After leaving the weapon store, Reyne guided them towards Glass Cauldron, on the way Daimon was in a bit of a loss of words.
'To think that the weapons those idiots had were that much trash', he thought.
The generic models of beast armor that Ismael's squad had were actually better than the weapons he used himself, in the sense that though they were generic armors with just overall boosting, the basic stuff that soldiers who had earned some merits are given, they were of seventh generation.
Meanwhile the weapons of both Ismael and Hal, were of fourth generation, but were more expensive since they had active abilities, such kind of equipment was only granted to team captains, which should be all peak Lord ranks.
Among the things exhibited on the rack behind the counter, Daimon saw a couple of those, but the vast majority were fifth generation ones, and the best one was the spear he bought.
"There used to be more, the past month I even saw a seventh generation sword in the store, what a shame it seems like someone bought it before you", said Reyne, she was still not convinced of Daimon's choice.
"I don't want to be annoying, but if you need a good weapon, I can always tell father to sell one to you… that spear will probably have destructive power on par with an early stage Arch rank of the seventh generation, of the highest quality, but it is unstable, using it in battle is too risky.
"I'll just bought for its rarity so I won't be using it in battle, as for your offer, I don't mind negotiating with your father when the time comes", said Daimon, which made Reyne let out a sigh of relief, while Sarah softly snorted.
Of course, Daimon wasn't going to use that poorly made spear, to begin with the chances of him ever finding a weapon that has as much potential as Disaster/Narasha is infinitely close to zero.
For example, Disaster isn't even a Stellar ranked weapon, or Daimon would not be able to wield it, and yet it is on par with them, as proved by Daimon easily using it to break half Stellar ranked equipment back at the three-art tournament, the capricious sword literally crushed every weapon it clashed with, and Narasha as his soulmate has a grimoire, meaning that she will continue to grow stronger along with Daimon, she isn't his battle companion by anything after all.
Leaving that aside, they soon arrived in front of their next destination, unlike the weapon store, Glass Cauldron was quite crowded, and for a good reason, they had the largest variety of alchemy products and rare materials in the whole city, and every day they put a batch of cheap things for sale, which is what most of the guys waiting in line aimed at.
Reyne casually ignored the line and went straight to the door, before those guys in line started complaining, she showed the guards a small circular black token, and their insults stuck in their throats.
"Confirmed, please go in", said the guard as he moved the line aside to leave Daimon and the girls enter.
"This is one of the privileges, not having to wait in line, ah don't worry no one knows to whom is the token linked, they are all the same, making it impossible for anyone besides the one who made them to know it, and its creator is dead", said Reyne with her usual calm and gentle voice.
"Smug", mumbled Sarah, to which Reyne just softly laughed as the three of them entered the store.
Unlike Hundred Claw, Glass Cauldron not only occupied a larger building with three stories, but actually had some decent service, at least for them who weren't interested in the first floor where the cheap stuff and discounted items were.
Seeing that Daimon's group went straight to the stairs that led to the upper floors, one of the salesmen approached them.
"Welcome esteemed clients, can I perhaps help you find what you are interested in?", he politely asked.
"Poisons, the deadliest the better", immediately said the crazy girl.
The salesman was speechless for a second, normally those who come to buy things like poison, keep a low tone of voice or ask about it in secrecy, poison isn't illegal, humans have many disadvantages against flesh eating demons and magic beasts, so they have to use what they can.
Still, those who specialized in poison were feared and discriminated, at Brown Wind town no one cared, but in Tiria things were much more civilized, anyway, the salesman didn't dare to show any disrespect since this group entered the using a token, meaning they had to have some connections with a bigshot.
"The best poisons we have to offer can be seen at the third floor, naturally they are not in exhibition unlike others, since they can be used to kill Arch ranked magic beasts with the correct methods, please follow me", said the man as he led the way.
Reyne wasn't surprised about it, she has heard from Gary about the results of Sarah's fighting, as for Daimon he came here only looking for a single thing, but he couldn't ask about it and instead decided to look around, if he found it then he'll buy it.
The salesman took them to the second floor, which was less crowded than the first one, there the "brand" products were sold, healing, mana recovery, stamina recovery, there were potions with a lot of different effects, but they all only had one effect, making them "generic".
The third floor was where the specialized products were sold, the salesman knocked on the door and the guards, who were two early stage Arch ranks opened it.
