Now then. Because of that we were going to head toward the dungeon city
in a hurry but... there was one thing that had to be done no matter what
before that.
It was procuring new armor.
"Our current armors aren't bad but, in the end they're only intended for
beginner who have only obtained their Gift. For weapons we had procured
new ones earlier but, as expected we also need to get armors that are
suitable for our level soon..."
I spoke while looking at Alicia and my armors.
Alicia and I were from noble families of Spermaria Kingdom, but the
equipments that our family gave us before all these were relatively
mundane. Their quality was high but, even beginner adventurer could buy
something similar if they worked hard.
This wasn't because our family was living modestly as noble, but because
wearing equipment that didn't suit the user's actual strength would only
make them reliant on it and distorted their growth. There was such
extremely logical reason behind it. Even if someone made full use of their
riches and ordered powerful equipments right from the start, it might make
them misunderstand their equipment's greatness as their own strength
which would lead them to early death easily. Such case often happened.
And so the two of us were also given beginner equipments but... we had
grown too euickly.
Alicia needed new weapon quickly in order to match her physical strength,
but she almost never got hit by enemy attack even though the difficulty of
our battle had increased, so we postponed procuring new armor for her.
As the result, the current us was wearing extremely brittle protection for the
level of the fight we got into.
I had mentioned it before but we almost never got hit by enemy attack so
we never really thought about it until now but... we wouldn't be able to
keep being so carefree from here on.
We were going to hide in a dungeon city that was ruled by dangerous
groups, and on top of that the church was looking for Alicia――who knew
what kind of danger would befall us in the future.
To keep wearing beginner level armors in such situation was really
dangerous.
"...Yes. I too am thinking that it'll be better to change armor soon...
We also have money... thanks to the sale of Erio's horsie..."
Alicia also agreed with my opinion (except that thing about horsie, well,
yeah).
Because of that we immediately headed to a certain place right after we left
the merchant guild.
To the shop of the best blacksmith in this region who provided us with
powerful weapons――Weips-san.
.
There the shop still looked like an abandoned building like before.
But the numerous equipments that were put in display in there were all of
such high quality that even we who were born in martial noble family
couldn't find anything to criticize. Just a single glance on them was enough
to tell us the skill of the blacksmith that created them.
"Hellooo. We want to talk for a bit with you Weips-san."
"Ooo, long time no see."
Weips-san immediately showed up from the back of the store.
She was a half-dwarf older girl with tanned skin and attire that exposed a
lot of skin. It made me troubled of where to look.
There I felt a bit of awkwardness.
The reason was,
(Come to think of it, Weips-san, she used the trial product of the penis that I
sold didn't she...)
Furthermore at that time I couldn't control my Penis Detachment skill well
and experienced the worst side effect of seeing the scene of "when it was
used" in my dream.
And so I got an eyeful of Weips-san's private scene.
I tried to quickly get into the main topic to cover up that awkwardness
but... there I noticed that Weips-san's atmosphere was different from
usual.
(? Somehow, it feels like she's in a better mood than when we met her last
time. Her complexion look better...?)
If I had to make a comparison, her skin color seemed glossy like Alicia after
she got along with me.
"Weips-san, it feels like you look prettier than usual today. Like your skin
is glossier…"
"Eh!?"
Weips-san was taken aback and froze for some reason.
And right after that,
"...Guh, I myself thought that I'm in form for some reason, but even a
brat can see that my skin is gleaming? This is embarrassing... tsu. This is
because the "trial product" that damn Rouge gave me felt too good... but
as expected perhaps I should start holding back from using it...?"
Weips-san turned bright red and blatantly averted her gaze from me.
I thought that she acted strange and peered onto her face asking "Umm,
what's the matter?", but it made Weips-san turned even redder and raised
her voice.
"N-no it's nothing at all! And, what's your business today!? I heard that
you still haven't got enough money and materials to make unbreakable
weapon."
"Ah, about that."
I thought that it also wouldn't be good to pry too much and followed the
flow to broach the main topic.
I talked about ordering armors.
Most of the products that were displayed in Weips-san's shop were weapon,
but there were also armors among them. Of course the armors were also of
the greatest quality and we would surely be able to gather armors of good
quality just like the weapons that we obtained from here the last time.
But Weips-san scratched her head awkwardly and said,
"Aa, armor huh. You came at a bad timing. If I'm gonna make them then I
want to make them to properly match your body size but... it gonna be a
bit hard to make it right away."
"Eh?"
Why did we meet this kind of trouble again right after the trouble with the
appraisal crystal? That doubt must have showed on my face.
Weips-san continued talking about her reason.
"Right now it's a bit, you know, armor orders are flooding me from the
whole city. For some reason a lot of adventurers got their armor melted at
the east forest. If their armors simply got damaged then I can fix the broken
remain using metallurgy skill but, they got melted instead and I need to
remake it from zero, so I'm currently running out of materials for armor."
"Armors getting melted...?"
The first thing that floated in my mind after hearing that story was the
information of a certain monster.
Melter Escargot.
A giant snail that secreted special liquid that melted only metal and fabric,
and then it would absorb the metal to strengthen its own shell.
It was a monster with characteristic that was oddly similar with the Rock
Turtle that Alicia and I fought the other day.
Its difference from Rock Turtle was its preference for processed metal that
had high purity instead of natural ore.
Therefore adventurers were always wary toward this monster because it
could heavily damage all their equipments if they were careless. But
looking at it another way, there was also proper countermeasure to face it.
And yet people whose armors were melted kept appearing. Just what in the
world was going on?
"It looks like the cause is still unknown."
Weips-san answered my question once more.
"According to the guys who got their armors melted, their armors were
already melted when they noticed even though there wasn't any Melter
Escargot near them. Of course the guild had also dispatched an
investigation team, but all of them only came back with empty hand and
melted equipments. But it seemed the liquid that remained on their armors
really came from Melter Escargot. There's rumor that perhaps some kind of
strange mutant species had just gotten born."
Well, in any case the east forest where the materials to create armor could
be gathered was in such state, causing the armor forging to get even more
delayed. That was the summary of Weips-san's explanation.
"I see, something like that is going on..."
It seemed that things were turning strange while we were going on a light
expedition to gather rock crystal.
Hmmmm. If the armor materials were insufficient then I could just transport
some from somewhere using Local Wife but... it would take time for me
to head until the city where the materials were sold. The possibility of the
church discovering us would rise if we took things too slowly like that.
That was why,
"I understand. We will go to investigate the east forest."
If the culprit was Melter Escargot, we would also be able to harvest good
quality material for armor from its shell.
And so Alicia and I decided to head to the east forest within the same day to
investigate the strange occurrence there in order to hasten our preparation to
go to the dungeon city.