A Rich Harvest
The warehouse was spotless.
“Whoa.”
The gnome stared fixedly at the gleaming shelves, mouth hanging open.
“How… did you even clean all this?”
“Hoo… give me a second.”
I pressed a hand to my head, a little dizzy, and took a short while to catch my breath.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
As if it were already second nature, I raised my hand.
“Aerial Grasp.”
A pipe lying in the corner flew over and stuck firmly in my grip.
“Huh… what the heck is that?”
“There’s a thing like that.”
The gnome nodded.
“…You’re not a first-year, are you?”
“I am, though.”
“But you’ve already learned remote snatching that skilled cadets would use?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Hah.”
The gnome adjusted his pointed hat.
“You’re a genius, right?”
“Yes.”
“Seeing how arrogant you are, there’s no way you’re not a genius.”
It was a sight that reminded him of Donovan in his prime.
The gnome looked the place over a few more times after that, but everything shone as if it had been wet-mopped clean, and he had nothing left to say.
“…Perfect.”
“Thank you.”
“Right. A promise is a promise.”
I took the stone bearing the Thief Master’s blade traces from the gnome. The hand that passed it over was trembling hard.
“…Thank you?”
“This is expensive…! You can’t lose it!”
“Of course not.”
I took the stone with a firm tug, almost snatching it. He had clearly considered just giving it away on impulse and now found himself reluctant to part with it.
Still, the gnome turned out to be more of an optimist than expected.
“W-what’s a little thing like this! It’s actually for the best! If I’d tried to clean that warehouse myself it would’ve taken me years!”
“Is that so.”
“O-of course! A rock like that—even if I had hundreds of them, they’d be useless to me! It’ll be worth more in your hands!”
It was a lie. There was no way a stone that still held the first Thief Master’s blade traces could be worthless.
Ugh, still, I’ve got to wrap this up on a good note.
The gnome forced a smile and patted my calf with his tiny hand.
“I wish more competent guys like you were my gnomes!”
“I’m still a student, so.”
“After you graduate, if you’re ever bored between missions, come see me! I’ll pay you well!”
The gnome offered a handshake with his fist-sized hand.
“So, you’re heading back now?”
“Yes. If I don’t, I’ll miss curfew, and right now…”
I glanced at the cleaning tools I’d been using until a moment ago.
“Mind if I take some of these brooms and dustpans with me?”
“Why not just buy them at the general store?”
“They don’t have enchanted equipment there.”
“Fine, take as many as you like!”
The gnome had gotten his warehouse cleaned, after all. He decided he could just give me this much.
“Thank you.”
I opened my spatial pouch. More than ten sets of enchanted cleaning tools vanished into it with a series of soft whooshes.
“Huh? Huh? I never said you could take that many!”
“Going back on your word with the same mouth, senior?”
“Grr!”
The gnome hopped up and down in place.
“Do you know how much one of those sets costs, and you’re just taking them all!”
“Shall I give them back?”
“Grr! You’re doing this on purpose because you know fairies can’t break a promise!!”
I allowed myself a satisfied little curl of the lips.
Perfect. Next time I clean the Ruby Dormitory annex, I can make the first-year hall kids sweep and scrub with these.
I stepped out of the employment office.
“I’ll be going, then.”
“Don’t ever come back!! You thief junior!!”
“Aren’t all thieves thieves?”
“Grrr!!”
“But I’m not a thief.”
Leaving the gnome still hopping furiously in the office doorway, I quickened my pace.
I’d gotten a lead on the Solitaire cipher. Practiced qi operation. Received the Thief Master’s snatching arts manual. And scored cleaning tools on top of it…
Today’s haul is rich.
I smiled faintly.
People really do get lucky when they live honestly.
“See you around, then, Gnome Senior.”
“I said don’t come back!!”
After returning to Thief School, I went to the principal’s office to report.
“Did the commission go well?”
“Yeah, more or less.”
Of course, I had come a day late.
“You should’ve come straight back. Why did you dawdle around before showing up?”
Being tricked into the job without so much as a heads-up had left me quietly pissed off.
He’s holding back a laugh right now, isn’t he?
Donovan was desperately forcing the corners of his mouth down.
Ha… I really want to just charge him head-on.
But the principal of Thief School was still my superior, so I couldn’t answer honestly.
“I had a few things to take care of.”
“Tsk… Fine. Tell me what happened.”
I recounted helping the merchants downtown, then carrying out the gnome’s commission.
“One merchant was shaking down the city merchants for their goods.”
