Layla continued to man the stand, waiting on her stand partner. She didn't know how long the two of them had tried to make a quick credit, and how long she had been waiting on Quinn to return.
Glancing over at the local clock in the traveler's hall, she saw that it had been about 40 minutes or so since Quinn left.
"Geez, that long?" Layla sighed.
A kid with his mom walked past the stand.
"Why is that girl all alone?" The boy said as he pointed at it.
"Don't say things like that!" The mom scolded, then looked to Layla apologetic, "I'm so sorry, he just says whatever is on his mind sometimes."
Layla put on a forced smile, and tried to joke, "Well, you can apologize by buying one of my art pieces."
The mom looked to her, then at the sculptures to the side of Layla.
"Um…" The mom said, looking a little worried, "They look a little… Well, art is subjective and all, so uh…"
Layla's forced smile turned even more wider, with sweat forming on her forehead undergoing such an awkward moment, unnerving the poor woman.
"… You know what, I'll support a… small business out, yeah…" The mother said before quickly purchasing their tiniest sculpture and quickly running off.
With her gone, Layla visibly tensed up, cringing.
"Eugh, why did I act that way?" she said between her teeth.
Soon after, Quinn came back with a medium sized box of scrap metals, and got behind the stand with Layla.
"Did anything happen while I was gone?" Quinn asked, to which Layla flinched at the response.
"What? No, nothing happened at all, everything went jusssttttt fine. Yep! Nothing what-so ever!" Layla rambled.
"Well anyways, I got these metals because I wanted to test something out. There was something I had done a while back ago where I bent some metal using my ability," Quinn explained before grabbing a handful of scrap metal.
Concentrating, Quinn closed his eyes, and began to crush the scrap together, then shaped it into a simple sphere. The sphere was rough around the edges, and looked not quite that impressive on its own, but if you knew Quinn's ability, it was groundbreaking.
"Is that even possible?!" Layla said in shock and awe, "How? I thought earth users could only manipulate things like rock or mud."
Quinn looked at her slightly confused, "Can't other earth users do this?"
"I know I'm not an ability expert, but wouldn't you think that if the military could control metal like this, they would've done so by now?" Layla replied.
She kept glancing between Quinn and the metal ball he was holding, still surprised that he could do such a thing. Everyday, it seemed that she was finding Quinn to use the earth ability in impressive ways.
"I just thought that they preferred to use earth because it was easier to shape, or that it was a skill unlocked once they reached a higher level. I can already tell that I used up a lot of MC just making a simple ball."
Quinn then grabbed one of his sculptures and began to embed the metal pieces into the earth, trying to make it look more nice, but partway through, he stopped.
"Maybe I shouldn't, if earth users can't control metal, then I'll attract unwanted attention."
"Quinn, you'll be fine. People will just think you're a metal user, and I'm an earth user or whatever," Layla explained with a tired voice, "Just make the sculpture already. I want to get out of here."
Looking around, Quinn saw that people were moving in and out pretty fast, not really paying attention to their little stand. Some were more preoccupied with the food stands, and blacksmiths on the other parts of the traveler's hall. Layla was probably right, who would pay that close attention? The only ones who could point out the strangeness were the students, but he could barely see any.
"Yeah, I'll be fine."
—
The metal embeddings had garnered some attention with their shininess. Eventually, Quinn offered to do some custom sculptures to go alongside their purchases for extra credits. After some time, Quinn and Layla were able to sell their sculptures enough to cover the last bit of costs for an intermediate tier bow.
Closing up their stand, Quinn still had a few sculptures that didn't sell, but he just put them back in the ground.
The two of them went back to the blacksmithing area of the traveler's hall. Quinn recalled seeing a pair of names, Alex and Asahi, when Erin had gotten some beast armor earlier that day. If Erin thought that they were good enough to buy from, then they should do the same for Layla's bow.
On the box, there was also a small logo design of a fist in front of a hammer that was on fire, which was something that Quinn was looking for in all of the stands.
"What are you looking for?" Layla asked.
"I'm looking for— There!" Quinn pointed in the direction of a stand which had the same logo brand.
The stand was pretty simple, being made out of a dark wood, but as the two walked up to it, they spotted a tan muscular girl leaning back in a chair with a newspaper on her face. Noticing there was a bell on the stand, Layla tapped it, which caused the girl to quickly shoot up, and the newspaper to fall off.
"Huh— Oh! Customers! Welcome, what would you guys like to buy?" The girl asked.
"Are you Alex?" Quinn said.
"Seriously? This is the second time this has happened," The girl replied in a tired voice, "No, I'm NOT Alex, I'm Asahi. Alex is my business partner— How is he getting so much more attention than me?"
"…Who's Alex?" Layla wondered.
Asahi shook her hands, "Just forget him, what do you want?"
Layla felt a little bad because she had unintentionally upset her, but she nodded her head to clear it.
"Sorry about that, I just wanted to know if you sold a bow? Preferably intermediate tier, but I'll be fine if its basic,"
Asahi grumbled, "I think we only have one left in stock, let me check…"
She turned around searching in one of the many wooden crates behind her. Normally, bows weren't something that Asahi made as it wasn't a very common weapon people used. They were more likely to buy melee weapons like flails, axes, or swords, which was most of her stock.
After opening at least three crates, she was able to find the last bow she had on hand.
The bow was a very lightweight aerodynamic one. It was mainly a grayish purple color with the tips of the limb painted yellow, and the riser section had two bits of metal that sharply stuck out. This little section was called the bow sight, and it was there to help aim accurately faster.
"Yep, I knew it, this was the last one. Surely you two have the credits for this, right?" Asahi asked warily, then placed her watch arm on the table. She revealed to the two of them that she had a level 4 ability, just in case any of them tried anything funny.
Layla raised her hands defensively, "Trust us, we've had more than our fair share of fights today. Don't worry, we have the credits."
"Good, that'll be 5,000 credits," Asahi said firmly.
To be honest, Asahi didn't expect the two of them to afford the bow, not without at least trading for it. It was to be expected since a few people have traded some crystals to make up for their lack of funds a few times.
"Deal," Quinn said, then went to exchange the credits amount.
Asahi was a little surprised, but the two of them looked to be quite happy with their purchase, so she decided to give them a little extra information about the weapon.
"By the way, that bow is called the Starlingshot, and has some pretty good accuracy. It'll always aim true at least 50% of the time. At least, that's what I found while trying it out, and I barely know how to use a bow!" Asahi gave out a hearty laugh.
After they acquired the bow, the two of them headed back to the dorms.
Layla was pulling on the string, trying to get used to its draw weight, when Quinn had noticed a notification in the corner of his screen.
'That's what you've been doing all of this time, Erin?' Quinn thought.
[Shadow control has reached level 2]
[You have gained 10 stat points]