The Smile Behind the Mask
⟨ Third-Tier Orthodox Magic: Invisibility ⟩
An old spell used by the ancient mages to twist the grain of light and erase the body from sight.
Back when I was still limited to the 2nd Tier, I wouldn’t have even dared to attempt it. But once I reached the 3rd Tier, it fell into place with a single gesture.
"...You’re telling me he’s really dead?"
The count clicked his tongue softly.
"A shame. Record him as deceased. Say he was buried after serving the Valderk family."
I walked past them with calm, steady steps.
None of them could see me.
Getting out of the manor was easy.
Guarded gates and locked iron doors meant nothing. If something blocked my way, I stitched the space shut and stepped through the seam.
Even the towering walls and the soldiers patrolling the garden were nothing more than scenery slipping past my eyes.
* * *
The outskirts of Rowen.
An abandoned house with no one around.
I was planning to leave Rowen soon anyway.
But before that, there were still things to settle at the magic tower and the exchange.
This face won’t do.
There was no way I could roam a city half-controlled by the Valderk family wearing Hans’s face.
A hood alone wouldn’t be enough.
"I need to become a completely different man."
I opened my subspace and took out the materials.
Finely processed specialty silk.
Mana-infused thread.
Pigments for coloring.
I’m a tailor. If I can mend clothes, I can sew a face too.
First, I took a mold of my face.
Then I laid the silk over it and began stitching, one delicate seam at a time, with my mana needle.
Third-Tier Transformation Formula: Biological Resonance
The fabric responded to the mana wavelength and writhed like living skin.
Hsssssh.
If I’d tried this back at the 2nd Tier, it would have been a sloppy mess even after three days and nights of work.
Fortunately, now it was over in an instant.
"...There."
I pressed the palm-sized mask over my face.
Whoosh.
Without any sensation of foreignness at all, it sank into my skin.
I took a small mirror from my subspace and looked into it.
In the glass stood a stranger.
He looked to be in his mid-thirties.
Square jaw. Sharp, slashing eyes.
A faint scar marked his forehead.
He had the seasoned, hard-bitten air of a man who’d seen everything the world could throw at him.
"Count Valderk himself wouldn’t recognize me now."
When I lifted the corner of my mouth, the man in the mirror smiled naturally too.
Even the fine wrinkles gathered at the corners of his eyes were perfect.
I needed a name that suited this face.
"...Zeron."
Not bad.
I pulled on a black long coat and yanked the hood low.
"Straight to the magic tower shop."
The alchemy that turned spent magic stones back into real ones.
Now it was time to turn that into actual money.
* * *
The magic tower shop.
When I showed the clerk a single high-grade magic stone, he looked shocked.
"You mean you have more stock?"
The clerk swallowed hard.
"Of course."
I picked up the high-grade stone I’d set on the counter and took it back.
"But there’s an order to these things. This one comes last."
"...Pardon?"
Confusion flickered across the clerk’s face.
"Start with this one. I’d like to know your buy price per stone."
I took a low-grade magic stone from my subspace and set it on the counter.
The clerk picked it up and let mana flow into it.
His eyes widened instantly.
"Oh! This is no ordinary stone either. Where on earth did you get such high-quality low-grade magic stones?"
"When did the rules of the magic tower change so that the clerk interrogates the customer’s secrets? Goods and money should be enough."
"Ah, no. I’m sorry."
"The only thing that matters is the price. That’s all I care about."
"Low-grade usually buys for 80 silver, and sells for 1 gold, but..."
The clerk swallowed.
"At this purity, we can buy it at full retail price—1 gold. A very generous offer."
"1 gold and 20 silver."
"...Pardon?"
"Am I supposed to be an idiot? A magic stone of this purity would fetch at least 1 gold and 50 silver if you resold it at the tower. Adding 20 silver shouldn’t be too much to ask."
Unable to argue, the clerk’s expression turned awkward.
"...How many do you have?"
"480."
His eyes went wide.
"You’re selling all of them?"
"If the price is right. If not, I’ll take my business elsewhere."
"Please wait a moment. I’ll bring the branch manager."
The clerk hurried into the back.
A short time later, the branch manager emerged in an expensive robe.