"These esteemed clients are looking for specialized products, there is no need to verify their funds, they have a token", said the salesman, the two guards nodded and then opened way for Daimon's group.
"I hope you find what you are looking for", said the salesman as he bowed towards Daimon and the others to then return to the first floor, apparently, he wasn't allowed to enter.
Daimon and the girls entered through the door, and were welcomed by much more organized spacious room, there were many shelves, racks and tables with staff tending to the clients.
"Please take seat at table number 3", said one the guards, pointing at one of the free tables, which was attended by a woman who seemed to be in her forties, who was smoking, surprisingly her cigarette didn't produce any smell, but her slightly gray skin and bags under her eyes, gave her away as an alchemist who worked with poisons.
"Welcome, what kind of poison do you want to buy, the best ones we have are peak Arch ranked ones, a drop will cost you five hundred peak Lord ranked beast cores, of course with a single drop you can only kill an early stage magic beast" said the woman as she saw Daimon and the girls sitting in front of her.
Luckily Sarah was wearing a mask, otherwise the woman would have for sure felt uncomfortable looking at the smile she had on her face right now, Daimon on the other hand did get to see her and he inwardly sighed.
But then ignored what was happening on the table, to focus his attention on Rita, who was scanning the whole room, by Daimon's request of course.
'I found what you asked Daimon, third shelf on the upper left side of the wall at your right', after a couple of seconds, Rita's voice could be heard in Daimon's mind, her trustable sensing abilities didn't let Daimon down, as usual.
'Thanks Rita', answered Daimon as he used his infinity eyes to look at a hand sized bottle, in the shelf mentioned by the self-claimed head maid, the thing contained a bright red liquid, which is what he came looking for… blood of a Ghoul.
Human trafficking of any kind is forbidden, but the Ghouls aren't humans, and though their corpses for sure end up in the hands of the church or the Adjudicators, to be used to develop better weapons against them, some of their materials showed up from time to time.
As to why he didn't ask for it to Reyne, he naturally had a reason for it, but that could be left for later, for now he compared the blood in that bottle against the one which he got from those two women, in his memory, and the intensity of this one surpassed that, in fact it even surpassed Dylan's.
And with a good reason, it belonged to a middle stage Arch rank and surprisingly the price on the tag wasn't as exorbitant as he expected, probably Ghoul's blood publicly didn't have much uses, since humans couldn't use it as an ingredient for anything that they consumed, it didn't even work as poison, though it would for sure make anyone who drank it, vomit, in other words, Ghoul's could consume humans and benefit from it, but it didn't work the other way around.
Something similar happened to Ghouls with magic beasts, not only their meat tasted awful for them, but they wouldn't get benefits from it.
Seeing that Sarah was now happily holding onto a small bottle with a single drop of an ash gray liquid inside of it, it was Daimon's turn.
"I want that bottle of flesh eating demon's blood", he said, the woman raised an eyebrow, since the girl she spoke to a moment ago bought something really useful, giving her a good impression.
In comparison the masked man, chose the most useless thing in the whole room, besides collection value, it could only be used to cover one's presence for a certain period of time, but you had to hid to use it that way, since the flesh eating demons could hear the blood flow, to a certain extent, so you had to stay still for it to work that way, still it wasn't her money so she just nodded.
The woman casually tapped her hand on the table, a small array appeared on it and the bottle was now in her hand.
"A thousand peak Lord ranked beast cores please", she said, Daimon paid and then he received the bottle.
It was "cheap" in the sense that there was more than two liters of blood in the bottle, Daimon heard a notification ringing in his mind, but he didn't open it right now, the information seller was going to open in a few minutes according to Reyne, and that was their priority right now, besides the level of the things here was horrible from his point of view.
Sarah only bought that poison, because it was the only one made with an effect different to the ones she has stored in her ring, and that was the only one, the others had similar but worse effects to the ones she had.
They got up and then went downstairs, the guards didn't pay them any attention as they left the store.
…
Once outside, Reyne turned to see Daimon before saying.
"The information selling store is different than the other ones, only those with a token from the black union can access to it, since each token holder is for sure not a flesh eating demon, that being said the one selling the information is quite a pain to deal with, so try not to antagonize it".
Daimon in exchange turned to see the crazy girl who just playfully shrugged as she placed her hand on Daimon's shoulder.