“Right. I’ll send someone to deal with that myself.”
Donovan said it while riffling a deck of cards into a neat stack with a soft flutter.
“And the commission.”
All I had really done was help clean the gnome office, but I had already coordinated with the gnome to claim I’d done something more substantial—clearing out lesser magical beasts, that sort of thing.
In truth, Thief School entrants were a higher caliber than most people expected. Even a Novice Cadet who had only just started the curriculum could easily handle lower-grade magical beasts.
“I cleared a mine road that had been overrun by lesser wisps.”
“Well done. That’ll do.”
Wisps were spirit-type magical beasts that floated around like little electric balloons, spitting sparks. A lot of ordinary citizens thought they were pure energy and impossible to catch, but you could put one down just by stabbing the core with a dagger. You just had to endure the shock.
“Didn’t it hurt?”
“I toughed it out with special forces spirit.”
“What the… never mind. I get it.”
Donovan issued his dismissal.
“Get out. Make sure I don’t have to see you again until the end of the semester.”
“Yes. I’ll be going.”
The way Donovan was smirking while trying not to laugh grated on me. I turned to leave, then stopped as if something had just occurred to me.
“Ah, right.”
I turned back around.
“Gnome Senior was really angry at you, Principal.”
“What?”
Donovan’s eyes narrowed.
“Why all of a sudden?”
“I should have mentioned it sooner… but you haven’t been managing the employment office very carefully lately, have you?”
“That’s none of your business.”
I dropped my gaze for a moment, then met Donovan’s eyes again.
“He said he would no longer tolerate unfair contracts against fairies. That he was going to file a petition with the Magic Tower and the imperial court under Principal Donovan’s name.”
“!!!”
Donovan’s eyes went wide.
“He even said the Gnome Group was considering terminating their contract with Thief School.”
From what Gnome Senior had told me, the Gnome Employment Office handled a tremendous amount of work for this school. The only people who truly knew the geography of Thief School’s labyrinthine ant-tunnels and earthen pipes were those from the Gnome Group. As the nearly exclusive source of competent labor, they were something the school watched very carefully—and something that would be nearly impossible to replace.
“Is that true??”
It was not. In fact, I had never heard a single word from the gnome about filing any petition. This was all a lie.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
Bang!
“Why are you only saying this now!”
“… ”
“Ha… if this reaches the crown prince and the Magic Tower master, it’s going to be a real headache… no, we’ve been doing fine under the old custom all this time, so why now…”
Donovan hurriedly sent a messenger bird somewhere. Then he sat there looking stricken, heaving deep sighs.
“Ha… damn it.”
He clutched his head, slumped against the desk, and waved a hand.
“…Fine. Get out.”
I opened the door but only stuck my head back into the office.
“…Why are you still standing there?”
“Principal.”
“What.”
“Do you know something, though?”
“What is it.”
I grinned.
“That was complete bullshit, actually.”
Donovan’s face flushed bright red with outrage.
“W-what!?”
“Gnome Senior tipped me off that if I said something like this, the principal would freak out.”
I added,
“I was taught that among thieves, a clean deception is a virtue. Since you yourself taught this unworthy disciple a trick, Principal, I simply showed off what little I’d learned. Aren’t you proud?”
Donovan’s face went scarlet.
“You… you little!!”
I waved as I stepped out the door.
“That makes us even. Good work.”
“Ethan Cass, you bastard! Get back here!!”
In an instant I was on a zip line, vanishing across the forest.
I was in a good mood.
I had thoroughly messed with the principal first thing in the morning. It was the start of a solid day.
Today was Saturday. Any other cadet would have been off downtown or buried in their dorm room catching up on sleep. I, however, was hard at work preparing for hand techniques class.
Whoosh!
A dagger shot from my hand, scored a stone, and flew back into my grip.
The back courtyard of the Ruby Dormitory annex, draped in ivy. Thin mist clung to the ground.
Snap!
I was practicing remote snatching to produce a blade trace I could submit to Professor Felix.
“So it can be used this way too.”
A desk set out in the yard. The stone on top of it was covered in scratches.
Whoosh!
The dagger that had scored the stone flew back and settled snugly into my hand. To anyone watching, it would have looked like I was throwing a yo-yo around in the fog.
“Ugh, dizzy.”
I pressed a hand to my head and sat down where I stood.
“I can’t keep this up for long.”
