“There are three types of coins for us commoners to use: copper coin, silver coin, and gold coin. One silver coin equals to 100 copper coins and one gold coin equals to 100 silver coins. This is how they look like. The insignia on three of them are the same, representing the coins belonging to a country or a union. Our country, Vahallad, has the flag showing the tree of life, so the insignia is also a tree. In case you want to travel outside this country, you will need to call these coins, Vahallad copper coin, Vahallad silver coin, and Vahallad gold coin, so that people can recognize them.” Johno explains the currency of this world to the two girls while guiding them around the town.

“You said ‘tree of life’? Can you tell me more about it?” Makoto curiously asks.

“You have never heard of the tree of life from before?” Johno is shocked but then continues “Oh, right, then I should start from the story of how our country was founded. It was 1000 years ago, when the hero was still eradicating the countries who betrayed her. At that time, disaster befell everywhere, drought, tornado, storm, flood, epidemic. Even though the places where those disasters occurred were limited to those countries alone, it did not mean that they did not affect those unrelated. People at that time lived through hell every day.

Seeing how people were suffering so poorly from the cruelty of disasters, a cultivator sought to help them out, despite the objection of his fellow cultivators. That person transformed into a big tree, a tree big enough to hold a mountain inside it. He gave shelter to the humans of that time, while resisting the destruction caused by the disaster outside.

After three months of unleashing her wrath, the hero stopped causing the destruction and the world returned to normal once again, except the countries she wanted to destroy. The tree had sheltered everyone inside there safely and released them outside again. Those people were the founders of this country, Vahalla. To remember the gratitude of the protection from that time, the flag of this country has the symbol of the tree on it. The ancestors called it the tree of life because that tree sheltered not only the humans, but also other races and animals. In other words, it is the protector of all living creatures at that time, hence the tree of life.”

“The other races?” Yuuko asks.

“I have heard that from a long time ago, there were people called elves, dwarves or something like that. However, that distinction was only because of superstition and unjust racial discrimination at that time. They all look exactly like human, except for a few parts on the body. Why were they bothering something as trivial as that? In the end, such stupid thinking was abolished and everyone is called human nowadays.”

“I see.” Makoto nods. In the town, there are sights of people with various traits that do differentiate them from normal humans such as long pointy ear, very short or very tall height, typical traits of fantasy races, elves, dwarves, and giants. It is a spectacular sight but the two girls do not show the surprise on their faces because they started getting used to it since yesterday.

“By the way, I want to ask. Have you ever wondered how the people over there are so different from the people in your village?” Makoto points to a group of adult men with the height of only more than 1 meter.

“Ah, about that, the village elder explained that we humans are races that can evolve and change to adapt to the environment over many generations. The people over there have their ancestors living in the underground and mountain, thus they adapted a body with short height for ease of movement in the tunnel and strong muscle build to dig through the dirt and ground. I also heard that depending on where they live, the change also shows in the skin, hair, and height. The group over there only live in the Alumba mountain range so their height is still better than the group living in the Sentur cavern, their height only reaches 90 cm at most.”

“Natural selection, huh?” Yuuko mutters.

“That’s right. It’s natural selection.” Johno nods.

“Do you know who Charles Darwin is?” Makoto curiously asks.

“Never heard of him. Who is he?”

“Nevermind, forget what I just ask.” She waves her hand.

The kid is confused for a second, but does not pay any heed to it anymore and continue to guide. He is introducing various stores, their uses, what to buy there and the usual price of the merchandises. Knowing is very useful in traveling in the future. It is also an exciting experience for them as the girls manage to go window shopping in another world, although they also buy a lot of stuff from the reward money from giving the information about the goblins outside to the town mayor.

“Energy potion, healing potion, sharp sense potion, dangerous sense potion, luring potion, calming potion, iron skin potion, …” Makoto checks the bag she just bought from the potion shop. There are many potions with various uses and she pretty much bought one of each. She really wanted to buy two of each but some potions are quite expensive, and they are not rich at all, so she had to settled with only one of each common potion. The girls only have 15 gold coins with them but the spending on potion alone is already more than 10 gold coins. In other word, she spent most of money for herself alone, leaving Johno to object her spending behavior.

“Big sister, that’s not the way you should buy potion. You should only buy a few important potions, leaving them for the crucial moment to use. Especially the healing potion and energy potion, you have to buy several of them. Why are you only buying one for each of them? And what are you going to do with these potions? Water breathing potion, iron skin potion, feather fall potion, sharp sense potion, I can understand their importance, but why did you also buy the happy mood potion, depressing potion, sticky potion and melting potion?” Johno is agitated by Makoto’s lavish spending. 10 gold coin is the maximum amount a family in his village can save up for a whole year. Seeing so much money spent so inefficiently is enough to drive anyone mad.

