Commercial District

Two days after Allen had secured the first four days' worth of firewood, he was back at the village center for another round of bartering.

Because Krena came in the afternoons, his plan was to do these shopping trips in the morning every second or third day.

Rodin and Theresia had given him complete discretion on how to spend the meat from all sixteen albaherons.

Last time, he had used some to bring home molmo fruits and they had not said anything. While watching Mash happily eat his portion, Allen thought about how he could provide a more nutritious diet for his pregnant mother.

Allen packed ten blocks of meat—totaling ten kilograms—onto his rack and put on a thick pair of shoes woven from wheat straw.

These shoes were supposed to keep his feet warmer, but melted snow would still soak through.

The hemp outfit he was wearing had been worn quite thin as well, so honestly, it was still really cold out.

***

An hour later, he arrived at the commercial district. The villagers referred to it as a district, but it was really only a few merchants' stores huddled together.

'Since I'm alone today, I can take my time exploring.'

First, Allen walked into the salt merchant's store. The amount that he had purchased last time was far from enough, as he needed to build up a stock.

Same as before, the merchant accepted his five blocks of meat and weighed them wordlessly.

Soon, he gave the same assessment. "Ten scoops."

"Yes, please," Allen replied, passing over his box.

The man accepted it and transferred salt over using his large spoon.

"Thank you," Allen said, checking and then putting the box away. "By the way, how much would this be in money?"

"Hm? Five silvers."

'All right, noting that down.'

The next place Allen went to was the general store. He was leaving the firewood merchant for last, just as he had been taught, as the firewood would be heavy and bulky.

"Can I trade meat for fruit please?"

"Sure thing. Which fruit do you want?"

Allen looked around and pointed at a yellow peach-like fruit that he had never seen before.

"What's that?"

"That's popo. It's pretty expensive, kid. I can only give you one in exchange for a block of meat."

'Oof, yeah, that's expensive. Guess I'll just stick to molmo after all.' Allen thought. "I see. Then just the molmo, please."

Despite his insistence on this being for Mash's sake, Allen also had quite the sweet tooth himself. He could not very well go home without some fruit.

"By the way, how much would these be if I used money?"

The friendly old lady who tended this store readily answered a few more questions from Allen. He jotted down her answers alongside the observations that he had made on his previous trip.

___

These Things Are All the Same Value:

- One block of albaheron meat (around 1 kg).

- Two tablespoons of salt (around 30 g).

- Four Molmos.

- One Popo.

- Four days' worth of firewood (around 60 kg).

___

The reason why fruit and salt were so expensive was because they had to be brought to town by traveling merchants.

The storekeeper of the general store also taught Allen about the currencies in use, so he noted that information down as well.

___

These Things Are All the Same Value:

- 1 gold coin

- 100 silver coins

- 1,000 copper coins

- 10,000 iron coins

___

Allen was looking into the market prices of products and the currency of this country because it was his goal to make his entire family commoners.

According to Gerda, this would require fifty gold coins in total.

'Based on the salt merchant's answer, one kilogram of albaheron meat is worth one silver coin. Each albaheron gives me about ten kilograms of meat, which means I'll only need to hunt five hundred albaherons. If I really go ham with hunting starting in October next year, I can probably earn the fifty gold coins in a few years.'

Back in the day, Allen used to hunt countless number of monsters in games. For a hardcore gamer, five hundred mobs was nothing.

Depending on the specific game, he had even been killing tens of thousands every hour.

After having gotten a general idea of market prices in this village, Allen headed toward the firewood merchant.

However, he spotted a drug store and a weapons store on his way. What looked like medicinal herbs could be seen through the open doors of the former.

Allen had not been able to check it out the other day, as he had been following Gerda, but he was now alone and free to make whatever detours he wanted. He decided to take a look inside, his curiosity piqued.

"Excuse me."

"Mm, welcome."

There was a large variety of grasses and roots all over the interior of the store. The shopkeeper here, seated at the far end, was an old woman quite advanced in years.

"Um, do you have any medicine to help recover MP?"

"Spare me if you're just here to jeer, boy. There's no way we'd have something that expensive for sale."

As it turned out, the herbs being sold at this store were only on the level of lowering fevers and making poultices to bandage wounds with.

"I see." Allen replied, as he thought, 'Hmm, so medicine to recover MP does exist but is very expensive... Guess I can't expect to get my hands on any until I manage to acquire a steady, sizable income somehow.'

The first time he fought with an albaheron, Allen had lost a lot of Summons during the fight itself.

Every time another one got done in, not only did he lose a fighter, he also lost the stat buffs that the Summon's card gave him.

Because of the way his class worked, if he was ever facing an opponent strong enough to take down his Summons, the longer the fight went on, the less possible it would be for him to recover.

This was why he was interested in items or potions that could help recover MP.

Even though Allen continued to examine and ask about various other things on display, and even though he was a six-year-old boy who clearly did not have much money, the shopkeeper showed no intention of chasing him out.

'It was the same with the firewood and the salt merchants. They're probably all commoners, but I don't get the feeling like they're giving me the cold shoulder just because I'm a serf.'

"Which one is the medicine used for poultices?"

The old lady curtly jerked her chin. "Those, over there."

Allen closely examined the dried herbs in the indicated area, wondering if most people were just curt and gruff in this world.

