Let’s Go to the Weapon Shop
“Hey there, comin’ in~”
“Welcome~ huh? Oh! Ain’t that Alke? Been a while. What is it today, sharpenin’ a hatchet or a saw?”
In the plaza that doubled as a place for well-side gossip, all sorts of shops necessary for daily life were lined up. Dad walked into a building a little closer to the Guild side.
Looking more carefully, it turned out that shops adventurers absolutely needed were grouped closer to the Guild, while daily necessities were gathered on the residential side.
When we slipped through the door, it was apparently the shop itself. On the wall straight ahead hung a sign with a hammer and a sword crossed, but the interior was really small.
When I imagined a weapon shop, I pictured walls lined with tons of weapons, some legendary-looking piece behind the counter, barrels stuffed full of swords, barrels with long things like spears sticking out, and other barrels where you could see the big heads of axe-like weapons, all crammed in everywhere.
This place didn’t feel like that at all. Honestly, if you weren’t used to it, you probably wouldn’t think this was a weapon shop. I mean, it was in a row of stores, but there wasn’t even a sign outside.
“No, today I came to talk about gettin’ a weapon made for my daughter.”
“Yer daughter?”
The man who came out from behind the counter looked exactly like the person drawn in the karuta cards. It really showed how good Kathe was at drawing.
The man, with a white hand towel wrapped around his head, glanced around a bit at Dad’s words, then lowered his gaze toward his feet. When our eyes met, he widened them in shock.
“Huh? Yer daughter’s this little runt? I heard the rumors, but she’s a human, ain’t she? Ain’t it way too early for a weapon?”
"I used to think seven was the right age myself, but she's just twenty points shy of Copper Rank now. Once she hits Copper, she can go on them subjugations, right? If we don't make one soon, it won't be ready by the last month of summer."
Ohhh, so since I was almost at Copper Rank, he wanted to prepare my weapon ahead of time.
Dad, thank you!
“Huh? Copper? Wait, this kid’s already Bronze?”
Giren kept being surprised over and over. Well, I mean, I’m a little human girl, so yeah, I get it.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Vio, Alke’s daughter, a five-year-old human. I’m currently Bronze Rank. I’ll be Copper Rank in eleven more points.”
“O-oh. Seriously? I’m Giren, the weapon craftsman here. I’m a lizard beastman. If you’re goin’ to the academy, you’re with Kathe, yeah?”
So he was a lizard beastkin. When he rolled up his sleeve a bit, I could see some beautiful blue scales on his arm.
Apparently, he and Kathe were relatives. That explained why the drawings looked so alike. Makes sense.
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“Hmmm… Alke, at this size, even callin’ it a weapon’s gonna be tricky.”
I was sitting on a chair while Giren was squeezing my hand over and over. This was not anything weird. He was checking what kind of weapons I could grip and handle.
"Well, I plan on huntin' down a proper main weapon for her as she grows. Vio's right handy with magic, so she'll mostly be fightin' with that.
But if she can't handle close combat at all, that's mighty dangerous for a mage. So I want her to have a dagger she can use to protect herself, and I'll teach her how to dismantle, so I'd like a knife for that too."
“Man… Alke, you never change. Tonga and Ronga both shot up in skill after their baptisms, didn’t they? They’re Silver Rank, mid-tier now, right?
Even though Vio ain’t yer real daughter, she’s gonna turn into an adventurer just as impressive, huh?”
He looked at Dad with a complicated expression, part exasperation, part surprise, part admiration.
From the way he talked, he must’ve meant his two sons. They were adventurers working outside the country, right?
"Hah, hah. Vio's already outshinin' my boys. She's human and only five, so her stamina's 'bout right for her age, but she makes up for the rest with physical enhancement and such. She's sharp as a tack, too."
“Seriously? Huh? She can use physical enhancement at this age?”
The second half of Giren’s shocked muttering seemed directed at me, so I nodded to confirm it.
