After leaving the guild, Tsutomu first went to the magic stone exchange. It's a very good idea to go to the town to trade in the magical stones when you're alone, because you don't want to be alone in the guild.

　The guild is often a more stable place than the town's bartering center, and they are able to buy the magical stones at a more stable price. However, rather than having to wait for time to be appraised by the guild, which is a needle in a haystack, it was better to use the city's redemption office, resigning myself to some loss.

　Besides, the city's redemption office would sometimes buy magic stones at a higher price than the guild. Unusual magical stones and magical stones with high-demand attributes can be negotiated to raise their prices. However, there are also a certain number of bureaus that will rip you off.

　Garum has taught me that until you have become a good judge of magic stones, the guild is a safe place to go. It's a good idea to have a good idea of what you're looking for.

　The signboard with the price of the magic stone made it easy for Tsutomu to go to the exchange that Garum recommended. A large wooden box is regularly arranged and several workers are carrying it. The redemption center looks like a stone prison, with a guard with a spear patrolling the area with a stern gaze.

　A rude reception counter made of white stone with two guards standing beside it. Inside, a small girl was sitting in a chair, holding what looked like a magnifying glass and appraising a magic stone the size of her fist. Tsutomu called out to the girl, who was rolling up her long sleeves even as she lowered the magic bag on her back.


''Hello. I'd like to purchase the magic stone.''


　When Tsutomu called out to her, the girl looked up at Tsutomu and shook her brown shortcut hair. Then with one reply, she went behind the counter and the door next to the reception desk opened.


'The small one's this way. The big one's at the counter.'


　Despite the girl's pretty voice, which was no different from her appearance, she brought a tub as large as her own height in crisp movements. A deep vat of water was placed in front of Tsutomu with a thud.

　As a dwarf, she is strong despite her small appearance. Tsutomu untied the bag that he took out of his magic bag, thinking that the picture plane was as amazing as ever.

　I'm sure you'll be able to find a great deal of scrap metal and small magic stones in the bag, which is placed upside down on a deep wooden box. You can hear the pleasant sound of the magic stones slipping out of the bag and falling one after another into the water. After repeating the process three times, Tsutomu announced that he was done.

　The girl holds it nimbly in both hands and carries it to a large workshop in the back. In the meantime, Tsutomu reaches into his magic bag and pulls out one magic stone after another, imagining a magic stone too large to fit in his two hands from the size of his fist. When the girl returned to the counter, her eyes widened when she saw the magic stones.


''We have some big ones today.
I made it to the 40th level.
Heh.


　While ministering with interest, the girl looks at the magic stone with a simple appraisal but flows backwards. And after a simple appraisal of a rare purple magic stone, he stopped his hand, took a magnifying glass and began to examine it in detail.


''This magic stone........heh, you're a lucky man,''
Haha.....


　She looked up from the demon stone and gave him a slightly ridiculous look, but Tsutomu scratched his cheek with a smile on his face. The girl dropped her hanging eyes boringly at Tsutomu's appearance and handed him a wooden board.


'I think we'll be done by the time the sun goes down.
''I understand. Oh, and I also want to buy a fire magic stone. 3,000 g of the small ones and 50,000 g of the medium ones, please.
Give me a second. Give me the fire magic stone!　Elementary and middle school!


　The girl turned around and shouted as Tsutomu ordered, indicating the price with his finger. The girl turned her back to him and shouted, "I'm going to order," as Tsutomu indicated the price with his finger.

　In the meantime, the girl writes the price specified by Tsutomu on a red bag and glues it to the bag, then presses the seal with a red magic stone attached to the bag. It's a very good idea to be able to have a good idea of what you're looking for when you're ready to buy.

　A man from the back workshop greeted Tsutomu in a cheerful voice after two men carried in a wooden box. The girl shakes her head at the men who carefully unloaded the crate containing a large amount of red magic stones, and they trot back to the back workshop.

　The girl pulled back her rolled up sleeve and then grabbed the red magic stone in that crate haphazardly and put it into a red dyed bag. It's quite appropriate to look at from the side, but it contains a price worth of magic stone that also takes into account the quality.

　I've been told to check the magic stone, Tsutomu looked at the magic stone on the surface for a bit. And then, without checking the contents of the bag, he tied the cord and put away the wooden board with the numbers written on it and left the exchange.

　Next, Tsutomu headed to the potion shop. The Forest Apothecary, a famous shop that has a shop right next to the giant monitor. Tsutomu stepped into the shop.

　The inside of the store, which was cleaned up nicely, smelled like chemicals seeping out of the store. Tsutomu rings the doorbell at the counter, and a woman answers it with a twang. While Tsutomu was taking a large bottle out of his magic bag, an old lady came out from the back with a cane.

