Meikyuu Toshi no Antique Shop

"Hey, manager, I've got a customer."

"Oh, excuse me."

"You don't seem to be at the counter...... All right, I hope you wait here."

"Um, no problem."

When he lowered the sign to stand at the door, Mr. All-body Armor disappeared into the back of the store, making chatter and noise.

I'll take a quick look around the store where I was suddenly brought in.

Instead of being a big but customer-like person, there is no one in the store as careless as it is.

I wondered if they were handling interior figurines, furniture, etc., rather than antique shopping, but I don't see any products like that.

Looks like they're dealing with a variety of items instead. The emoticon information board is carefully lowered from the ceiling - you can see a wide array of products including wands, shields, books, medicine bottles, rings, brushes, glasses, etc.

There was a different vibe to Soara's imaginary antique shop.

"... somewhat close to my home grocery store"

The dagger displayed in the glass case just beside me gets into my eyes.

The sheath has an odd twisted shape, burned and faded during the day and has a slight crack. I guess it's an age thing.

The product is bracketed with a thin thread.

"Cursed Dagger (good product). | Something from the late (Old Good) days of the good old magicians. It is mainly used as a spell prop, but it can also play a role in damaging monsters with antiphysical attributes by carrying magic itself. No prerequisites, the price is five hundred and fifty-five drops of blood - 'etc. The explanatory statement is surprisingly written in small letters.

Is this the shopkeeper's obsession? If you look around, every product is tagged the same way, and every one of them has a surprising description.

Sounds pretty funny.

I don't like walking around unattended stores and being suspicious of strangeness, so I decide to kill time by looking at the products lined up in glass cases without leaving the spot.

"... nevertheless"

Soara looks up and breathes through her nose to make sure. I've been curious since I came into the store, but there is a fresh, refreshing smell in the store that is different from the mildew and dust odors characteristic of old bookstores and antiquities.

"Kun Kun...... what does it smell like"

"This is Hinoki."

"Hinoki?"

"Yeah. It's an essential oil made from a tree in the Far East with that name. I use it because it's insect repellent."

"It does feel like I'm taking a forest bath."

"Yeah, they say when people smell it, it's also relaxing."

"... what?

I was in conversation wondering if Mr. Whole Body Armor was back, but his voice is very different.

At some point no one was supposed to have stood on the counter with a man with a black apron on.

"It's... who?

... I asked without thinking about it, but if you think calmly, it's up to the staff here. Perhaps he is the manager.

Age is about mid twenties. He's skinny, he looks nice with black edged glasses.

"It's called the store owner Fujiwara"

"Sora, it's called Soara. Hi."

"Welcome. Welcome to Old Good, Antique Shop"

"Um... what about the full body armor (full armor)...?

"Mr. Anemone's going to rust, so he's going to change."

"I wonder why it was such heavy equipment in the first place..."

"She was originally an explorer, and there's something about her that she thinks that's a uniform. I'm a worker who notices the details, but that's all I can't take off."

Mr. Black Apron laughs bitterly.

"Are you a woman after all?

"I rarely see your face, though. … Now dry it"

Mr. Black Apron is talking, and he's offering me a towel.

"Uh..."

Soara's not used to it. She's lost in deciding what to do with her treatment.

I have tried to circle nearly a dozen second-hand arms stores and other shops so far, but I have never been treated as a decent customer first, being a searcher for a rush out without gold. Until you put the coins on the counter, there are not many clerks who don't even try to respond to the story at a glance, and some treat you like a thief just because you enter the store at a terrible place.

I ended up saying "Thank you" and received it.

It wasn't just kindness that lent me the towel. There must have been considerations to keep the product from getting wet, and most importantly, I should have taken the favor honestly.

"Well, what are you looking for today?

"Um... there's something I need you to see..."

"Is this an appraisal request?"

Mr. Black Apron brightens his face all the time and eats it.

"Um, but... it's not like antiques or anything... it's something my master used to get in the dungeon..."

"We'll see whatever items we've collected from the dungeon."

"Is that true? But isn't this an antique shop?"

"People who come from extra space often mistake me, but this is a store that specializes in granting tools (magic items).

"Oh really?

Soara was surprised by the unexpected answer.

"Of course, antiques can mean furniture, dishes, and art, but in this labyrinth city, even items that have been recovered from dungeons can mean things that are old and valuable."

"... it is"

A grant tool is a generic term for a tool that can exercise witchcraft.

Examples include lamps that don't need a spark forever to keep lighting, like the ones that appear in the gaga story, and canes that can send meteorites down like rain.

While the conferring tools of reality are not that versatile, they are convenient, rare and expensive enough for a magician to substitute for something he can do.

And you have to dive into the dungeon to get them.

It is said to exist in places so deep underground that it becomes a powerful granting tool, protected by many monsters and rarely leaned on by people.

That's why granting tools is also an admirable treasure for the Seeker. Of course, it is not something that a rushing seeker can grab because it is a substitute that can finally be obtained by gaining experience and overcoming many dangers.

Only Soara possessed one thing that fell under it.

"Hmm. Your sword is also apparently antique."

Mr. Black Apron grinned, pointing with his thin, long fingers at the short sword Soara put on her hips. Soara, for a moment, remembered the illusion of being read the thought and was stunned.

It's not otherwise oddly shaped. It's a seemingly everywhere mediocre sword.

As an anti-theft measure, it is stored in a cheap skin sheath and even camouflaged.

Besides, none of the stores I've visited so far realized that this was still a grant tool, even if I pulled the sheath out of my hand.

But Mr. Black Apron figured out who this was, even though it wasn't even in his hands yet.

"This child... This sword was said by his master to be a product he had acquired in a dungeon during his active life"

"Hmm."

Mr. Black Apron puts his hand on his chin and stares at him to devise something, or worthy of it. Not the kind of gaze that animals target their prey.

Either after the hunt, he looked like an artisan trying to see through the built-in and bones to figure out how to break down the prey just before judging and how to divide the areas.

"... created in the late 'Age of Good Old Mages'... is the thing... a firesword?

……

Seeing Soara's astonished face, the black apron seemed convinced of the right answer.

"Yeah. Apparently so."

"How do you know that when you haven't even touched it?

"What simple reasoning. That sword is for some reason the only skin sheath is not wet in the rain. Probably because the sword body dried up because it was exothermic. And the patterned part. I can see blue stone-like materials being used. It is a metal called Shizukuishiron, a material with strong insulation. This is mostly used because the area most likely to be damaged by heat is the pattern. We determined it was a firesword from two points above."

As long as you have the knowledge, you can spot it.

Mr. Black Apron explained that to me, but until I took out specialized tools in every store to find out, there was nothing to tell what kind of grant was being remitted on this. Besides, I had spent a small hour getting to that stage.

If it's in this store, maybe people will look into this sword properly. Soara made up her mind, removing the sword and placing it on the counter in front of her and bowing her head.

"Please. Please identify this child."