Chapter 236.1: Popularity and Demand (Part 1)
「This is certainly useful.」
Mira left the dark room and looked around again.
Usually night vision goggles would get blown out and become unusable in brightly lit areas, but those made by the Dinowal Store were not like that. It was still a manual process, but there was a switch the wearer could quickly flip to turn off the night vision mode.
So Mira entered and exited the dark room many times, marveling at the difference in operation. Then she finally returned to the new arrivals section to take off the samples.
There she returned the goggles, mask, and mantle to their corresponding place, then picked up one of each to buy for herself. All of them in S size.
Once she was done looking at whatever else was new, she headed to the checkout counter.
As she headed there, a young man watched her leaving the new arrivals sections. He was the same person who had been startled by her inside the dark room.
Now he was completely dumbfounded.
Not too long ago he had been shuddering and had run away when he saw Mira crawling around the dark room, looking extremely suspicious. But when she came out and took off all the equipment, his fear turned to swooning as he saw a really cute girl emerge from the strange getup, the large gap between the two appearances only accentuating the effect.
But he kept those feelings to himself, and Mira was completely oblivious to them as well.
The night vision goggles sold for 500,000 Rils, the gas mask and mantle each were 300,000 Rils, so together they came to a total of 1,100,000 Rils. Coupling that with the refrigeration bag and everything else she picked, and the total went up to around 1,300,000 Rils.1 At least Mira still had her complimentary ticket, so she got a discount of 20%.
「I ended up going over budget by so much!」
After leaving the Dinowal Store, Mira looked at her remaining money and exclaimed that with delight. She had decided that her budget would be 300,000 Rils when she entered the store, but she had gone a million Rils over that. She had no regrets though, or rather, seemed pleased with everything she had found.
She had spent more than expected, but that did not bother her at all because a certain thought was floating in her mind. If she ran out of money, she could simply go sell more Magic Stones.
There was still plenty left of the Magic Stones she had hoarded in the Ancient Underground City. She had not sold them yet, but considering current prices she could easily get tens of millions of Rils from them.
But either way, Mira's wallet felt really light now.
The next location she wanted to visit was a store specializing in amber, but not the type used in jewelry. Instead she wanted a more specialized type, used by adventurers as aids for enchantments or Magic Wares.
(Hmm... The prices did go up...)
Mira was there to see how much Rainbowbead Amber cost, since that was what she needed to craft Refined equipment. After a quick glance, she concluded that prices had increased by half of what they were in the past.
(But that's still a fair price to attain a powerful boost in strength...)
Mira was currently trying to find a way to obtain the strongest equipment, which would allow her to get the most out of her own skills.
Rainbowbead Amber's main attribute was enhancing physical attacks. In other words, it would cover for Mira's weaknesses as a spellcaster, while also making her Sage Arts more effective.
Her plan was to use Refining to distill the power of multiple Rainbowbead Amber pieces into a single one, and then combining that with the materials harvested from Machina Guardian to create new equipment.
She was expecting the result to be completely broken, in a way that's unfair to others.
(They actually have a pretty good selection here.)
As she daydreamed of the day when it would be completed, Mira began evaluating the Rainbowbead Amber in the store.
In the end, she ended up spending nearly as much time in the amber store as the Dinowal Store, and by the time she was out again it was just about 6pm, with the sun about to set.
(Now then, I wonder what happened? Somehow everyone seems to be on edge...)
Feeling like she had done enough for the day, Mira headed back to the Baron Hotel, but on her way there she noticed something.
She was walking through one of Haxthausen's main streets, lined with stores, so it was normal for many people to be there. But somehow things felt different this time.
Wondering what was the source of that feeling, Mira began surveying her surroundings, and soon after she heard some voices.
「So, did you find her?」
「No she wasn't over there.」
「I see, I wonder where she went?」
It was clear they were looking for someone.
Mira looked around a bit more, searching for the source of the voices, and saw a group of people running around and looking into the alleys.
Their attire made it easy to assume that they were adventurers. Seeing that, Mira looked around again, and she finally realized what felt different.
Most of the people were still going with their usual peaceful lives, but the adventurers amongst them were agitated and trying to find something. Their eyes kept darting around, and sometimes they would even bump into people by accident. Looking up, Mira noticed that there were also adventurers running along the rooftops.
It was clear that there were many adventurers searching for something, maybe across the entire city.
(Could this be...)
Considering the current state of things in Haxthausen, and the attitude of the adventurers, she began to wonder if maybe the Phantom Thief Fuzzy Dice had made a move.
But there were still a few days left before the scheduled date, so it was too soon for him to appear. The adventurers seemed to be certain there was something to search for though.
Every time the thief had sent an advance notice, he had shown up at the specified date without fail. So it was hard to imagine he would conduct the heist earlier this time.
Then Mira thought about it a bit more, there were still a few days left before the date, and it would not be strange for him to be scouting the area beforehand.
Maybe someone had spotted Fuzzy Dice while he was planning something. But the longer she thought about it, she realized that there was no point in forming baseless assumptions from vague information, so she decided it was faster to ask directly.
「Hey, you there. May I ask you something?」
Mira used Sky Stride to climb onto a nearby roof, where she approached a man who was surveying the streets from up there.
「Hm? Sure, go ahead...wait, you're the girl from this morning!」
The man turned around and let out a surprised voice the moment he saw Mira.
「This morning..? So that must mean... Ah, you must've been in the crowd back then.」
There was only one event that came to mind when Mira thought of that morning and adventurers. The crowd of adventurers and soldiers that stood waiting for her outside the spirit mansion. It seemed like this adventurer had been amongst them too.
「Yes, I was there. We all were shocked to learn so much about summoners, though I think learning that you're the Spirit Queen was even more surprising. I'm honored to be able to meet you again.」
The adventurer seemed excited about seeing Mira, almost like he was meeting someone famous, and held his hand out to greet her.
「You flatter me too much, I'm merely a fellow adventurer.」
Mira gave a modest reply, though she seemed excited to shake his hand.
「Anyway, what did you want to ask? I'll tell you everything I know!」
He gave a confident reply, bringing back the conversation to how it started, though he did not forget to keep looking around the streets. His ability to multitask was quite impressive.
「Ohh, alright then, I appreciate that. So I've been wondering...」
And so she asked what had been bothering her. There were a lot of adventurers moving around the streets looking for something, and she wanted to know what that was.
「Ahh, that...」
The man quickly answered her question, explaining why so many adventurers were searching around the city, and what had led to that.
According to him, all the adventurers who were running around were desperately trying to find a water spirit.
That just made Mira slightly puzzled, and as she tilted her head in confusion the adventurer continued explaining. They wanted to find that water spirit because of everything the Spirit Queen had told them in the morning.
When they learned about the benefits and usefulness of a summoner, the adventurers, especially the female ones, became crazed with excitement.2
They quickly rushed the Union trying to secure one of the few summoners active there for themselves, while also preparing everything they could for potential contracts with spirits, like emptying all stores carrying Spirit Crystals, and even scheduling visits to the different places where water spirits usually lived.
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