episode_0096

“Ain, do you have time?”

While I was twisting and turning the magic circuit of the newly made arcade machine as Lulu had optimized it, Ion opened the door to my room, stuck his head out, and asked.

“It’s vacation, but time is always fine. How long will it take?”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

“Going out?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll be out soon.”

Why is Ion calling me? Anyway, since I said I was going out, it seems like he’s calling me because he has something to do.

I was thinking of just dressing up and going out, but since I’m going out, I’ll be exposed to people, and I’ll have to show off my Ion side as I’m going to be with him, so I decided to dress up a little.

Then you might wonder why I dressed so lightly when I went out with Hoyo last time, but I can make an excuse that Hoyo is a regular visitor to the Night Sustained estate during vacations, and neither she nor her family cares about that at all.

However, the Duke of Moratium of Ion is a dukedom, and its master, Duke Icarus, is a leader of the central nobility.

Ion, like Hoyo, doesn’t care if I dress casually or formally, but she needs to dress up for her family.

Oh, this isn’t discrimination, it’s female-specific behavior. Mothers-in-law like it.

“Oh? You look pretty today.”

Ion, who usually wore either armor, an academy uniform, or just underwear, is wearing a stylish outfit today, with a loose-fitting, thin, long top that exposes one shoulder and short hot pants.

“If I go out alone, I just wear whatever I want, but since I’m going out with you.”

Ion, who was smiling brightly, held out his arm with his hands in his pockets, and I naturally put my arm around him.

“Shall we go, Monsieur?”

“Good, Mademoiselle.”

We come down giggling, and the maid, Shiru, sees us off, saying, “Have a nice day.”

“Where are you going?”

“First of all, a weapon shop. I want to buy a new shield.”

“Oh, ah… I’ll buy that for you.”

“Haha, I won’t refuse.”

I stuttered when Ion said he was going to buy a shield… In fact, the reason she wanted to buy a shield was because the shield I often carried got dented by the mace I swung during our last practice duel.

The warped part was also a difficult area to repair, and I boasted that I would buy him another one when Ion said, “You’ve been using it for a long time.”

The weapon shop we visited was the ‘Escatola Weapon Shop’ that Marquis Luciola recommended. Lulu? She was the one who told me to ask her mother because she didn’t know anything about weapons.

“Come on in!”

Entering the store, the owner, a boar-like female, greets you, not wearing any top at all, her chest barely covered by the thick shoulder straps of her work overalls, as if she is both working and serving customers.

“Please show me the shield~”

“Go inside and the left side is full of shields. Take a look around.”

The owner said with a big smile, and we went inside the store.

“Wow, there are a lot of shields.”

The corner where the shields were gathered was quite authentic, as if Marquis Lucio had recommended it for a reason.

From handguards for parrying to tower shields larger than mine, they are neatly organized by size and type, and shields of decent quality, probably intended for mercenaries or adventurers, are also piled up in a corner.

“Are you going to live with a kite shield?”

“Hmm, I see. I’ve been thinking about heater shields lately.”

“How about scutum?”

“Oh, that’s there. And Scutum is a bit annoying.”

“Then let’s look for the heater shield.”

We started looking for a decent and suitable shield. Sometimes Ion would curiously pick up a tower shield and shake his head, or when I picked up a large, round Parma, it looked like a shield with only legs sticking out, which made Ion giggle.

“Hahaha, shield-human!”

“Hello, girl. I am a shield-human.”

“Wahahahaha!”

As we were laughing and chatting, the item we chose was a heater shield with three fairly expensive auxiliary magic effects.

To be exact, it was something I chose rather than something we chose, and while Ion was satisfactory in terms of performance, I shook my head when I saw the price.

“Since I’m buying it for you, I’ll take this.”

“It’s expensive, but is that okay?”

“Because shields are important.”

I especially liked the phrase “We’ll engrave any emblem you want on the spot” underneath where the shields were displayed.

Perhaps that’s why the shield I chose had ornate edges, but nothing printed on the shield face.

“What are you going to engrave?”

“Hmm… I’m thinking about it.”

When I brought the shield and asked Ion about it, Ion seemed to be thinking about something but did not give a clear answer.

It was the same when they were whispering among themselves after handing over the shield to the owner. They looked at me and talked among themselves, but I couldn’t hear them at all because I’m not a superhuman.

