Courtesy of the RBB

The bow was wooden but seemed to be of good quality. Jax wasn't good at recognizing the quality of weapons, but this one felt nice. He looked at the arrows too, but they felt quite flimsy.

They were light, made up of lower-quality wood, with a metal tip at the front. Jax took the bow and pulled on the string, feeling the tension on his fingers. It was so hard to pull.

'Definitely a warrior's bow,' he thought, slowly releasing the tension as he put it down. He looked at the arrows, then at the threads he had created throughout the time he absorbed Navi, and wondered if he could use them together somehow. There should be a few things he could do.

Jax put away those two weapons and pulled out the dagger next. The blood crusted on the surface of the dagger, which Jax used his knife to scrape away. It was a slightly longer dagger than the one he used. This was perhaps a much better weapon than what he had.

The dagger he had bought was one that was to butcher a dead monster. This dagger was one to kill.

After looking through it, Jax put the weapon away and brought out his axe. He felt quite happy with the performance of this axe. It was on the heavier side, certainly, but that did nothing to diminish its quality. Instead, it made it better.

The axe carried a momentum with each swing that one simply couldn't compare with any other weapon.

That took him to the other axe he had in his inventory.

Jax hadn't brought it out yesterday since he had remained outside around so many people. However, now that he was back in his room, alone, he wanted to take a better look at it.

He brought out the axe, and immediately, it landed on the ground with a loud thud. A part of the floor had been cracked where the axe had landed.

Jax prayed no one got curious enough to come checking to see what had happened. He waited for a while, and when it seemed like no one wanted to come, he finally began checking on the axe.

"Wow, the head of this axe is so much larger than the one I bought. I didn't realize it was this large," Jax thought. While it wasn't a semi-circle in shape, if it was, it would be a foot in radius.

It was weirdly all made up of a black crystalline material that Jax didn't recognize. From head to handle, it was one single object, which surprised him quite a bit. On top of that, Jax noticed black tendrils that scarred the surface of the head, like palm lines.

"Ooh! Check if it has runes and a spell slot," Gemma said. "It should."

Jax tried to check, but he didn't know where to begin. "How do I check those?"

"For spell slots, just find small indents on the body. It would be somewhere that the axe wouldn't be hit at normally so that they don't go flying off. So… the handle."

Jax couldn't see any dents, but he felt some on the side of the handle. "It's here. There are six of them."

"Ooh! A six-slotted axe. That's incredibly rare. Forget about my previous statement now. You might be able to buy this entire country with this axe," Gemma said as she laughed quite fiendishly.

Jax tried to take in her words, failing to comprehend just what she meant. "I will assume six slots is very good."

"Very good? That doesn't begin to explain how good it is. A six-slotted weapon of any kind would be considered a treasure even in the 3rd Carriage. Maybe even the 2nd Carriage."

Jax felt stunned. "So there are people out there capable of making something this great, huh?"

"This sort of weapon is way too rare to be made by someone. It's likely that it was dropped by a monster after it was killed."

Jax slowly nodded. "I see." He looked back at the axe and wondered what the old man was doing with it. In fact, he began to question who the old man was exactly. Why was an axe this good in the 10th Carriage?

Who was the one torturing him?

"At this point, you don't even have to check the runes, I guess," Gemma said. "It's obvious it has runes."

"How do you check runes?" Jax asked. "These black veins aren't it, are they?"

"No, that's a feature of the axe. Runes aren't easy to see. They're flush on the surface, so the only way you can see them is if you tilt it to the side such that it reflects the light. Then you can see the runes."

Jax tried to do as Gemma said, but it was rather tough to even move the axe. He filled all of his muscles with Navi and slowly tilted it against the light on the ceiling until he saw it.

"It's there. I can read it," Jax quickly said.

"Well, that's to be expected. A weapon like this would obviously have a…" Gemma paused. "You can read it?"

"Yes," Jax said. "Courtesy of the RBB. What sort of rune is that?"

"That's… not a rune," Gemma said. "It's… it's likely the creator's signature. The runes should be elsewhere."

"I see," Jax said, searching for the other runes. He saw them almost immediately and realized how weird they were. They weren't letters to a word but rather symbols. Each one likely meant something specific.

As he looked through it, he paused. "Wait a second, you said this axe came from a monster. But now you're saying someone made it?"

"I said it was most likely from a monster. But it's certain now. A person made this axe, which frankly makes them incredible for having made this."

Jax looked down at the axe, surprised by what he was hearing. He couldn't wait until the day he got strong enough to make use of this axe.

It was another big motivation for him to go through the Carriages as soon as he could.