I walked off to the side, where I was greeted by a man wearing an expensive looking suit and a stylish short sword sheathed to his side. The man was holding a chain that connected to the goblin’s shackles on one hand, and a bracelet on the other one.

“That was a lot of money to spend on a measly goblin. Not that we are complaining, but may I ask, why spend so much?” He asked politely, walking behind a small counter while tugging the slave behind him.

“He looked strong enough to do what I need him to do. I don’t know what else is up for grabs, and I didn’t want to miss out.” I answered simply, trying to keep my tongue in check from lashing out for the poor treatment of the goblin. My feelings about the situation were complicated. On the one hand, these people weren’t real. Just extensions of my imagination. So why would I care if someone was treated poorly. Especially a slave at that. But on the other hand, I was now living here, not game mastering for other people. And living one thing as supposed to playing it were two different things. The facial expressions of pain and anger were so real that my natural instinct of getting angry when someone was mistreated kicked in.

“I see. Well. After you pay, you are more than welcome to see our other specimens up for auction.” The assistant interrupted me from my thoughts and placed the bracelet on the table. “Twenty five silvers if you may.”

I stacked the coins next to the bracelet, and once I hit the desired amount, the money disappeared in the man’s purse. He took the piece of jewelry and tapped it against the slave’s collar, before handing it to me.

“You know what this is?” He asked, smiling.

“Slaver bracelet” I said simply. “Wear it, and whoever wears the linked collar has to obey you or suffer from extensive pain. They cannot touch it and if the wearer of the bracelet dies, the linked slaves die”

“Have you owned a slave before?” The man asked politely while I was fitting the bracelet on.

“Uh.. no. My family had a couple”

“I see!” He seemed satisfied with that answer. “Now what kind of job are you going to assign to him? We do have a stall nearby with basic equipment for household work.”

“Personal security. I am intending to travel, so another spear will be useful”

“Oh! You should get mercenaries for that kind of job then. I wouldn’t trust these suckers with anything sharper than a butter knife”

“I have the bracelet. He cannot harm me or anyone I don’t wish him to. And mercenaries can stab you in the back if they are greedy enough” I unlocked the shackles from my new slave, and he immediately tried to jump me.

“STOP!” I roared, and the goblin fell over, writhing in pain. It was an unpleasant sight to behold. Ignoring the snarky comment from the assistant, I focused my gaze on the goblin.

“Stand up and follow me. Don’t attack anyone.”

After a moment of struggling, my words seemed to register in his mind. He stood up, glaring at me angrily.

I glanced back at the assistant. “The auctioneer said that he doesn’t understand common. Does the collar have a translation spell of some kind?”

“No. But he would know instinctively what your orders mean. It’s a common practice when capturing foreign creatures.” He explained helpfully, and I grimaced at my own stupidity. Of course that was the case. But given the recent scare, I may be pardoned from forgetting such a detail.

“Right. I’ll be off then.” I took a couple steps away from the market, checking that the goblin was following me. He was, although grumpily. I needed to come up with a name for him. I’ve owned him for a total of one minute and was already getting tired of calling him “a goblin”.

While walking away, I heard yet another goblin being sold to a new home. I felt bad about it. Unlike everyone else, I had no grudges against goblins, and would treat my travel companions better than whatever the place these poor souls were sold off to. If I could’ve I would’ve bought them all, just to spare them from the pain that was about to come. But in reality, even if I could afford them all, I couldn’t feed a big group. Or enter most places with a small army of creatures most people hated.

Reminding myself that they were simply NPCs, I was able to carry on. Now what’s next? Right! Equipment! Scanning over the stores, I noticed one place that would provide me some of the things I needed. A good old blacksmith!

A faint chime sound echoed through the store as I entered the blacksmith’s storefront. It was filled with all kinds of metalwork, everything from nails to different tools and then to well crafted weapons and pieces of armor. I felt my eyes widening in awe as I watched the items on display. The sight was so impressive to my medieval times loving self that I reconsidered my build, almost deciding to go full frontline warrior just so I could wear all the cool stuff this man had for sale. But no. I needed to keep my focus on what’s important if I ever wanted to get back home.

Soon a shopkeeper came from a backdoor, eyeing me and my companion.

“No goblins at the store” He said grumpily, clear disdain present in his voice.

“I am sorry sir, but I need him to be present. For it is him I am choosing a weapon for, and I don’t know what he uses.” I said, my speech pattern jumping straight into my polite roleplayer style. Damn some habits were hard to break.

His eyebrows rose up slightly at my statement. “A weapon for a goblin? Why?”

“I currently lack the strength to fight myself, and I need someone to do the heavy lifting for me. The roads are dangerous these days and an extra pair of weapons will go a long way to keep me safe” Stop it, stop it, stop it! Nobody speaks like that, you idiot!