He gave me a sharp, appraising look, then picked up the low-grade stone from the counter and examined it.
"To think such high-quality low-grade magic stones exist. Remarkable. Very well. We’ll buy the entire lot at 1 gold and 20 silver each."
"Now that’s more like it."
"However, there is one condition."
"A condition?"
"The high-grade magic stone you showed us earlier. We’d like to make that part of the deal as well. What do you say?"
Apparently the manager had been watching the whole exchange from inside.
I smiled faintly.
"Before that, this."
This time, I took out a medium-grade magic stone.
The manager’s eyes lit up.
"Good heavens! This medium-grade one’s mana density is no less extraordinary. Where did you find something like this? Could it be from the western continent? I hear there have been many ancient ruins discovered there recently..."
"There you go again, prying. Do I really need to tell you that?"
"No, no. That was nothing more than my curiosity, so you needn’t say a word. In any case, at this quality we’d normally offer around 12 gold..."
"15 gold."
"...!"
The manager’s face stiffened.
"That’s too much. The selling price is 10 gold. At 15 gold, we’d be selling at a loss."
"Magic stones only get scarcer the higher you go."
I rolled the medium-grade stone between my fingers and smiled coldly.
"You’d be reselling a medium-grade stone of this purity at a loss? Then let’s not bother."
Just as I started to put it away again, he cried out.
"W-wait!"
The manager raised a hand in panic.
Sweat had broken out on his brow.
"Fine. 15 gold. But—"
His eyes flashed.
"That high-grade magic stone from earlier. How many do you have, no, before that, show it to me one more time."
"Easy."
I pulled the high-grade stone out again.
A mysterious crimson crystal!
The manager’s gaze fixed on it.
Not admiration—something closer to greed.
"Quantity?"
"15 pieces."
"Really?"
He sucked in a sharp breath.
After quickly doing the math, he opened his mouth again.
"What price are you asking?"
This time, he asked me first.
The market price for a high-grade magic stone is around 100 gold.
That was the usual rate.
But what I’d brought in was a high-concentration high-grade stone.
Of course it would be treated far more expensively.
I’d already pushed above market price for the low-grade and medium-grade stones, so by that same logic the floor here should be 150 gold.
I can probably get more than that.
Maybe even 200 gold.
High-grade stones were always scarce in bulk.
I decided to take a shot.
If I was going to gamble, I might as well aim higher.
"250 gold apiece."
"250?"
The manager nearly jumped out of his skin.
"That’s outrageous. That’s more than double the market price! No matter how pure it is, 250 gold is absurd."
"Is it?"
I set the high-grade stone back onto my palm.
"Then there’s nothing to be done. I’ll ask another magic tower. I only intend to sell where I can get even one gold more."
"Damn it...! Then 200 gold. How about that?"
Two hundred.
Twice the market price.
Not bad.
Honestly, that had been my target all along.
I’d only asked higher to leave room to compromise.
But it wouldn’t hurt to push once more.
"230 gold."
The manager’s face twisted.
"...210 gold. That’s the limit. Anything beyond that is impossible."
He raised the offer by 10 gold, then kept right on talking before I had a chance to reject it.
"Instead, I’ll offer you something else."
"Something else?"
The manager brought out something from inside.
"This is a token we only give to preferred customers of our tower."
It was a small plaque.
"With this, you’ll receive preferential treatment at any branch."
Then he held out another item.
A palm-sized leather bag.
"It looks like a simple hand bag, but inside it contains subspace the size of a backpack. It’s something you’d normally have to pay several dozen gold to get. So? Doesn’t that seem pretty good to you?"
Subspace the size of a backpack.
Compared to the vast folds of my own subspace, it was pitifully small.
Still, it has some use.
It was a nuisance having to reveal my secret subspace every time I took something out.
For small odds and ends, this bag would be convenient.
"If you’re willing to go that far, then I can afford to give a little too. I’ll sell the whole lot at 210 gold each."
"...Haha! A wise decision."
I nodded as if I’d been won over.
But in the end, the deal amounted to 5,856 gold for the magic stones alone, plus the magic tower’s preferential trade token and the subspace bag.
It was a pretty sweet haul.
"I’d like the payment in gold coins."
