As far as Serenity was concerned, the pair of sheaths and replacements for his belt and boots were the big items of his stopping trip, but that didn’t mean he was done. He passed through the jewelry section without any enchantments catching his eye; several of the sets were pretty, but none were worth more than that to him.

They wouldn’t be worth much to Rissa either, unfortunately; at Tier Two, she could barely take any attribute enhancement, and that’s what most of them were. Serenity didn’t worry too much about whether or not any of them were useful utility items; Rissa would take her time in that section. If there were any spatial storage rings, she’d find them. They’d be more useful for her anyway.

Maybe that was stereotypical, but it was true; Rissa had always paid more attention to appearance and details than Serenity had. The fact that he was more interested in his weapons was probably just as stereotypical, though Serenity thought the real reason was that he was a melee combatant and Rissa was backline.

Some of the other “mage” items were far more interesting. The first thing that caught Serenity’s eye was a small stack of wands. While most of them were simply magical focus devices intended to make casting easier, a handful of them had preset spell patterns. You had to supply the mana, and they used your own Affinity, but you could use the built-in spell just as quickly as using a Skill.

They were useful both for earning Paths and for actual combat. They could even stretch across multiple Tiers, though the more mana you pushed through them, the faster they would burn out. Serenity was fairly confident that with his oversized mana pool and high mana control, he could manage to push out Tier Nine or Ten spells with a wand that was built for it, but trying to do it with any of the wands in the display would make them single-use items. None of them were designed for over Tier Six.

Tier Six was still better than Serenity’s actual Path Skills, unfortunately. They capped out at Tier Four. He badly needed another mage-type Path at his current Tier; unfortunately, he suspected that his next Path would only be Tier Five.

Worse, he was having a difficult time progressing his current Magitech Abomination Path. The first few Skills all talked about increasing his synchronization with Aide, and he’d done that; that made his initial levels pass quickly. Unfortunately, he couldn’t figure out how to push that farther and the last Skill wasn’t about synchronization anyway; it was about technological and magical absorption. He suspected he needed to either absorb a lot more technology or figure out how to absorb magic items in order to make real progress now, so it might not be possible until he got back to Earth.

He was simply going to have to lean into his melee combat abilities for now. He could probably make it work. He was missing Skills he should have, but his healing was absolutely insane and he was well-trained in combat; that would make up for a lot. He wouldn’t be useless, even if he did end up fitting best in a melee/utility role.

Which brought him back to the wands. He picked up a handful of direct-damage wands; he probably wouldn’t use them, but having something he could overcharge once and actually get a good shot off with could be useful. He might use them at their intended power if he needed range, as well. His Affinities didn’t line up perfectly, but his Plasma Affinity would work fine for a Fire wand. It was too bad they didn’t have a Death-based wand, but the Affinity was simply too rare.

The real prize was the utility spell selection. They were far less hampered by the Tier restriction; sure, the spell effects might not be quite as powerful or last quite as long, but the difference was usually minimal. There was a version of a Quickness spell that wasn’t as good as the one Serenity could create, but having it prebuilt meant that he could use his Infusion abilities for other things. There were three different slowing spells, each using a different Affinity; Serenity settled on the Time-based one. It paired well with the Quickness spell.

There were no wands based on gravity; the only flight spell was actually based on a Lightning Affinity. Serenity took one look at it and passed on the wand. It clashed horribly with his Concept of Energy; Lightning didn’t actually make you move fast; even worse, moving fast enough couldn’t make you float on air.

There was a significant selection of healing wands. Serenity was about to skip them all when he saw one that was different. It was in the same pile, but it wasn’t a healing wand at all. Instead, it was a wand of damage transference. Serenity didn’t recognize the Affinity it used; something like Ita’s Connection Affinity, maybe?

He wasn’t sure if he could use it or not, but if he could use it even poorly it would be extremely useful. It went in the pile.

All of the debuffing spells were based on the Curse Affinity, even the ones that didn’t have to be. The wand maker must be good with curses; that was the only reason to not use some of the other options, like Cold, Mind, or even Lightning. Serenity had zero interest in them; they were tremendously useful, but he didn’t use the Curse Affinity. He’d never been able to gain it, possibly because he despised it and possibly because his background kept saying it doesn’t work like that. Admittedly, he hadn’t really tried all that hard.

That left Serenity with the pile of odd spells. Three of them were summoning; until recently, Serenity would have assumed he didn’t have the Affinity for it, but he was pretty sure he could use Essence or Potential for it, whether or not they appeared on his Status screen, so into his pile the wands went. He wasn’t sure what he’d do with a wand that summoned horses, but that didn’t make it useless. Maybe he’d need to travel and it would come in handy.

Serenity had hoped for a battlefield control spell in one of the wands; there were a large variety of spells that could help make the enemy stay where you wanted them, move away from where you didn’t want them, or otherwise turn the terrain to your advantage. Serenity considered everything from strong spiderwebs to actually changing the terrain itself to fall into that category, and it was notably completely missing from the store’s selection.

