"Are you planning to give it to me as a gift?" Helare asked.

"Huh? As a gift?" Rafe asked in turn.

"It is a special item," the princess clarified.

"And it might be expensive," Rafe told her. "Expensive enough to compensate the losses you've suffered because of me destroying a whole shipment of products, and messing with the mine."

Helare glared, but Rafe had the feeling the scary expression wasn't aimed at him.

"Hestus! That little —"

"Hey, he is a merchant," Rafe said reasonably. "It is sensible he'd worry about his profits."

"Still," Helare said, the pout audible in her voice. "To go behind his partner's back like that."

"You didn't want him to tell me?" Rafe asked. "But why?"

"Why? You…had an inspiration, whatever that is, Rafael. Yet your level hasn't grown? You… you have a lot of secrets. This blade. Your Insights that nearly killed you. I don't know. I just thought you wanted to keep your secrets, okay?!"

Well, Rafe didn't know what to say to that. She wanted him to keep his secrets? Or she was helping him keep said secrets? She was a strange woman.

"Thank you, I guess," Rafe said. He scratched the back of his head, just looking for something to do with his hands. "Still, I'll make a sword for you. I'll make a sword, so please sell it. Sell it very expensively, ok. You need the money for something, from what I remember."

He could not stare at her just then. It was dangerous to look too close to the sun. She took her time in answering.

"Is this…like some kind of gift? Like the earrings? Are you trying to win my favour again?"

"What?! A gift?" Rafe found himself whirling to face her again. "I'd never give you a gift you can't use. Besides, what use is gifting money to a princess. If I need to give you a gift to win your favour though? Hmm…"

Helare panicked. He saw it happen. He saw her startle from the suddenness and violence of his turn, and he saw her start to redden as he pondered getting her a gift.

Now that he thought about it, there had been a spear in his possession. A spear he'd been with since the second floor of the trial tower. Rafael thought about it. About how perfect it was for this occasion.

"No! You don't need to win any more of my fav—"

"That's it!" Rafe shamelessly interrupted the princess. "I know what I can get you. I'd hazard a guess that it might be better than this…ah, useless to you, hank of metal. So, please sell the sword."

****

Rafe sharpened the new sword. It had been some time since he'd finished a sword on his own.

His insights reacted, far more reactive than insights ought to have been. They were half-step concepts, he had come to realise.

He had curved a bunch of useless but impressive looking runes into the flat of the blade. Just to hide the fact that there was no enchantment at all. Of course, whoever bought the blade could find out more about it if they had an identify skill even half as strong as Rafe's, but Rafe was hoping whoever bought it was in the tutorial sector.

Come to think of it, Primus would soon be getting promoted to a higher sector or something. How soon was that, he wondered? What did it entail?

Maybe Helare would tell him if he asked. She had settled close by, resuming her vigil in that spot she'd occupied when Rafe first settled here weeks ago and they weren't on the best of terms.

Filoria stood not far from the princess as well, though the distance between them had grown from what Rafe could see. Both physically and…emotionally? Filoria stood a lot further behind the princess than before. And in all the days since Rafe regained consciousness, he'd yet to see the princess acknowledge Filoria at all. It was like the other girl was nothing to her. Less than a speck of dust.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The way Filoria looked at Rafe made him uncomfortable too, but he could get through it. He wondered why their relationship mattered to him. Helare had loved Filoria. He could see it plain as day, yet the other girl had always been indifferent, distant. Now the princess was indifferent too. And she wasn't just pretending to be indifferent in order to get attention.

Something in that girl had shifted. She seemed to have mentally aged by at least twenty years in the spun of two weeks.

"Fascinating women, aren't they?" a gravelly voice he'd never heard before spoke to him.

Rafe did not startle. The man might have been sneaky, but one of his feet had gotten into the range of Rafael's first racial ability. Though he did freeze when the man moved another step forward. An E grade, huh?

Name: Collab Seawhisperer.

Race: Elemenoid (lvl.???)

Class: Seawhip (Epic lvl.???)

Strongest stat: ??? You are too low level to see this information. Increase mana expenditure to see anyway. Warning: risks of spiritual damage.

