Making Money Is Really Hard (3)
—Thud.
The deep night, when the moon had flaunted its beauty to the fullest, had passed, and the sun was just beginning to climb the sky. It was that hazy hour when moon and sun still wrestled for dominion, the world outside still dim and half-awake.
—Thud. Thud.
—THUD!
"…Are they fighting monsters up there?"
What on earth were they doing on the floor above to make this much racket at such an early hour?
I sat up in bed, and Marbas dragged its plushie body over to me.
"Curious as to what they do above, art thou? I could tell thee—if I so desired."
"I'm fine. They might have their reasons."
"Kang."
Miho, who had been sleeping beside me, stirred awake and climbed onto my lap. I stroked the little black fox settled across my legs. The soft fur under my hand soothed both body and mind.
Honestly, weren't summons the ultimate pets? Miho ate nothing but mana, so there was no waste to clean up either. That alone was an enormous advantage over ordinary animals.
Of course, some summons did eat food and produce the corresponding byproducts—but that was a case-by-case thing. No animal on Earth lived on mana alone, yet among summons there were two kinds: those that consumed only mana, and those that ate both mana and food. Even the ones that ate food could, in principle, survive on mana alone; the meals were more of a luxury, a matter of preference.
And on NerTube—the video platform pretty much everyone in this world used—you could find no end of people raising summons as pets.
I lifted Miho off my lap, set her back on the bed, and got up to head for the bathroom. In the mirror, I studied my reflection. The narrow eyes looked a little—just a little—suspicious, but overall I was handsome enough.
…Maybe I should take a shower.
After drying my hair, I sat on the sofa and raised a hand. Palm turned upward, I set my mana in motion. The energy moved exactly as I willed it, sketching a small magic circle above my open hand. I poured mana into the finished circle. The formation, having swallowed a measure of black mana, flared with light—and from it several butterflies of purple and black unfurled into the air.
Black and violet butterflies drifted through the living room. I guided them back onto my palm.
Black Poison Magibeast Butterflies and Violet Poison Magibeast Butterflies. Both were subspecies of the magibeast butterfly: the black ones carried a neurotoxin, the violet ones a paralytic. That was why they were called poison magibeast butterflies. I had collected a few of them on the mountain where my training grounds lay.
In this world, mana carried many attributes. A volcanic region seething with lava brimmed with fire-attribute mana; a coastline battered by waves overflowed with water-attribute mana. Beasts that lived in such places often absorbed that influence so deeply that their forms and traits could change overnight. Take a porcupine steeped in fire-attribute mana—it might suddenly wear a collar of flame and throw punches wreathed in fire. Creatures like that were called magibeasts.
These butterflies had been transformed by black mana. When a butterfly emerged from its chrysalis in a place saturated with black mana, it became a magibeast butterfly. The mountain that held my training grounds had not originally been so thick with black mana, but the energy I spilled during practice must have seeped into the soil and stone; I had found the butterflies there. I collected them at once, converted one of the rooms on the third basement floor into a breeding chamber, and put them inside.
The ones on my palm were second-generation magibeast butterflies raised in that chamber. Unlike the first generation, they had been fed a concentrated diet of my black mana, so their venom and combat power far outstripped ordinary magibeast butterflies. They also understood my commands remarkably well.
I watched them flutter across my palm for a moment longer, then dismissed them.
Today I planned to take a look around the city. In a world crawling with every kind of supernatural ability, there would be sights I never would have seen in the world I came from.
All right. Where to first?
Hmm… for now, let's just get outside.
I stepped out of the house with Miho and Marbas.
"So then—where is thy destination?"
"I haven't decided yet. I just came out. I was thinking of heading toward the shopping district, though."
There was a place I would have to visit in a few hours no matter what. In the original novel, this was the day the protagonist came to Yongsan at the request of his childhood friend, who wanted help picking out a weapon. While they were shopping, a villain attacked them in a quiet corner where ability users were scarce. The protagonist and his childhood friend fought back with almost supernatural coordination, protected the ordinary people nearby, and finally subdued the villain. At the entrance ceremony they received an award directly from the principal and became overnight celebrities within the academy. That fame became the seed of contact with various heroines and dragged them into all sorts of incidents—that was how the original story went.
My reason for going was simple. I wanted to see the protagonist and his childhood friend's combat power for myself. I was also curious what the villain looked like.
Well then—off to the shopping district.
