"...I mean, not really. If you start enchanting your gear you can still wear unenchanted desert clothes to visit exactly the same bits of the desert you could visit in unenchanted desert clothes before. It's just that you won't be able to visit new parts of the desert you're technically strong enough for until you've enchanted your gear to be desert-worthy."

"Plus if you pick something like that, uh, like what you're wearing you can just wear whatever you want over it, it's like underwear. You'll need a top eventually though."

"Or a lot of jewellery. But I'm not gonna decide on my final gear this early anyway, I'll figure it out when I figure it out."

"...how long would you wait?"

"Don't rightly know. Probably at least until my Stat gains aren't as high as they are right now."

"Mm."

"That's pretty vague."

"Do you have less vague plans?"

"Oh absolutely not but I haven't thought about it nearly as much as it looks like you have and, I dunno, guess I kinda expected that much thinking to get anywhere?"

"Ha. Yes, fair enough. I'd say most of the results of thinking are, like, having some feelings about what kinds of things I'll use to decide? Like, okay, for one I'll need to see what my rate of earnings will be to have a better idea of what'll be within my means, and I'll also need to check out the market for going rates of common gear and for commission prices—I am planning on taking this career to its extreme so I'm definitely not going to settle for standard enchantments and refinement, I'll want to get a custom-made staff at minimum and—"

She raises her hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, you do have less vague thoughts, I concede."

"When you say extreme, you mean...?"

"...well this is just an example I'm thinking about because it's fresh but I want to be the kind of person that participates in the main assault against threats like Surt."

"Wow."

"Isn't that kind of—ambition—reasonably common amongst adventurers, though?"

"Well, yeah, but..."

"People usually go 'I want to be the one to defeat Surt' which, sure, everyone says that, but 'I want to participate in the main assault against Surt' sounds a lot more—serious? Like you've given it thought? Like you're not just going 'Hel yeah I'll be a powerful adventurer' because you, uh, know that it won't be just a single adventurer that'll take Surt down? I guess."

"Oh, yeah, that's what sounded weird. It's like you've got a plan."

"...well, I don't, really. I wasn't even planning on taking on Surt specifically, if nothing else it'll take me years to get that strong and I hope we'll have defeated him before that."

"Or he'll have killed us all."

"Augh."

"It's a legitimate risk!"

"I don't see what talking about it like that helps with, though! It's so—pessimistic—"

"Maybe the Dark Lord in Glast Heim will overrun the world with his servants, maybe Rune-Midgard and Arunafeltz and Schwartzvald will go to war and destroy each other, maybe it is Ragnarök like those nutjobs at the church think and Skoll and Hatii will eat the sun and the moon..."

"Now you're doing that on purpose."