Chapter 94

Clink.

His fingers found a hard surface inside the inner pocket. The World Tree sapling Joseph had sent.

Mikhail pulled his fingertips from the branch—trembling faintly at his touch—and called up the game's lore.

To turn a World Tree branch into weapon material, you first had to strip away its hardened bark. But that… wasn't something any ordinary method could accomplish.

Mikhail let out a quiet breath. Eyes half-lidded, he resumed walking.

The scenes that would unfold from here sharpened in his mind, gaining color and depth with every step.

The fingers hanging at his side curled inward, just slightly.

"Goddammit! It cracked open! There goes all my money for nothing!"

A voice worth noting cut through his thoughts. Mikhail stopped mid-stride and looked ahead, six or seven paces down the road.

Two travelers were grumbling as they shook out empty coin purses, drifting further along the path.

"Ugh… he kept saying something good was bound to come up if we just tried a few more. Now we can't even afford tonight's special dinner."

Mikhail pulled his gaze from their shrinking backs and glanced at the side street.

A sizable stall had planted itself squarely in the middle of the shopping district.

Spread across it were rows upon rows of unrestored, unappraised relics.

"Let's see here… good lord, how many is that? Really cleaned me out nicely, didn't they—my valued sucke… ah, customers."

Mikhail stared at the stall owner, who was sweeping rock fragments aside with a snicker.

He studied the heap of relics buried under stone and dust for another moment.

Then he walked over, slow and deliberate.

Jever—Melphendes relic appraiser and self-proclaimed specialty lottery vendor—swallowed the grin threatening to spill across his face as he watched the boy approach his stall.

First the gullible travelers, and now some wet-behind-the-ears kid, one right after the other.

Today really was a lucky day.

Judging by the look of him, some pampered noble's son. Even better. The more sheltered the young master, the easier it is to make his eyes spin with a good story.

Jever sidled up to the young customer browsing the stone-encased relics and spoke with practiced warmth.

"Here's how it works. Pick any relic you like, pay one gold coin, and I'll appraise it for you. If luck's on your side, you could walk away with something worth a cool fifty gold! No—a hundred! And if not that, you'll still get something unique or interesting that you won't find anywhere else."

Jever reeled off every line calculated to hook a young buyer.

In truth, nine out of ten relics were junk worth less than five silver coins. But details like that were beside the point.

"Oh, I see."

The boy put on a rather solemn expression, rubbed his chin, and nodded.

The pitch had clearly piqued his interest.

Time to ease off the pressure. Better to let him browse freely than rush the choice.

Jever pictured the coins that would soon be trickling into his purse and watched the young customer with a leisurely gaze.

The boy kept his eyes on the relics a while longer.

Then, slowly, he reached forward—

Clunk.

—and picked up a palm-sized chunk of rock before turning around.

"This one, please."

He produced a gold coin and held both items out. Jever accepted the gleaming coin and the relic with an eager nod.

"Absolutely! Excellent choice!"

Jever tucked the gold coin lovingly into his breast pocket, then moved to the nearby table.

He scooped up the restoration tools scattered across its surface and began chipping away at the stone casing, piece by piece.

The relic revealed its true form before long. Resting on the table was a silver pendant fragment, catching the light.

"Oh, would you look at that…!"

Jever gasped with exaggerated flair. Inwardly, he wanted to cheer.

Whether it was the lure of a fortune or the appeal of novelty—this was the perfect kind of relic fragment for stoking a customer's hopes and milking every last coin. A piece tailor-made to maximize his take from the young gentleman standing before him.

Jever rolled his eyes toward the boy, rubbed his hands together, and beamed.

"Well now, our young sir must be truly blessed by fortune! A pendant fragment—maybe one in every few dozen—and you pulled it on your very first try. It may look like nothing special right now, buried in rock and dust as it was, but I'm told these were once worn exclusively by people of very high standing in the ancient world."

The boy kept his gaze fixed on the pendant, nodding slowly.

Jever wedged a dramatic throat-clearing into the pause, then pressed on.

"Ahem… Now, here's the thing. As you can see, this pendant is broken into pieces. If you could find all three fragments and put them together, you'd have something truly magnificent on your hands. So what I'm thinking is…"

Jever leaned toward the boy and held up two fingers.

"Why not pick out two more relics from the pile and see if the matching pieces are in there? Fortune has a flow to it, you know. Strike while the iron's hot, and you just might find them all."