He still held some suspicion in his eyes, but relented, thank the lord. “Alrigthy. What will it be then? A sword? Dagger mayhaps? He doesn’t look like a spear user in my eyes”

I turned on my collared little friend. “You!” I really needed to choose a name for him. I should’ve done so before putting a weapon in his hands. Oh well. “Pick a weapon you want… And some armor that will fit” I added as an afterthought.

The goblin looked at me for a second, clear confusion present in his beady eyes. But then finally he started to go around the store, browsing for items for display.

“And don’t break anything!” I shouted after him, and went to talk with the presumed store owner.

“Anything I can get you while your slave takes his time?” The man asked. The words were polite, but his tone screamed “Whatever can get you two out of here the fastest!”.

Well if that was his attitude. “Do you have brigandine armor at hand?” Look at that, it only took someone being rude for me to drop my roleplayer act.

“I do. Several in fact. What kind are you after?”

“Show me your finest that would fit me, and we can go from there.” I shrugged. With only my basic knowledge of armor construction and quality, I really didn’t know what to ask for. A troublesome thought came to me then. If I didn’t know the best metal qualities and ways to make weapons and armor, would the blacksmith know? Would my basic understanding in the subject matter be the highest level of skill anyone in here could muster?

Turns out that my fears were unwarranted. While I walked behind the blacksmith through the display cases towards the portion of the shop where pieces of armor were sold, I could hear him babbling on about metalwork. It all sounded very professional, and the man clearly knew what he was speaking of. I didn’t know even half the stuff he told me during our short walk, so I assumed the world had taken some real knowledge beyond what was in my head… somehow.

My goblin was now browsing through a sword section, weighing the weapons in his hands and seeming displeased and trying out the next one. For a goblin from a poor ring, he was surprisingly picky in his choices. I was half expecting him to come back, carrying half the shop and expecting me to buy them for him.

The shopkeeper came to a stop in front of a shelf, displaying breastplates of ever increasing quality. He strummed his fingers on the shelf, before tapping a leather vest with shiny steel rivets on.

“This would be my recommendation for you. It is on the expensive side of my wares, but since you let your slave roam around free to pick any gear he wants, I assume you have the money to pay for things.” He crossed his arms on his chest, looking rather pleased.

I took a step closer to the armor, trying to inspect it the best I could. Coming up empty, I turned to him. “Why this one? Why not something else?”

“Ah! Well. I had a local wizard to enchant a few of my items, this one included. It weighs less than it normally would, and the leather repairs itself… within limits of course.”

“No magical protections?” I asked, trying to see if he was lying.

“No. Steel doesn’t work well with enchantments. So weight reduction and minor self repair is the best he could place on it”

Well that wasn’t entirely accurate. A skilled enchanter could very easily put stronger enchantments in steel items, if they put a little bit of effort in it, but this would have to do for the time being. After all, as it was with any game, the truly valuable and useful items wouldn’t be purchased from the NPC vendors, but found in the dungeons around the world. Or crafted by your own hands.

“Right. Well, if that is your highest recommendation, I’ll take it. How much?”

The owner smiled and pointed at a small tag I hadn’t noticed previously. “Fifteen gold.”

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Almost half of my total funds? For weight reduction and minor self repair on a piece of armor? Nope. “I’ll give you seven.” It was bordering on rude to lowball my offer by that much, but seriously. If I were in charge of the world, I would allow this item to be sold at around ten gold with good enough charisma rolls.

The shopkeeper laughed at my ridiculous offer. “I’m sorry boy, but where would be the profit for me if I let this piece go for only seven gold? But since you are buying gear for your goblin, I suppose I can part with this armor for.. say thirteen and a half?”

So the haggling started. After a few exchanges, my new slave came to me, showing a small pile of steel he was carrying, and we moved to the counter, the shopkeeper carrying the enchanted brigandine armor for me.

The goblin had chosen a decent set of armor including greaves, wrist guards, small chain shirt and a simple helmet. On top of the pile I saw a short one handed falchion and a steel rimmed buckler.

I nodded to him approvingly and got a confused look from him in return. Apparently he didn’t think I would allow him to get everything he wanted.

“So twelve and a half gold for the whole pile. Final offer” I said after quickly calculating a rough estimate of the value of the gear.

“Thirteen.” Was the shopkeeper’s verbose response.

“It’s a deal then” I opened my bag and collected the necessary coins. I turned towards my goblin, pointed at his selection of gear and said “It is paid for. Put it on and we’ll leave”

He gave me a nod and went on to put the armor on. I noticed a slight wince on the shopkeeper’s face when the goblin struggled to get into his chainmail. “What’s the problem?”

