Hiatus Gifting This Unfortunate Guy With Blessings

"Do you have anything you want to buy?"

"Mmm… not really. I don't really need much besides food."

We chatted as we were getting closer to the biggest market in the city, according to Megumin's information.

The Explosion Girl walking beside me seemed really frugal with her money. When I first met her she was considering catching mice to feed herself so I guessed that she hasn't had the easiest childhood.

"Although I have earned a lot of money recently I don't know what to do with it. I've sent some home but… if I send too much my father gonna use it to make another weird magic item again..."

Megumin gave out an exasperated sigh after mentioning her quirky father - Hyoizaburo who seemed to be responsible for financial problems in her household.

"How about upgrading your equipment? Maybe you could buy a better staff or some enchanted accessory?"

I put another idea but Megumin didn't seem too interested in those as well.

"There are not many enchanted items that would help me with my Explosion in my price range as far as I know and I got very fond memories with this staff so replacing it would be a little…"

I didn't have any other ideas and we already entered the market's area so instead of proposing other alternatives randomly I started looking around. The main objective of this shopping session was getting tons of food for my Griffin and Toad forms anyways so I focused on that first.

I saw various stalls with monster parts but those seemed more alchemy related and were not sources of cheap food. And I expected that I needed a little mountain to fill my giant forms.

After a minute or two of looking around Megumin pulled me by my sleeve and pointed with her head while saying:

"Why don't you just buy these?"

I noticed that stall before Megumin did but my brain automatically rejected that idea. It was full of green spheres that I got acquainted with all too well the day before.

"Cabbages as Griffin's food?"

Megumin then looked at me as if I have just asked a stupid question.

"Why not? A monster eating a monster vegetables is completely normal in my opinion."

"..."

"Oh! Are you interested in buying my cabbages, sir? I got quite a selection ranging from 1,000 Eris to 5,000 Eris per cabbage. They are all still fresh, from yesterday's hunt."

The merchant quickly reacted to us gawking at his stall and gave us his sales pitch.

"Would they be good… for a Griffin, for example, to eat?"

I asked unsurely but the merchant just smiled politely and answered calmly:

"I don't think dead cabbages would work as good bait although if it was starving it probably wouldn't fuss about eating them. However, I wouldn't recommend feeding a Griffin with anything else other than arrows, sir. Unless you are a tamer of course, but I doubt it by your equipment."

So it meant probably that a Griffin could eat those. It wasn't the priciest investment either so I decided to purchase a few cabbages of better quality to try out. I wondered if any of those were caught by me the day before while I was handing the money over to the merchant.

I g.r.o.a.n.e.d when I was handed the bags. I felt like having Megumin's weight in my hands. Speaking of which… I couldn't spot Megumin anywhere near me.

"Huh? Megumin?"

I looked around for a few seconds and only after a very muscular and tall guy went between I spotted the characteristic witch hat among the crowd of people some distance away from me.

"Hey, I can't see! Let me through!"

Megumin was angrily exclaiming at more than ten people in front of her but none of them seemed to care. I could only hear people yell out in amazement and some other excited shouts. I walked up to Megumin and I couldn't see anything beyond the crowd as well so I asked:

"What is happening?"

"I don't know, but I wanna see it too!"

She then looked at me and exclaimed:

"Let me sit on your shoulders!"

My interest was piqued by the large number of people absorbed in the event happening before them as well so I let down the bags with cabbages for a moment and crouched so Megumin could scale my shoulders. After she did it, I carefully made sure not to lose balance while standing up and asked:

"Can you see it?"

"..."

I looked up when I didn't receive any response in the next few seconds and saw an expression of utter amazement plastered on Megumin's face.

"Hey, Megumin. What happened?"

I asked worriedly since she was even more flabbergasted than after seeing my Griffin's form. Only after patting lightly Megumin's knee a few times she managed to get out of her stunned state and answered slowly:

"That's the cutest thing I've ever seen in my entire life."

I blinked absentmindedly upon hearing her response. Megumin has never used 'cute' to describe anything so my curiosity more than doubled in an instant.

"Hey, what are you doing-!"

I carefully crouched again, picked up the bags and started moving between the stalls to find somewhere between the crowd I could see through as well. Megumin didn't seem to appreciate the fact I was moving about but she calmed down since she could see somewhat what was happening from the above.

It took me a few minutes to find a good spot to see that the crowd was gathered around a large animal pen.

But contrary to the pen's size its resident was just tiny. What I saw inside could be described as a hopping ball of fluffy fur with small shiny horns on its head. It very closely resembled a baby goat from Earth.

But that comparison escaped my mind when I saw it jump up two meters in the air, kick off the wooden plank hanging from pen's wall and do three flips in the air before landing smoothly on the ground and giving out a satisfied bleat that sounded like "Maaa!"

