Intuition and Analysis
Inside the Rowen stock exchange.
The electronic board flashed like mad.
Red numbers and blue numbers.
Brokers shouting.
Investors groaning.
“Black Forest! Black Forest Forestry has gone insane!”
“They issued another acid fog advisory for the western coast!”
All around me, I could hear people shouting the words Black Forest Forestry.
The very stock I’d emptied my entire fortune into.
I pushed through the crowd and made my way to the quote board.
My eyes raced over the numbers.
[Black Forest Forestry: 6 silver]
‘......Huh?’
My God.
I couldn’t even speak.
A stock that had been five copper a share was now worth six hundred copper.
Exactly one hundred and twenty times higher.
‘This is a miracle.’
I looked around and saw everyone screaming toward the counters with bloodshot eyes.
“Buy! Buy it now!”
“Black ironwood is the only way we survive!”
“Black Forest Forestry! Buy it now!”
Everyone was desperate to get in.
‘No matter how I look at it, this is way too overheated.’
After calming myself, I stared at the board with cold eyes.
‘There’s a good chance this is the top.’
The acid fog story had already been priced in.
Overpriced, in fact.
Sooner or later, word would come that other nations had found substitutes, or that someone had developed an acid-neutralizing spell.
When that happened, the bubble would burst in an instant.
‘Sell today.’
I made up my mind.
‘Besides, selling at the exact peak is impossible.’
It might keep rising tomorrow.
And if I got greedy and waited for that, I might not be able to sell until after the collapse had already begun.
‘Enough. This is more than enough.’
I quietly walked to the sell counter.
“Black Forest Forestry. Sell everything.”
“All of it? The momentum’s shooting through the roof right now... are you sure?”
“Yes. Dump it at market price.”
The broker looked at me like I was a lunatic, but before long the order was complete.
1,057 shares × 6 silver = 6,348 silver.
Converted to gold, that was 63 gold and 48 silver.
“It’s filled. Total sale amount is 63 gold, 48 silver. From that, we’ll...”
“I’ll deduct the Imperial securities transaction tax of 1.5% and the brokerage fee of 0.5%. The imperial court also raised taxes by another 0.5% while strengthening border defenses, so everyone’s been complaining about that lately.”
“......I suppose there’s no helping it.”
A total of 2 percent.
About 1 gold and 27 silver vanished into thin air.
It stung a little, but there was nothing to be done.
Taxes were an unavoidable cost.
“All settled. Here you are.”
A heavy pouch was placed in my palm.
[Final amount received: 62 gold 21 silver]
Fifty silver had become sixty-two gold.
Even after taxes, it was a vast sum, one most commoners could labor their whole lives and never so much as touch.
‘With this, I’ve secured enough money to live on for the rest of my life.’
But this was only the beginning.
If I didn’t put this money to work, my dream would vanish as nothing more than a fantasy.
I held out one gold coin to the clerk.
“Give me a pass for the information reading room.”
The clerk’s eyes widened, but he quickly issued the entry card.
“You can use it for seven days for 1 gold. Reading hours are from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. We don’t operate at night.”
“I see.”
I walked through the thick iron door.
Very few ordinary investors ever came to this place.
It was nothing but a room full of boring numbers and words, after all.
The bookshelves lining the walls on every side were packed tight with financial statements from companies listed across the empire, quarterly business reports, and continental trade statistics.
I climbed a ladder and pulled down the dustiest materials from the highest shelves first.
‘Luck only comes once. From here on out, it’s analysis.’
Finding Professor Keil’s scribbles had been a miracle-level coincidence.
I couldn’t expect that kind of luck to happen again.
I flipped through the shelves at speed.
Swish.
[Report on Northern Iron Ore Production]
[Eastern Maritime Trade Statistics]
[Magic Engineering Society: List of New Technology Patents]
[Western Grain Belt Crop Report]
I only skimmed them, but that was enough.
Once I saw a set of numbers and facts, I never forgot them.
Thousands of records that seemed unrelated at first began stacking up inside my head.
And after four days of that, I could read the broad currents of the continent.
‘Trade volume is rising.’
Shipping companies’ stock prices had already skyrocketed long ago.
A prime example was Valderk Transport, the Valderk family’s company.
I examined the report.
‘Debt ratio under 10 percent. Cash holdings are excellent.’
It was a stock as steady and honest as Ellen herself.
But it was already so overvalued that entering now felt risky.
Bergen Shipping.
Its price was soaring too.
That made sense, considering it controlled seventy percent of Rowen’s southern trade.
There was no room left to get in.
‘Popular stocks never have much left to eat.’
I closed the ledger.
I wasn’t interested in anything the market had already discovered.
What I was looking for was something else.
On the sixth day of reading
I went through records on thousands of small companies.
Firms I had never even heard the names of.
[Northern Wagon Guild]
[Golden Wheel Merchant Company]
[Southern Grain Carriers]
[Silver Cart Merchant House]
.
.
.
Sales reports, freight rate charts, cargo throughput, route distribution maps.
