For the day, they had three objectives: find two axes for Prof, find a sword and a shield for Bianca, and find light or medium armor for Prof, Bianca, and Wolfgang. Bianca's shortsword was actually not bad, but she wasn't really comfortable with it – she was trained and used to handling longer ones. Prof first thought, she meant a common, well-known longsword, but was informed, that longswords were two-handed, what she was after could be translated as "arming sword", a one-handed one with a straight, double-edged blade.

Prof wasn't really well-versed in sword typology and always thought, longswords were long, one-handed ones, bastard swords were one-and-a-half-handed, and the big, two-handed were called claymore. However, Bianca was born and raised in a medieval world and knew her swords better than an Earthling who only saw swords in a museum, so Prof decided to take the mercenary's wisdom at face value. She most likely knew better.

The basic problem wasn't finding weapons and armor, but finding ones that were matching their expectations. Normally, one would try the goodies out before settling on the best one, but the overwhelming majority of deadly implements in the hoard were magical – and no sane person would try out an unknown magical weapon. A large part of the rest was made of precious metals and were decorative pieces, not made for battle. There were a few pieces around, that weren't magical or made for posing, but made of different fantasy metals. Very few, mind you, if there was a, say, mythrill sword, it was most likely it was converted into a magical mythrill sword in short order. If you have the means to buy a Ferrari, you don't settle for the base model with a one-liter engine, after all.

The over-abundance of magical weapons and armor with the inability to test them out meant, that Wolfgang was saddled with identifying stuff all day. Again.

In the end, Prof found thirty axes or so all told, but only a dozen made it into the narrower selection – the rest being ornamental pieces or ones where the sizes and forms weren't his likings. Out of the dozen, only four remained after Wolfgang was done with them. The other eight were all right too (except that one, that gave a Perk for intimate interactions with the opposite sex as long as held in the hand – kinky. That was a piece of equipment Mini didn't have to know about), but the four were either simply better in their effect or had a unique one.

Nightwalker Axe

Material: Nightwood handle with a black lunir head

Quality: Rare

Properties: 60 centimeters long, one medium head, one flat head. +20% to [Sneak] in the dark, +10% Critical Chance, inflicts bonus life drain damage (if the user is undead, the life drain will heal him), on command, surrounds the user in magical darkness (user's sight will not be affected) for 5 minutes once every 24 hours. +10% damage to Necromancy spells. User's Initiative is considered 10 Points higher in darkness. Unbreakable.

Damage: 30-80 (+2-20 Life Drain)

Armourbane

Material: Ironwood handle with Orichalcum-Tungsten-Chromium alloy heads

Quality: Rare

Properties: 45 centimeters long, one armor-piercing spike, one small head. Armour against the small head is considered 25%, against the armor-piercing head 66% less effective. 25% chance that the armor is completely ignored. Damage is not affected. 20% chance a successful critical hit will cause heavy bleeding (10% of the inflicted damage/Sec) until treated. Unbreakable

Damage: 20-40

The Chopper

Material: Bloodwood handle with red lunir head

Quality: Rare

Properties: 40 centimeters long, one large head. +20% Critical Chance, +30% Critical Damage. 10% chance a Critical Hit on the extremities will sever, 10% it will cripple, and 10% it will paralyze the limb. 33% chance a successful hit will cause heavy bleeding (15% of the inflicted damage/Sec) until treated. Wounds caused will always leave scars behind, no matter the healing method. User's Initiative is considered as 5 Points lower. Needs a one-time donation of 66 HP-worth of blood to bind and a daily donation of 5 HP-worth of blood afterward (not necessarily of the user). Durable. Sharp

Damage: 15-50

Treesquizer-Squizer

Material: Magically altered Elf femur handle, Deadwood heads with magically altered Elf incisors as the edge

Quality: Masterwork

Properties: 50 centimeters long, two medium heads. +50% [Intimidation] (+100% against Elves), 10% chance to cause fear in enemies (25% chance against Elves), 66% chance Elves will be enraged. Double damage against Elves. On Critical Hits 100% chance to inflict moderate bleeding (5% of the inflicted damage/Sec) until treated (heavy bleeding against Elves – 10% of the damage/Sec). 10% chance to inflict rot on every successful hit. Can not be used against Greenskin races. Unbreakable.