The last wand that caught his eye was labeled ‘Wand of Severing’. It took Serenity a few questions before he knew what it was claiming to be: it was supposed to contain a generic counterspell. The problem with the wand was that you had to understand the spell you were countering well enough to ‘cut’ it. Most people couldn’t do that in combat unless they knew the exact spell being cast.

Serenity could. He could see magic and read spellforms, whether or not he was already familiar with the spell and whether or not he actually saw it get cast. He could already damage spells on his own, but it took time; the wand was a distinct addition to his arsenal.

The next section held staves. These were clearly not intended as martial weapons, though Serenity wouldn’t want to be hit by one; instead, they were more like oversized wands. The difference was simple: they were bigger. This meant that they could be either higher Tier for a less skilled enchanter or they could hold more mana. Technically, they could also be fueled by a monster core, which a wand couldn’t be, but those weren’t going to be in the “mage” section.

There were still none made for a caster over Tier Six. The reason had to be that they didn’t bother making them, not that they couldn’t, because if there were Tier Six wands there could be Tier Eight staves. They were probably all made for the individual instead of stocked.

Serenity considered picking up quite a few, but when he saw that they only had staves with direct damage spells, he settled on only a Fire Cone and a Fire Magebolt. He could precharge them, which meant that he’d have something to use if he were low on mana, but staves specifically rate-limited their outputs to prevent them from being burnt out quickly by their own reservoirs. The wands were more useful as long as his mana held out; if it didn’t, he’d probably use his ax.

Clothing items were next. Like jewelry, Serenity mostly skipped that section. The one thing he did pick up was a wand harness; it was like his old Quick Belt, but it would only hold wands and they were each in a different spot. There were more generic versions of the harness, but Serenity didn’t see the need.

He spent far too long in the section that seemed to be random items. It wasn’t random at all, really, it just felt that way. He picked up three complete camping sets (including a two-person Cot of Comfort that he knew Rissa would be thrilled about) and an Ant Repellent Picnic Blanket, along with several “food storage containers” that he decided to think of as “coolers”. They didn’t stop time; instead, they kept food from going bad. It wasn’t by cooling the food; Serenity suspected it had more to do with discouraging bacterial growth than anything, though he doubted the enchanter realized that.

The pile continued to grow with each aisle he walked down. At one point, the clerk asked him if she could start putting together the bill of sale; he told her to go ahead.

They didn’t have any flyers. Those were apparently all sold shortly after the first attack and the only man in Takinat that made them fled at about the same time. The best they could offer was an enchanted Cloak of Flying, and that didn’t seem worthwhile when he already had the Footwraps of Air Glide. He’d mention it to Rissa before she came, though; it looked like something she might be interested in.

They also didn’t have any way to extend his viewing range, not even something as common on Earth as a pair of binoculars. The lack was disappointing but not really surprising; at this Tier, most dungeons weren’t really that big. Sure, they might take days to walk through, but they were in constrained spaces. Dungeons where you might have to worry about a monster that was a mile away moments before it attacked you simply weren’t a thing at this Tier.

He more than doubled the cost when he got to the section of single-use charms. Teleportation and communication were obvious choices, but so were the protective spells. Unlike the other store, the wards here were intended to be used for a single attack or at most a single delve; many were set up to complement a personal shield spell instead of substitute for it.

Many others were highly focused, so that you could get exactly the effect you needed; it would be far more powerful for that one thing and useless for defense against anything else. Serenity didn’t try to be choosy; he had money. He might as well use some of it to prepare for emergencies. A small storage pouch that would help him pull the one he needed out quickly finished that set; it was probably the best two hundred Etherium Serenity had spent yet.

When he finally finished, the clerk clearly expected him to put some of it back. She even told him to put anything he didn’t want on a table to the side and she’d take it off the bill and put it away.

She lost her composure when Serenity simply paid 1,062 Etherium. Serenity had the feeling he’d just made this a very, very good month for the store. He didn’t mind at all; it was more than any individual Earthbound portal had cost to send people back to Earth, but not more than he could afford. This expense wasn’t going to be repeated dozens of times.

More relevantly, it was more than a Tier Eight would make in a year but far less than the value of gear a Tier Eight should have; gear for a Tier Eight delver was assembled over decades at a minimum, and if you were successful you made more than you used or had to replace.

On the other hand, if Serenity counted the value of his weapons and armor, he wasn’t really that far off what a Tier Eight should have. A good melee specialist always invested in their weapons and armor. An adjustable manablade had its downsides at Tier Eight, but since it was Tier Eight it would still be useful. Serenity wasn’t sure how being a soulblade would affect that, but he doubted it hurt. Dragonscale armor always scaled well above its Tier. While neither was enchanted, the Crystal Hilt could take on different Affinities, which was better than an average enchantment, and the dragonscale didn’t need it.

Serenity felt pretty good as he walked out of Lorenzo’s Magic Shoppe. This was the first time he’d really felt properly geared since he left the Tutorial.