'Hmm, I've never tried this before, but can I add images to the memo pages?'

On the spur of the moment, Allen mentally tried to impress an image of the dried herbs into his grimoire.

To his surprise, what looked like a pencil sketch appeared on the page.

'Nice, it worked! I guess you never know till you try.'

Up to now, Allen had been using the memo function of his grimoire for noting down results from his experiments, working out hypotheses, journaling, and keeping record of his memories from his previous world.

Now he had learned that he could also use it to keep images of things. Just in case, he went around taking "pictures" of all the other herbs too.

Although his movement was greatly restricted at the moment due to him being a serf, once he gained his freedom, he could go in search of all these herbs in person.

Just as Allen was mentally sorting out which plants were medicinal, the one that had saved Rodin's life suddenly came to his mind.

He asked, "By the way, do you have a Flower of Muellerze here?"

"What?! Of course I don't! Even if I did, I'd make you pay full price!"

Allen flinched slightly at the shopkeeper's sudden outburst. "Um, I'm sorry...?" he asked in a confused tone.

"Ah, no, I should be the one to apologize. I just had a terrible experience with one."

'This is the place where Gerda bought the Flower of Muellerze that saved father, right? What happened?'

Curious, Allen asked about what happened one and a half months ago.

According to the shopkeeper, the man named Gerda rushed into her store and desperately begged her to sell him the most effective medicine she had for wounds.

She fetched the single Flower of Muellerze she had in stock and told him it was worth five gold coins. When he heard that, the man begged her to sell it for three gold and promised to bring the money the next day.

The man did not look like someone who would have three gold coins, but he prostrated himself in the store, going on and on about saving his close friend's life. What's more, he promised to turn himself into a debt slave if he failed to bring the money the next day.

In the end, the storekeeper folded and agreed to let him have the flower for three gold coins payable the next day.

Sure enough, Gerda kept his word.

"The problem is, the herb could have easily fetched more than five gold in the feudal lord's city. I was planning on selling it to the next traveling merchant who came to town. I lost out big time on that deal."

The old woman continued repeating that she had lost out. When Allen nodded and indicated that he understood where she was coming from, she emphasized once again that even if she had one in stock at the moment, she would refuse to sell it for any price less than five gold.

Seeing that the story was over, Allen lowered his shoulder rack, grabbed a block of meat, and placed it on the counter.

"Hm? Which herb are you trading for?"

"I'm not trading. That's for you."

"What do you mean?" The old woman frowned in puzzlement, making her wrinkled face even wrinklier.

"Because you sold the flower at a discount, my father's life was saved. This is thanks from me. Thank you very, very much."

The shopkeeper looked on with an astonished face as Allen bowed deeply.

After this day, whenever he came to the commercial district to shop, he would always make sure to drop by the drug store and leave another block of meat.

The third time he did this, the old woman told him that was enough.

After leaving the drug store, Allen continued his exploration of the commercial district, the touching story of the close friendship between Rodin and Gerda still fresh in his mind.

'Hmm, next door is a weapons store.' Although he had no plans to do so, Allen decided to drop in anyway. He ducked inside and called out, "Excuse me," but no reply came.

Apparently this was the kind of store where the storekeeper would not answer. The man himself was sitting in the back, though.

'Wait, isn't he the father of the Ax User kid?'

This man had been sitting at the same table as Allen during the feast at the village chief's house. As it turned out, he was the village's weapons merchant.

Although he was not saying anything, he was staring right at Allen.

It did not look like he had anything particular that he wanted to say, though, so Allen decided to ignore the gaze and browse the store.

'I'd thought this was a weapons store, but it looks like it's also a hardware store. There are things like pots and carvers on sale.'

This was a tiny settlement which had only barely received official acknowledgment as a full-fledged village. That was probably why this weapons store had stocked such a large variety of goods.

'I'm in no hurry, but it might be time to consider using something better than wooden swords.'

The main reason why Allen had walked in was to find an upgrade to the weapon he was using to hunt albaherons.

A few wooden swords had snapped on him so far, so he always made sure to bring a spare.

However, sometimes he would not be able to draw in time, and therefore had to resort to using his bare hands to strangle his prey to death.

"How much is this short sword?"

"Fifty silver."

Unbeknownst to Allen, he was actually quite well-known throughout the village as Rodin's son. Rodin and Gerda had spearheaded the serfs' great boar hunting efforts from the village's very founding.

This effectively made the two of them authorities among the serfs. And considering how seventy percent of the population in this village were serfs, that was quite a lot of influence.

Normally, a six-year-old boy in worn-out clothes asking the prices of weapons would come across as messing around.

However, due to his connection to Rodin, the weapons merchant answered his questions earnestly.

'I see. I picked this up because I thought it looked the cheapest here, but it's still fifty silver. In other words, it's worth five albaherons.'

"How about a simple iron bar the size of this wooden sword? How much would that be?" Allen asked, pointing to the weapon at his waist.

"Hm, twenty silvers."

'Oof, it's still quite expensive. That's still two albaherons.'

Allen wanted to improve his gear, but he could not do so just for the sake of self-satisfaction.

The albaheron meat was, at the end of the day, to be used for the entire family. And so he gave up and left the weapons store.

He continued on his exploration for some more time.