The happy mood and the depressing potion have their uses same as their name, giving the person the mood to feel happy or depressed. It is used to create the mood artificially and commonly consumed for entertainment purpose, like acting and partying. However, the potions Makoto bought are all low grade, meaning their effect duration is short, which is also why Johno is angry. A lot of these potions have good effects, but their use is limited because of the short effect time range.

Sticky potion and melting potions are not really potions, but special liquid contained in a flask. Sticky potion contains a thick liquid that becomes adhesive after exposed to the air, in other word, glue. Melting potion is a corrosive liquid that can melt metal, basically acid. However, these two words are not present in this world, so people call them sticky potion and melting potion, quite convenient and easy to understand. These two potions are mainly for crafting and mining, which are works that the group is not going to do.

Yuuko pats on Johno’s shoulder and assures him “Don’t worry. Makoto has her own reason for buying things that way. She has her way of doing things.” She knows that Makoto will use absorb these potions and gain new skills. Having the power to absorb thing and gain a new ability related to it is very useful. With so many different potions with many uses like this, the journey will be much easier when Makoto has the multiple skills and can deal with different kinds of problem.

Yuuko also has a chance to see a shop she wants to see, which is the weapon shop. As expected from a fantasy world, there are many kinds of weapons on display there and the qualities vary from low grade to high grade. She finds some weapons good enough for her to pay attention to, but does not buy them. First, those weapons are very expensive. One of them can cost more than 50 gold coins, which is out of their budget range. Second, even if those weapons are very good in the eyes of warriors, they still can only be comparable with the weapons that Yuuko can create. She believes that in the future, when she levels up and gets stronger, she can create better weapons than the present. Thus, buying them is a waste of money.

However, she still buys a set of protective gear and a sword. This set is for Johno. The set is about medium grade, enough for the kid to protect himself for a few hit from normal monsters. Since the group has accepted him as a new member, she has to be responsible for his safety and training. However, she is unsure how to train him.

Yuuko has experience to teach people martial art when she worked at her home dojo. However, the lessons were mainly for self-protection and exercising only. She does not know how to train people to fight and kill monsters. All of her fighting abilities are thanks to awakening, not something she learned by herself. Therefore, she can only fight on instinct but does not have any foundation for the techniques. This puts her in a difficult position as she already agrees to bring Johno along and teach him fighting technique. Her personality does not allow her to break off an agreement or promise easily.

Seeing how troubled Yuuko is, Lexar jumps on her shoulder and whispers to her ear “Do you have difficulty thinking of how to train him? Don’t worry, I will help you with that.”

Receiving an unexpected help, Yuuko brightly agrees “Thank you very much, Lexar. I know I can count on you.”

After a few rounds around the town, the girls have finally bought what they need. Beside the potions and gears for Johno, they also bought some equipment for traveling such as traveling bags, water containers, food containers, dehydrated food and medicines for some diseases. In the end, only 20 silver coins are left in their pocket, enough to stay in an inn for a few days. However, they do not feel any dissatisfaction because they learn a lot in just only a day: how the people in this world work, how to live in this world, and the price of commodity. Furthermore, they are able to get a lot of useful equipment to travel in this world.

………………………………..

“Phew, shopping in another world is so exciting. So many strange items, so many things I want to buy, I am more and more motivated to earn money to spend on more items I would like to buy.” Makoto says happily while checking the inventory.

“Geez, your spending habit does not change at all. When you have money, you immediately spend it on things that matter to you. Though you are not wasteful with all of these useful and necessary stuff, it still feels very hurt to have so little saving left.” Yuuko sighs.

“It can’t be helped though. Our schedule is tight here, we still have a destination to go tomorrow. We don’t have time to be picky and saving money. In addition, getting money in this world is easier than our world with our ability. If we are short of money, we can just go out and hunt monsters.”

“Hunt monster, huh? Really an adventure job in another world.” Lexar thinks about it.

Tomorrow, they are going to register a new identity as an adventurer at the guild. Currently, they are registered as normal citizens of the Vahallad country and the custom is done by the government office, where help from Sir Brian comes in handy. However, to travel around in dangerous territory and make money from the slaying monster, they have to register their jobs as adventurers.

It is the job described same as in many isekai fantasy novels, a freelancer job which deals with a variety of areas: subjugating monsters, escorting merchants, hard labor, gathering materials, and so on. In this world, one more special aspect of this job is to explore the danger territory and excavate the cultivator inheritance. Due to the urgency of locating and excavating these treasures, the adventurer job is supported by the government many aspects regarding finding the inheritance. This support includes reward for exploring dangerous areas, information, and collaboration with the army. For this aspect, the adventurer job is a respectable job in this world.

“Now then, let’s go Yuuko. We still have a job left today.” Lexar jumps off the bed and heads outside.

“Um, we will be going then. What are you going to do, Makoto?”

“I will be staying here. Analyzing these stuff will take some time. Good luck training him.”