The Negotiation Method of a Tailor
“From here on, I have to go alone.”
Nen stopped walking. Beside the city gate, where the carriages waited for passengers, she would have to catch one headed for the capital.
“Be careful on the road. There are plenty of beasts out there.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Nen gave a faint smile.
“These days, most things don’t scare me anymore. I’m not who I used to be. That’s all thanks to you.”
It wasn’t empty flattery.
The maid who had once been hunted down by Kalik and left to die was gone now. Even her eyes had changed. She was a sharp-edged swordswoman now, the one who had cut down a Kran Sword Expert.
I’m looking forward to seeing how far she’ll go.
There was no telling whether I’d ever meet Nen again after today. All I could do was hope the breathing method I’d made just for her would show its worth.
“Never let your guard down. Stay careful, Nen.”
“Of course. I’ll always remember the weakness you pointed out, and keep it in mind.”
Nen answered while idly touching the shoulder guard on her right shoulder. Then she hesitated for a moment, rummaged through her backpack, and took something out.
“This... please take it.”
“What is it?”
“A talisman that’s supposed to ward off bad luck. I bought it from a traveling merchant... I’m sorry, but this is all I have to give you.”
It was a small charm made from a worn scrap of cloth, marked with a strange symbol.
Bad luck, huh.
For someone like me, who calculated every phenomenon through cause and formula, superstition like this didn’t mean much.
Still, I couldn’t refuse her kindness.
“Thank you. I’ll treasure it.”
When I took the charm, Nen seemed relieved and nodded.
“Don’t stay in Bellat too long. If war is right around the corner, any healthy man can get dragged off for conscription. You could end up in trouble too.”
“Don’t worry. Once I’ve collected the materials I need, I’m planning to head straight down to Luber Village, where my parents live.”
“Then that’s a relief.”
Nen soon looked at me with a gentle smile.
“I’m sure we’ll meet again someday.”
“Take care, Nen.”
She disappeared into the crowd before long, and I headed straight for the city gate.
The inspection was strict. Rumors had spread that Kran spies were disguising themselves as refugees and slipping in among them, so the soldiers searched every identity and every bundle with painstaking care. I had nothing to worry about. My spatial pocket was not the sort of thing they could uncover in the first place.
By the time I got inside the city, the sun was already setting. As you’d expect from a military city, the streets were packed with shops. I first stopped by a magic materials dealer and picked out a few components for the armor cannon. Then I sold off the miscellaneous equipment I’d taken from Kran’s scouts.
That should do it.
My business was finished. Since it was already dark, I could stay the night and leave for Luber Village in the morning.
* * *
In a warehouse in Bellat’s back alleys, wrapped in darkness with not even a single lamp lit, a cloaked figure held out something to Kassel.
A black scroll, small enough to fit in the palm of a hand.
Kassel took it in silence.
“The underground waterway... the purification facility’s magic circle. Tear this in front of it.”
“......!”
“That is all. You need know nothing else.”
“I’ll obey.”
Kassel bowed deeply.
“The day Kran’s banner is planted atop these walls... your name will be remembered.”
The man in the cloak left only those words behind before fading into the darkness.
Kassel moved at once.
The underground waterway of Bellat. The soldiers guarding the entrance straightened and touched fists to their chests when they saw him.
“Captain.”
“Anything happen while I was gone?”
“No, sir. Nothing unusual.”
He was one of the leaders of the sewer guard.
“I’ll make a round of inspection.”
“We’ll accompany you.”
Kassel raised a hand to stop the soldier who was about to follow.
“No need. I’m enough by myself. You lot keep the entrance locked down.”
“Yes, sir!”
Once the soldiers stepped back, Kassel took a torch and walked alone deeper into the sewer.
The sound of running water echoed damply through the passage. He had traveled this path so often it was practically home.
At last he reached the deepest chamber, where a massive purification magic circle carved into a stone slab glowed with a faint blue light.
“Kassel? What brings you here at this hour?”
Dellan, the mage stationed beside the circle, turned toward him with a puzzled expression. He was the one in charge of maintaining the purification array, and he and Kassel knew each other by face.
“Routine inspection.”
Kassel approached as if nothing were amiss.
Dellan, suspecting nothing, turned his attention back to the stone slab.
That was the moment.
Swish.
Kassel drew out the black scroll.
“What are you doing? What is that scroll?”
Dellan turned back just as he finally sensed something was wrong.
Riiip.
The scroll was torn from Kassel’s hand.
“The empire will soon be destroyed. Bellat is only the beginning.”
“How dare you—stop!”
Dellan hurriedly cast a spell, but it was already too late.
