Chapter 31
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 31
Chapter Title: One-Eyed Village (3)
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"How... did you do that?"
The black-haired woman strode forward, as if she still couldn't comprehend what she'd just seen.
She wasn't a mage, that much was obvious. But she wasn't clueless about mana, either.
She was probably one of those warrior types who'd honed their body to wield mana.
Considering she'd swept up every weapon in the auction house, it all added up.
Instead of her, I pointed to one of the attendants standing behind her.
Unlike the black-haired woman, he had the air of a proper mage about him.
I couldn't pin down his exact rank, but it didn't matter anyway. Not while I was hiding behind the mask of Cedric.
"You. Come here and try it yourself."
"Ahem..."
One of the attendants shuffled over reluctantly.
"What exactly am I supposed to do?"
His voice was already deflated.
"Grab the thread and pull."
"Where's the thread...?"
"Look at the flow of mana, and you'll see it."
"I can't. Truth be told... I've never really handled an artifact before."
"...I see."
The mood sobered up instantly for some reason.
With no other choice, I explained the principle myself.
"Artifacts have these threads of mana that form their internal flow. In finely crafted ones, those threads can't be unraveled easily."
Of course, for standard or horse-drawn carriage-grade artifacts, most mages—including me—could manage it.
But they wouldn't come apart this effortlessly.
I hadn't tried it with treasured-grade ones myself, so I didn't know for sure, but they had to be even tougher. No way they'd unravel like this.
"As you can see with your own eyes, this one... it comes apart way too easily. Probably all the artifacts you bid on do."
"Oh ho."
"Oh..."
The black-haired woman and her attendants all nodded in a daze.
This wasn't the reaction I'd expected.
Shouldn't they be furious?
Watching them was making me feel dazed too.
...Why was I even bothering to explain this?
Oh, right. I needed to check out that ancient hero's relic.
"I think that's explanation enough."
"Yeah. So the takeaway is we smash the auction house owner, right?"
"I don't care if you smash him or whatever, just keep your promise."
The black-haired woman gave a curt nod, then shot to her feet and headed for the carriage.
She personally brought out the ancient hero's relic.
It was in a box, and she even unlocked it for me.
A sturdy box, and she placed it right in front of me after popping the lock.
Her straightforward decisiveness caught me off guard for a second, but I didn't let it show.
I wrapped mana around my fingertips and carefully lifted the small iron plate fragment.
I checked for any lingering traces, just in case, but as expected, there were no signs it belonged to a hero.
That didn't mean it was fake, though.
There were no traces of anyone else's mana, either.
The original mana it might have held had probably been swept away by time...
And no one with mana had handled it.
More precisely, even if someone had touched it, there were no signs of them manipulating it with mana.
Which meant the person who put it up for auction had done so as-is, without any special measures.
...I couldn't be certain, but I had a gut feeling it was real.
Come to think of it, none of the auction items linked to Transcendents showed signs of tampering.
Who the hell put them up there?
Should I just hand it all off to Joart?
'No need for me to stir things up myself.'
He'd come running if I just slipped him the info.
As I mulled that over, the black-haired woman and her attendants busied themselves.
What were they thinking, not even watching me? What if I just grabbed the hero relic and bolted?
Before I knew it, they'd surrounded the entire auction house.
And more people kept pouring in from who-knows-where, swelling their ranks like a tide.
All her people?
The tension was thick enough that something big was about to go down, so I slipped the relic back into its box and stood.
"Oh? Leaving already?"
She spotted me from afar and waved casually.
"See ya."
"..."
What the...?
Didn't she say something about giving me a job?
Well, now that she knew she'd been scammed, maybe her priorities shifted.
No messy entanglements for me—better this way.
I turned and walked off without hesitation.
"My name's Lina, by the way. See you again soon."
For some reason, an uneasy feeling lingered, so I wandered other places for a few days instead of heading back to the lab.
Three days later, I returned to Jengen to check on the corpse.
It looked like it'd been dead a while, but it was preserved professionally.
