The Air Conditioner Steals the Ice Mages' Jobs (2)
「 Morne Merchant Guild 」
It was not a particularly large guild.
But its value could never be judged by appearances alone. Ever since its founding, the Morne Merchant Guild had been climbing at a remarkably steep pace — and, more importantly, it had kept that momentum going without a hitch.
And at the center of that growth stood the guild master, Morne herself. It was her unerring eye — the one that could spot the worth of strange curiosities from who-knows-where and artifacts that had never once seen the light of day — that made it all possible.
That was why the guild had an unwritten rule: no matter how unsellable an item someone brought in, they were never turned away at the door.
At least, that was how it had always been.
"You're telling me this is meant to replace ice mages in the summer?"
"Yes."
"……"
Be that as it may, this was going too far.
Clerk A, who had been attending to Owen since he showed up at this late hour, scratched his head with a troubled sigh.
Selling an item meant to replace ice mages was, in effect, declaring war on every ice mage in the Empire.
And that wasn't even the worst of it. Mages were the sort of people who would happily split into factions and squabble over fire magic versus frost magic on any given day — but the moment one of their own started losing money to an outside influence, they closed ranks without hesitation.
In other words, selling an air conditioner that would gut the ice mages' livelihood amounted to picking a fight with every other mage in existence, the Tower included. The vindictive little bastards would retaliate, no doubt about it. They'd ignore any commission he filed. They might even refuse to recharge mana stones from now on, insisting he channel his own mana.
And if it stopped there, he could count himself lucky. Those people were perfectly capable of compiling a registry of everyone affiliated with the guild and blacklisting them for life! At that point, half your life was effectively over.
Anyone could see this was a disaster. Even the guild master, who preached never to treat an item carelessly no matter how worthless it looked, would probably take one glance and say, now this is a bit much… before refusing.
Or would she not?
Either way, this wasn't even trash. It was a bomb — a bomb primed to drag the whole guild into a firestorm.
"I'm afraid this is not something our guild can handle."
And so, breaking the guild's sacred unwritten rule, Clerk A turned Owen away at the door.
He'd had no choice. This was for the guild's sake. And for his own sake, too.
What would the guild master say if she found out? Better to pretend this so-called air conditioner never existed at all, he told himself, muttering the thought over and over in his head —
"Hm?"
— when Owen, who had been shuffling toward the exit, stopped dead in front of the door.
Don't tell me he's about to grovel and beg for a second look. Clerk A steeled himself to say it flatly: No. No deal. Not changing my mind. Go home.
Then his words died in his throat.
"Ah, we have a guest. Do go ahead."
That voice. He knew it. The very guest he'd been treating as a non-customer had just crossed paths with the guild master herself — Morne.
Why now, of all times?!
Please just walk past. Please just walk past. Please just walk past.
Clerk A prayed. Please, let her not ask why this guest came. Let her take no interest in the enormous thing strapped to his back.
But the world is a cruel place.
"By the way, sir. That thing on your back — I've never seen anything like it. What might it be?"
Clerk A's worries proved entirely futile; Morne's eyes gleamed with unmistakable interest at the so-called air conditioner or whatever it was.
Ah.
With everything on the verge of spilling out, Clerk A could only wish for one thing: that the guild master had enough common sense buried in her not to pick a fight with the mages…
"An artifact that can replace ice mages, you say…"
Guild Master Morne's eyes narrowed. That razor-sharp gaze flew across the room and locked onto Clerk A — the man who had tried to send Owen packing.
As if struck by petrification magic, Clerk A froze on the spot.
"Magnificent."
It was no empty flattery.
In this world, no two spells were ever truly identical, no matter how similar their effects. Countless factors — environment, the mage's disposition, their abilities — shaped every spell's awakening.
Magic, at its core, was the act of taking an insight gained during that awakening and manifesting it into the world. It was like the written word joy: everyone who read it felt something different. In the same way, no amount of recording could ever reproduce an insight perfectly.
That was why magic was considered the mage's private domain — nearly impossible for anyone else to replicate.
But what about the air conditioner Owen had brought in?
