There was a sort of counter where a young woman was handling clients. When it was my turn, she looked at me with a friendly smile.
"Welcome. What can I do for you, sir?"
"Hello. I'd like to buy weapons in bulk."
Her grin disappeared, replaced with a troubled expression.
"I'm sorry, we received a restraint order on sales yesterday from the Ministry of Commerce. We're not allowed to sell in bulk until the order is lifted."
Nothing was easy, it seemed. This told me a couple of things. The government of Geola was aware of the incoming war and tried to artificially spike the prices. And they had enough leverage to issue these sorts of orders to individual businesses.
"How much can I buy?"
"Ten items per week per person."
"Are you fine obeying these sorts of orders from them?"
"Yes, because they're not doing it to hurt us but to help us. They're usually correct about these things. It's better for all blacksmiths to unite and follow their directives to get better profits in the end."
The level of trust was astounding. This was something I only knew from countries with a strong authoritarian government from my world. Geola's rulers didn’t seem like that sort but maybe trade was an exception. This city was mostly based on commerce and the government might have wanted to keep a strong control on that aspect.
"Fine. Please give me ten of your most popular weapons. But no bows and arrows. Medium and small-sized ones."
"Yes. Just a moment, sir."
The woman entered a storage room behind her and soon came back with a variety of arms. There was a bit of everything including swords, axes, maces, daggers, spears, and so on. Even though they sold weapons for all species sizes, I heard that feline subspecies were mostly around my height or shorter and so I opted to buy them in that range. I didn't know much about weapons but there was at least one element I could test. I rudimentarily injected some sel into them and checked if the conductivity wasn't too horrible.
For high-ranked fighters, weapons by themselves didn't mean much. For mages rank 2 and above, their shield spell usually was enough to stop normal weapons. And the same applied to sorcerers, who surrounded their bodies with sel like it was armor. That's also why I wasn't interested in buying armor. They were only good for rank 0, maybe rank 1 at best. After that, spells and sel itself were better than any armor.
The main reason sorcerers used weapons was because their martial arts demanded it. If they only knew about one sword art, they had no choice but to use a sword in combat to be effective. Because the weapons themselves couldn't do much, everyone fought while imbuing them with sel, becoming a sort of extension of their body.
Sel flowed fluidly into the weapons and I decided to buy them. The cost range was between 30 and 40 silvers, which was more than what I knew from my market research. The prices might have already gone up due to the situation.
I encountered the same issue when visiting a merchant selling iron ingots. The limit per person was twenty ingots and I bought everything I could there too. Each ingot cost 1 gold, more than the standard 90 silvers. However, these were relatively large and each could be used to create many weapons.
Since I couldn't buy a lot at each store, I had no choice but to visit many of them. Each time, I bought up to the maximum allowed and switched to another store. When my storage ran out of space, I teleported behind Suuru's house to discharge my load before coming back. While I was at it, I also took the opportunity to buy camping equipment and tools. I shouldn't need them in theory but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Eventually, I ended up buying 300 iron ingots and 300 weapons. I even bought some weapons from merchants directly at some point because I had gone through all the blacksmiths in the city. It was a blessing I was a spatial mage since a normal person would have spent days doing this.
Simultaneously, I shortly opened my stall in the night market to get rid of any selnic items remaining in my storage. This also gave me a bit more budget to work with. When I was done, I only had around 100 golds left on me.
The next step wasn't any less important. I now needed to hire fighters to escort me on my business trip. When I asked around, a lot of people directed me to a single place. It was a martial center that focused on growing fighters and their two main sources of income were teaching children from rich families and acting as mercenaries. It was called the Mimdo Martial Center and I had to dig my memory to remember where I heard that name before.
Finally, I got it. It was the name that Selva, the rhinoceros woman who initially escorted me to Geola, had given me when I asked about where I could find her. Truthfully, I had completely forgotten about it. I wanted to keep in contact with her since she was the first outer world inhabitant I met after coming out of the dome but then got too busy doing other things.
I headed toward the place and was soon in front of a large building close to the city center. Buildings in Geola often told their purpose by their sizes. If everything was small, it probably was a house for a small species. The reverse was true for large species. But if everything was large with furniture of all sizes, it meant this building was used by many different species. It needed to have a high ceiling and big doors to allow the largest species to use it but still had to have things to accommodate small species. It wasn't rare for buildings to have several doors of different sizes since smaller species would have trouble opening doors several times their size and weight otherwise.
I entered through a door that was right for my size and came into a space full of tension and spirit but in a completely different way from a brothel. There was a large hall where many species of all types were training and the place was filled with martial shouts from people sparing here and there. On the sides were many rooms with closed doors, probably for those who who needed a quieter environment for training. Everyone was wearing similar martial clothing to what I remembered Selva had on her, giving quite the uniform feeling overall.