When Ragnar and the others arrived, they seemed to be overwhelmed, in the face of the strong old man they were about to flee and when one of the robbers recognized Anri, he cried out in fear for his life and dropped his weapon, in order not to die, he fled, and the others also despaired and did the same to his comrade.
Silence returned to the village, only the crackling of the fire could be heard as the robbers were scared away. Oswald began to wobble slightly, the effort of fighting had robbed him of the last of his strength, but before he fell, Ragnar held him and helped him sit down.
The village was barely salvageable, everything but the warehouse was ablaze, doing anything about the fires would be futile.
"Are these all the inhabitants?"
Ragnar asked the exhausted Oswald, who nodded and then fell asleep in his armor, he had done his job, still, someone had to do something about the fire.
It was just that no one would come to put out the fire, who would? Most of the inhabitants were old and weak, and Oswald had hardly, when he had driven the robbers away, originated an order to the guild.
As Anri thought about Oswald, he wondered who he really was, a normal old man could hardly have fought robbers, he looked to Ragnar and asked him, after all he had known Oswald a little longer.
"Who is Oswald actually."
While Anri was asking this to Ragnar, Neve was already making her way to the villager in the warehouse to take care of them.
"Oswald used to be a well known adventurer, he specialized in the demons back then, but like all the others he had a problem when the hero reduced the demons to the point that he couldn't get any more orders, he was old then too and instead of re-specializing he had decided to retire."
Anri now had what he wanted to know, but what should they do about the fire now, Anri was thinking, his head was already hurting from thinking as he flipped through the book hopefully and found a spell.
"Mruts"
Spoke Anri next to Ragnar, who took a look at Anri's book and could read absolutely nothing, neither did he understand what Anri was saying, what he did notice however is how the weather changed as Anri recited the spell, for the actual dark clear sky was suddenly filled with black clouds, which gathered over the village, then it began to rain, such rain that in some areas would bring flooding, but here he helped, while Anri and Ragnar ran to the villagers and Neve, taking Oswald with them, full the rain did its job and extinguished one house after another.
When the fire was extinguished, the rain also stopped and the villagers went to their houses, or what was left of them, those who could not spend the night in their house slept in the warehouse. The party also spent their night here and Oswald just slept through.
The next morning Anri was once again, the last to get up, slowly he shuttled sleepily out of the warehouse to see the baker, during the raid of the robbers the baker was in the capital buying special grains and when he arrived back in the morning he saw the destruction, immediately he sat down and made lots of dough to help out his neighborhood, Ragnar was already awake too, he helped the villagers rebuild and transported huge slabs of wood around, Neve meanwhile sorted the dead robbers, the weapons she put in a sack and the bodies went on a cart that Ragnar would later pull to the capital, because the robbers surely had bounty and that was more than needed. When Neve was finished, she discussed with Oswald what percentage of the bounty would go to the troops, even though they had barely made anything.
"Forty percent."
Started Neve, who looked at Oswald seriously, but he just yawned and said.
"Mhh, subtracting the room and board.... 0.5 percent."
Then Ragnar interfered, who was just walking along the two of them with a long wooden plank.
"Including your debt, 5 percent."
There was little Oswald could say.
"Deal."
Neve and Oswald shook hands to seal the deal.
The party helped as much as they could before they left for the capital around noon, Oswald also coming with them, after all he had to take the 95 percent of the bounty for the village back home.
The party went directly with the robbers on their cart through the market to the guild, because this also gave out the bounty. In the guild Ragnar spoke first with the guild lady, because he finished first the Golem - order, then he went still up, because he wanted to inform the guild leader of the incident with the wrong demon, meanwhile Oswald bagged the bounty of the robbers, while the robbers are identified, Neve and Anri went to the market to sell the weapons of the robbers.
At the market, Anri looked at Neve, who was still standing there without weapons, looking sad on the ground as they walked through the crowds.
"Shall we go and see this Zen after this? If the old man knows then it can only be a good blacksmith."
He tried to cheer her up and it seemed to work too, because she started smiling.
Anri had already forgotten again that his newfound party members had seen his horns, and so did Neve it seemed.
Anri and Neve went to a merchant who seemed to be selling old weapons, and they presented the bag of weapons to him.
"What are you offering."
Asked Neve, she was looking forward to seeing the blacksmith and therefore wanted to get this over with quickly, but she also wanted to make enough profit out of it that she could get some good knives.
The merchant, who was relatively fat, took a sword out of his sack and pulled it once under his nose long and smelled it, which disgusted Neve quite a bit, Anri on the other hand was watching what the merchant was doing.
"I smell blood."
Said the merchant with a serious expression, after which he stroked his chin.
"5 silver."
