Dungeon of Niflheim

301 Chapter 301: Daki (5)

“That should do it in terms of the items you can provide as a smith, we still need to visit a general store, food supplier and mostly likely a book store given Frost’s desire for knowledge. We could also visit a specialty adventurer supply store but by then he’d likely be out of funds.” Sam used his fingers to cross of a list of things that Frost needed to purchase before looking seriously at Frost whose eyes were twitching. This was only the first store, and he already felt the pain of the cost, thankfully Daki seemed to have a thing for him, allowing him to get a substantial discount but even then it still cost him a great deal. Around 40% of his total acquired monster materials as well as 3 gold coins, covered the tab.

“Hey, don’t look so down this is how much it costs to be a full fledged adventurer at your level. Most people slowly increase in strength after dozen or even hundreds of quests, thus establishing a decent war chest and higher rank equipment over time. You however are already nearing B-rank, yet you only have two pieces of decent equipment. That glaive of yours and your chainmail vest, just those won’t be enough for you to fight against C-rank monsters on the regular. If you don’t want to die an early death then you gotta spend the money, what good is silver and gold when you’re not alive to enjoy it?” Sam admonished Frost’s warped expression as Daki gave him the bill, she was even kind enough to take a look at the crack in his glaive and give him some maintenance free of charge. Saying that by working on such a high quality glaive would be payment enough.

“....”Frost looked at Sam with an aggrieved look, understanding his words but struggling to accept them, that was so much money gone in a blink of an eye. Under Sam’s scrutinizing gaze however he eventually relented, handing over the gold coins to Daki as well as nearly half his accumulated monster materials, a solitary tear dripping from his eye as he did.

“Pleasure doing business with you Frost, please do think of me whenever you’re in need of equipment.” Daki gratefully pocketed the money and transferred the monster materials into one of her storage containers. She gave her perfunctory business woman thank you while batting her big doe eyes. However, Frost at this moment didn’t see her as the beautiful woman that she was but a money sucking demon.

“Alright now that our financial transaction is complete I need the two of you to vamoose so I can get to work.” Daki waved her hands as if shooing the two of them out the door. “Drop by before you leave tomorrow, I should be done if I work throughout the night.” The beautiful orc woman showed a bright and passionate smile as she turned to head into her workshop, prepared to spent a long night outfitting some of her best work.

Sam smiled when he saw that look on her face before leading Frost out of the shop, allowing Daki to do her thing. Not only was she a very skilled smith she was very passionate about her work, perhaps even more so than flirting with people.

Frost felt rather reluctant to leave Daki’s store but under Sam’s guidance and Daki’s actions he didn’t have much of a choice.

“What you fallen for her already? Heheheh” Sam chuckled as he saw the look of reluctance on Frost’s face, he’d seen it many times before, he himself used to look at her the same way before he got with the love of his life Lola.

“I wouldn’t say that, but she certainly made an impression on me.” Frost spoke honestly, out of all the women he’d met so far, bar Maya, Daki was the only one that truly caught his interest.

.....

“She certainly does have that effect on people.” Sam looked back towards the closed door of Daki’s store. “But unfortunately, her lineage isn’t always a good thing.” His eyes showed a look of pity.

“You mean her succubus bloodline?”

“Yeah, since she isn’t a succubus but an orc it results in her having less control over some of her innate abilities.” The look of pity in Sam’s eyes grew. “Though she was blessed with unparalleled looks and a body to match, her love life is always quite fleeting with none of her relationships lasting more than a couple weeks.”

Frost’s ears perked up as his curiosity was peaked.

“Just like a succubus, she can devour life force through acts of lust however since she’s only part succubus she can’t control it. No man or woman can last longer than a couple weeks with her before being completely drained, their potency in danger of being permanently disabled.” A faint pink hue grew on Sam’s face as he himself was included in the fleeting relationships.

Frost’s eyes opened wide as a look of understanding washed over him, no wonder he didn’t see a ring on her finger or heard any mention of a significant other. His gaze was then drawn to Sam as he wondered how long this shameless teacher of his lasted before he too was ‘drained’ of his essence.

A mysterious smile grew on Frost’s face as he learned of Daki’s issue and instead of feeling put off or fearful he was instead fired up, desiring to test out how long he could last in such a battle. However, thinking about it and acting upon it were two different things. He still had a beautiful fenrir back home that he was yet to make any solid moves on, he shouldn’t be splitting his focus lest he end up with nothing.

“Come on let’s go to the general store first, they should have a good range of storage containers to carry meat, monster blood as well as some types of medicinal herbs, plus we can get you some spare camping equipment given that you’ve got decent sized storage rings.” Most low level adventurers didn’t have storage rings and even if they did they were of low quality and size resulting in them having to pick and choose what supplies to bring. They’d also find it hard to embark on long distance and time consuming quests since they would need to restock and offload their supplies fairly often. Frost’s two storage rings meant he didn’t suffer from this issue, allowing him to store vast quantities of items. Therefore, he should do the prudent thing and pack back ups of most of his adventuring gear. Whether that be body equipment, pots, pans or even camping gear, it was always wise to be amply prepared whenever there was an opportunity, even if that meant reducing the amount of cargo space for sellable items i.e. monster parts.

Danger zones such as the Glacial mountains were especially hazardous, with the environment and local fauna looking for every chance to kill those unprepared, money was useless if one wasn’t alive to spend it. This prudent nature was not as dire hard within the sapient lands but here within the Glacial mountains there was very few who didn’t obey this precept and those few tended to not live long.

Frost had already been through Sam and Lola’s strict teachings, so he understood this precept and wholly agreed with it, so he didn’t bat an eye when Sam sounded off a list of items he needed to the clerk. Thankfully items such as these were pretty inexpensive since monster materials weren’t necessarily needed in their construction. The only exception being the tent, which was made of cold resistant monster hide, making it a couple grades more expensive but once again Frost was able to trade with his monster materials as well as money, greatly offsetting the final cost. Since there wasn’t an official adventurer’s guild organisation here in Kranor, people would trade their materials directly with the merchants.

After another couple hours of touring the first floor, visiting the many shops and Sam greeting and introducing him to several of his friends that they ran into on the street, Frost’s stash of monster materials were nearly all but spent. Leaving only a small amount of the highest quality stuff, and his gold fortune had been vastly reduced to 60 silvers, a significant shopping trip. But by the end of it Frost was all smiles, the pain of having his coin purse and storage ring gouged out passed after visiting the third store, he became numb.

Sam did eventually take him to that speciality supply store after they visited the book shop which wasn’t nearly as expansive or diverse as the one in Furano but none the less Frost purchased a few books that he found appealing. The speciality supply store had a range of items that were helpful in hunting specific monster types such as sleeping agents, easy to assemble traps, smell masking powders and other nick knacks. They even had a grand item on display, a magic device that tracked a certain species of monster within a radius of 10 kilometres, all it required was the blood of the sought monster. Of course, such a device had a very inflated price tag but even so Frost found that there would be people willing to buy it. Not him of course given that he was now strapped for cash. He made do with some mild sleeping bombs and scent maskers before he and Sam called it quits.

Now though thanks to their ample purchases and with Sam’s approval, Frost could officially call himself a well prepared adventurer, ready to make his name known to the people in Northrend and the Glacial mountains.