Making Money Is Really Hard (2)
Leaving the fourth basement floor behind for now, I returned once more to the third.
Then I scoured every last room on the third basement floor.
Just in case any traces of the crime remained.
Fortunately, they had carried out their work with considerable thoroughness; nothing particularly conspicuous caught the eye.
As for the familiars that had directly performed the acts, control usually lapsed the moment their master died, so I had no need to worry. Familiars put to work like that were typically nothing more than insects or small animals that happened to be wandering the roadside. With the master gone, they were no longer my concern.
That said, even after turning the entire third basement floor upside down, nothing of monetary value presented itself. Not gold, not jewels—not even a single small artifact or cursed object.
In the original work they supposedly found a considerable amount of gold on the third floor.
Yet on this third basement floor, nothing of the sort appeared. The reason, I learned from Marbas.
In other words, the demon that had been controlling this villain had paid an enormous price to summon its true body. It would have consumed every last livestock on the fourth basement floor, of course, and offered up every valuable object stockpiled on the third in the attempt to call itself forth.
What it never expected was that Marbas would force his way into the ritual, so that instead of its own body appearing on the altar, Marbas himself would burst out.
One question still lingered, though.
In the original work, the protagonists arrived here several months later than my current timing, yet no foreshadowing of any ritual had been described at all.
Several possibilities came to mind.
The villain himself might have performed the ritual. He could have forced it ahead of schedule after deciding I posed a threat. If that were the case, the self-immolation would have been an unexpected turn even for him.
Another possibility existed. The demon might have seized complete control of the villain and, since I had already come and the villain was going to die by my hand anyway, simply offered him up as a sacrifice. If its true body could be summoned in the process, that would have been an enormous gain; even if the body failed to appear, successfully parasitizing me would still have been a considerable profit.
But something far beyond its expectations had occurred, so by now that demon was probably grinding its teeth in fury.
With those thoughts in mind I searched the second and first basement floors as well, yet nothing turned up.
When I finally passed through the first basement floor and stepped outside, however, a sense of wrongness struck me. Drawn by that unease, I returned to the first basement floor and examined the surroundings with care—and discovered something interesting.
One thing on the first basement floor had changed.
Objects that had been placed at regular intervals were gone. The ones I had left untouched because they felt like things I ought not to touch. They had vanished without a trace. They must have been used in the ritual along with the treasures of the third floor and the offerings of the fourth.
This dungeon—no, calling it a dungeon felt wasteful. Call it a workshop instead.
After searching the entire workshop, I reached a conclusion.
No more valuables remained here.
In the end, everything I had gained from all this trouble was this vast space, a handful of books, a few dolls, and a filthy livestock pen.
What did that mean?
It meant I had not scraped together a single coin.
Time flowed on and on, until the day of the academy entrance ceremony drew near.
In the meantime I had learned to control the various dolls perfectly. They were little more than programmed artificial intelligences possessing only the faintest scraps of self-awareness, so mastering their use had been quite easy.
The fourth basement floor, which had previously received only the barest maintenance and never escaped the limits of a livestock pen, had now been reborn through the dolls’ labor and the power of Clean Magic into a perfectly empty, spotless space.
Black Mana corrupts magic—so how had I been able to use Clean Magic?
The principle was simple.
I simply refined the Black Mana before using it.
Every black mage’s mana inevitably turns into Black Mana, so they devised methods that allowed them to cast ordinary spells even while possessing it. Of course most simple spells could still be activated with Black Mana—though the magic itself might become corrupted. And black mages preferred not to shoulder that risk.
It was only natural. Suppose a black mage wanted to use a simple Water spell to cook rice. The water that emerged would be black, and it would stink. Would anyone want to eat rice cooked with that water? Absolutely not.
Black mages who had suffered such experiences—or who simply refused to suffer them—had devised a solution: refine the Black Mana and convert it into pure mana. The leftover residue was then compressed into black beads and stored. Because those beads were saturated with the essence of Black Mana, they could be used wherever Black Mana was required.