He made his offer, 5 silver wasn't bad, sure they could negotiate, Anri however didn't want to anger the merchant, he might not even be needed in the future after all.
Neve was about to say 10 silver when Anri bluntly talked her into it.
"We'll accept the offer if they tell us where to find a blacksmith named Zen."
The merchant just smiles and rubs his hands together before pulling out 5 silver and handing it to Anri. Neve just looked at Anri incredulously as the merchant tells them where to find Zen.
"In the shopping street to the west, he has a huge sign in front of his store, you shouldn't be able to miss him."
Anri just nods her thanks and walked with Neve to the shopping street, she still couldn't believe Anri didn't act a bit.
"Why did you do that!!!"
She said incredulously. Anri however just looked at her with a smile and pointed out why this deal was better.
"We could have gotten a maximum of 7 silver out of him and then if we had asked him for information he would have asked for money again, the bottom line is that we get too little of it to make it worth drawing the merchant's disfavor on us."
Neve just responds angrily
"How do you know he wouldn't have given more?"
She was angry, understandably, he had not agreed anything with her, slowly they arrived to the blacksmith, he actually had a huge sign in front of the door, which could not be missed. But before Anri opened the door he thought again about the knives and the fake demon, why did he take the knives, he looked at Neve and asked her first things about the old knives, he let go of the doorknob again and took a step away from the door.
"Where did you get your old knives anyway."
Neve just looked at the sky and smiled a little, because she remembered well how she got the knives.
"In the first party I ever went to, so about 5 years ago."
When Anri heard that he was amazed, because 5 years ago she must have been probably a real kid just like him, it made sense though, she had to take care of her family and maybe that was one of the reasons why the guild lady is like a mother to her.
"We were on a mission to explore the ruins of an old demon camp in the north of the capital, at first we found only corpses of the demons the hero had killed, as we progressed into a kind of demon bunker we found lots of relics, including the knives, but when we were about to leave the bunker, a demon came out of nowhere and killed my party members within a few seconds, I was standing with my back to the wall and the demon was slowly walking towards me when the knives lit up next to me, I took them and threw them at the demon. He died directly. At the guild I concealed the finding of the knives, I kept them as a symbol of luck."
So the knives really had a huge value for Neve, at that moment Anri vowed to find the knives again, then the Demon King spoke to Anri.
["I knew I knew those knives."]
He said it with disappointment that he had not noticed it before.
["The Knives of Damnation, as we demons call them, the demons who are touched by this knife are banished to the core of the knife."]
Now Anri knew what the knife was all about, but why did the false demon take this knife? What was he going to do with it, with all these thoughts he opened the door to Zen's forge.
"Heeeeeellllllooooooo"
Shouted right back at them and a weird guy with aviator glasses hung from the ceiling before jumping down and taking a look at Neve, he thought for a moment.
"What do you want to buy, I have everything, you want to buy something, right?"
He made a worried impression, his store was full of weapons, but still there was no customer here, I wonder what that was because of.
Neve was still disturbed by the stranger's looks when Anri gave him the letter from Soth and he explained what they were looking for.
"We are looking for a weapon for the lady."
The stranger paced the store as he raised his finger in the air and then tore the writ apart.
"Coupon redeemed! Mhhh, a weapon, we'll take this one."
He went into a side room and came out of it with a huge weapon, he himself was having trouble holding it at all and it wasn't quite apparent what the weapon even was, it seemed like a mishmash of every conceivable weapon they knew, sword, spear, axe, everything was built in there as Anri and Neve frantically looked at the blacksmith.
"For only 5 gold you can have this beautiful piece!"
He explained as he wobbled back and forth to balance the weight of the sword.
"Ehh, I think we're looking for something smaller."
The stranger dropped the weapon on the floor, which is also split by the weapon at the same time, then ran back into the next room.
Anri and Neve were already starting to sweat when they heard the metal flying in the next room.
The stranger came back out with a stack of weapons and dropped them on the floor, it was all there.
"How about this."
He lifted up a sword with a golden hilt, the blade was decorated with an engraved snake and it seemed to be good quality.
"I CALL IT HLANGE!"
Said the stranger demonstratively as he held it up proudly, to his disfavor the two didn't seem to like it. Noticing this, he simply threw it towards the next room, where the sword dug firmly into the floor, very sharp it was then.
The merchant plucked the next weapon from the pile, a wand.
"Bers! The Deathbringer!"
Called the stranger the wand, but the two didn't seem to like it either.
It went on like this, the stranger pulling the weirdest weapons out of the pile, until finally an interesting one came.
It was not a conventional weapon, like a knife or a sword, no, it was a kind of hammer, not an oversized one with which you could destroy any monster, but a small, silver one, which had a pointed face on both sides, Neve was immediately excited.
