I'll Give You a Discount
“Please be more careful next time.”
“……I’m sorry.”
“We’re letting this slide because you’re the Swordmaster. Honestly—I thought a real dragon had come crashing in. You have no idea how badly we jumped……”.
I bowed my head in apology to the grumbling soldier. He still looked irritated, but he turned back toward the golem he’d ridden in on.
I kept my head down until every last one of them was gone, then slowly straightened up.
Fuck, that was close……
Getting a new weapon and a new insight, then testing out a finishing move—all of that had been fine. The problem was that this was the Royal Capital.
The capital was already blanketed in every kind of magic, sorcery, and barrier imaginable. So when a giant dragon suddenly soared into the sky, the garrison troops came running at full speed.
Only when I saw the siege golems charging like mad and the wyvern riders dropping out of the air did I finally realize what a colossal mistake I’d made.
Fortunately there were no casualties, it was a first offense, and there had been no malice. They settled for a fine—along with a clear warning that next time it wouldn’t end so lightly.
“Ahem—Evan, lad. All finished?”
“……Yumir.”
“Impressive, I’ll give you that. But if you were going to pull something like that, you could’ve given us a heads-up……”.
“I didn’t know either. Back home I used to draw pictures in the clouds for fun and nobody ever said a word……”.
“Hm? What was that?”
I shot a mild glare at Yumir, who had been hiding inside the building waiting for the investigation to end, then stepped inside. He seemed to realize he was being resented and immediately changed the subject.
“Come on, now—try on the armor too. Yumina made something incredible.”
“……That good?”
“Don’t fall in love with it at first sight.”
At his words I glanced over. Yumina hurried over with an armor stand. Resting on it was a single suit of armor crafted from dragon hide.
They had poured not only the dragon’s corpse but also rare metals that were nearly impossible to obtain into the work. The armor gleamed pure black, radiating a luminous sheen that seized my gaze completely.
“I named it the Dragon Suit.”
“Whoa……”.
“Do you like the design?”
“Yes—yes!”
“Come over here and put it on.”
With Yumina’s help I donned the armor. The pieces that had looked a little large shrank until they fit my body perfectly.
I’d been told dragon hide retained anti-magic properties that made it hard to engrave spells, so I looked at her curiously, wondering how this was even possible. She smiled brightly and began explaining the armor.
“I carved the magic circles on the inside of the leather to bypass the anti-magic. That means the interior is weaker against magic, so be careful.”
“Is there any chance I’d get hit by magic from the inside of the armor?”
“Normally no…… but you never know, right?”
After warning me not to take the armor off and shoot magic at it for fun, Yumina grinned and brought over a war hammer so massive it looked like it belonged on a siege engine rather than in anyone’s hands.
The war hammer was bigger than her own body. Still grinning, she lifted it high.
“Yumina?”
“Don’t dodge, okay?”
Then she swung it hard at my side.
Crack-zzzt—! The impact of the war hammer against my ribs shoved me back a single step. I was surprised once that even a full-power blow from that thing only produced this much force—
—and surprised twice when scales began to rise in a rippling wave from the exact spot the hammer had struck, spreading outward like water.
“This is……”.
“I used a ton of scales in that armor too—but reptile scales look a little…… you know. So I made them work like this.”
Impact-reactive armor, she called it—and she gave her own new technique a proud thumbs-up. I let out a soft snort of admiration as I watched the scales bloom across the surface.
Under normal conditions it looked like ordinary armor. Take a hit, though, and scales erupted from the point of impact?
Cool. Fucking cool. My heart was already pounding with the urge to put it to use.
Damn—how did she even come up with this?
Someone like me, whose head was only ever full of thoughts about cutting things or getting a girlfriend, could never have dreamed up an idea like this.
I gave her a thumbs-up loaded with respect and envy. Yumina’s cheeks pinked a little, as if she was genuinely happy her idea had been praised.
“Ahaha—seeing you like it this much makes me happy too.”
“You’re a genius, Yumina.”
“Hehe—I am a genius beauty dwarf artisan, but you don’t have to go that far with the compliments.”
“I didn’t say all of that.”
I stared at her self-praise with a blank expression. She paid no attention and kept right on complimenting herself.
Her self-esteem really was something else. While I was thinking that, I realized this sight I’d been looking at every day for a month was finally coming to an end.
“……So everything’s finished now?”
“Yes. The custom sword and armor you commissioned—both complete. Ah, could you sign the receipt here……”.
“Oh, sure.”
I finished signing the document that said something about receipt confirmation, then looked at the two people I’d grown fairly close to over the past month with a faint sheen of tears in my eyes.
“I hope we can see each other again.”
“No need to drop by too often. Not after making gear like this.”
“I’d like it if you came by often.”
