The entrance ceremony on Monday was coming fast and the classes would start the same day. It was not much but he wanted to have some advantages over others if he could, therefore Darrick was learning the basics of mana manipulation from Leon. It wasn't easy, he was a born genius in mana manipulation so his teaching wasn't the best but it was still miles better than anything the book dedicated to help people understand it said.

Turns out the guy who wrote that book was more of a genius than Leon or he was just mentally challenged for all I care. It was so exhausting to learn just some basics of mana manipulation, like really? I know I'm not that good at it but am one hundred percent sure most of the blame lies on the genius spell crafter aka trash teacher. He was so fucking self-aware about it too, he literally refused to teach a spell simply because I won't understand it, hah! I'll just have to wait for the Tuesday class.

When they were free of playing teacher-student and doing nothing else they simply roamed the campus aimlessly, no destination whatsoever. The campus was massive but not infinite, they eventually ran out of places to explore inside the campus. They had covered most of it in a few days and were now roaming the Astoria streets.

More than ninety percent of the Caladric Academy was outside of the city, at one side it touched a great forest but the entrance was in the noble district or maybe the noble district was built around its entrance to show their superiority, although it didn't matter at all. Or maybe it did? The stores here just outside the Caladric's gates were for rich people and with little to no surprise, it turns out Darrick did not have a lot of money, evidently from his life in an orphanage.

But on the flip side, Leon was rich, like crazy rich. He was carrying around an artifact that could store currency and can be used to transfer money from one bank account to another. The sharing artifact was a flat card in a rectangular shape, it was covered with some patterns, the same kind as the one he saw when he was making his artifact. And receiving artifact was a rectangular box that could receive money by simply placing the first artifact on it and sending some mana towards it.

Bro has debit cards and he is using them however he wants. Well, it's his so all is fair anyway. He already showed me around the big chunk of the noble district and didn't even let me pay for anything, I don't need freebies but man I can't refuse them either. Now that hanging around is done I should source some materials for my future artifact-making projects and also some blueprints. But before that,

"Leon I meant to ask you about that money-paying artifact. How does that work?"

"You mean the 'gold card'? If that's what you asked about then I don't know how it works. I've been using this thing since my family got me this like ten years ago. I just spend money through it wherever I can since it doesn't work everywhere."

"Is this artifact commonly used by everyone or nobles?"

"As far as I know Only nobles have this kind of thing. Only big stores like the ones on these streets can afford that 'payment terminals' and most of the common people don't benefit much from it as nobles usually don't go to their stores to buy something or simply spend their money."

"Is this the question of dignity and pride for them so they only spend in expensive places?"

"Nobles are rich and they don't think all these things are expensive. This brand elevates their standing in front of others so they think it's just a fair price even though it's really not. Most of the people who find this place as expensive are wannabe nobles. Commoners don't bother with this place but these mildly rich merchants who spend their fortune on these places so they can catch the eyes of some rich noble to do some business are the ones who grumble about this place."

"What about you? You are also a noble. So what do *you* think about this?"

"I don't care about spending to look good but I love expensive, high quality and simple designed items. Whatever I may say at the end I'm also a noble. That's how I was raised and it naturally comes to me. The food we ate was expensive in the sense of common people but to me, they are nothing but some spare change."

"How much did those foods cost? You didn't even let me see the bill."

"798 Denim. Each."

"The fuck! My whole saving isn't much more than that and I ate something so expensive."

Fucking hell! The currency is almost 1:1 to my previous world's currency and with that much money I wouldn't need to worry for one whole month except rent I guess. But still, I think living conditions are similar here so that's a lot of money for a single meal.

"You are a lot calmer than I thought you would be. Most non-nobles I have interacted with react so much more dramatically than this."

"I have eaten an expensive meal like this once before, I don't know what I was expecting with this meal. It just kinda warped my sense when you paying for it so casually."

Stolen story; please report.

Technically I have eaten some expensive meals but it's just not in this world. At that time I earned quite a bit so I really did try it sometimes.

"Well, it does not matter or maybe it matters but for now I will ignore all that. I need to find some materials and blueprints for my artifact creation work. I hope you can show me some places where the materials are not that expensive. I don't mind if it's out of the noble district, that would be better actually."

"You don't really need to go somewhere else, there is one shop somewhere around here who can get you materials for really cheap and it's 'you cheap' not 'me cheap' so don't worry about the price. However, acquiring some artifact blueprints is difficult. Even the common ones are decently expensive and those are usually out of stock in a few hours. I'll think about something, for now, let's get the materials." Leon suggested the best plan for Darrick.