Strongest skill: ???

Rafe shrugged in response to the man's first question.

"They are interesting enough, I suppose," he started. "But that is not why you're here, is it?"

"What other reasons could I have other than to watch over my princess?"

Helare had told him about the man. Rafe knew not what he was going to do with the information. Exchanging pointers with an experienced warrior seemed a good deal, but did he have the time? If he had been out for one week, then he had maybe two weeks, tops. He had been counting the days until the tutorial system left Earth. His deadline for leaving this place.

He was getting worried though. His quest chain had not updated for weeks. The last quest in the chain was the one that brought him to this camp. He had not received any continuation or a notice of having completed the quest. And when he thought about it, there was nothing he could see of the system's design.

Definitely it was his first quest chain, but what was the end goal? Every other quest he'd received, be it a side quest or main quest, had always told him what the objective was fairly easily. In this case he was traveling blind.

"A worthy pursuit that," Rafe said with a forced smile. Then he noticed someone behind the old timey warrior. "Oh, Hestus, I finished the sword. Did you bring the scabbard like I told you?"

He had told Hestus to have a scabbard fashioned from rare and expensive materials. They needed a kind of anti-magic material to prevent the sword's very strong magical inclinations from shining through.

"Impressive sword you got there," the old man commented, likely not pleased about being ignored.

"You think so?" Rafe said with a forced but innocent-looking smile. He wondered what was next on the agenda, the weather? They were in a dungeon with a false sky for crying out loud. Weather was not even an imaginary problem here. "You want to touch it?" he asked the warrior innocently.

Of course Collab could not touch the sword. He might have had a very weak affinity for water, but he was still a Ma'la.

"Ohoho, little warrior, do you intend to send me to an early grave?"

That was a bit of an exaggeration.

It would be very uncomfortable, but F grade insights could not kill an E-grade. Could they? The thought struck Rafe and for some reason he couldn't help but be attached to it.

His insights were too much for the current level of his soul and body, so using them was out of the question. But if he had the ability to use them, could he challenge E grades by now. He examined Collab's aura as carefully as he could, comparing it to his own aura.

The results were unsatisfactory to say the least.

Rafe smiled blithely at the old man's question. "Oh, I don't know about an early grave. I'd be happy pummeling your face a bit though."

"Hmm. I see the princess told you who I am," Collab said menacingly, switching out of his amicable attitude. *And she told you of my preference too."

Rafe found himself faltering a little. "Preference?"

"I like young men with a spunk. And women too. You'll do really nicely."

Rafe stared at the old man for a few moments. Then he sighed. "Your words are so open ended, they can be misconstrued. Well, whatever. That's a you problem. Sure, I'd like to have a few spars every once in a while."

"So you two are done," a tiny, aggressive voice chimed in just before Collab could answer. "Here, Rafael, the scabbard you ordered. Replit with magic blocking runes on top of the anti-magic."

Rafe scratched the back of his head. "I'm sorry about ignoring you, Hestus."

"Yeah. Yeah, I get it. You do need a distraction from crafting too much in any case. Just don't forget a whole load of weapons was damaged by your shenanigans and needs replacing."

"Don't worry about it. I got you," Rafe tried to keep his voice even.

Now that he was finished with most of his goals for focusing on this particular course of action, he had decided to start serious training again. He had a new technique to learn, then he had to start on his soul strengthening training, then he had to break through to the master realm in the first few techniques he'd learned on Aeon. Then of course he'd have to start thinking of how he was going to incorporate those techniques plus his new insights into his skills.

But that was a long term goal. He was set to leave Primus soon. He was going to start his training anyway. He needed to build habits if he was going to make all the progress he needed. No matter what, he would have to at least have some kind of exercise every morning. Just doing his swings would be enough most times, but he couldn't do that here on Primus.

He had already been pretending not to know how to use a sword.

"Sorry about that," Rafe said to Collab. "Merchants. You know how they can be about money and time?"

"No, I do not. And I don't care, so don't explain it," he forestalled Rafe. "I will wait for you at the training training compound. Don't be late."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.