Once outside of the cathedral Emily once again used her camouflaging ability and her figure blurred, before she disappeared from plain sight.
Reyne then turned to see Daimon, who was in a good mood right now to then say.
"The information dealer won't be available until an hour or so, but if you want, I can take you to the black market, the street stalls are already open and even some of the locals too, who knows you might find something interesting there", she said with her usual gentle expression.
Both Daimon and the crazy girl nodded, they thought that the whole thing didn't start operating until the hour mentioned by Reyne, but turns out, it's the information dealer the one who starts working quite late.
"Sounds good to me", said Daimon.
Reyne smiled and then guided the group towards the northeast area of the city, contrary to what one would expect from a place that led to the black market, the area where Reyne brought them was peaceful, clean and calm.
In fact, the area was practically filled with family stores, like bakeries, restaurants, pubs, cloth shops and the like, Reyne casually entered one of the many bakeries which was attended by an average looking middle aged woman.
But as casual as the woman at the counter looked, she was using a treasure to hide her realm, while in reality she was an early stage Arch rank.
"Hi, I would like three coups of coffee and three baguettes please", said Reyne, to which the woman nodded and pressed her finger against a certain spot of the counter.
Daimon was able to see it because of his infinity eyes and for that same reason he could see that the glass windows and the door of the local, were now projecting a frozen image and not what lied inside of the bakery.
Only then, the woman at the counter pointed at the door that led to the backstage of the bakery.
"This way please young miss", she said.
Reynne nodded and then she beckoned at Daimon and Sarah, who followed her through the door, at the other side there was a middle-aged man sitting on a corner, besides that, the room seemed to be empty.
"According to the rules, please wear something to hide your identities, and remember that while scamming, fighting and dismembering is allowed, no killing can take place at the black market, otherwise you'll be punished", emotionlessly said the man.
"Don't take it personally, that is just a reminder, this passage is safe and exclusive to me and the people here can be trusted", said Reyne to Daimon as she put on a generic black mask, she also activated that necklace of hers, which hid her realm and changed her presence.
Sarah put on a purple mask, while Daimon wore a white one over the half face mask of the Hollow Suit, once his face was covered, he sent the other one to the inventory.
Reyne was surprised to see that their clothes also changed all of a sudden, courtesy of the bracelet of the god of mischief.
"Nice trick, I feel a bit dummy to have worried about you two", jokingly said Reyne as she put on a black mantle to cover up her body, just in case her clothes could be recognized by someone.
Sarah smirked behind her mask, the bracelet was invisible as it shouldn't be seen by others, but she felt tempted to flaunt it to Reyne.
"I wish the young miss, good luck in today's findings", said the man as he activated the transportation array engraved on the ground.
After a couple of seconds, Daimon and the others disappeared from the room, and the man returned to his casual bored expression.
…
The travel through the dimensional tunnel lasted only a few seconds and Daimon knew why, the black market was built below Tiria, of course they had illusion and deceiving arrays all over, to prevent even Arch ranks from being able to detect it.
But Daimon could see through the ground, and so he had already discovered where the black market was, he still allowed Reyne to accompany them, because the information store seemed to be exclusive.
They soon appeared at a random alley, which was isolated, though it was the black market, it was actually just a smaller city below Tiria, there were lamps all over the area, illuminating the dark underground.
"How is it, different from what you expected right, unlike the black market at other places, this one is "official", in the sense that the City Lord in other words my father, knows about it and lets it exist, with some conditions of course, any kind of human trafficking is forbidden, for example, in exchange we have some privileges", said Reyne.
Daimon nodded, Oliver's focus was the flesh eating demons, he decided to go for a mutual agreement instead of having to fight the underground scene, this way he used the dark side of humanity for the benefit of his city.
Of course, the previous came with risks, but the benefits were worth it, since he was involved, he could keep things under control, according to Rita, the moment they appeared, there were people giving some signals.