“I just never thought that my handiwork would be worn by a filthy goblin. It’s too good for those scums.”

“I don’t know about that. He is my slave, so technically I’m wearing the armor.”

“You have a point there. But still. Did he have to pick my better made gear? It could’ve been worn by a noble fighter.”

I saw no point to keep arguing about it, so I grunted in response and stood in silence while my minion finished strapping his armor on. When that was done, I nodded at the shopkeep, ordered the goblin to follow me and together we left the shop.

“I have few more errands to run in the city. After that we’ll get a meal and look for a job board. I’m sure a city this big has at least a few problems that upstart adventurers could take a crack at” I said offhandedly to the goblin, trying to establish some kind of relationship. I really needed a name for him. And I didn’t even know if he understood what I was saying, beyond the orders I gave.

Something to look into the near future. I walked through the busy city streets, getting strange looks due to my companion. Did people really not use slaves for fighting? What was I thinking? Of course not. People got slaves to do menial labor and unwanted tasks. In their minds, slaves, especially goblins, had no other useful purpose. They weren’t trusted with weapons, even with the protection that slave collar offered. Their loss.

Finally I spotted the shop I wanted to visit. “Arcanum Trianna”. A well known and respected magical store, selling spell scrolls, crystals and equipment for those looking to become a powerful magician.

Most of the items wouldn’t be useful for me at this point, since they required a magic stat to be unlocked, but there were a couple things I wanted for myself.

I opened the door to a smoke filled room. The atmosphere was totally different from the blacksmith’s shop. Walls were covered in dusty tomes and scroll tubes, instead of weapon and armor racks. Glass cabinets showcased various items rested on soft velvety pillows, and the few tables that were on the shop floor showcased casting focuses, spell components and rune carved stones. This was more like it.

I browsed the wares, my goblin friend following me, not really knowing what I was looking at. Sure I had placed everything that was sold in the store to my notes, but that was back home. I didn’t remember all of them or their effects.

When nothing obviously useful to my current situation came to my mind, I went to speak to the shopkeeper. From the looks of it, the girl behind the desk was not Trianna herself. Maybe an assistant? She had curly brown hair and very sharp facial features and was wearing a set of ornamental robes. A wide leather belt held various small pouches and trinkets, and I could even see a small wand tucked away in a suitable sheath.

She was eyeing me lazily as I approached. “Excuse me, miss, but could you help me out? I am starting my journey towards magical mastery, but I’m afraid that I am quite at a loss with all your wondrous wares.” And my cringe-worthy roleplayer persona was manning my mouth again. Just.. great.

She gave a look. “Why not. What do you need? My name is Olga by the way. Thanks for asking.”

“Well, there are a couple items I would need to begin with. I have not unlocked my potential in magic just yet, so the items that I’m looking for should be accessible even without the natural gift.” Why was that so oddly worded? A simple ‘I need a focus with a mana battery’ would’ve done the trick.

Apparently, she thought so too. “So an arcane focus with an internal mana battery?” I nodded. “Those are quite expensive items. Are you sure you can afford one?”

“I am fairly certain that such an item is within my ability to purchase. But there is more. As you may have guessed, I don’t have the ability to read magical text, so I would need a spell to be imprinted on the focus.” I paused for a moment, glancing behind me at the goblin, who was looking at me and the shop, once again confused. “And if you have one, I would like to buy a skill tome. One that allows the user to speak the common tongue”

“Right.. Just… wait here for a moment. I go get the boss. She should be able to help you out.” Olga said, and exited the storefront through a back door.

I stood there still, admiring the items displayed and could only imagine the conversation happening in the back room. “Hey! There is a strange man speaking oddly who came in with a goblin. He is asking for expensive stuff. Could you sort this out for me?”

After a moment of waiting, a very large woman came through the door Olga had just left through. Finally I was able to speak with one of my named NPCs.

Trianna was a half goliath. She stood just a bit under eight feet tall, and looked very intimidating. She had piercing amber eyes, and her hair was neatly rolled inside an elaborate headdress. It reminded me of the headdress one could see on fortune tellers in the real world. Golden jewelry covered her arms, fingers and neck, most of them having at least one gemstone inserted and her robes were expensive purple silk.

She surely looked the part of a sorcerer or a witch. And her being one of my creations I had put some time in, I knew how to deal with her.

“So you are the boy looking to buy a charged casting focus with an imprinted spell? And a skill tome that teaches the common tongue?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said simply, giving her a short but polite bow. “Indeed I am starting my journey to become a magic-focused Sinhunter. I am currently only a level zero and lack the funds to attend Mage's College properly, so my journey begins from your wonderous shop.”