　The old woman's blonde hair showed some gray, and her ears stuck out of her hair longer than a person's. An elf of high spirit and longevity, she was the founder of this traditional forest apothecary.


'Hello.'
Hello. Another potion refill today?


　Smiling warmly like the sun, the old lady put her hand on the pot on the counter. Tsutomu nodded and held out the bottle.


''Yes, sir. I'll have all the blue potion in this bottle, please.''
You mean the blue potion?　You're such a curious kid, buying so much stuff every week. We've run out of materials last week, I have to go buy some more.


　The old lady laughed mischievously, pointing outside as if she was a little annoyed. Tsutomu apologizes and puts his hand behind his head, suggesting that there's something he can do to help. The blue potion here is effective in restoring mental strength and tastes refreshing. Tsutomu was ready to help if he needed any materials.

　The old lady chuckled at Tsutomu's enthusiasm and waved her hand in his direction.


The old lady chuckled happily at the sight of Tsutomu's motivation and waved her hand lightly at him, "Don't worry, young man, don't get too wound up. It's a big relief that we don't have to take up space in the warehouse. .........Blue potion doesn't sell that well nowadays, you know. It used to sell better, but nowadays, everyone sells only green potions.
''That's right. People who are black mages will buy it, but people who are white mages won't.
Yeah. You're a white mage by the way you dress, right?　You mustn't be so reckless.　I've seen a lot of people whose hearts have been broken. Don't go hiding in the dungeon for too long, okay?
I will consider it positively.
I don't know. You sound like an old man.


　Tsutomu, who spends most of his life in dungeons, looked away deceptively, and the old lady tapped the floor with her staff in dismay.

　She removed her hand from the pot as the green magic stone in the pot glowed thinly to block the old lady's eyes. She then placed a large straw-like object on the pot's ejection port and put the bottle down.

　Then the old lady put her hand on top of the pot, and the blue potion poured into the bottle as it was pushed out from above. The bottle filled with the blue liquid while buzzing and bubbling. Tsutomu squeezes the lid on the full bottle, wraps it in a green slime buffer and puts it in a magic bag.

　Tsutomu pays the price and puts the bag with the price and the branding of the magic stone exchange on the counter. When Tsutomu received the bag containing the red magic stone, the old lady looked up at him with a smile.


It's always nice to see you. You'll save me a lot of trouble.
Not at all. You're a lifesaver.


　The old lady would deduct more money if you bought the magic stone you asked for instead, so even for Tsutomu, he was grateful for the story.


''Then I'll come back next week. What do you want to do about the magic stone?
''Then I'll take care of the water magic stone and the wind magic stone.
Understood. And as for the blue potion, please produce it when you can!
I'm tired of making recovery potions. I'm tired of making recovery potions. It's a good anti-blurk.


　He left the forest apothecary, returning the thanks to the old woman who waved at him with a coy smile.

　After that, Tsutomu made his way through the crowds of people to look at the stalls near the monitor. The stalls are very unusual in Japan, and many of them have performances that attract the attention of passers-by.

　However, since he got a bite at one of the stalls, Tsutomu doesn't try to try any more unusual foods. Since then, he mainly buys food that is cooked on the fire.

　He sat down on a chair at the stall and accepted a fork served to him by the shopkeeper, and then, feeling a bit peckish, he bought a thickly seasoned soup with some kind of meatballs in it.

　He took a bite of the hot meatball and breaded it into the thick, slushy juice and puffed it into his mouth. Swallowing the last of the remaining juice as he scraped it down, Tsutomu returned the empty wooden plate and stood up from his chair.

　After that, he chills out on the sparse marketplace of solid stalls and floor-standing goods, and when he gets bored of it, Tsutomu sits on a bench in front of a medium-sized monitor and pulls a notepad and pen out of his magic bag to watch the delivery.

　Most of the big clan and bug PTs are usually potent firepower gorilla tactics, and when Tsutomu senses this, he moves to another monitor. What Tsutomu wanted to see were the battle tactics of the mid-sized clans.

　It's a good idea to be able to see that the mid-ranking clans have their own unique warfare techniques and PT structure, and many of them have strategies that show that they want to reduce the amount of potions spending. However, from what Tsutomu has seen in the past two weeks, many of the mid-tier clans do not include a healer in their PTs and consist of five attackers.

　However, in the mid-sized clans, there were a few heavy warriors who refrained from attacking and focused on defense, and a few black mages who used support skills and state-disrupting skills to block the movement of monsters. And for once, I also found a medium-sized PT with a white mage functioning reasonably well.

　While setting his sights on those people, Tsutomu was looking at a medium-sized PT that was exploring the swamp hierarchy.

　A mid-sized clan PT working only with women ran out of detoxification potions in the swamp at the 20th level and chose to retreat. While they were advancing at a slow pace while being hobbled by the mud, a slime of mud slime followed behind them coyly.