“Seriously…” Giren muttered again. Uh, are you okay?
“Well, at this size, a knife’s probably the best choice.
Vio, is there any other kind of weapon you’d like to try? Though I doubt you’d really know…”
You’ll still ask even if you think I won’t know?
Then… I don’t know if it can be made, but can I say what I want?
“Um, if it’s a dagger, I want one I can go shupipipi with using both hands.
And… I wanna try a whip too. Big weapons are heavy and hard to use, but a whip shouldn’t be that heavy, right?
If mana flows through it well, I thought it might be easy to use, kind of like an Ivy Whip. In the forest, magic alone’s fine, but dungeons are rocky places, right? So I figured a whip would be handy there.”
With Ivy, I could already create vines from tree branches and leaves. If I added Grow, they’d stretch and shrink and could be used like a Tarzan rope.
Whip was a whip-type spell, and when combined with Ivy, it made a vine whip.
In the forest, I could use it freely, but in places without plants, the mana cost would probably go up. If that was the case, having a whip as an actual weapon seemed better.
“… She ain’t yer real kid, right, Alke?”
"I hear that a lot. She seems to admire them adventurers even more than I did when I was a young'un. Says she wants to conquer them dungeons."
“Yeah! And I wanna see a dragon too!”
They say saying your goals out loud makes them more likely to come true, right?
When I said I wanted to conquer the continent’s dungeons and meet a dragon, Giren patted my head.
“Alright then. Let’s see which grips feel best for ya.”
Like he’d made up his mind about something, Giren stood up and brought out a box from behind the counter. Inside were rods of various thicknesses, round ones, flat ones, angular square ones. Lots of shapes and sizes.
I took each rod he handed me and gripped it. The ones that felt good went into the box on the left, and the ones that didn’t went into the box on the right.
After narrowing it down to a few rods, weights were attached to the ends.
“Now come over here. Hold that rod and try attackin’ those targets. Check how it feels in use.”
Giren led us to what looked like a backyard behind the shop. It was enclosed by walls, but several targets were set up, just like a training ground.
“When makin’ a new weapon, ya need a place like this where ya can actually swing it around to check how it handles, right?”
Ahh, just like trying on clothes. You can’t exactly swing weapons around inside the shop.
The shop being small made sense now, it had the forge attached, and this backyard too. Inside was just for handing over repairs and talking about custom orders.
Understanding that, I gripped the weighted rod and faced the target.
"Vio, keep that arm enhancement goin'. Out in the field, you'll always be fightin' while enhanced."
“Okay, got it.”
Yeah… it’d felt a little heavy at first, but once I applied enhancement, I couldn’t feel the weight at all.
Holding it with both hands, I struck the target like I was slicing it. When the weighted round rod hit, it slipped right out of my hands.
“Ahh, looks like ya oughta wear yer gathering gloves.”
“Oh, right! I forgot!”
Bare hands, and the rod was smooth, of course it slipped. I took the gloves Dad had brought and tried again.
After a few tries, I found that for dual daggers, slightly flattened grips were easiest to hold. For the whip, a thinner round grip felt best, so we decided on that for the handle, but then…
“Damn. Vio, are ya really a five-year-old human? Not a dwarf or an elf or somethin’?”
“Yeah, I think I’m probably human. My mom was human, but I don’t know about my dad. Maybe he wasn’t human. But I don’t have any racial traits, so if anything, maybe dwarf?”
If I were an elf, my ears would be pointy. If I were a beastman, I’d have animal ears and a tail. The only race without obvious childhood traits was dwarves, so if anything fit, it’d be that.
If I was a dwarf… would that mean I wouldn’t grow very tall?
“Heh, heh, heh. Nah, I reckon you’re pure human. You’ve grown taller even over just these past few months. If you were a dwarf, yer growth would be a lot slower.”
So I’m human after all.
I don’t dislike other races or anything, but if I can grow tall, that makes me happy.
What do you think about this chapter?
