I then tried to check the status of myself and my items, so I ended up casting 「Identify」on myself, and the results were exactly the same as I have already saw: While wearing the two Misangas at once, only the one that has been put on first was being displayed as an active item.

If I wear an ordinary Misanga without any Skills or Empty Skill Slots on my right ankle, and then equip the Sacrificial Misanga on my left ankle, 「Identify」 will just display the ordinary Misanga as the active one, treating the Sacrificial one as if it was never there.

If I then remove the Misanga from my right ankle, nothing will be displayed as equipped by 「Identify」, which makes me think that for whatever reason,「Identify」has probably determined that the Sacrificial Misanga on my left ankle is an invalid equipment in this state.

And since it is not displayed as a properly working piece of equipment, I do not think there is going to be a possibility of the effect being active.

I asked Sherry about why such a thing might be happening, and she explained to me that the effect of the Sacrificial Misanga will probably not be registered as working properly unless I unequip it and then equip it again, this time putting the Sacrificial Misanga on first before that other Misanga that does not have any Skills assigned to it.

So what I gathered from all of this is the following thing: wearing two Sacrificial Misangas at once is not going to make the second one’s effect become automatically active after the first Sacrificial Misanga has been destroyed, meaning that the strategy that I initially wanted to go for: equipping as many sacrificial Misangas on me as possible in order to have them negate multiple attacks that would have otherwise killed me at once is not going to work, and in turn, that also means that it would be useless to try and sell multiple copies of the Sacrificial Misanga at once is also not going to work, because no one would be willing to buy more than one copy of it since it is not going to be worth it from a financial standpoint.

I cannot say that this particular setback makes it impossible for me to continue exploring the Labyrinths, but being able to negate not one but many deadly attacks aimed at me would have certainly been a nice bonus to my safety while exploring the Labyrinths, but as I said, this is nothing worth making a fuss over. It simply means that after having one attack that would have otherwise killed me neglected, I will have to resume my careful style of advancement instead of going in a more balls-to-the-wall style that the Sacrificial Misanga would have allowed me for due to its 「Sacrifice」Skill.

And just like that, we went to the Vale Labyrinth while I was wearing a Sacrificial Misanga and ensured that its effect is going to be active. After hunting Slow Rabbits for their Rabbit Furs and Rabbit Meat through most of the day while being in a pretty good mood, we arrived at Vale Labyrinth’s ninth floor, we finally arrived at its Floor Boss’s Boss Room.

Since the monsters at this floor are Slow Rabbits, it means that the Floor Boss is going to be Rapid Rabbit. When I fought against it for the first time in the Labyrinth of Quratar, I have to admit that I had a pretty hard time against it, but now that I had a pretty good understanding of its attack patterns and how it operated, I was not going to hesitate and used 「Overwhelming」 right from the get-go, getting rid of the Rapid Rabbit rather quickly. Yes, here it is, the demonstration of how big of a difference knowledge of your enemy can do in battle.

Where I struggled at first because I did not know the enemy, now that I already knew how to fight it, we managed to beat it consistently without the fight being difficult at all, and everything ended after a few minutes without any major problems or any of us suffering any major damage.

「What monster is the one native to the tenth floor of Vale’s Labyrinth?」

「I believe they are going to be NT Ants, master.」

Sherry shares her knowledge.  Oh, great, NT Ants again? Since now I know exactly how much of an unpleasant feeling it is to be poisoned, I cannot say that I am particularly happy about the prospects of facing these damn insects again so fast after we have only just encountered them in Quratar’s Labyrinth. But nevertheless, since e are already here on the tenth floor of Vale’s Labyrinth, it would be a shame not to explore it, even if just for a little bit, so I swallow and give the order to advance forward while asking Roxanne to guide us to the nearest group of monsters, as per the usual.

Thankfully, even though the NT Ants here are of Lv.10, it still takes only three shots with 「Water Ball」 in order to kill them, so I guess that is some piece of good news. If they can still be defeated with three spells, then I am not going to have as much trouble fighting them as I initially thought. With that amount of spells, they can be easily disposed of even before th reach us, and if they have been paired up with other monsters, Sherry ad Roxanne can easily take them out due to their superior teamwork in the vanguard position. With the way that things were going now, I did not even had to switch back to Durandal in order to recover my HP wit its 「HP Absorption」 Skill, because I ended up suffering practically no damage throughout the entire time that we have spend exploring the tenth floor.

The only time when I actually had to whip out Durandal were the times where my MP was running kinda low due to all the 「Water Ball」spamming that I had to be doing, but other than that, everything was proceeding rather smoothly. This proves that with our current levels, we are more than capable of fighting against anything that the tenth floor of Vale’s Labyrinth might be throwing at us, and it makes me feel good not only about how much progress Sherry and Roxanne have made, but also about my own progress.

After staying in the Labyrinth until the evening, we left it and made our way to the Imperial City in order to do some market research on mirrors and their prices. We managed to do quite a lot in the Labyrinth and we were pretty busy throughout the entire day, but before I go back and report my findings to Gozer, it would be best to go and see what is the situation with the Palmasque Mirrors in the Imperial Capital, because if there is one thing that I do not want to do, it is to incur the wrath of the Duke of Hartz and the leader of the Knight Order of Hartz Duchy upon myself.

My first stop was a luxury goods store in the Imperial City, the one that was sure to have at least one Palmasque Mirror available in their stock. I found one rather easily, because it was pretty eye-catching due to the gaudy frame around the proper mirror’s surface. The frame itself, which was made out of wood, has been adorned with an intricate geometrical pattern. Is there any reason for it to have something like that?

Some kind of deeper, hidden meaning, perhaps? Because if it is not serving any kind of purpose, then that means that this would be something that would certainly looked nice in the house of some noblemen or in a castle of the member of royalty, but for somebody like me, a perfectly ordinary citizen who has a perfectly ordinary house in Quratar, something like that would simply be a useless decoration that is probably only there to artificially elevate the price of the mirror itself. And as for the price itself, it was also much higher than I could have expected.

The cheapest mirror that the store had to sell, which was essentially a small table mirror, costs eighteen thousand Nars. Eighteen. Thousand! For such a small mirror at that! When I continued to look around, I confirmed that this luxury goods store did not offer any big mirrors or three-sided mirrors, but it was clearly visible that the taller mirrors were much more expensive than the small ones. In fact, their prices were set sooo high that they nearly caused me to faint on the spot so I had no choice but to leave the luxury goods shop because I could not take it anymore.