　It is a monster that is less effective with blows and slashes and is best dealt with by magic, but it seems that the two sorcerers are running out of mental power and are exhausted. The PT, which lacks two more people, is struggling to get a foothold in the muddy foothold, but is still aiming for the Black Gate.

　The black gate is now in sight. As the leader of the group, the black mage, leads the way with a snarky voice, the heavy warrior who was walking at the back of the group stumbles. The relief of seeing the black gate and the exhaustion of taking on a monster alone for a long time. She fell with a flourish. The image that had been projected from the top of the diagonal was sooooo low.

　A mage walking in front of me tried to wake me up, but the mud got into my armor and I couldn't hold it up. The woman who seems to be the leader of the PT stopped for a few moments, then approached the heavy warrior and called out to him.

　After exchanging a few words, the PT leader wiped the heavy warrior's face with a cloth and then retrieved only a small bag-shaped magic bag. The PT leader pulls the mage, who is in tears and trying to wake up the heavy warrior, to the black gate. The video alternates between the two who have gone on ahead and those left behind.

　The video shifts to the heavy warrior, her slightly muddy face shifting towards the heavy warrior, who is smiling at the PT leader and looks at the front of the monitor as if she noticed the camera's presence. The heavy warrior winked.

　The image shows the two of them turning away from her and into the Black Gate, where they are particulate. The heavy warrior let out a single sigh as he looked away and moved his body to get out of the swamp for a while.

　The mud slime looms behind the heavy warrior as he struggles to get out of the swamp. And the swamp slime has been traced from her thighs to her back.

　The heavy warrior couldn't bear the weight of her back and was forced face first into the swamp. After struggling in the swamp for a minute and a half, the heavy warrior then gradually stopped moving, and after a few moments, he became a particle. The swamp slime is still in place, seemingly out of place. And then the image switched there.


(How could he do that? I don't know if I could do that.)


　Even in a situation where death was almost certain, he could be revived later anyway, so the best thing to do in that situation would be to give something of value to his friends and become a decoy. But when Tsutomu was the one left behind, he didn't have the confidence to do it in such a matter-of-fact way.

　The best self-sacrifice and a spirit of not fearing pain. Although his tactics were not very helpful, Tsutomu felt he had a lot to learn from that mental aspect. It was different from moving the keys and mouse in front of a computer.

　Even now that he is able to move around a bit, his recovery, hate management, and judgment of the situation are still not as good as they could be. You can't see it from a third party's point of view like you can on a computer screen, and you have to think and move your skills on your own, so you have to be careful. Even if the occasional monster attack doesn't kill you, it's still frightening, and I was often paralyzed.

　It's best not to be in a sacrificial situation, but you should just be prepared for that sort of thing. I don't think it's possible to do that yet, but Tsutomu saw the sunshine that was leaning towards him and headed to the redemption office, although he didn't think he could do that yet.

　He went to the reception desk and found a dwarven girl sitting there with her hands behind her head as if she was bored. When Tsutomu handed her a wooden board, she handed him a certificate of authentication for the magic stone.


'The small ones were generally colorless and of poor quality, so that's about it. If you have a problem with it, take it somewhere else.''
Oh, I'm fine.
Yeah. Okay, now we have the mid-size and large.


　When she said that, the girl produced some magic stones from the reception desk and laid them out.


''There are two medium-sized ones at the bottom. The middle one is four. The middle one is four, the high one is three. A total of 224,000 g's.
"...yes. That's all right.
''Then it's a big one. This one is colorless, but it's large and of medium quality, so it's 400,000 g. This purple magic stone is very rare, I'd say it's about 1,200,000 g with color.
'All right. That's fine for the colorless one. I'm going to sell the cursed magic stone to the guild, so I'll take it back.


　When Tsutomu said that and touched her hand to the purple magic stone, the girl laid her small lumpy palm on Tsutomu's hand.


''..........One hundred and sixty thousand g.''
If it's about the same price as the guild, no problem.
Woo. All right. One hundred and seventy-three thousand g's!
Yes. Thank you.


　When Tsutomu took his hand away from the purple magic stone, the girl lifted it with one hand while her lips twitched.


''You know that and you don't know it. I thought you were a good-natured brother, but you have a bad character.
Amy's going to appraise the big ones for me.
"d*mn, I thought Galum was the only one who had appraisal skills!　I thought we were going to have expensive drinks tonight!


　Tsutomu returns a bitter smile to the girl who is dexterously holding her head while counting the G in coins. I left the redemption office after receiving about two hundred and fifty thousand Gs while thinking about wrapping up some alcohol for her next time she came.

　After that, I stayed at my usual inn, which was somewhat pricey, and spent the next day in the same way, watching the monitor.