Whoooosh—
From the torn scroll, a blood-red force surged upward like fresh-spilled blood and wrapped itself around Kassel’s ankles.
In an instant, the crimson miasma bound his whole body.
As if he had known this would happen, Kassel did not resist.
“My... my body... as a sacrifice... ugh... aaagh!”
His flesh began to burn.
Veins dried up. Meat shriveled.
“Kraaah!”
His body, withered and ruined beyond recognition, was swallowed without leaving a trace.
“N-no...!”
Dellan staggered backward.
Shaaaas—
The force that had devoured its sacrifice swelled grotesquely, then poured straight down onto the purification circle.
KWA-AAANG!
The stone slab ran red.
The soft blue light was drowned in blackish crimson, and the formulas of the circle began twisting madly out of shape.
“N-no—this can’t be happening...!”
Dellan’s face turned white as a sheet.
The purification magic circle had been cursed.
“This is bad! I have to report this at once!”
He sprinted down the passage in a panic.
* * *
The next morning.
When I woke, I felt refreshed. Thanks to sleeping soundly through the night, my mana core was full to the brim, and the fatigue I’d accumulated from several days of camping had vanished completely.
Yeah, a bed really is nice.
After getting up, I checked my personal spatial pocket out of habit. The vast folded space was the size of a medium warehouse. At its center floated a gray sphere that shone like a sun. Beneath it lay the magic stones I’d charged in the underground cave in Rowen, along with glittering gold coins and bills of exchange. There were also reinforced mana-thread and the armor cannon, as well as all sorts of cloth and tailoring materials. I still had a fair amount of materials harvested from beasts left over too.
And there were three sets of armor cannon underwear that I planned to give my parents and my maternal grandfather as gifts.
That made me feel very satisfied indeed.
Of course, I didn’t keep everyday necessities or odds and ends in this spatial pocket. For that, I had a small spatial bag I’d received in trade for magic stones at Rowen’s Magic Tower. Whenever I needed to take something out in front of other people, I used that bag unless there was a special reason not to.
Time to go. I should get a carriage.
There was no reason to walk anymore.
If I go by carriage, it’ll only take a few days to reach Luber Village.
In high spirits, I packed up my things and went down to the tavern on the first floor.
But something felt off. The atmosphere was restless.
“I’m telling you, all the well water turned bright red!”
“Even the bucket in my house came up full of blood. I was too scared to touch it.”
The customers seated around the tavern were all talking in low, tense voices, faces stiff with unease.
“Sir, I’m sorry.”
The innkeeper came up to me with an awkward expression.
“There’s no soup this morning. We can’t use any water. Even drinking water has to be replaced with wine.”
“What happened all of a sudden?”
“Overnight, every well in the city turned to blood. We’ve run out of drinking water. We’re barely able to serve bread with the water we managed to store.” The owner sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know what kind of disaster this is. Business or no business, you need water to keep the doors open.”
On the table sat nothing but a dry loaf of bread with no moisture at all.
The well water turned to blood?
While tearing off a piece of bread, I quietly listened to the people around me.
“Could it be some kind of plague? If you drink blood water...”
“The garrison’s put soldiers at every well. They’ve blocked them off so no one can use them.”
“Who on earth would do something like this?”
This was bad.
If every well in the city looks like this at once...
There was only one source.
The city’s drinking water was being managed through a single core system.
The purification magic circle in the underground waterway. Someone definitely tampered with it.
Something had gone wrong in the heart of the city’s water supply.
What kind of bastard would do something like that?
It was a scheme to choke off the city’s water and slowly kill it.
If the magic circle wasn’t completely destroyed, it shouldn’t be that hard to repair.
I stood up.
With the city in such a state, it might be best to leave quickly.
Let them handle it. There are plenty of mages here anyway.
I left the inn and headed for the plaza where the carriage brokers gathered.
The streets were a mess. Soldiers stood guard at every well, and people carrying water buckets stamped their feet anxiously in line.
With that level of control, they should have it under control soon.
As expected of a military city, their response was fast. There was no reason for me to stick my nose in.
That was when I reached the edge of the plaza.
“You’re telling me it’ll take a whole month?”
“At least a month. The formulas have tangled together. Even if you brought in a 5th Tier mage from the capital, I couldn’t promise anything.”
Two robed mages were hurrying past, their faces drained of color. I slowed my steps without thinking.
“A month? Then where are tens of thousands of people supposed to get water in the meantime?”
“They’ll have to haul it in from the river outside the walls. But beasts have been swarming the banks lately, so it’s become a matter of risking your life for a bucket of water.”
“A few water sellers can’t possibly manage that. Even if you assign soldiers as escorts...”