“Decorate the side profile of the male in my group with white wings.”

“Is this what you mean? It looks like it would be worth engraving because it looks so elegant.”

The grumbling owner enters with a shield and pays the price to the Holstein female cow, who appears to be the father-in-law.

“What did you want me to engrave?”

“Um, secret.”

Ion said with a sly smile, and only after a while, when the owner came out of the workshop inside the store, did I understand why they were whispering to me.

“Nane.”

“You.”

The new heater shield of the Ion had a profile of me with my eyes closed, surrounded by pure white wings in a circle, and beneath it was a very stylish long flag with the words ‘Protactia minus noir Angelus’ written on it.

I found out much later that the phrase she had engraved meant, ‘My black angel protects you.’

“Well… If you like it, I like it too.”

“The expression doesn’t seem like that?”

“…It ended up looking like something was going to fly at my face.”

“Hahaha!”

Ion laughed heartily as I grumbled while leaving after asking him to deliver the shield to Anastasia’s mansion.

“So where next?”

“Next is the article store.”

I nodded at Ion’s words.

Aside from the weapon shop, what about the article shop?

In a knight’s shop, they sell weapons like swords, and defensive gear like shields and armor, but they also sell sturdy leather belts that can be attached to armor for easy putting on and taking off, small pouches to store consumables that can be attached to the inside of a shield, multi-purpose bags that can be worn over armor, and even a market for servants (usually of commoner origin) that knights often carry around – that’s what a knight’s shop is all about – “everything a knight needs except weapons and armor.”

To put it simply, you could think of it as military equipment for soldiers.

“Welcome~”

This time, a female Sphinx cat employee greets you.

The characteristic of this world’s Sphinx cat human is that it does not have a strange appearance with wrinkles like the Sphinx of the world I was in, but rather has the form of a beastman (a human with ears and a tail) that is commonly referred to these days because of its invisible and very short hair.

“You need thin leather gloves that fit inside the gauntlets.”

At Ion’s request, the employee cheerfully says, “I’ll show you around~” and leads us to one side of the store.

“This is the armor corner!”

“Shield pocket? Just tell me the location.”

“The shield pocket is over there!”

The employee who guided me like that said cheerfully, “Then, if you need anything, please call me again!” and then returned to his seat.

“Gloves for armor?”

“Oh, it tore last week so I’m going to buy a new one. It’s old too.”

“Oh, what do you mean by a shield pocket? You need to buy a new shield?”

“That’s right. Its original purpose was to hold combat supplies that could be used in times of emergency, but if you put snacks in there, you can eat them during class.”

I laughed a little when Ion said that and made a playful expression.

Since she only had a few items to buy, it wouldn’t have taken long for her to just choose, but since it was my first time at a craft store, I took my time looking around.

What was especially fun was passing by a resting place where a variety of seeds gathered, each sharing their experiences with the knight seed, dozing off, or watching the knights walking around the knight supply store with curious expressions.

“Wow, it looks like there are male knight seeds too. I’ve never seen one before.”

“What a handsome man. Where on earth can you get a seed like that?”

“Ugh… It might not be a seed.”

“Agree? Are there any male seeds? Where would the male seeds be?”

We laughed out loud at the small talk of the seeds after we left the newsagents’ shop.

“Doesn’t the male produce seeds?”

“Seeds are quite hard even for me, a knight, to say this. If a male with an uneven face walks around the village, there are dark-hearted females everywhere, so how can you be a seed?”

“You don’t know? There might be a big meaning to the article.”

“I’m interested in such a rambling opinion, but it would be much faster to mate with the females of the knightly family and learn from them.”

“That makes sense!”

I nod my head at Ion’s more plausible words. Well, it’s probably only something you’d find in a book, where a male goes through all that trouble to become a knight.

“Because there was something like that in the books Hoyo was reading. She pretends to be a female and lives as a servant, then meets a knight she was hanging out with and does this and that to train as a knight… It was quite fun to read.”

“How about looking at the story from the reporter’s perspective?”

“It’s quite interesting. Sometimes the person writing the article knows a lot about the article, and sometimes he doesn’t… but it’s interesting either way.”

What she found particularly amusing was the story about how he would pull out a two-meter-long blade of magic from his sword and fly through the sky, slashing at his enemies. What… was this a martial arts story?

The story from the magazine continued until we got to the cafe.