The fragments in the library of my mind started fitting together on their own.
Spice imports had surged.
Port cargo throughput had hit a record high.
Inland transport rates were climbing.
Congestion at the big shipping companies was getting worse.
.
.
.
And then, all at once.
Countless pieces of information combined and pointed to one stock.
[Blue Wagon Transport: 10 copper]
‘Huh?’
A small inland transport company.
‘This?’
It was one I’d passed over earlier without a second thought.
A company that had nearly gone bankrupt two years ago.
‘......This doesn’t make any sense.’
If you looked only at the company report, it was absolutely not a stock that should rise.
So why, out of nowhere, did it keep catching my eye?
‘It just surfaced in my head like a formula. The way new magic does.’
That was what happened when I finished reading every report in the archive.
‘I’m sure it’ll rise. Soon.’
I couldn’t explain why, but if I didn’t act on it, I had a feeling I’d regret it badly.
‘Should I buy it?’
I didn’t want to just ignore this strange instinct.
But then again.
My entire fortune was 61 gold.
‘Not all of it.’
If I lost this, I’d have to start over from 1 copper again.
‘Invest part of it.’
My eyes turned to one of the safest stocks on the continent.
Amos Magic Tower: 30 silver
The biggest magic tower on the continent, located in the imperial capital.
As a blue-chip stock, its price was heavy and steady.
‘It’s not even in the same league as the Rowen Magic Tower.’
A place where you could learn not just 4th Tier but even 5th Tier magic.
An area far beyond what I could dream of now.
I’d heard that for a commoner to be admitted there was nearly impossible.
But if you had money, impossible didn’t mean impossible.
‘If I own a stake, it might become a stepping stone someday.’
The status of being a shareholder in Amos Magic Tower.
For some reason, that made my heart beat faster.
‘From now on, I’ll collect it steadily, little by little.’
Amos Magic Tower wasn’t going anywhere.
It wouldn’t collapse if the emperor changed, and it wouldn’t collapse if war broke out.
Its stock price even climbed a little every year.
‘If it keeps rising, I can sell it and buy magic books.’
I headed straight back to the exchange counter.
“I’d like to place a buy order.”
“For what stock?”
“Amos Magic Tower, 45 gold. Blue Wagon Transport, 15 gold.”
The clerk’s eyes widened a little.
“Amos Magic Tower? That’s a stock that never really moves... but I suppose it’s also one that will never go under.”
The clerk began processing the order.
“Amos Magic Tower is currently 30 silver a share, so that comes to 150 shares. Blue Wagon Transport is 10 copper, so I’ll buy 15,000 shares.”
“Yes.”
A little later, I received the confirmation slip along with the stock certificates.
[Amos Magic Tower 150 shares]
[Blue Wagon Transport 15,000 shares]
‘No way I’m carrying these around with me.’
The secret vault was the answer.
I took the certificates and headed straight for the exchange’s basement vault on the second underground floor.
* * *
The moment I left the exchange, I headed for the Rowen Magic Tower shop.
Jingle.
As soon as I opened the shop door, a pleasant herbal scent and a wash of mana swept over me.
A clerk in a neat uniform.
He glanced at my shabby clothes and frowned slightly.
“Looking for something? The cheap potions are over in that corner.”
“No. I’m here to deliver goods.”
I pulled a bundle of white cloth from my backpack and set it on the counter.
“Deliver goods? We don’t handle anything unless it’s a verified artifact. Try somewhere else.”
The clerk waved a hand in annoyance.
‘So I’m being treated like a peddler.’
I didn’t back down. Instead, I opened one of the bundles and laid it out.
A white handkerchief, about the size of my palm.
“This is called a Cleanliness Handkerchief. Would you like to take a look?”
I opened the lid of the ink bottle sitting on the counter and spilled it onto the table.
Drip.
A black stain spread instantly.
The clerk yelped.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Don’t worry. It comes off easily.”
I rubbed the ink stain with the handkerchief.
Swish, swish.
In an instant, the ink was sucked into the cloth as if it had never been there.
“As you can see, the table’s clean now.”
The clerk stared at me, stunned.
“It wipes ink pretty well. Is there some kind of utility spell attached to it?”
“That’s right.”
More precisely, it was the 1st Tier utility spell Trace Erasure.
But it didn’t just erase the ink from the table.
“Please wait a moment.”
The tiny magical circuit stitched into the handkerchief had already begun to activate on its own.
Ssss.
The black stain broke apart and scattered into the air.
The handkerchief had turned brand new, as if no ink had ever touched it.
“......Huh? It cleans itself automatically?”
The clerk’s eyes went so wide they were almost round.
“1st Tier purification magic... and self-cleaning magic too... and the texture isn’t ordinary either.”
Almost entranced, he picked up the handkerchief.
He rubbed it between his fingers, flipped it over, held it up to the light.
It was nothing like the bored swatting of a moment ago.
Cloth enchanted with ordinary magic was usually stiff, but this felt softer than the finest silk.
It would be gentle enough that it wouldn’t irritate the skin at all.