Residue… or rather, high-purity lumps of Black Mana, one might say.
One could cast magic freely without fear of corruption, and the leftover beads found use everywhere—a perfect two birds with one stone.
Even so, the method had its drawbacks. One could not store pure mana inside the body under ordinary circumstances, and the efficiency was poor. Even if you refined Black Mana and gathered pure mana within yourself, it would mix with the Black Mana already present and turn back into Black Mana. Of course, residue would still remain, so if that was the goal it might be worthwhile. Someone desperately short of money might do it. Still, most black magic demanded the caster’s own Black Mana, so the practice was rarely employed.
Moreover, refining Black Mana itself added an extra step before a spell could be cast, inevitably delaying the process. A certain amount of mana was also lost in the conversion from Black Mana to pure mana, further harming efficiency.
Yet the mere fact that a black mage could use ordinary magic in an ordinary way was already something to be grateful for, so black mages had no choice but to grit their teeth and use the method.
I was no different.
At any rate, the fourth basement floor had been reborn as a space where I learned black magic from Marbas.
After transmigrating into this world I had investigated black magic as thoroughly as possible, yet the field was so closed-off that I had learned little. Consequently I knew almost nothing about it and had to receive lectures from Marbas starting from the very beginning.
Learning basic black magic from a Great Demon felt rather ironic, yet Marbas himself seemed to enjoy it all the more.
…or something to that effect, I believe.
In any case, after learning a fair amount of black magic, I returned home once more.
Three days remained until the academy entrance ceremony.
It had been a long time since I last set foot in my house. The hour was night, and the moon shone clearly in the sky to match. The home I returned to after so long still retained a fair sense of lived-in life.
"It's been quite a while since I've been here as well."
Before my transmigration the house had been a bleak place with little sense of habitation, but that changed after I arrived. I was not the sort to scatter things about carelessly, yet the scene I first saw upon transmigrating had been almost too clean. There had not even been dust, so someone had clearly been living here. Perhaps the original owner had suffered from a cleanliness obsession.
"Kang."
The moment I stepped inside, Miho burst out. Landing on the floor, she casually climbed onto the sofa and sprawled out.
I had summoned her to guard the place, yet instead of doing her job she simply lazed about while sucking on my mana. There were times when Marbas floating beside me felt more reliable.
"Kang!"
Sensing my irreverent thoughts, Miho expressed her displeasure from the sofa.
…Watching a black fox wriggle about on the sofa was rather adorable. The sight warmed the heart.
"Kang."
Only then did Miho seem satisfied and flop back down across the cushions.
Hmm…
I had much to say, but it was probably best left unsaid.
Clack.
I drew a single black bead from the pouch at my side and tossed it to Miho. She had been watching me intently from the moment I produced the bead; the instant I threw it she snapped it up with agile precision.
Miho loved these beads. Because they were compressed from my Black Mana, she seemed to treat them like snacks.
Leaving her behind, I moved on.
Click.
I opened the refrigerator. The scene inside was little different from the day I first transmigrated. I had arrived in early-to-mid January; it was now late February, so I had already lived more than a month in this world. Yet most of February had been spent in that villain’s dungeon, so the time I had actually spent in this house was not particularly long.
By now that place almost felt more like home. I decided to regard the dungeon simply as a training ground. Once I entered the academy I would move into the dormitory, so I might not visit either this house or the training ground very often—yet having a private training ground was still a good thing, was it not?
Unwelcome visitors rarely interrupted training there. Yellow cloths that radiated an ominous aura had been placed in various spots around the mountain. As long as those yellow cloths remained, ordinary people would not be able to disturb my practice.
For someone only a month into transmigration, this counted as fairly solid progress, did it not?
Tomorrow I would wander around the neighborhood a little and do some sightseeing.