In other words, Oliver had informants all over the place, supervising the overall situation, the black market wasn't exclusively for forbidden stuff to be sold, there were private collectors, and people who found random things and just wanted to sell them while keeping their identities hidden.
This way they could sell things with "unknown" origins, without any problem, of course if something that previously belonged to someone important, popped here, a secret investigation would follow.
"We don't have to do it, but others have to sign a silence contract before entering, they can only bring other people with them, after they have visited a certain number of times, even we are limited to bring less than ten people along with us each time", she added.
Daimon was a bit surprised that the upright Oliver was so "flexible", but he then understood that wasn't exactly the case as Reyne said.
"This was mom's idea of course, the Adjudicators would have never approved it, if the choice was given to them after all".
Leaving that aside, Reyne asked Daimon what he wanted to see, the black market was divided in many areas, so it would be easier to focus in what they wanted to buy.
"Beast equipment, blueprints, recipes, rare materials and alchemy products", answered Daimon, previous to this, he had already discussed with the crazy girl what they would be looking for, besides information that could lead them to Jasmine's location.
Reyne wasn't surprised about Daimon's requests, those were all valuable things, but considering the strength Daimon has shown, it was justified that he aimed for that stuff.
"Mm… blue prints and recipes are really expensive that is if they even show up for selling, there might be some at the information store, so we can leave that for later, for beast equipment I would suggest Hundred Claw store".
"Just be aware that they will be expensive and they won't nearly as of good quality as your sword, since they mostly come from the discarded inventory of the Adjudicator and the union's army and small underground workshops, still they have some Arch rank goods in there, if you can't find anything then we can go to the street stalls, mom found my necklace in one of them", she happily said before adding.
"As for materials and alchemy products, Glass Cauldron would be the one with the largest variety", said Reyne, it's obvious that she has been here quite a few times so she of course knew a lot about the subject.
Daimon was also solved one of the questions that have been lingering in his mind, but which he didn't make, because it might give him away as a non-native of Kerrol, from where did the Beast Equipment came from.
If they were rare enough so that they only showed when they were replaced for better ones, then it was understandable that Ismael, Hal and even Jeremy who was rich enough to rival with some Arch ranks, as he was involved with the son of a Blood Earl, couldn't get too many of them.
It was also interesting that Reyne confused Disaster as a last generation Beast Weapon, but Daimon didn't correct her, as long as he didn't confirm anything then everything was nothing but assumptions.
"Let's go to Hundred Claw first them", said Daimon to which Reyne nodded, they left the alley which was actually hidden behind a fake wall, guarded by a street "seller" which was one of Oliver's subordinates.
Along the way Daimon observed the scenery of the black market, it didn't seem as grim as Daimon expected, back when he was training prior to enter the academy, Aura took him to a gathering point for people that lived in the underground scene.
And it was quite a wild atmosphere, way worse than the darkness of Brown Wind town, those who went there were in danger to be devoured in a different way, there was no law so they could kill each other without any doubt, just to rob the other, or be captured and sold to other races for experimentation and the like.
In comparison this place was more similar to a merchant district, with the difference that everyone was hiding their identities one way or another, and there were a lot of things whose origins couldn't be disclosed.
"Here we are", Reyne stopped walking in front of a large building with claw mark designs on its walls, this was Hundred Claws store the largest weapon selling store in Tiria's black market.
As expected of a black market, the service wasn't good, there was a slim man standing on the counter, as well as tons of regular weapons made with the materials obtained from magic beasts, but without cores embedded into them.
Apparently, the level of rune engraving for weapons, without using cores, was really low, so the human magic blacksmiths didn't make weapons like that, instead they focused on increasing their sturdiness and the like by adding materials from magic beasts.
The flesh eating demons on the other hand, did follow a similar path as the four galaxies using runes to grant better specs to their weapons.
Daimon observed the many racks full of weapons, each had their own price and the method of payment which was acceptable, Daimon directly ignored the regular weapons which were basically just claws, sharpened bones and carved teeth, and went straight for the beast equipment, which were all on the rack behind the counter.
