CH 14

I visited a shop in the marketplace that handled items for adventurers.

Heal Potions, Smoke Bombs, and Decoy Puppets were on display.

Heal Potion was something just as the name suggested, a liquid that healed you if you drank it. Although in [Magic World] it took a bit of time to work.

It depends on the quality of the particular item, but usually you need to drink quite a bit of it for it to work properly.

It takes some time to take it out, put the bottle to your mouth, and drink all of it.

That makes you highly vulnerable during that time.

In addition to that, your HP recovery happens slowly over time after drinking it, which may not be enough to counteract the damage dealt by enemies.

In other words, you can’t really just chug down one potion after the other during battle and use that to push through.

Most other recovery type Skills also work along the same vein in that they create a vulnerability when used.

Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean you don’t need to procure something to recover your HP with if you delve into a Dungeon.

“Three Heal Potions, please,” I asked the female shopkeeper.

“Here they are. That will be 72 000 gold.”

That’s quite a hefty price….

And yet, if I end up penny-pinching on this and run out of recovery items, I might just end up dying because of it.

“I would like to ask one more thing. Do you know where I can buy Skill Books? I haven’t managed to find one in any of the shops I visited so far….”

Indeed, my main objective right now was a Skill Book.

Rather than a single Skill, a Skill Book allowed you to obtain an entire Skill Tree.

Skill Books for Class specific Skill Trees like [Vow of the Heavy Armor] do not exist, but you can obtain general Skill Trees like [Beginner Swordsmanship] or [Attack Power UP].

But then, one person can only have three Skill Trees maximum, so you need to discard one to gain another.

In that case, all Skill points allocated to that Skill Tree disappear.

What I want is a Skill Book for [Smoldering Fang of Madness].

To tell the truth, the period until a Heavy Knight obtains the [Smoldering Fang of Madness] can be considered to be the tutorial.

No need to even consider going without it.

Skills from the [Vow of the Heavy Armor] and the [Smoldering Fang of Madness] are weirdly compatible, so much so that in certain conditions the Heavy Knight can dish out multiple times more damage than even a DPS Class.

A Heavy Knight with a complete build is not a Tank.

It’s not even correct to call it a DPS.

I want to get it as soon as humanly possible, but a Skill Book for the [Smoldering Fang of Madness] is a rare item.

However, there aren’t many Classes that would use the [Smoldering Fang of Madness], so it shouldn’t be that expensive. The question is whether I can find any on sale.

“Aah….customer-san, you don’t know anything, do you…. Are you perhaps someone who only recently got his Class? Maybe not even a year in?”

“Hmm….?”

“The buying and selling of Skill Books are forbidden. People who obtain one are allowed to use it themselves, but the rest can only be sold to the adventurer’s guild, who sells it forward to the nobility or church affiliates.”

My shoulders dropped.

“No…no way…”

Trying to get a Skill Book for [Smoldering Fang of Madness] by myself is all but impossible.

In [Magic World] aiming to get a specific rare drop was considered nothing but self-flagellation.

For the most part, getting nothing to drop when trying for it, then simply picking one up when you no longer aiming for it is a common state of affairs, not just in [Magic World], but in any game.

With it now being reality, it becomes a question of stamina, which makes it impossible to run a Dungeon multiple times a day.

Compared to the game world, the power of the nobility was noticeably much higher.

But, even then, I had no idea something like this could happen.

Those noble assholes!

Well, I’m technically one of them.

There is a high chance the Skill Books collected in Rondalm are monopolized by my former home, the Edvan Family.

“Ah…. it can’t be helped. I don’t usually tell people about this, but I’ll make an exception this time. Consider it as an extra for the Heal Potions. You should visit this place.”

Saying that the female shopkeeper chuckled, drew a simple map on a piece of paper, which she then gave to me.

“This is….?”

“It’s a place that deals in stripped items. Aside from that, they trade in Skill Books illegally.”

“So it’s still illegal….”

I know about shops dealing in stripped items.

In other words, those are items that were stripped off of dead adventurers.

However, ordinarily lost items like that are required to be turned in at the adventurer’s guild.

“It’s somewhat of an unspoken agreement. The adventurer’s guild is aware of underground shops like that, but they leave them alone. Although if one becomes too brazen they would need to crack down on it…. There are adventurers that can’t make a living without those stripped items, and even when the proper procedures are followed, those items mostly end up in the possession of a noble, rather than the deceased’s family. Even the Skill Books are bought off for a minimal amount of money, then wind up being hoarded by a noble, even though they don’t even end up using it. It’s customary by now and they end up profiting from it, so they must have no intention of changing it. They don’t care about how hard it is for an adventurer in the least bit.”

“I-is that so….”

….my chest hurts from hearing this.

For the last fifteen years, I had no idea that this was the case.

Maybe it’s because I focused solely on training with my sword that I ended up ignorant about the world.

The reason I admired my arrogant asshole dad up until I regained my past life’s memories must’ve been because my sense of values was narrow.

Now that I think about it, everyone in the Edvan Household, aside from the family head, was akin to a slave.

If my memories didn’t come back and I got the Sword Saint Class as expected, then I might’ve naturally become like that too.

I shudder just from thinking about it.

It might be normal to accept tyranny from the head of a noble household in this world, but I can’t help but be thankful from the bottom of my heart that I was able to discard those values.

“Oh and of course, you shouldn’t mention this shop to anyone from Count Edvan’s Household or the city magistrate.”

“Of course.”

There was no way I would blurt out that I was that Count’s son.