Taking the dagger, he felt the weight of it and was shocked at how heavy it felt. It wasn't a ridiculous weight, but it would do some damage, even against armour.

The entire black dagger was shaped like a Kunai he had seen on many martial arts shows back on Earth, with a long silver handle that ended in a circular hoop with a hole in the middle.

On the shows, he had seen many martial artists use that loop at the end to spin the dagger around their fingers. He suspected it served another function rather than to look cool, like attaching a rope to pull it back in once thrown.

"What is this for on the end?" He asked, pointing it out to the beautiful woman who watched him give it a once over.

"Although these can be considered daggers, they are also tools and can be used as a Piton. This design often allows strong ropes to be attached so you can use them to secure yourself when scaling a rock face or other obstacles."

"I've also heard of strong cultivators using them to attach ropes or strong hairs and using them to attack from a distance before pulling them back in." She calmly explained, pointing at the black diamond-shaped blade and rear circle.

He knew his mother would probably hate him for this, but he felt he had to have this set. It wasn't just his boyish dreams of running around the mountains like a ninja, although that did play a small part. It was the fact they could double as climbing equipment.

Although he wouldn't call himself a military history buff, he had learned enough in his studies to know that mobility on a battlefield was invaluable. Living surrounded by mountains and having a way to scale them would go well with his gliding in getting around.

"How much are they?" He inquired and internally winced when he got the price.

It was far more than he had spent on the books back in the city, and he was wondering what to do as he glanced at his mother and saw her nod. With her go-ahead, he knew the haggling came next.

"Okay, I'll take that set of knives and these four daggers. How about you knock thirty per cent off, and I'll use them to swagger past that one-eyed guy two stalls over who didn't think you sold real weapons as payback?" He said with a bright smile, trying to look like a cute kid.

"You mean my father? That's okay. I'll make him cook his own food later. I can do five for making me laugh, though." She said as she snickered at the look on his face.

Gathering himself, he changed tactics.

"How about twenty-five? As you said, the set is incomplete, and how many children will you come across wanting to buy these?" He stated as he placed the black dagger away.

It was true about the set of knives, at least. They were crafted for a child's small hand, but not so much about the daggers. The handle was nearly longer than the blade, and he would have no issues using them, even as an adult.

Like that, they haggled back and forth and in the end, he got a fifteen per cent discount for making the woman laugh at his antics and failed attempts at smooth talking. He felt the fact he was a child also had something to do with it. It seemed most adults found a child speaking like a grown-up comical.

"Want to explain why you needed them?" Valeria asked as he walked away with a happy grin on his face.

He clarified his views on using them to get around the mountains and how he could use his Many Form Mirage to create a rope for them in combat. He assured her he wasn't stupid enough to use an illusionary rope to scale a mountain and wasn't lying.

One little snag on a sharp rock, he would fall to his death. Flying the glider was safer as strong winds didn't seem to cause his skill to fail, and there were no sharp rocks in the sky. The skill was like a balloon in that it could bend and flex, but any blow sharp or strong enough would burst it.

"You have some wild ideas for a child your age." She said after thinking through what he said as they walked around the other stalls.

Nothing else was catching their fancy as they walked down the line of stalls. It wasn't until he got to the second to last one that something caught his attention.

"Mother, look." He said as he pointed at a sign beside a stall.

Not many traders had bothered to set up signage, as everything they were selling was pretty evident at a glance.

The Wagon he was looking at had an older woman sitting behind it on a tall stool with wares displayed on the wooden floor that would generally be inside the cart.

Four pillars ran up the corners, and a fabric coating hung over the top, preventing any rain that might come. That made sense as the woman mainly sold books, and you wouldn't want them wet. That wasn't what had drawn his attention. It was the sign sitting off to the side near a collection of items that had.

Inscription Master testing set.

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Looking at his mother, he could tell she had spotted it, and they curiously made their way over. The old woman spotted them but made no move to talk to them and carried on flipping through a book instead as she watched them from the corner of her eye.

"What do you think?" He asked as he whispered to his mother.

Her father had been a genuine inscription master, and she had seen him work many times when she was younger. He hoped that she could tell if the kit was genuine or not.

"May I?" His mother asked the woman, who nodded.

With the seller's permission, she lifted various items, inspecting them. There were clear glass pots of coloured liquids and tools like small chisels, brushes and hammers.

He had read the books his mother had left from her father, so he knew what they all did. Some of the more complex ones were missing, but he wasn't interested in that. It was more the liquid and the runes.

