Holding the Line
In front of the Kodana Exchange, the welcoming ceremony prepared for the Hero began promptly at seven in the morning.
At first, everyone assumed the spectacle would closely mirror the ordeal of former Second Prince Matthias—hours of an enraged mob venting their fury with hurled bricks, stones, rotten eggs, and squashed tomatoes. Given that the hatred toward the Hero far eclipsed that felt for Matthias, people simply expected a longer, far more savage stoning.
Yet the nobles gathered before the exchange displayed an unexpected degree of order. Despite faces twitching with suppressed rage and despair, they reached a mutual consensus: they would form a line and confront the Hero one by one.
No official had ordered it. It was simply a tacit understanding born of collective agony. Mere venting would never suffice; simply throwing stones and walking away would do nothing to soothe the bottomless despair clawing at their chests.
From that moment on, Hero Kwon Hee-jin was forced to meet each aggrieved soul who demanded an audience, entirely against his will. The only comfort he had in the world was the potion bottle Eric had shoved into his hands, which he clutched like a lifeline.
His first visitor was a young woman.
She did not immediately resort to violence. Instead, she gripped the iron bars with both hands, pressed her face close, and fixed him with a chilling, unblinking glare. Baby fat still clung to her cheeks, yet her features were worn by bitter worldly trials. She introduced herself as an undergraduate from the Imperial Academy's Faculty of Magic.
"The imperial palace waived my tuition," she said, her voice eerily calm. "A true act of grace, wouldn't you agree?"
Kwon Hee-jin offered no answer, trembling in silence.
"To be frank, Hero, I don't even hate you that much. I only lost about a hundred and eighty million liras. If I just resign myself to spending my entire twenties paying off the debt, it's manageable enough."
"Th-then why... come to me...?"
"Because one of my friends committed suicide."
Her tone was bone-dry. The Hero hastily averted his gaze, unable to bear the young student's eyes. Instead, his attention dropped to the wand gripped in her slender fingers. It seemed unlikely she would cast lethal offensive magic in a wide-open plaza before thousands of onlookers, but in a crowd this unhinged, nothing was guaranteed. His breathing grew shallow and rapid.
"Don't look so terrified, Hero. Offensive magic isn't my specialty. Besides, look at the line stretching behind me—it wouldn't do to leave you critically injured before the others get their turn, would it?"
"...What!?"
"I prepared something else instead."
The student began a slow, deliberate chant. While faster than Yuni, the Hero Party's notoriously sluggish mage, she was still an unpolished apprentice, making the incantation drag out agonizingly. The spell she invoked was a tactile stimulation charm—a mischievous bit of magic designed to produce minute, prolonged sensory irritation across the skin.
The trouble was the target area: the soles of his feet.
"...Pfft. Wait, hold on—"
Kwon Hee-jin's face warped into an absurd grimace as his body squirmed uncontrollably. An unbearable tickling sensation began crawling up the bottoms of his feet. He twisted frantically, biting his lip to suppress the laughter, but muffled snickers leaked past his teeth nonetheless.
"It should last about six hours," she noted mildly. "A pity this is all I can manage."
"Pf-haha... Wait, please! Wait a second, dispel this—!"
"Enjoy yourself, Hero."
"Aagh...!"
The Hero pleaded desperately for release, but his first guest turned on her heel and departed as though she were completely deaf to his cries. Left behind, Kwon Hee-jin shuddered, tears pricking the corners of his eyes.
"Pffft... hahahaha!"
Unable to endure the agonizing stimulation, he finally burst into helpless laughter. Only after hearing the wretched bray of his own mirth did it dawn on him that this trivial, childish spell might very well be the most lethal torture ever devised. Unlike the first visitor, who had delivered her hex and slipped away with icy composure, the second person stepping up to the cage possessed a face dark with incandescent fury.
"You think this is funny, Hero?"
"No, wait... hic! That's not it—!"
The Hero writhed, fighting with every fiber of his being to stifle his giggles. Yet the more he twisted and thrashed, the sharper the tickling became. He threw his head back, desperate to explain his predicament, but—
Splat!
A raw egg detonated square against the bridge of his nose. It wasn't merely raw; it was foul and rotten. Thick yolk and gelatinous, cloudy whites smeared across his eyes and cheeks, accompanied by a stench beyond human description. The reek was so nauseating that it momentarily shocked the tickling sensation into submission.
"You son of a—!"
Splat!
A second egg exploded across his mouth before the curse could clear his lips. The third and fourth projectiles struck the iron bars and shattered harmlessly, but it brought him zero comfort; an entire basket brimming with rotten eggs remained. The stench, the sickening slime, and the renewed surge of electric tickling up his legs coalesced into a bespoke hell.
Instinctively, the Hero curled into a tight ball. If he couldn't stop the laughing, he could at least shield his face from impacts and hide the involuntary grin stretching his cheeks. It seemed a sensible compromise, but even that modest defense proved utterly futile.
The third guest in line stepped forward, brandishing a heavy crossbow modified to fire dense steel ball bearings. Evidently, they had realized that standard stones lacked the force to penetrate the Hero's fortified physique and had come prepared with superior armor-piercing ordnance. Behind them, an endless queue of ruined souls stood waiting, eyes burning with retribution.
Inside the iron cage, the Hero finally broke down and began to weep.