This caused a round of applause to explode from the crowd as well as from the Megumin sitting on my shoulder.

Then I saw the guy in a nice suit come into the pen and after standing right in the middle of it he whistled and the little goat creature jumped up immediately and sat on his shoulder. When the crowd stopped applauding the man started with a loud voice.

"And with that, we will conclude the show. Now… is anybody interested in buying this here Shinehorn for the low low price of 100 Milion Eris?"

Everyone in the crowd got silent immediately and only after a few seconds some confused murmurs could be heard.

"This is an extremely rare creature, found only in the Great Forest to the west. In the territory of elves. It is said that Shinehorn's horns can be used as one of the most powerful magic cores for wands and staffs alike and they get better with each year this wonderful creature is alive!"

No matter how the announcer hyped up this cute goat creature the crowd got only thinner and thinner with each passing second as the adventurers left with depressed faces. Almost everyone seemed to have the same going through their mind 'If I had more money…'.

I saw a few sneaky-type adventurers looking hungrily at the Shinehorn sitting on announcer's shoulder but after noticing a vicious-looking guard standing in the back with his hand on the sword hilt they seemed to reconsider their ideas.

Megumin, on the other hand, had a surprisingly calm look on her face after.

"Hey, the bounty for the Demon King should be higher than 100 million Eris, right?"

Apparently, she wasn't calm at all.

I sighed deeply and started walking away as well. My hands and shoulders were getting really sore from the weight of cabbages and a girl sitting on top of me so I asked Megumin to get down.

After a few minutes of silent walk, I noticed the stall with the items that I wanted to buy as well. I topped up my arrows and bought an additional quiver as well as I thought it would come in handy in the near future.

The last item on my shopping list was a rope. Chris has taught me that Bind skill but I forgot to buy the rope needed for the skill to work. If I had it on me during the run from the s.u.c.c.u.b.u.s things might have gone differently… or not.

At this point, Megumin seemed to recover from cuteness damage she received and started talking normally again.

"That is all you needed?"

I nodded in answer to what Megumin started saying:

"Then let's-"

But before she could end her sentence we have heard a merchant speak up.

"Young Lady! I have something that might interest you."

We both looked at the guy and at the stall, he was standing at. It was one of those "monster materials" stands that my brain was already filtering out since I wasn't interested in things like goblin ears, bats' blood, etc. But contrary to the other stalls I quickly noticed that there were multiple long wooden sticks hanged in the back.

Well, any wizard would probably whack my head with a stick if he would hear me call them sticks. Those were actual magic staves.

"I see that you use a staff with a core from a lower-tier fire elemental. I have ones with a much better core made out of high-tier elementals or even with coronatite core!"

"..."

The merchant took out two different staves and showed them off to Megumin. The core that was located at the end of Megumin's staff was indeed looking much blander than the two. The merchant seemed to also be a magic user because after Megumin kept silent for a few more seconds he channeled magic into both staves and they shone brightly. But it was coronatite staff that shone with a particularly captivating crimson hue.

"H-how much-?"

The merchant smiled widely and seeing how Megumin's stare was fixed on the staff with coronatite answered quickly:

"This is a high-end staff made out from very conductive Woodland Leshy's Wood with B-Grade Coronatite Core. Its price is ten million Eris."

"..." x2

"You can try it out. Here."

The merchant walked out of his stall and practically pushed the staff right into Megumin's hand before she could say anything. It suddenly shone even more brilliantly than before.

"How does it feel?"

This guy seemed extremely knowledgable about how to push a potential client's buttons because Megumin was totally gobsmacked. I wondered who, just half an hour ago, was saying that she had "fond memories with her staff so changing it would be a bit…".

The merchant had a wide smile of victory on his face but Megumin's eyes suddenly widened as if she remembered about something. I saw her eyes wandered towards my direction for a fraction of a second but she quickly pointed her head downwards and reached out her arm towards the merchant to give the staff back while saying:

"I can't afford it. "

Without missing a beat the merchant answered:

"That's a shame. How about this one? The staff is made out of Treant Wood and as I said earlier, it has a core of a high ranked fire spirit. It's much more affordable with a price of 2.2 million Eris."

Megumin took the other staff in her hand and compared her own to it. The test seemed to go well because Megumin gave out a smile and said:

"I think I will buy this one."

"How wonderful-"

"Wait, Megumin. Don't you think that we should look around and check different shops first? It's not like that you have to buy it today."

I let out the common sense level advice out of my mouth before Megumin could finalize her transaction. Megumin got that "oh, right" expression on her face after hearing it.

I could swear I saw the merchant's face twitch just a bit when he realized that Megumin decided to postpone her purchase.