In truth, remote snatching techniques like Aerial Grasp were almost never used in daily life. The qi drain was simply too heavy. For a thief, burning through all your qi at the start of a fight was suicide, so even on missions people mostly stuck to close-range snatching arts that didn’t require qi manipulation at all.
“Hah… just a short break.”
Around me lay the wreckage of desks and household tools I’d sliced apart. Daggers I’d bought at the downtown general store were stuck in the ground here and there.
“Um… Ethan!”
A female cadet who had been lingering at the edge of the yard hurried over, cheeks flushed, and held out a cloth.
“H-here, wipe with this, Ethan!”
“Ah, thank you, senior.”
On days without classes, upperclassmen and even classmates—female cadets—would sometimes show up and volunteer to wait on me. I found it too much trouble to stop them, so I just let it happen.
Leaving a few favors owed by the women isn’t a bad strategy either.
“Somehow even the way he wipes his sweat is sexy…”
“E-Ethan! Eat this too! I bought it at the general store.”
Female cadets kept squealing beside me. If Sera had seen it, she would have unleashed her Conqueror’s Haki on the spot.
Carson, who had been training with me, whispered to Iska.
“The world’s really not fair. Why do the girls only swarm around that guy?”
“Envy is a sin, Mr. Carson.”
A female senior handed me water and said,
“Did you hear the news?”
“…No? What news?”
“The main dorm building—first-years can use it starting today!”
The Ruby Dormitory main building that had turned into a disaster zone during the entrance exam. It seemed the traps had finally all been disarmed.
“So we can move in now?”
“Got anything to pack?”
“Nothing. I’ll just go check the room first.”
“Good. Follow me.”
I rode the monorail toward the main building of Ruby Dormitory.
Myuria thrust a hand confidently into the air.
“First-years! Welcome to Ruby Dormitory!”
The first impression I got when I opened the door to Ruby Dormitory was this:
What a dump.
A male cadet was tightly bound to a wooden pillar with chains. Crack! Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh! Upperclassmen clinging to the walls were exchanging shuriken. Crash-bang! A female cadet stepped on a trap someone had set and vanished into a hole.
“Ah… ahaha! No! That’s just because it’s early in the term and everyone’s training! Training! That’s why! Let’s go to the lounge!”
Myuria desperately tried to cover our eyes as she ushered us toward the lounge.
I sat for a moment, then lifted my head.
“Does this place not have dorm rules?”
“Ah, ahaha! There are! But once everyone’s been around a while, the second a professor or the houseparent shows up they vanish into their rooms like ghosts! So they never get caught, haha…”
As first-years, people still got docked points for running in the halls and getting caught by professors. By second year, that almost never happened.
“So that’s how it ended up looking like this.”
The school’s freewheeling atmosphere had clearly played a part in the current mess. In my previous life I had been an FM drill instructor who didn’t know the meaning of “cut some slack,” so the situation did not sit well with me at all.
I should tear this place up and start over sometime.
Just then the lounge door burst open.
“No-Name is trapped in the bathroom!”
“What? What are you talking about? Who set another trap?”
“I don’t know! Everyone’s piled on trying to dismantle the formation right now, but however they set it, it won’t come undone!”
“For real? What do we do!”
Myuria covered her mouth with an exaggerated gesture.
What was this about?
Iska whispered to me.
“Setting traps on campus is against school rules, isn’t it, Mr. Ethan?”
“It is, but.”
Did that even make sense? Cadets still had a code among themselves. No one would just plant a formation-trapped device with lethal potential anywhere they liked…
Bang.
The lounge door opened again, and a male senior walked in with wooden vines wrapped all over his body.
“Whoever put a wood-attribute insult trap in the third-floor bathroom toilet, step forward.”
Myuria called out in a bright, sunny voice.
“Oh, No-Name! You got out? I was just about to come rescue you!”
“So it was you, Myuria?”
Myuria’s eyes went round.
“Ah, no!? What are you talking about!”
“If you confess honestly, I’ll only roll you in the mat for about two minutes.”
“… ”
Every gaze in the room drifted naturally toward Myuria. The cheerful light in her eyes twisted into something serious.
“Tsk. Next time I’ll have to mix in a spirit formation too.”
Crash!
Senior Myuria smashed a window and fled along the wall in a blur.
“Damn it! Kids, catch that bitch!”
“What, Myuria again?”
Our group gathered near the broken window. Outside, Ruby Dormitory cadets could be seen chasing Myuria as she raced along the walls.
“Whoa… what kind of insane school is this.”
Thief School, where schemes and ruses ran rampant. The unskilled did not survive.