Her smile told me that my compliment didn’t go unnoticed. “I see. I remember that the tuition to college is expensive. What kind of funds do you currently have on you?”

I looked in my bag to make sure I had the number right. “A bit over twenty-seven gold, but I’m hoping to spend only twenty-five if I can manage it”

Her eyes widened slightly. It was not every day someone came in with an equivalent of twenty-seven thousand euros.

“That will certainly get you started,” Trianna said and walked across the counter to start browsing through the items in the store. “Now the skill tome comes to around three gold on its own.” She said after pulling out a book from one of the shelves. “I have only this one, and it includes both the written and spoken language, along with some regional dialects.”

“That is more than enough, ma’am.” I smiled and followed her as she moved to the wand section. I watched as she picked up a few wands, and placed them down. “Is there a problem?”

“Not really a problem, but choosing the right focus within the limits of your needs and funds can be a bit tricky. These ones for example,” she waved at the wands she had just placed down, “can be charged with mana, but they cannot absorb any ambient energy to recharge. As I understand it, your magic potential is at zero, so they wouldn’t be useful to you”

I nodded in agreement, thankful that she had understood and taken my request seriously rather than picking the easiest option and selling it to me as top-level gear. I was right to come to Trianna’s shop. She was the best the city had to offer.

I waited for a moment longer while she inspected the items, dismissing most of them. Finally, she had four potential items in one pile.

“Here would be my recommendations for you. This first one,” She held up a silvery wand with a small row of diamonds embedded in the handle, “would work for you. Out of all of these wands, this one holds the largest amount of mana. But the drawback is that only one spell can be imprinted, so your options in combat would be limited. The other ones hold less amount of mana, but they can be charged with more spells.”

“What would be your personal choice then, if you were in my boots?” I asked, looking at the wands.

“I would maybe go with one that has more options, but then again you do have a defender by your side. One or two spells should be enough to start with, in that case”

“How much is the silvery one you just showed?”

“Nineteen gold and the price is firm.”

“I see.” I thought about it for a moment and made up my mind. “I take it”

Trianna gave me a pleasant smile, took the wand and waved her hand over the table. I saw that the rejected items floated back to their original places. That was cool! Easy clean-up!

She walked behind the counter, carrying the wand and the tome and I followed her. Standing at the opposite side of her, she started working on the imbued spell. After explaining the options, I chose a basic arcane missile spell. A simple first-level spell that would concentrate a small amount of mana into a ball, and shoot it at high speeds towards the target. It was the easiest and most mana effective spell she had to offer, and all I needed to do with the wand was a swish and flick and off the spell goes.

After that was sorted out I remembered that I had a few items that I needed to be inspected.

“How much extra would it be if you were to inspect a couple scrolls and a book that I gained from… a family friend? I cannot read the text, and I am sure they are important.” I pulled the two scrolls I had looted from the Rindell family, along with the magical notebook and showed them to her.

“Now now! What do we have here? A proper spell scrolls!” Trianna exclaimed, and took the papers from my hands. “With your current purchases, I can inspect these on the house.”

I grinned, and placed twenty-two gold coins on the desk. Trianna took them and held them near one of her necklaces. The coins vanished from her hands. Okay that was super cool! Of course, she had a spatial storage device. I wanted one. But that would have to wait for a moment since I had just almost bankrupted myself.

“The book is interesting,” Trianna said after scrolling through a few pages. “It seems to be a makeshift grimoire, containing instructions on three spells. A common mana missile, a spell that allows you to detect magic, and a shield spell” She closed the book and moved onto the scrolls. “Now this one has a concussive blast inscribed on it, and the other has a spell form that allows you to inspect magical items.”

Score! Two combat spells, two utility spells and a defensive spell! I couldn’t wait to unlock my magic characteristic so I could learn these. But there was still one problem.

“That is great, but they won’t be too useful for me. I don’t have the ability to read the magical language. Would you have a tome I could buy to fix that issue?”

“In fact I do, but you said you were willing to spend only so much. And the tome I have is beyond your ability to purchase.”

“How much?” I asked, hoping it wouldn’t be too far off my funds.

“The lowest quality I have is six gold, but if you want a proper tome, it would come to at least eight.”

Crap. I had only five gold left, and Trianna didn’t like hagglers. Her prices were fair, and the deals honest.

“I see. That is certainly something I need to come back for in the future.”

Her eyes widened slightly with my statement. Apparently, she had expected me to try to haggle. I took the items on the desk, stuffing it all neatly in my shoulder bag. “Thank you for your time and the free inspections. I’ll be back as soon as I can for another tome.”

I could feel her smile on my back as I left the store. Apparently, I had gained some reputation with her. That was good, and for the moment, I had everything I needed to get started.