After chatting with Leon for a bit, Jeanne and the others changed into bathrobes and eagerly joined Rose and the rest in the bath.
With nothing else to do, Leon pulled the few Wonder Packs they'd used over to himself and started sorting through the haul from this trip to the Free Market.
Vegetables, fruits, fresh meat, eggs, and dairy and other perishables, whatever needed to go into the ice cellar got refrigerated promptly, whatever needed handling got handled at once, so the flavors wouldn't bleed into each other and spoil the taste.
Beyond that, there were all sorts of ingredients and spices for making the Monster Hunter Special. Leon sorted these specialty materials by category and stored them separately, so he wouldn't be scrambling when he needed to grab them in a hurry.
Finally, taking up more than half the backpack space, were boxes of premium 5kg-bagged rice, wheat, flour, and mixed grains and other staples.
"Without the Wonder Pack, forget all the odds-and-ends ingredients, just hauling these few hundred jin of staples back home would be enough to give anyone a headache."
After all... even adventurers, for all their tremendous power, three people alone couldn't exactly clear a whole flatbed cart's worth of stuff in a single round trip, could they?
Yeah... this Wonder Pack thing is absolutely strategic-grade equipment, a T0-tier essential everyone needs. Going by their feedback after testing them out, whether it's everyday life or Dungeon exploration, it noticeably improves the game experience.
Having a Wonder Pack versus not having one are two completely different feelings.
How should I put it.
Yeah, badass...
Having marveled a while at how important the thing was, he picked up the shopping list Jeanne had left behind, gave it a casual glance, and was about to toss it aside.
His income these days was no longer what it had been back in his small-fry days, when he scraped together a few thousand Valis a day.
The gold coins spent on a single routine supply run, he wouldn't say he didn't care about them, but he wasn't as sensitive to it as he'd been back when he was weak.
But when he saw the price of rice and the other staples, his eyes went wide despite himself, his brain stalling for a second.
"Holy shit!"
Premium rice has climbed to 6,000-plus Valis? Damn, how long has it even been, seriously?
At that price, can ordinary citizens even still afford to eat it?
Oh, most people's staple is bread, so never mind.
Still... this wheat price isn't cheap either...
Looks like the residents of Orario really are blessed.
After griping to himself for a bit, he studied the price fluctuations on the rest of the list more carefully.
In the end he concluded that, aside from rice rising at a downright unholy rate, everything else was still within a normal range of fluctuation, though it had gone up plenty too. By Leon's own gut sense, it was definitely up somewhere around 30 to 50 percent.
As for why prices were soaring, Leon knew perfectly well.
Behind it, aside from the market turmoil and unsettled public mood stirred up by Evilus, it also had to do with most residents stockpiling all at once ahead of the festival. Going out for a big shopping run at a time like the pre-festival rush, prices naturally wouldn't be low.
Once all the supplies were sorted away, Leon set the three Wonder Packs gently on the tea table and examined them closely.
[Name]: "Item Box Black Rhino Series, Hart Exploration Model"
[Origin]: Orario
[Type]: Wonder Pack
[Effect]: A bag crafted from magic cloth and leather, simultaneously imbued with Item Box magic, granting it a larger interior volume.
[Description]: A magic item crafted from materials including the leather of the Lv. 5 monster Black-Horned Rhinoceros and magic cloth woven by Spirits. The crowning work of a certain tailoring apprentice fresh to the trade.
[Volume]: 4.98x
...
[Volume]: 4.91x
...
[Volume]: 4.93x
...
These three backpacks before him were exactly the satisfying works Leon had finally hammered out after countless failures and an enormous expenditure of effort and resources.
Going by volume, these three backpacks alone are enough to match the capacity of fifteen of the ordinary Supporter backpacks we usually use.
Pity it's still a long way short of the goal of one per person.
But Leon knew there was no helping it.
With the festival drawing near in Orario lately, adventurers had cut back on their deep Dungeon runs, which made the materials for crafting the backpacks rather hard to come by.
Oh well, making do with three for now is enough to get by.
Once the festival's over, I'll slowly put out purchase requests to the Guild.
His mind made up, he picked up the backpacks, crossed the hallway, and came to the armory on the first floor.
Pushing open the door, what met his eyes was rows of meticulously maintained, expensive equipment, arrayed in silence.
Jeanne's Banner Lance and ceremonial sword stood imposingly side by side, with a custom high-slit clerical robe and an engraved Holy Maiden light armor hanging beside them.
Rose's one-handed sword and kite shield hung crossed on the wall, and adjacent to them were a high-slit clerical robe similar in style to Jeanne's and a full set of knight's armor.
Kureha's main and secondary twin blades were laid out neatly, her purple form-fitting combat suit, pleated short skirt, and tall boots tracing a crisp silhouette under the glow of the magic stone lamps. Beside them was the Sword Saint light armor tailored to her measurements.
Laurier's robe and short boots were stowed in good order, the sword she'd cherished back in her Lv. 1 days standing alongside brand-new third-class equipment, and beside the cloak hung two short bows and matching quivers.
Beyond the warriors' parade of arms, the wall on the other side of the armory was a domain belonging to the Mages.
Leon's Scholar's Twisted Staff, Aura's blooming-plant staff, and Iri's winter robe and silver-threaded magic wand were arrayed in turn. The newest addition was a set belonging to Margaret: a high-slit ceremonial robe woven in black and red, suede tall boots, and a delicate wand similar in style to Iri's, but set at its tip with a crimson magic crystal.
This place was Leon and his Familia's treasure vault.
It was the foundation they relied on to survive, the cornerstone of their future growth, and the ballast that anchored the Familia.
Sweeping an appreciative gaze over every precious piece of equipment displayed on the walls and in the cases, a contented smile surfaced on Leon's face, like an old farmer gazing out over fields ripe for harvest.
"These are everything we have to our name."
"Yeah, and they're the proof of all the sweat and effort we've put in along the way."
He set the three exploration-model Wonder Packs properly atop the cabinet meant for storing bags, then casually picked up the wand custom-made for Margaret and examined it closely.
Unlike Iri's wand, carved all over with silver-thread patterns.
Margaret's wand had only a single crimson magic crystal set at its tip.
You could tell just from the color that this magic crystal was a crystallization born specifically to amplify fire-type magic, and precisely because its attribute was pure, its enhancement effect was all the more pronounced.
Naturally, the price wasn't cheap either.
This one magic crystal alone had cost 15 million Valis, and as for the whole wand, that went without saying.
Sigh, an ordinary Familia probably couldn't afford to support several Mages at all. Any single piece of this equipment would be enough to leave those ordinary little Familias eating dirt.
Thinking of those poverty-stricken Familias, Leon couldn't help but recall those two "Bacon Potato Roll sales champions."
Sigh, growing the Familia into something big still looks like a long road ahead.
...
...