I took the subway toward the commercial quarter. The shopping district in Yongsan was famous as the largest in Korea. Here you could buy anything: magic, martial arts manuals, common weapons like daggers, even obscure pieces that looked like they belonged in a historical drama. With that much ground to cover, there would be plenty to see. The place was so vast I might never find the protagonist's party—but that couldn't be helped. I would just have to tell myself I had come for tourism.
The moment I stepped off at Yongsan Station, the smell of iron hit me hard. Outside, the street was a carnival of every kind of person. A woman in a flamboyant robe that screamed mage at a glance. A muscle-bound man who looked well over two meters tall. On one side the air was thick with black mana—black mages clustered there, no doubt—while the opposite side radiated holy power. Apparently the black mages and the holy practitioners kept to opposite ends of the district.
By contrast, plenty of ordinary people with no mana at all moved through the crowd. People born with mana were not that common to begin with. Most supernatural abilities required it; the few an ordinary person could use were limited to things like shamanic arts. Without mana, protecting yourself was no easy task. For people like that, the shops here stocked a wide range of self-defense artifacts and talismans that could be activated without any mana of your own.
While browsing the artifacts in one shop, I spotted something that looked interesting and spoke to the proprietor, who for some reason had been staring at me the entire time.
"Excuse me—what kind of artifact is this?"
The shopkeeper flinched, then clasped both hands over his stomach and answered in a carefully respectful tone.
"Ah—ahhh. That one? It's nothing special. Just a simple self-defense artifact. But, uh… you don't really seem like you'd need it…"
Something felt off. The mana sealed inside that artifact was markedly weaker than in the others around it.
"Ah, is that so? Thank you for the explanation. However…"
"W-why do you ask…?"
I smiled as I spoke, and cold sweat began to bead more and more thickly on the shopkeeper's face.
"It's nothing. By the way—you keep sweating. Are you all right?"
Only then did he seem to notice his own condition; he wiped his brow with his sleeve. Wondering if something was wrong with him, I swept a thread of mana through his body—but found nothing unusual, only a heart rate that was racing absurdly fast. The moment my mana passed through him, his face went deathly pale.
Is he actually unwell?
"Ah—ahh… y-yes, I'm fine. Fine."
I had no idea why he was stammering like that, but he said he was fine, so I let it go. After looking over a few more artifacts, I left the shop.
"Take care."
The shopkeeper kept sweating coldly until the moment I was out the door. Sweating that hard—shouldn't that mean something was wrong with his health? I was genuinely worried.
Marbas drifted closer, as if it had read the look on my face.
"What thoughts occupy thee?"
"Ah—that man just now. He kept breaking out in a cold sweat. I wondered if something might be wrong with his health. You would know, wouldn't you?"
Marbas snickered.
"My contractor would do well to regard himself with a more objective eye."
What on earth is that supposed to mean?
"I almost fucking died…"
The shopkeeper let out a long, shuddering breath of pure relief. That had been genuinely dangerous.
At first I just thought some weird guy had wandered into my shop first thing in the morning…
The man with the narrow, deeply suspicious eyes had looked so shady that the shopkeeper had only glanced at him for a second—and that alone had been enough. The smile that sat so thickly on the man's face carried a sense of imminent crisis, as if he might do something terrible at any moment. And yet the things he said were completely ordinary. At a glance he seemed like a regular customer who had simply taken an interest in one artifact—except that the artifact itself was the problem.
It was an ordinary artifact. The only thing special about it was that its performance was catastrophically worse than every other piece around it. Of course, the shopkeeper had priced it roughly the same as the rest—maybe even a little higher than it deserved. And that narrow-eyed man had noticed with uncanny precision and issued a warning.
Then came what he said next.
"Ah, is that so? Thank you for the explanation. However…"
He had cut himself off and pointed out the cold sweat instead. What had he been about to say? And then—the sudden brush of black mana sweeping through the shopkeeper's body had nearly stopped his heart.
Black mana!
Fresh sweat started down the shopkeeper's face as he leaned against the wall. Had the man been a black mage? If so, that was the worst possible outcome. Villains were thick among black mages. Someone who looked like that could not possibly not be a villain—so he was definitely a villain—and the force and atmosphere that rolled off him while he spoke told the shopkeeper, on pure instinct, that this man ranked high even among villains.
Did one of his underlings buy that artifact? Don't tell me he came for revenge…
Fortunately, the narrow-eyed man had done nothing and left the shop almost at once. He must have decided to give the shopkeeper one chance. The man had crawled out of hell alive.
"This is no time to stand around—I need to get rid of that piece-of-shit artifact right now."