"I'll "behave" if I'm distracted with something~", she happily said, making Daimon's eyebrow twitch, still she wasn't crossing the line, only her hand was placed on his shoulder, so he didn't complain, Reyne could feel Sarah's gaze piercing her but she limited to softly laugh and then turned around to guide them to the information seller.
Unlike the previous stores which were in the same region, where the biggest locals of the city were, the information seller had a small house-sized local at the area where the street stalls were located.
This also worked in Daimon's favor, since he could take a look after he has gotten the information he wanted, on the way Daimon wanted to clear some doubts he had about the seller with Reyne.
"What's the limit of the information that guy sells?", he asked.
"Mm, besides asking about secrets regarding the secrets of Adjudicators or the church, I don't think there is a limit, the most it can happen is that the seller doesn't know about it, normally there are many information sellers in a black market, but in this one there is only one, since father didn't want to increase the risk of leaks of information too much", she said.
Daimon nodded, if that was the case, then he could reach the answers he needed… one way or another.
They soon arrived at a small house at the outer southeast area of the black market, naturally since only those with tokens like Reyne could come here, there was no line, Reyne placed her token on the door and then an array appeared on it, before the thing opened.
The process seemed simple, but Daimon could see what truly happened, if the token would have been a fake, the array which had spatial properties would have instead opened a gate to a highly dangerous area, giving time for the one inside to escape, quite a cunning design, also the protective arrays in this house were not that far from the ones on the Valleris's mansion.
Having gotten the greenlight, they entered the small house and Daimon closed the door behind of him, there was only a regular living room in front of them, the rest of the house was covered in arrays as it was a restricted area.
In the middle of the room, there were two sofas, a small one in which a man wearing brown robes was sitting, and a large one that could accommodate up to eight people, which was reserved for the clients.
"So, what do you want…", the man turned to see them, as he spoke with an uninterested voice, but froze on the spot, he then took out a small paper from his pocket and after reading it, but didn't say anything.
Daimon and the girls sat on the sofa, while Sarah as practically stuck to him, Reyne kept a small distance between herself and Daimon, it's worth mentioning that Emily was standing behind of them, she had her own token and was allowed to use her camouflage without the informant knowing, since she has signed a contract stating that she can't kill him instead, an agreement between Oliver and this guy.
"Everything important happening at far northeast from Brown Wind town, do you know about it", directly said Daimon.
The man nodded and then placed his hand on the table between them, to then say.
"The price would be ten Arch rank beast cores, ah right also handover that spear you bought earlier and apologize for making me lose my valuable time, otherwise the negotiations are over…", the man couldn't even finish his sentence, when the atmosphere in the room became heavy, making him sink into the sofa as the sound of bones creaking started coming from him.
Naturally the arrays on the room immediately lit up, but their shine faded away the moment a black sword was shoved on the ground right where all of them crossed paths.
Daimon whose pressure was flooding the room, and yet Reyne and Sarah were completely unaffected by it, casually tapped his finger on the table as he said.
"It seems you are misunderstanding the nature of this visit, that wasn't a request, it was an order".
Daimon would have normally not cared about a clown trying to pick on him, heck, he wouldn't have minded giving him the spear if that was the payment required, but this idiot was thinking on lying about the information just to mess with him.
And that of course angered him, since this was an important matter, that being said he noticed that he was being unusually aggressive, which could be because night has officially started a minute ago, as increased boosting effect on him, suggested.
"If you even think on lying to me again, death will be the least of your problems", he said as she retrieved his pressure, leaving the brown robbed man who was gasping for air, while a puddle of blood formed around him, since he suffered internal bleed and practically vomited blood due to the previous situation, to finally breath again.
Emily who was standing behind, of them was also excluded from Daimon's pressure, but she could feel it, or more accurately her instincts could notice it, she was also wearing a mask just in case, and she was happy about it because her current expression was of awe.
'H-He is like me!', she inwardly screamed as she secretly sent a message to Jeanne, naturally with Rita watching everything in a range of one hundred kilometers, and informing Daimon of the things he asked her to, Daimon knew what she did, but he didn't stop her, because there was something he wanted to confirm and there were no ill intentions coming from the dark gray-haired woman, in fact her impression of him seemed to have improved a lot.
What Daimon didn't know was the reason of that, he thought that it was because of the small power display he did a moment ago, unaware that Emily somehow managed to feel a hint of his vampire lineage, through his aura.
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