This was the sort of thing noble ladies and obsessively neat mages would go mad for.
“It’ll wipe away sweat or grime too, and the stain’s gone immediately. It also disinfects wounds. The healing effect is subtle, but it’s there.”
“Is that... really true?”
The clerk’s expression changed.
Wound disinfection and a slight healing effect!
It would be far superior to an ordinary bandage, which meant there would definitely be demand for it even on the battlefield.
Knights. Mercenaries.
“You can verify it.”
“Just a moment... let me see.”
The clerk at a magic tower branch wasn’t an ordinary man.
He was a mage too.
“The magic infused into the handkerchief isn’t permanent.”
“Yes. Since it’s 1st Tier utility magic and only the bare minimum mana is used, it lasts about six months before fading.”
“So it’s a consumable magical handkerchief, not a permanent one... meaning after half a year it turns back into a plain scrap of cloth?”
“Even so, if you use it three or four times a day, you can comfortably get at least half a year out of it.”
“That’s actually a pretty clever concept.”
In fact, the magic tower already had a permanent magical item with a similar function.
The problem was that it was very expensive.
A full 2 gold.
It was a luxury item and decorative piece for wealthy noblewomen, and its appearance was extremely ornate.
Of course, almost no one actually used it for practical purposes.
The purification and cleansing magic were indeed permanent, but the handkerchief itself wasn’t very durable.
‘If you tried to add durability reinforcement magic on top, the difficulty would skyrocket, and so would the material costs.’
Naturally, the price would climb even higher.
Who would pay that much money for something as simple as a handkerchief?
But this thing was practical—a consumable magical item you could use up and throw away after half a year.
“If the price is right, there’ll be buyers. The problem is the unit cost.”
“Wouldn’t 10 silver already attract plenty of people? I’ll set the delivery price at 5 silver. That way the tower can still make 5 silver profit per piece.”
The clerk’s eyes lit up.
“When you think about the permanent handkerchief being 2 gold, 10 silver for one that lasts six months is certainly attractive. But if you deliver them at 5 silver, is there even any profit left? To grant this kind of effect, you’d need to melt down at least a low-grade magic stone and infuse it...”
He fiddled with the handkerchief and asked,
“How many do you have in stock?”
“I brought 100 pieces for now. If the response is good, I can make more.”
“Good. I’ll take all 100.”
I handed over the 100 handkerchiefs and received a full 5 gold.
My chest swelled.
“If you need more goods in the future, where should I contact you? No, more importantly, I’d like to know who made this magical item. To weave magic this precise and unobtrusive, they’d have to be at least 3rd Tier.”
The clerk seemed not to imagine for a second that I might have made the item myself.
He clearly thought I was just a messenger.
That was only natural.
The faint mana in my body amounted to barely 1st Tier.
Still, I had no desire to draw attention by saying I made it myself.
I picked up a pen and wrote a note on the back of the receipt.
[Hans, personal tailor to Young Lady Ellen, annex residence of Count Valderk.]
“He doesn’t wish for his name to become known. I’ll leave my own name here, so if you need anything, please send a letter to this address.”
“The Valderk family?”
A personal tailor to a noble house.
That was more than enough to guarantee my identity.
“Understood. I’ll be counting on you in the future.”
* * *
The moment I left the magic tower, my steps took me to Rowen’s southern district.
The place where the wholesale market was, where I could get cloth at the cheapest prices.
“This fabric’s been stored badly. The threads are already loosening.”
“Ah, you’re awfully picky! Fine then, I’ll take off 2 copper per piece. Satisfied?”
“Take off 3 copper and throw in the leftover scraps as a bonus, and I’ll buy it.”
“Fine. We’ll do it that way.”
Right in the middle of the market.
I had just made 5 gold from selling handkerchiefs, and yet I was still trying to save every last copper.
That was instinct. Habit.
“And now I should head back.”
Before I knew it, the sun had set and dusk was settling in.
Then—
“Urgh! Guhh... please help me...”
“Heh heh... you made fun of us because you thought your big brother would back you up, huh?”
The dull thuds of blows and cries came from deep inside an alley.
I quickly slipped behind a pile of garbage.
‘There.’
Five masked men were surrounding a young boy and mercilessly kicking him around.
‘Better just keep walking.’
If I recklessly stepped into trouble like that, I could end up in a very dangerous situation.
What stopped my feet, though, was their voices.
“Break one of his arms. Then that Bargo bastard will come running wild-eyed.”
“Tch, if his precious little brother comes back with a leg cut off, even that proud older brother will get on his knees.”
That rasping, splitting voice.
Those snake-like eyes gleaming through the gaps in the masks.
‘......?’
There was no way my memory was wrong.
‘Are these the same bastards from back then?’
If Ellen’s carriage hadn’t happened to pass by and help me at the time, I would have been in serious trouble.
‘No question. It’s them.’
I never forgot a face once I’d seen it, the same way I remembered the contents of a book after reading it.
And there was no way I’d ever forget my enemies.