Darrick nodded to him and followed him to the smithy. But they had to search a lot more than they expected. The streets were a bit confusing and Leon claimed to have come here a long time ago so he may have some problem remembering exactly where it was. They only found the smithy when Darrick used his Map function to determine the locations of all the smithies, then they went there to check them, if that was not the one then they moved on to the other one. They found 'Waylen's smithy' in *just* half an hour.

When Darrick and Leon entered they saw only one guy, probably the owner of the smithy. The owner gave a nod acknowledgement to Leon and he returned it with a nod of his own. He had probably recognized Leon possibly because he had visited here before or maybe something else. Leon took the lead and entered a room where a lot of different types of metal ingots were arranged according to their quality and rarity.

He gestured for Darrick to come inside the room. "Darrick, come here quickly. You should pick the material you want from here and we will leave after taking that."

"Yeah, that's why we came here. Why did he not talk to us? Is that his special trait? Nodding to communicate."

"He is a mute. His tongue was cut off as a punishment for some crimes he committed. And you should find the material faster. I have to return to my room before 6 pm, for reasons."

"We did not even ask for the price. I want to buy some rare-sounding metals like mithril and orichalcum but I don't know how much it costs. Some catalogues would have worked perfectly here when we needed it."

The owner came towards them with a catalogue for metals and surprisingly all the metals were too cheap. Even a hundred kilo of Iron wouldn't cost as much as a fancy meal and that was really a pleasant surprise. It was really welcomed but not with some extra thoughts.

"Why are all these metals so cheap? I can understand with iron but shouldn't these rarer metals be more costly." Darrick inquired Leon while not hiding his curiosity on the subject.

"Huh? All metals come from the land so everything would cost the same amount. Only a bit of difference here and there. Also here many costs are cut before selling so it may look cheap. The labour cost, production cost and many more things are reduced by the unique method his contractor uses."

"Then I'll list up what I want and we can leave whenever we want." Said Darrick and started making his list. He listed most of the metals here. He was willing to spend up to five hundred Denim and he did shopping keeping that in mind. All of it sounded doom spending. There was a guarantee that most of these metals would become artifacts but there wasn't any guarantee they would sell.

After two hours of calculating the profits and losses from this shopping, there was a large pile of metals on the table beside the scale machine, not an artifact and it cost a little over 450 Denim. Now the only problem was how to carry all of this back to the dorms. He could easily fit them all in his inventory but revealing such a thing could prove to be dangerous to himself he was thinking about it and then,

"Do you want me to carry all these things in my spatial ring for you?" Leon offered to help.

Yep, there are spatial rings here in this world. Then I will stuff all this into my inventory and pass it off as me also having a spatial artifact. Wonderful plan.

"No need to bother with this I also have some things so I will just stuff them all here." Darrick rejected Leon's offer and sucked all of the metal into his inventory. He did not notice the smile on Leon's face and the split second of pure horror on the owner's face, he was only focused on the fact that nobody questioned it or asked anything about it so he thought it was normal among the nobles and dismissed it.

"I think we are done with this for today, now only blueprints left. Did you think about something while I was shopping these?" Darrick asked Leon as he had told earlier he would think something about the blueprint problem.

"I did think about a solution but for now you won't be able to get any. Maybe after three or four days, I can help with that. It may be a little illegal but it works and possibly a lot cheaper than the market price so you can think about it." Leon gave some shady ideas for the cause and Darrick was certainly not going to oppose it.

"I don't really care. I just need a blueprint. I mean, a little illegal things happen all the time around us so I wouldn't care too much about it as long as I don't die a horrible death for it."

A genuine surprise was plastered across Leon's face, "To be honest, I thought you would need some convincing before you accept it but I like this too so it's decided. In a few days, we will be returning here again. For now, though I want to be in my room."

"If you don't mind can you give me your gold card artifact once? I just want to check out the artifact." Darrick made an abrupt request to someone else's money pocket.

Leon did not hesitate a bit to give it to him and headed back to the Caladric Academy.

That guy did not even hesitate. Does he trust me that much or think I won't be able to do something without the proper methods and such? Whatever it is now I can have one more blueprint for myself.

"Identify"

Gold card

common

A card that helps transfer money magically from their bank account when making a transaction.

Just around the right corner, there was another option called 'scan'. He chose the other option in there and the card was being scanned. There were no lights or such thing, just a panel showing all of its materials in front of Darrick and he had a bit of mixed feelings about the main material of the artifact, The Souls.