To be an inscription master, you needed three things. Tools to help you perfectly carve out the required inscription runes, usually quality, high-precision ones. If you were drawing runes on paper, using a brush was fine.

The ink, but he felt it was more of a chemical suspension than actual ink. He wasn't entirely sure of its makeup, but he knew it was some kind of alchemy liquid. Crushed-up pieces of crystal or other materials are then placed inside this liquid.

The final part was the knowledge of the runes themselves and the ability to channel spirit power and the required matching essence into the liquid as it set.

If you did all this correctly, the rune would resonate with the surrounding essence and work correctly. He found that it got more complicated the further into the profession you went, but that was it at its simplest.

"Seems to be genuine." His mother said after replacing the stopper on one of the pots after inspecting it.

Whilst Valeria had the books on the trade and some runic diagrams, her father had not left his best tools behind, as they were lost when he got killed.

He knew his mother had used what was left of his ingredients to try and learn the trade, but she had failed, so she had sold the remaining tools and kept the books.

That was why this set had attracted them both. When chatting about the profession, she had always mentioned having him try his hand at it. It seems like they might be able to do something about that today.

"How're the runes for the set? Are they essence-specific or of a neutral quality?" Valeria asked as she looked over at the woman who stood up from where she sat, walking around.

"There are two runes, both essence neutral and can be used by anyone, as long as they have the talent to do so." The frail voice of the elderly woman slowly answered as she went into a coughing fit at the end that stopped as she drank from a cup nearby.

"This is a genuine testing kit used by the guilds. You can be assured of its quality, and it's suitable for the young to use as that is the purpose of it." The woman continued, correctly noting that the set would be for him.

"How much," Valeria asked, and the pair of women went through a series of haggling before they purchased it. It wasn't cheap, but not as much as his daggers.

"Mother, how're we able to afford these things?" He asked, wondering about his parent's displays of wealth. It didn't seem like they were rich.

"Your father and I already had a lot of savings from our time in the military, and I also had the money left over from my father and selling his house. The General also splits the profit from all external trades between the families here, and the ore from the mine is quite profitable for the village." Valeria replied as they left the market area and headed through Mysthaven.

He nodded and left it at that. He knew there must be more to it as they had also bought the cultivation technique for him, and it couldn't have been cheap.

Arriving home, they found the door locked, and he overheard his mother mumble something about the tavern, so he guessed that's where his father and Cleon had gone.

Mysthaven had a small tavern where people would relax, run by one of the other villagers, but it was nothing more than a dusty large house with lots of seating and a bar.

"Why don't you set the inscription master kit up on the table, and we can take a look after I make us a warm drink?" Valeria said as she motioned at the bundle of items they had just plopped onto it. It seemed that she could tell he was eager to look at it.

He started sorting through it and carefully moved all her tat to the side out of the way as he unpacked the leather satchel that contained the tools and ink. Two scrolls were sat to the side, and he knew these were the runes.

Picking them out, he unfurled the first one and used two heavy glass pots as paperweights as he looked it over. A large, intricate design was drawn into the centre of the parchment, and he noticed it seemed to glimmer in different colours as he looked at it from different angles. It reminded him of a shiny from a collector's card game.

The design was a mixture that reminded him of geometry, as triangles, circles, squares, and various other shapes were all drawn together, interconnecting or overlapping.

Usually, that wouldn't have been an issue to replicate, and he felt anyone could copy such simple shapes. The problem here was there were hundreds of shapes all intermixing, and if the instructions were anything to go by, they had to be done in a set order. The page reminded him of complex mathematical equations as it was just that esoteric, and the shapes were so tiny and densely clustered.

If that wasn't all, the annotated notes hugging the edges of the pages noted a set order in which the diagram needed to be created.

It seems those colours aren't just for show. They list the order in which the diagrams need to be completed.

He scratched his chin in thought as he read through the order of colours that started with purple and blue, which ran through others into orange and ended in red.

Aren't these colours the same as the ones typically associated with the light spectrum?

He quickly looked at the other diagram and noted this was precisely the same. It could just be a preference of the person who drew it, but he felt that wasn't the case. This world seemed a lot less advanced than Earth on the surface, but he found when he started to dig, there was a hidden depth there.

The shapes were drawn perfectly and looked like a machine had produced them. Thanos wouldn't be surprised if he started to measure angles and distances to find they were all neatly matching.

Looks like something out of a geometry teacher's wet dream.