there any mysterious magic tools or artefacts? I hoped the prices weren't too high for us to afford. We definitely wanted to get teleports if we could, so hopefully those weren't out of our budget.

The door opened with a tinkling bell sound, and we were greeted with a cheerful "Welcome!" The salesgirl approached us with a smile and asked whether we needed help with anything.

"We're actually looking for teleports and potions," I told her while Masa glanced around the dimly lit shop. There were various items for sale displayed on the shelves, and although some were clearly vials of potions or books, the uses for the other items were not so obvious. I wished we had more time to browse, but asking for help would be the quickest way to find what we were looking for.

The young woman nodded and guided us to a display cabinet. She then unlocked the glass doors and took out a hexagonal metal slate. "This is a standard teleport for a single person," she explained, handing me the dark grey slate to inspect. "You need to have one at the places you are teleporting to and from. This model can be used five times before it needs to be charged with mana again."

Item: Single-person Teleport

Charge: 1/5

Link: 0/5

Registered user(s): 0/5

Description:

An item that facilitates teleportation between two locations. Must be linked with another teleport in order to work.

Price: 5 silver

Five silver for one, huh. That was about a hundred dollars, which wasn't too bad. We probably needed to buy two each, at least. We asked a few more questions and it turned out that Nevda Town had a public teleport already, so we merely had to link our teleports to it rather than buy an extra one. One also needed to register as a user in order to use the teleports as a safety measure. It would be scary to have a stranger suddenly pop up at your home after all. That didn't mean they couldn't be "hacked" magically, but it would still take a lot of effort for a Transporter to do that. Naturally, it was impossible for anyone without the Transportation affinity in the first place.

Masa and I discussed how many we should buy and decided to share the costs by paying for two each. One would be at the old mansion, one at the tunnel to Kagawa, plus one each for us to carry when we were travelling elsewhere. Once we decided, I then asked the salesgirl about potions. She gestured towards a shelf that held vials of different shapes and coloured contents. While I looked them over, Masa asked her about whether it was possible to make our own. Unfortunately it was a complicated process requiring special apparatuses and the Alchemy Skill.

As a result, potions were expensive, but the salesgirl did inform us that certain herbs could aid healing or had antiseptic effects. These weren't popular because they tasted terrible and didn't have an instant effect, unlike potions which had mana infused into them. Apparently adventurers preferred to save up for these potions rather than use herbs, which didn't make sense to me. Just how awful did the herbs taste? I wasn't exactly keen to find out though.

I was able to barely afford the cheapest general-use potion, so I bought it. Now I was left with just five silver, but I could always clear more quests and earn more money in future. I had noticed some herb-gathering requests on the board. Taking that could be both educational and earn me money as well. I wondered if we were expected to know the type of herbs beforehand or if we had to research them in some encyclopaedia...wait, I had Inspect, didn't I? That could be a piece of cake!

Masa didn't seem to share my enthusiasm though. He tilted my head and asked if I intended to inspect every single plant as we walked. Oh. I hadn't thought they would be so difficult to find since these sort of quests were usually the beginner quests in games. "People wouldn't be willing to pay for someone else to find them if they were that easy to find, right?" he pointed out.

As usual, he was right. So we still had to do research to find out where the plants grew, at least. Not only that, these quests had a time limit, unlike the regular guild requests. Maybe fighting goblins and other monsters was still easier. Ah well, we didn't exactly depend on the money we earned here for our livelihood, so I wasn't too concerned at this point. We decided to browse an equipment shop just to satisfy our curiosity before heading back. They sold pieces of protective gear and weapons, but the good pieces were beyond what we could afford. I suspected that our swords could be more valuable too, since they had actual names rather than being called a generic "broadsword" or "steel dagger".

After that, we registered all the teleports we bought and then proceeded to link two of them with the Nevda Town teleport. This teleport turned out to be located beside the fountain we saw when we first arrived. To link the teleports, we just had to touch both teleports at the same time and pass mana through them. It was my first time doing that, but I was told to close my eyes and just concentrate on my hands until they felt warm. Apparently that would concentrate the mana flow there and made it easier to transfer mana. Masa did his in a few moments, but I took a minute or so. Maybe it had to do with his higher Mana stat or the way his Elementalism affinity worked.

With that done, we tested out the teleports by placing them on the ground and then teleporting to and from the Nevda Town teleport. They could be activated by either touching them or stepping on them and thinking about the destination. That was pretty user-friendly. Now that we had these, travelling to and fro would be even easier than before, which meant that we could spend even more time levelling and completing quests. I rubbed my hands as I thought of all the possibilities.