The boy shifted his gaze from Jever to the heap of relics.

He tilted his head, taking his time.

Every sign pointed to deliberation. Jever watched from the corner of his eye, licked his lips, and jumped in before the moment could pass.

"A special offer, just for you! This one time only—two relics appraised for a single gold coin. You can't lose at that price! Go ahead—take your pick."

The tension in the air eased at once.

The boy let out a soft hum, then turned those deep blue eyes toward him.

"Sure, why not."

He agreed without hesitation and strode back to the relic pile.

Jever exhaled in relief, smoothed a hand across his chest, then clasped both hands behind his back with an air of genial patience.

"Take your time looking. A good choice deserves careful thought, after all."

Jever tossed out the pleasantry, then smirked to himself behind it.

He'd pushed the boy to hunt for two more fragments, sure.

But the real odds? The second fragment might turn up in six or seven pieces out of the hundreds laid out.

And the third? Almost certainly not there at all. Maybe one in a thousand, if that.

The special offer had been nothing but bait to lock in the first sale.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Clatter.

Meanwhile, the boy returned with two relics and set them on the table alongside a gold coin.

Jever pocketed the coin in a flash, then picked up the relic on the right and began tapping away at it.

The stone casing cracked and fell away in pieces, gradually revealing the artifact inside.

"…Huh?"

The moment he saw the fully uncovered relic, Jever blinked in slack-jawed confusion.

Sitting on the table was the second pendant fragment.

"H-how in the world—? This is…"

Tap.

An unrestored relic slid firmly into the center of the table.

Jever raised his eyes with a start. The boy stood across from him, smiling, already speaking.

"The second one too, please."

Something in the boy's voice had changed. It carried a weight that seemed to guide the listener's hands before their mind could catch up.

Jever couldn't manage a single word in reply. He simply moved.

Crack. Clunk.

The stone casing peeled away like a shed skin, and the artifact hidden within emerged into the light.

"Good lord…"

Jever couldn't even form a proper sentence.

The instant he saw what lay on the table, he questioned his own eyes.

After the second pendant fragment—a third piece, set with a blue gemstone, appearing right on its heels.

Was something like this… even possible?

Click.

That was when the boy's hand swept across the table and gathered up every last pendant fragment.

Jever gaped, mouth hanging open, as the boy turned his back on the stall.

Then instinct kicked in—the reflexes of a man who'd spent years handling relics—screaming that he could not let what he'd just witnessed walk away.

Right now, he needed to name a price that would extract the maximum value from the customer standing before him.

"W-wait…! Would you consider selling those? I'll pay handsomely! Fifty—no, a hundred gold!"

The boy stopped in his tracks.

Jever swallowed past a throat gone bone-dry and stared, unblinking, as the boy turned around.

The boy stepped back to face the table.

His eyes flickered briefly in thought, then he gave the pendant fragments in his hand a small shake.

Clink.

The blue gemstone caught the burnt-gold sunset behind it and sparked like a scattering of stars.

The boy smiled, perfectly at ease.

"Five hundred gold. That's the fair price for this."

"…!"

"But even for that much, I have no intention of selling. Try somewhere else."

---

Roughly thirty minutes drifted by after that.

The sunset announcing the day's end was spreading slowly across the sky.

"……"

Mikhail walked toward the inn with his hands shoved in his pockets.

It was nearing dinnertime, and the restaurants lining the street were buzzing with noise.

"Cider and a plate of fried fritters over here!"

"The next verse! Sing the next one! I've never once heard the third verse of that song!"

Mikhail was passing through the commotion when he paused and gazed through a restaurant window.

The smell of food sizzling on heat. A packed dining hall alive with chatter.

Servers with loaded plates wove briskly between tables while up on the small stage, a bard with a stringed instrument was mid-performance.

"Certainly! I'll play it for you right away. The third verse of the Melphendes Adventurer. Its title is none other than…"

Mikhail watched the bard milk the suspense, scanning the eager faces around the room, and murmured under his breath.

The subtitle of the Melphendes Adventurer's third verse—the line the voices inside would soon call out—and something tied directly to the zone of the ruins they were about to enter. He knew it well.

"…The tale of a hero who cut down a comrade turned enemy."

His quiet recitation trailed off, and a booming voice from within the hall followed right behind it.

"The tale of a hero who cut down a comrade turned enemy!"