"I don't have a name for this, but I'll call it."
The stranger thought for a moment and then looked at it again.
"Haord, a cross between a hammer and a sword, rad right?"
He looked at them expectantly, the name didn't appeal to Neve, but the weapon did. She ran over and practically snatched it out of the hand of the merchant, who laughed.
"I'll take that!"
Said Neve with glee. Anri, on the other hand, noticed something completely different on the wall, a mask, which was completely white and plain.
The stranger was already rubbing his hands with joy because he smelled profit as Anri observed the mask, he asked Anri
"Do you like it? It adapts to whatever the wearer wants."
To show the effect of the mask he took it and put it on, after that the mask disappeared and the stranger looked like Anri in the face.
Anri was convinced he absolutely had to have this mask, because that way he might be able to hide his horns.
"We'll take those too."
Said Anri as he imagined finally being able to remove the hood.
"Yes sir."
Said the stranger as he saluted and snatched the hammer from Neve's hand and put it together with the mask on a table where he had some kind of cash register, next to it a pad, which he took in his hand and wrote something down, at least that's what it seemed like he was doing.
"The mask ... Mhh, yes, ... Haord..... Discount."
Received the pad towards the two, on it he had painted a stick figure holding out a sack, a line pointed to the sack and on that line was written.
"3 silver."
They had 5 silver with them, however not all of it was theirs by any means, but they would just take some of the robber's bounty for it, that's what Anri thought, but this time Neve swung her arm in front of Anri, he had already interrupted their negotiation once, she looked at the stranger seriously, and he replied the same, staring back at her.
"Fifty bronze."
Said Neve seriously, with Anri thinking to herself that the offer was more than unfair, the first took a deep breath and pulled a key out of his pants pocket and placed it on the table.
"Two silver and fifty bronze, plus a key."
He said with a grin, Neve was about to say something when the stranger put his index finger on his mouth.
"First listen, then talk, this wonderful key will literally open any door for you, but only once!"
At the latest Anri wanted to say yes, but again Neve stopped him, she wanted to get a better deal out of it.
"Two silver."
The stranger thinks, then smiles.
"Deaaalllll."
He opens his register and holds his hand out to the two, Neve places the 2 silver on his hand, which then snaps right shut.
"Payment accepted! Please honor us again soon, you were advised by Zen!"
Zen said as he bowed while his customers leave the store with the newfound goods.
Outside the store, Anri clutched the mask to his belt and Neve only spoke ambitiously.
"See? I told you they'd go down."
Anri was silent, it wouldn't be worth discussing it, they had gotten everything they wanted.
When they arrived back at the guild Ragnar and Oswald were already waiting for them, Neve just threw the bag of 3 silver on the table and said nothing, she pretended that was all, but lying was not something a money would do, which is why he said it.
"Two silver we already spent."
Neve just looked annoyed at Anri, who in her opinion needs to learn to shut up for once. Ragnar just looked skeptical and Oswald smiled, as long as they were honest he was friendly too, except to Neve, she already had no chance with him.
"What did you buy?"
Asked Ragnar Anri who held up his mask, Ragnar just looked incredulous.
"Two silver for a mask?"
He thought they didn't have more, but Neve still showed her new weapon and the key. Ragnar was curious where the key led, and Anri added that information.
"It can be used to open any lock."
Ragnar had to acknowledge that the two didn't make bad purchases, even if he didn't know what the mask was all about.
They split the money, and Oswald went back to his village with his share, still saying goodbye to Anri and Ragnar, but not to Neve.
"Let us see you again sometime."
He said with a smile on his face and then looked sourly at Neve
"And you ... I hope you never come back."
Then the party was back among themselves and Ragnar spoke to Anri, for when he was gone he had received an instruction.
"The guild leader wants to see you in his office, I don't know why, and I haven't said anything, but he wants something from you."
Anri had to gulp, had the guild leader found out what was wrong with Anri, that he was a demon? He gave it a lot of thought as he walked to the guild lady and glanced back at the party, then asked the guild lady to show him how to get to the guild leader.
"Please wait a moment, the leader is still busy, he will let you in as soon as he has time."
Anri was led up by the guild lady, but not to the rooms for rent, which Anri had also moved into, but to a higher compartment, which had a huge golden door, in front of the door were benches to wait on, where Anri sat down, he was the only one in the waiting room.
He was nervous and started sweating, what would the guild leader say, the demon king was also unsure.
["If he knows I'm here, you should kill him, or it will come out, and that wouldn't be good for either of us."]
("I'm not going to kill him.")
Said Anri only, the suggestion of the demon king he thought was pure nonsense.
But the two could not talk further, because the door to the office of the guild leader slowly opened.