After a while, the carriage finally reached the shopping district. It was a venue dedicated to warriors and cultivators. Most shops were either blacksmiths’ or alchemists’.

One could see an unusually high number of kids going around here with their attendants following. It was clear that the academy was about to start.

All the noble children were here to purchase all their school supplies. The supplies comprised of many different things, and depending on how much their families supported them, they could get vastly different qualities.

Children coming from minor nobility only bought the bare necessities, and often even those necessities weren’t of high standards. Another factor that allowed someone to discern the status of a child was the number of attendants following.

But what was certainly astounding was the number of servants that were listening to Henrick’s orders right now. He probably had around thirty attendants. If one counted the guards as well, that number would probably be closer to fifty, though.

As for Estelle, she only had Vince and three other attendants. One of them was Fabian. Having noticed him, Vince went over and slightly bowed while greeting him.

“Hello senior, hadn’t seen you while we were departing, else I would have come to greet you earlier.”

Fabian showed somewhat of a surprised expression as Vince wasn’t behaving at all like he usually did.

Without even waiting for a reply, Vince went back to Estelle’s side.

“Do you know him?”

“We share a dorm room with two other attendants.”

“You don’t have a room of your own?”

“No, milady.”

“I see; I didn’t know.”

As they began to walk, Estelle started rehearsing all they had to look for.

“So, we need a weapon, armour, and school books. Those are the only things allowed inside, so buying more is useless. You could technically buy ten different sets of armour, but that much would be useless. One good set is all you need. It might be worth buying more than one weapon if you intend to master multiple or try them out to understand which one best suits you, though.”

“Don’t worry; I already know what weapon I want to use!”

“Let me guess, it’s the sword, isn’t it?”

“YES! All the heroes from the tales always use swords!”

Hearing her answer, Vince could only sigh. But he expected this much to begin with. Just the fact that there were the so-called “Sword Saints” but nothing such as a “Spear Saint” made it obvious.

“Well, it’s fine. Let’s immediately go and grab some weapons, shall we?”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Estelle and Vince thus departed before anyone else could understand what they were doing.

After walking for a few minutes, they reached a road that was packed with weaponsmiths. And as one could expect, almost all of them specialised in Swords. Hell, some of them even specialised in a single type of swords, such as greatswords, longswords or shortswords.

“What kind of sword does milady want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s go and try some of them out then.”

And thus, they entered the first shop. This shop specialised in common longswords. It was probably the most crowded shop in the whole street.

A man in his twenties greeted them.

“Welcome, dear guests; how can I help you?”

Vince took the lead and spoke up. It was common when entering shops that the attendant spoke with anyone that wasn’t the shop owner. The reason for this was along the lines of “servants should only speak with servants”.

“My lady is wanted to try out a few longswords since she isn’t sure what kind of sword she would like.”

“I understand. Please follow me.”

After glancing a little at them, he brought them to the central area of the first floor. It was by far the most crowded area of the shop, and most customers were to-be students like them.

Vince immediately noticed that everyone in this area had simple clothes and few attendants.

‘Sigh, looking at milady’s clothes, he must have thought we come from some minor noble family. I understand the misconception, though…’

Vince thus called out to the employee who was tasked with guiding them.

“Excuse me, are there any higher quality swords… the swords here all seem made with cheap materials compared to some swords I saw customers go out with.”

The employee stared at him for a second and proceeded to explain the reason.

“We indeed have higher quality swords, but they are also much more expensive. Are you sure?”

Vince thus signalled him to come close, and once he bent a little, he whispered into his ears.

“I know it may not look like it, but milady is from a ducal house. Money shouldn’t be a problem.”

Having heard what Vince said, the employee showed a bit of a shocked expression. He thus guided them directly to the third floor of the shop.

The third floor was filled with heavily decorated swords. All of them had beautiful hilts, and the blades often had golden finishing, if not the entire blade made out of gold. Looking at them, Vince could immediately imagine what kind of people would buy these.

But those weren’t the kind of swords they were looking for. Swords with so many decorations were usually hard to handle and unnecessarily heavy. Therefore expert warriors would never pick one of those.

Estelle picked up one of the swords on display there and gave it a few swings.

“It’s too heavy… why is that?”

Looking at her, Vince could only think one thing.

‘You monster, lifting such a sword is already beyond impressive. Luckily the employee overlooked that… You would have pretty much given away the fact that you are already a cultivator…’

“Maybe the sword is too big for milady. You should try a smaller and shorter one.”

The employee gave such an opinion, but Vince was of a different idea.

“I think all those golden decorations and that uselessly big hilt are the problem. This sword was forged with the appearance in mind and not its usefulness in combat. We should go seeing the ones on the second floor.”

But it looked like the employee had no intention of giving up. Selling a sword from the third floor would rake in the same profit as two or three from the second floor, after all.

“But the swords we have on this floor are the best quality you can find. Look at all that gold. Everyone knows it’s the best metal. It might be slightly heavier, but its performance is worth it.”

Estelle seemed to nod a little, but Vince chimed in to end this farce.

“Gold is not good for swords. It’s a very malleable metal, thus making it very unsuitable for making a blade. It would lose sharpness continuously, and in a real fight, you would risk the blade receiving substantial damage if not bending completely. There are many more suitable metals for making swords. Actually, most swords on this floor are ornament swords. Another reason that blade feels so off is that the blade’s balance is not thought for combat. Those swords are just for the looks. I’m very impressed that an employee tried to sell one of these to someone who’s clearly about to get into the academy. Now, will you please bring us to the second floor?”

Listening to all he said, the employee realised that he wouldn’t be able to pull a fast one on those two, so he gave up and brought them to the second floor.

The second floor had way more refined swords than what the first floor offered, but the decorations weren’t anywhere near as abundant as the ones on the third floor.

Estelle once again picked up a sword and gave it a few swings. It was a sword that almost reached her shoulders, even though she was a pretty tall child for being that age. It lacked any golden decorations, but the hilt had nonetheless received much attention, especially regarding its shape.

“This one is much better. Can I pick this one?”

It was among the cheapest ones on the second floor. The employee showed a somewhat troubled expression seeing which sword she picked, but he remained silent.

“Milady, are you sure about choosing a longsword as your weapon?”

“Yes!”

“Then that one should be fine. I can tell it’s properly balanced even from here.”

“Hey, where do we pay?”

“Uh… yeah, follow me to the first floor.”

After the employee said that, they directly went to pay. The cost of the sword amounted to 45 silver coins.

There were a total of five types of coins, each being one hundred times more valuable than the previous. In order, the coins are small copper, copper, silver, gold and platinum. The average family living in the capital made one gold coin a year in total, and that was with multiple people working within the same family.

But 45 silver coins were nothing to a Ducal house.

“Excuse me, how much would that be in gold coins? I only have these…”

Hearing the question, the clerk smirked, but before he could talk, Vince did.

“Milady, a gold coin is worth a hundred silver coins, so you only have to give one, while they’ll return us 55 silver coins.”

“Thank you, Vince.”

And the last attempt the store employees could make at scamming a pair of kids thus vanished. It was unusual to see a noble kid without an adult attendant, but they realised why one wasn’t needed.

As for protection… well, one would be crazy to attempt anything in one of those streets, so they were super safe.