Injecting mana in his eyes, Daimon watched the different equipment, trying to discern which was the best one available, since he needed some samples for Liz, it wasn't hard to detect which one had less flaws, the best core and the best composition over all.
So, he didn't take too much to point at a black spear with two cores embedded on it, one on the shaft and another on the head, it was the first one which Daimon has seen having two cores, also it was attracting the largest amount of mana among all the things in the room, it's worth mentioning that it didn't have a price tag unlike all the other things.
"I want that", he said, the man didn't even have to look at what Daimon was pointing, to know it was that spear, meaning it's something that others have tried to buy before but haven't been able to.
"Five thousand peak Lord beast cores, or five hundred early stage Arch rank beast cores, no bargaining", casually said the man with an uninterested voice, as everyone always does the same, ask for the price and then back out after hearing it.
"It's too expensive, and it should be of sixth generation at most, for that price you can buy a legitimate one of seventh generation from father, it would be a one core one though", whispered Reyne at Daimon.
"Is it that rare to see one with two cores?", asked Daimon in response, to which Reyne nodded.
"Yes, they are accidental creations, sometimes the blacksmiths can use one core of the same kind to strengthen the one they will use, those are weapons of eighth generation, the latest and exclusive to the highest ranked Adjudicators or the Cardinals of the Church of Justice".
"These weapons with two cores are the failures from that process, tests made during the sixth generation, they have collection value but their usage is too limited, since the cores might attack each other out of nowhere", she said.
Her words simply convinced Daimon to buy it, the idea of the two cores was something that caught his attention, because he is neither a mage nor a knight, but someone who can use the powers of the two paths, now imagine a weapon with a core oriented to vitality and one oriented to mana, it would be perfect for him.
With a wave of his hand, he took out a pile of cores and placed them on the counter, only this amounted to the whole savings of Ismael, Hal, the peak Lord rank guy which he killed to warn the others and around a fourth part of the cores Jeremy had saved up, it was really expensive.
The man was baffled for a moment, but he woke up from his trance and then counted the cores, before he brought down the case in which the spear was contained.
"Congratulations esteemed customer, this Demon Slaying X-1 is truly a weapon made for a real man, make good use of it", said the man as he handed the case to Daimon.
Daimon ignored the flatteries of the man, and after confirming he wasn't interested in anything else, he moved aside and left the crazy girl take over, she had her own money so she also chose a couple of things, naturally if Daimon could think on getting samples of this technology, so could Sarah.
Having finished his purchase, Daimon and the girls walked towards the exit, a single brown robed man with a red mask passed next to them, and went straight to the counter, only to raise his voice a second later.
"What the hell do you mean with what you sold it, did I not tell you to keep it until I returned!", exclaimed the brown robed figure to which the man shrugged.
"If you don't pay up half of the value, you can't reserve our products, I told you before and you didn't listen, if you don't need anything else, please leave", he said.
"Tsk, fine, then tell me who bought it, I have been saving for years to get that spear?", asked the brown robed figure, just for the man to shake his head.
"I can't do that, it's part of this city's rules for the black market, I don't want the Valleris to come and arrest me", he said.
"Y-You!", the brown robed man was livid, but ultimately, he didn't say anything and just stormed out of the store, to then walk towards one of the random bystanders who was sitting and casually drinking from a bottle.
"I want a description of all the ones that had come and left this store, if you know about one who was carrying a large weapon, I'll double the pay", said the man with brown robes.
The guy who previously seemed to be intoxicated, suddenly recovered clarity and then took out a small piece of paper from within his clothes.
"A hundred peak Lord beast cores, the were a couple of Arch ranks here today", said the man with the bottle.
The brown robed guy gritted his teeth, but nodded and gave the payment, only then, the other party gave him the list, at which's end a description that perfectly described Daimon and the others, was written.