Damage: 25-66 (50-132 against Elves, 0 against Greenskin.)

Neither was exactly perfect for Prof, it was clear that each one was custom-made for someone with a clear idea, of what was needed from their new – and expensive, he blanched at the value [Valuation] gave him – toy. Obviously, the generic +1 sword wasn't a thing on Arkadia. If someone had the money for a fantasy-metal weapon and for making it magical, only the best was accepted.

If the party wasn’t constrained by weight limits and still stuck in the middle of the Valley, Prof would have taken all four (and a few others too), and have switched between them as the need arose. As it was, he had to pick the two that he felt were best for him. Without much in the way of outside help. There was no wikipedia to point out meta-gaming builds and he couldn’t even ask around in a forum. When asked, the others mostly just shrugged – Bianca even told him, that telling others what kind of gear and Skills to choose was considered rude and implicated, the person who was told was considered a moron or a child. Suggestions were all right, but with such a complicated choice, most of them didn’t have an opinion.

Except for Mini, of course. She flat out told Prof to choose the Treesquizer and the Intimate Hacker (of course, she found out about that one. Luckily the Wet Pants were safely hidden away). Because one looked fantastic and the other was extremely useful.

That made it easier to disregard the Treesquezer. Actually, it was the highest quality of all four, with very good crowd control properties – but the negatives were more severe. Currently, he knew exactly one Greenskin, and that one was basically a good guy, but having a weapon that did exactly nil damage to every other Greenskin who came his way (especially because he became rich) was too much of a risk for him. The double damage against Elves couldn't negate that point. Not to mention, Elves already hated other species, parading around with an axe made out of Elven parts and practically guaranteed any Elf to become enraged… Was the Darwin Award a thing on Arkadia?

Actually no, but they had the Utter Moron Perk – it was handed out preemptively, though.

Back into the pile, the Treesquizer went.

He picked Armourbane without much of a thought, that axe was the closest to perfect for him out of all the choices, and he liked the armor-piercing properties especially.

The other two were trickier.

The Nightwalker had the highest damage and would make him faster in combat, but most of the properties weren’t all that useful to him. He wasn’t exactly known for sneaking around the dark, and the only thing he knew about Necromancy was that it made dead people undead.

The Chopper on the other hand was close to perfect with all the bonuses for Critical Hits and extra damage, but it was to only one that wasn't unbreakable. Neither were his original axes, but he hasn't used them all that much, so wear and tear wasn't an issue with them. However, he imagined a magical weapon, made out of "Red Lunir", whatever that was, would need more qualified attention than just running a whetstone along the edges every now and then. Also, it made him actually slower to react. Not to mention that tiny little bit of needing about half his HP pool to bind it to himself and constantly feeding it blood afterward. And the scar…

Was it considered sexy to have scars or did they just inform everyone that the person was a poor bastard who couldn't even afford proper healing? According to the others, it depended on culture – in some places, it was considered heroic, in others as proof of incompetence while some didn't care either way. With Greenskins it was the second, in Forestdeep it depended on the Estate. His friends were helpful like usual.

With a heavy heart, he decided on the Chopper. It simply had more utility and complemented his style more. He made a cut below his left ribs for the first "donation". It hurt like hell, and in an instant, his HP plummeted by half. He hoped it was worth it.

Bianca was much quicker in choosing her new armament, despite there being more swords than axes in the pile. Her reasoning for taking only a bottom-tier sword (a strange steel alloy with only basic bleeding and armor-piercing enchantments) and a comparable round medium shield (ironwood with an ogre head done in some green metal as the shield boss. It had a small chance to inflict fear in an enemy) was that it wasn't a particularly good idea for a Level 10 Normal to flaunt gear that could feed a family for decades. A noble family to be precise. She had already more magical gear than she was comfortable with.