“That’s the problem. If you pull soldiers away to fetch water, who’s going to defend the walls? Especially with those bastards from the Kran Kingdom breathing down our necks.”
The mages’ voices fell lower and lower.
“Don’t tell me that’s what they were after.”
“Now you understand? It was a carefully planned attack.”
The two of them hurried away.
A month.
So that’s how long it would take to repair it?
It might make sense if the magic circle was completely wrecked.
I walked toward the blocked-off well.
A dark red liquid rippled at the bottom.
It really is blood. The water’s blood-red.
Above the blood-colored surface, warped strands of mana rose like heat haze.
Wait.
This well drew water from an underground source. And before that source flowed into the city, it had to pass through the purification magic circle.
In other words, this blood in front of me was...
Water that flowed through the magic circle.
Water carried mana with it. As it passed through the purification circle, it would have taken on traces of the formula, then traveled along the waterways all the way to this well.
Which meant that simply by examining this well water, I could learn...
How the magic circle was twisted.
Just as examining pus seeping from a wound could reveal the root of an illness, reading the strands of mana embedded in the blood-red water made the damaged flow of the formula gradually clear in my mind.
A twisted circulation. A reversed flow. And in the very center, one foreign object lodged like a splinter.
So the whole magic circle wasn’t destroyed after all.
The curse hadn’t broken the circle. It had simply layered itself over the purification route and reversed the flow.
Like sewing a filthy scrap of cloth onto a perfectly good garment.
All I had to do was find the patched seam, rip it out, and turn the current back the right way. There was no need to unravel the whole fabric. No need to spend a month struggling with it, either.
Without meaning to, I muttered aloud, “This is so easy... why is everyone making such a fuss? I could fix this in no time.”
“You there. Don’t you know this well is off-limits?”
The sharp voice made me turn around. A mage in robes stood there, his face grim.
“More importantly, what did you just say? What’s easy?”
I shrugged and nodded.
“The damaged purification magic circle. I took a look because the formula was tangled, but it looks like I could restore it pretty quickly.”
The mage stared at me in disbelief.
“You’re insane. Where did you come up with such a lie—”
“It’s not a lie. It’s the truth.”
“Are you some kind of scammer pretending to be a mage? Do you think this is a good time to make a fool of people with nonsense?”
Mana gathered at the tips of the mage’s fingers.
“You need a lesson in humility!”
Fwoosh!
A small mana arrow shot straight at me.
“......Huh?”
The mage’s eyes went wide.
By then, I was already standing behind him.
Tap.
I pressed the point of a sharp mana needle against the back of his neck.
“Do you want to die?”
“W-wait! I was only trying to scare you.”
“I know.”
My voice turned cold.
“Your target was the ground. I let you off easy because you didn’t really mean to attack me. If you had, you’d already be dead.”
“You’re... a mage?”
“As you can see.”
I had no reason to hide my identity here.
“I... I beg your pardon. The fact that you put me down that easily means you must be at least 3rd Tier...”
The mage read the room and spoke again, more cautiously this time.
“But what you said earlier, about being able to fix the purification magic circle... is that really true?”
“Of course. Since you won’t believe me just by talking, I’ll show you the formula.”
I pulled parchment and a pen from my spatial bag and began writing down several formulas.
Scratch, scratch.
The structure of the magic circle. The point where the curse had been layered on. The order of the formula needed to remove it and reverse the circulation.
With only a few key lines deliberately left blank.
“Take it.”
I held out the parchment.
“You won’t be able to make sense of it even if you look at it, so it’s probably best to show this to the person in charge of the circle.”
“Th-this is...”
“Go on, hurry. Time is running out. The longer this takes, the harder it’ll be to restore.”
“R-right. Wait here for a moment.”
The mage clutched the formula I’d given him and ran off somewhere.
And then, in less than an hour, he came charging back with a whole group of people in tow.
“Th-there he is!”
At the front was a middle-aged mage with his robe flaring behind him. Behind him came a swarm of mages and armored knights.
Every one of them looked thoroughly shocked.
“You’re the one who wrote this parchment?”
The middle-aged mage, breathing hard, held up the parchment.
“I am Gailon, magical advisor to Bellat’s military base. This solution... did you really write it?”
“Yes.”
“And these few blank lines! If they’re filled in, can the purification magic circle be restored?”
“Of course.”
Blood rushed into Gailon’s face.
“I don’t know who you are, but I beg you. The city is on the verge of dying of thirst. If there’s anything you want, I’ll have the command headquarters repay you for it.”
Watching his desperate face, I answered at an easy pace.
“Hmm.”
“......”
“First, why don’t you tell me what you can offer me?”
I’d decide after hearing the terms.
I wasn’t the one at a disadvantage.