“Yes! Next time I get a good weapon, I’ll stop by now and then!”
“Good. Come again next time.”
“Next time, maybe a date with me too……”.
“Ah, that one’s a no.”
I casually rejected Yumina’s advance, turned my back, and left the shop. Yeah—with this Dragon set the two of them had made for me, I’d leveled up another notch in coolness.
Which meant—it would be even easier to get a girlfriend now. With the title of Swordmaster plus gear this stylish, this time for sure—
“Customer?”
“Hm? Oh, Yumina. Did I forget something?”
“Yes. Payment still hasn’t been settled.”
Just as I was about to part on a high note, Yumina handed me a sheet of paper. It was the same document I’d signed earlier.
The amount required to craft this equipment was written on it.
“Right, I still haven’t paid the……”.
I glanced at the paper casually—then my eyes flew wide open at the figure written there.
2,500,000 Elso.
“Th-this is……?”
“We got to work with precious materials like a dragon’s corpse, so we waived the labor fee…… but the materials that went into it are what they are.”
Midway through forging the sword, Yumir had asked me something.
—I’m going to end up using a fair bit of material testing this and that. That all right?
—Yes!
Back then I’d been too stupid to grasp what those words actually meant. That I would have to pay for every single material that went into it.
My hands trembling, I pulled out my wallet. It was stuffed with 100-Elso bills, but even adding them all up only came to maybe ten or twenty thousand Elso. Including the gold coins in my spatial storage, I still only had a few hundred thousand.
Nowhere near 2.5 million Elso. Hell—even if I added up every single coin I’d ever earned in my life, it still only came to a few hundred thousand.
“C-can I put it on credit……”.
“I’m sorry, customer. Our shop doesn’t accept credit……”.
“……Isn’t there any way at all?”
“Hmm…… if you really insist—”
Yumina beamed as she opened her mouth.
“If you become my boyfriend, I might give you a discount?”
“To the bank, please.”
In the end I headed for the bank.
And took out a loan for 2.5 million Elso.
Overnight, I became a debtor.
South Ely.
This provincial city right next to Evan’s hometown was so packed with adventurers that people called it the City of Adventurers.
How did a place like that feed so many adventurers? It meant that one step outside the walls put you in a city so dangerous that monsters prowled freely.
Just as you could never wipe out every bug or insect, you could never wipe out the monsters that kept spawning endlessly from somewhere. That was common sense in this world.
Into that city of adventurers, a single boy trudged through the gates with lifeless steps. People assumed he’d been driven out of some rural village and had come up to the city to make his fortune.
That wasn’t actually the case.
“Oh—! Evan!”
After more than a month away, Rebecca spotted Evan returning and greeted him with a bright smile.
Part of it was the mountain of requests that had piled up in his absence, but part of it was also the quiet worry that he might have left for the Royal Capital for good and never come back.
“You’re back! Did everything go well in the capital?”
“……Rebecca.”
“Yes, Evan? What is it……?”
But the moment she got a good look at him, Rebecca realized something was seriously off. His eyes were hollow, unfocused—like a man who had lost something precious.
She was just about to offer comfort, thinking something sad must have happened in the capital, when Evan spoke first.
“Requests. Give me requests.”
“Requests the moment you arrive……? Aren’t you tired?”
“I’m fine, so hurry……”.
“Yeees…… understood.”
Rebecca was worried by how far from normal he looked, but she couldn’t stop him when he insisted.
She pulled out the pile of bad-debt requests that had accumulated during the month he’d been gone—the ones Evan himself had always claimed, the ones that paid poorly and were hard as hell.
Evan looked them over for a moment, then bit his lip lightly and handed the request forms back.
“Um…… this is a little awkward to say, but.”
“Yes? Is something wrong?”
“Something that finishes fast and pays a lot……”.
“Ah……”.
At those words, Rebecca understood exactly what his problem was. And she noticed that the armor on his body and the hilt of his sword were completely different from what he’d worn before heading to the capital.
He must have spent everything buying new gear.
Well, the Royal Capital had artisans and pleasures far beyond anything a provincial city could offer.
Even a Highest Class adventurer could burn through their entire fortune overnight if they felt like it. So it wasn’t strange at all that Evan—who had just come up from the countryside and suddenly made big money—had spent it all without knowing any better.
“—Yes! I’ll get them ready right away!”
Fortunately, the Adventurer Guild was always ready to extend every possible convenience to Evan.
Rebecca pulled out the requests he had once refused. After removing the ones that had expired or been canceled by the clients, what remained were solid jobs that, all together, would let him earn nearly a hundred thousand Elso in one go.
“Here you are!”
Even so, Evan’s expression didn’t ease as he looked over the requests. He looked like a man who was saying this still wasn’t enough.