"We can give you 856 coins immediately. The rest can be issued as drafts."
That was fine.
If they were drafts from the magic tower, any bank would exchange them for gold at once.
"Do that."
A short while later, I received a heavy coin pouch containing 856 gold and five 1,000-gold drafts stamped with the magic tower’s seal.
"You said your name is Zeron, yes? If you obtain more magic stones in the future, please come to this branch. We’ll always buy them at a generous price."
"Take care, Lord Zeron."
The manager and the clerk bowed deeply.
* * *
I left the magic tower shop with my hood pulled low.
I was thinking of stopping by the stock exchange while I was at it.
But when I reached the front of the exchange, a firmly closed door greeted me.
Ah. It’s closed today.
No matter.
Now there was nothing in this world that could block my freedom.
I can just come tomorrow.
More to the point, was I perhaps dreaming right now?
Was this really real?
I’d become absurdly rich today.
And yet it still didn’t feel real.
I stopped in an alley and glanced into my subspace.
Heavy coin pouches.
A stack of drafts stamped with the magic tower’s seal.
An enormous fortune I would once never have even dared imagine.
And all of it was safely tucked away in my own private space.
...So this day has come for me too.
A satisfied smile slipped onto my face.
At the same time, I remembered my parents, who had spent their lives fighting poverty.
They had closed the fabric shop and gone down to my mother’s hometown.
I should go see them soon.
A heavy warmth settled in one corner of my chest.
What should I do with all this money?
One thought branched into another.
When the exchange opened tomorrow, buying more stock would be one option.
Or I could head straight for the imperial capital.
The Amos Magic Tower, where the empire’s greatest mages were said to gather.
Getting through those doors as a commoner wouldn’t be easy.
But if formal admission proved impossible, I could simply buy magic tomes instead.
The road to the high tiers beyond the 4th Tier.
It was no longer impossible.
Because now I had money.
An astounding 5,856 gold!
...No.
More than that.
There was still the money I’d invested in stock.
I can get more magic stones too.
Beneath the Valderk family.
There was my own hidden base, a place I could come and go from whenever I pleased.
There was no reason to let all that endless mana go to waste.
Let’s buy more spent stones.
I headed straight for the back alleys of the market.
A shop stacked high with spent magic stones.
"I’ll take all the spent magic stones you’ve got. Don’t care about the grade."
The clerk’s eyes went round.
"Spent stones? You mean the husks with all the mana drained out of them?"
"Yes."
"What on earth are you planning to do with them? Practice processing them?"
"My hobbies are a bit unusual. I’m going to lay them down as garden gravel. Will you sell them or not?"
"O-of course I’ll sell them! We’d been stuck with them in storage and didn’t know what to do. I’ll give you a bargain!"
The clerk hurried off, excited, to call the warehouse keepers.
Spent magic stones that had been shoved into a corner of the storeroom came out in burlap sacks.
Over a thousand low-grade stones, and several hundred medium-grade ones.
Even dozens of high-grade stones were mixed in.
"How much?"
"Heh heh! For everything, just 2 silver. Want us to deliver them?"
"No, I’ll take them myself."
Right in front of the clerk, I stuffed the sacks into my Subspace Crease one after another.
The clerk stood there with his mouth hanging open as sack after sack vanished into the seam of space.
"A-ah, subspace magic..."
His eyes turned reverent.
A mysterious mage with money and skill.
The image of Zeron I had intended was taking root perfectly.
I’m heading back to the hideout.
In complete concealment, I crossed space.
InvisibilitySpace Stitching
The Valderk family’s underground chamber came into view a moment later.
Beyond the collapsed entrance.
A quiet, intimate stillness greeted me.
A space overflowing with cold, dense mana.
All this mana is going to turn into money.
I took the spent magic stones from my subspace and set them one by one onto the charging magic circle.
That was all.
The rest was up to the mana in this cavern.
All I had to do was wait.
Of course, I wasn’t about to waste the waiting time.
I sat down on the recycling magic circle and began to train.
* * *
The next morning.
After spending the night in training, I set out once more wearing Zeron’s face.
My destination was the place that had been closed yesterday.
The Rowen Stock Exchange.
Today, its doors stood wide open.