While the Hero was receiving such fervent "love and devotion" out in the square, the interior of the Kodana Exchange told a different story. Even prior to the morning bell, over eight hundred people were packed shoulder to shoulder onto the trading floor, leaving scarcely an inch of bare stone.
It was an exact replay of the first crash, where investors had tasted true despair, and the second crash, which had incinerated the last embers of hope. Now, the situation had deteriorated far beyond a simple price collapse; the market stood on the precipice of total annihilation.
"We might actually die today," a counter clerk muttered, his complexion bleached bone-white as the opening hour approached.
Moments later, the bell chimed, and a torrent of sell orders came crashing down. The opening price flashed at 26.4 million liras.
The vast majority dumping their holdings were commoner retail investors who had entered the frenzy during its final gasp. The nobility was largely occupied with tormenting the Hero outside; having bought in at two to three hundred million, an incremental drop down in the tens of millions scarcely registered on their emotional radar anymore. The commoners, however, were paralyzed by sheer terror. Their desperate faith that Kodana—already crushed to less than a fourteenth of its peak—could not possibly fall any further had shattered into dust.
"Fuck...! Hey, sell one at yesterday's close! Goddammit, just sell it!"
"Mind your tongue, customer. I am a quasi-noble."
"Huh...? Ah, f-forgive me! Just... just sell it quickly, please!"
"Order logged."
Hysterical investors shoved and elbowed one another, clawing for position at the counters. Being commoners, most possessed only one or two coins at best, but to those who had gambled in hopes of securing modest windfalls, those coins represented their entire life savings. In the back of the room, imperial intelligence operatives blended into the throng, observing the bedlam and letting out quiet, resigned sighs. Everything was unfolding precisely according to script.
The nobles were fixated on the Hero, while the commoners surrendered to panic and liquidated at any price. The Court Department's assessment had concluded that Kodana would freefall through every historical support until it drilled directly into the earth.
Today marks the death of Kodana.
Within thirty minutes of the opening bell, the operatives were entirely convinced. Yet the market refused to obey their predictions. Unlike previous crashes where the floor simply dropped away into a bottomless void, an unnatural bulwark suddenly materialized.
The moment the sell backlog hit nineteen coins at the 20 million mark, a voice cut through the clamor.
"I'll buy all available volume at twenty million."
The speaker was a young man clad in unremarkable commoner garments. The plummeting price ground to a dead halt. Everyone who had wagered that Kodana would hit rock bottom before noon froze in utter astonishment. Even the clerk logging the transaction blinked stupidly.
"U-um, that's nineteen coins... Are you certain? Pardon me, but trade settlements can only be accepted in physical gold coin or bullion bars."
"I'll take them all."
Without a flicker of emotion, the young man overturned heavy leather pouches, spilling thick cascades of imperial gold coins across the wood. The manic buzz of the trading floor went instantly frigid.
Merchants who had been on the verge of shrieking over their vanished fortunes snapped their mouths shut. Tellers who had been quietly agonizing over how to find their next job after the exchange shut down smacked their lips in bewilderment. And the pupils of the imperial spies—who had predicted prices would plunge into the single digits before midday—darted frantically in disbelief.
Yet the investor who had casually bought nineteen coins in a single breath simply swept his purchase into a pouch and vanished into the dense crowd. Relative to peak valuations, it was an amount that couldn't have purchased even a single coin, but in this climate, he was either a man of unprecedented courage—or an utter, irredeemable fool.
His identity had not been shrouded in mystery. The registration plaque he had presented at the counter indicated he was a resident of a provincial estate far removed from the Imperial Capital. A commoner through and through.
A provincial commoner dropping hundreds of millions of liras in cash...?
A heavy, bewildered silence hung over the trading hall. Speculative whispers quickly broke the stillness.
"Is it actually safe to sell right now?"
"Wait... if Kodana drops to absolute zero, doesn't the imperial palace lose out too? Maybe... how should I put it... maybe they're propping up the floor!"
"It's already fallen as far as it can go. Maybe a syndicate is cornering the supply!"
Trading ground to a virtual standstill as amateurs tossed wild theories back and forth. The lull, however, did not last. A noble who had finished his audience with the Hero stepped into the exchange with the hollow, detached expression of a man who had attained enlightenment, marching up to the desk to dump his personal stash.
True to his aristocratic status, he placed thirteen coins on the block. He seemed perfectly prepared to slash his ask to virtually nothing if they failed to sell; his sole aim was to wash his hands of the cursed things forever. The pricing clerk swallowed hard, eyes darting nervously as he calculated the order book.
Surely lightning won't strike twice...
Just as the crowd began exchanging skeptical glances—silently asking who could possibly be stupid enough to take the bait—another voice spoke out from the floor.
"I'll take the entire lot at twenty million."
Another anonymous buyer stepped forward, swept up all thirteen coins at the 20 million mark, and promptly melted away into the throng. Once again, the price locked in place.
To any observer, this was well beyond abnormal. Commoners who had never once set foot in the exchange were suddenly materializing from thin air to drop three to four hundred million liras apiece. The surveillance personnel monitoring the room immediately dispatched shadows to tail the buyers and fired urgent dispatches up the bureaucratic chain: someone was deliberately defending Kodana, establishing an impenetrable wall at the bafflingly specific price of twenty million liras.