They even offered delivery to a spot I designated.
No hassle of sneaking it out myself—why say no?
Surprisingly thorough work.
The auction house was a disaster, but for tedious jobs like this, they were worth considering.
I casually asked Jengen, too.
"That auction house you recommended... who supplies the goods there?"
"Oh, all sorts."
Too many to track them all, he said.
But the rumor about the ancient hero's relic? That came from the Prox Merchant Group.
I shook my head when he offered to dig more.
Yeah, better to pass it to Joart after all.
That's when Jengen dropped an unexpected bombshell.
Three days ago, the auction house had been turned into a wasteland.
A massive underworld force that controlled the capital's back alleys had swept in, ensuring no auctions would ever happen there again—not even a trace left behind.
Now, bloody winds were blowing between them and the auction house's backers.
No doubt that Lina woman's doing.
She had some serious backing, alright.
I headed back to Palrez's lab, and late that night, I fetched the corpse from the spot I'd specified.
I hauled it back to the lab without drawing eyes.
No one was around.
Classes had started, and Palrez was swamped, so he wouldn't drop by for a while.
Just keep the smell under control, and it'd be fine.
They said he'd become a popular professor.
Rumor had it, his lectures sparked fierce competition just to attend.
What he'd rambled about drunk, in fantasy, had come true.
Palrez was busier than ever outside teaching, but he still wanted to stay on as a professor.
Not my place to stop him.
Especially since I dumped nearly everything on him anyway—no grounds to meddle.
Anyway, I dove back into the experiments proper.
I had no intention of sculpting it exactly like human bone, but I'd make it as close as possible.
The more similar, the lower the odds of anyone spotting it.
Since it was my first time handling actual human bone, I examined it closely—density, thickness, sheen, color—recording every detail by touch and sight.
Bone's famously resistant to fire, so basing it on ore with similar traits seemed smarter than mimicking bone itself.
Using ore as a motif made sculpting easier, and bridging it to the treasured-grade artifact via mana flowed naturally.
My mana, with its trait-conversion property, had grown stronger after hitting 5th circle rank, which helped a ton.
The projected timeline shrank dramatically.
I even confirmed stable linkage over short distances—the bone-like thing I'd shaped moved just fine.
At this rate, I'd have time to spare.
But experiments always work like that: solve one issue, and the next rears up.
Distance.
Distance was the problem.
The regular assembly spot was beyond the barrier.
Beyond the barrier meant no imperial control, barely even northern oversight—a total lawless zone.
To secure my safety, I needed a safe distance from the Philip Deran I'd create.
I'd already scattered manaphones across the empire, but that worked because I'd personally etched the circuits with care.
Artisan spirit infused, you could say.
Short range was fine with crude links, but longer distances demanded precise circuits.
Problem was, I couldn't etch those circuits into this treasured-grade artifact with artisan spirit even if I wanted to.
No room to shoehorn my work into a perfectly finished piece.
...So I decided.
Disassemble the treasured-grade artifact.
Palrez, Parovian, Raistel—any of them would call me insane.
No denying it.
It was insane.
I'd disassembled standard and carriage-grade artifacts plenty, but treasured-grade? Different story.
These were heirlooms passed down generations until they wore out.
First treasured-grade artifact I'd ever held, too.
Artifacts have mana flows wrapping them like threads.
Once unraveled, they can't be rewound. The artifact loses its power entirely.
Disassemble it, and unless you recreate it identically, it's done for.
But that's exactly what I'd do.
Because... if I don't, it's useless anyway.
No safe distance meant higher risk for me... and no point in attending the assembly.
The whole purpose vanishes.
Sure, other uses for the artifact, but I had no attachment.
The moment I steeled myself, I wrapped my hand in mana.
And grasped one of the mana threads encasing the treasured-grade artifact.
As expected from treasured-grade, it wouldn't yield easily.
I pulled every drop of mana from my circle and poured it into controlling the thread.
And as I tugged...
Snap— the taut thread began to unravel.