Supply it mana through a mana stone, and it ran through the same fixed process to produce the exact same result, every single time. No deviation — and performance that lost nothing to an actual mage.
A revolutionary invention. One capable of overturning the era's fundamental belief that magic belonged to mages alone.
I want it.
Still, this single air conditioner wasn't quite enough to justify going to war with the mages over. Not yet.
"What kind of price were you considering?"
"Hmm, let's see. About this much?"
Owen wrote a figure on a slip of paper and slid it across to Morne. When she saw the number, her eyes widened slightly.
It was cheaper than she'd expected. Not just cheap — absurdly cheap.
"Could you create other artifacts with different functions as well?"
"Yes."
The answer came without a moment's hesitation. Seated across the sofa from her, he declared with full confidence:
"This is nothing more than a test model. Going forward, I intend to make and sell items with far more features than this."
It was no lie. There was no hint of a man chasing a pipe dream in his eyes, either. He truly could make something even greater than this — and Morne's instincts, honed since the day she built this guild from nothing, told her exactly that.
It did not take long for Guild Master Morne to reach her decision. And that decision was this:
"Very well. Our guild will purchase it."
Trusting her own judgment.
"All of it."
Clerk A clutched his own hair and let out a silent scream.
Summer was an inescapable calamity that arrived once a year, right on schedule. Hot. Humid. Sometimes the sky would tear open and the rain would come pouring down as if the heavens themselves had sprung a leak. For three straight months, the weather radiated nature's naked malice — an open declaration that it intended to boil humanity alive.
This summer could not be beaten. All one could do was endure it, gritting one's teeth, and endure it some more. And the only ones who could make that summer passably humane were the mages who commanded the cold.
At least, that was how it had always been.
"Ahh, it's hot as blazes!"
A man drenched in sweat came flapping his shirt as he stumbled into a cheap tavern that sold little more than rotgut liquor. The moment his foot crossed the threshold, the face he'd been wiping of its ceaseless sweat melted into a blissful puddle.
"Ohhhh—"
A groan of pure wonder, welling up from the depths of his belly.
"Wow, the heat's just… gone. Now this is living."
"Hehe, right?"
The man nodded at the server's reply.
"What's this, then? Business going well, I take it? You can afford to hire a mage now? Place is packed — wouldn't surprise me."
"Hardly."
"Huh? Then what gives? Why is it only cool in here?"
The server set down the man's usual order of drink and snacks on the table, then pointed a finger toward one corner of the tavern. The man's head turned to follow.
There stood something he'd never seen before — a large, white, square box of unknown purpose, roughly the height of an adult.
"It's an artifact called an air conditioner. That's what's keeping the tavern cool, like magic."
"Wasn't that expensive?"
"According to the owner, it wasn't cheap, I'll grant you — but it doesn't hold a candle to what it costs to hire a mage for the whole summer."
Truthfully, she'd wondered at first whether they really needed one. But after Morne Merchant Guild offered to lend it free of charge and told her to give it a try, she'd had no choice but to admit she'd been dead wrong.
Just look at the tavern now. Even outside the usual rush hour, the place was so crammed with customers it was hard to find a seat. This, from a tavern that stood empty even at peak hours until just days ago.
What else could have drawn a crowd like this? Had the booze suddenly gotten better? Had they hired a server so beautiful men would lose their minds over her?
All wrong. There was one reason, and one only: the air conditioner. Aristocratic luxury — once the sole province of nobles — now enjoyed over cheap liquor and snacks just like any other day. How could anyone not come? Even people who didn't drink were showing up just to escape the afternoon heat. The popularity was staggering.
"So that's it, huh…"
So the secret behind all the customers flooding this place lately was that artifact. A drunkard who'd been pretending to sip his drink while hanging on the server's every word stuffed his notes into his pocket and rose from his seat.
His true identity: the owner of a tavern in the neighboring district. Having recently had every last customer poached by this very establishment, he'd infiltrated the place in broad daylight to uncover their secret.
Scrape, scraaape.
And then, in perfect synchronization, a dozen-odd men rose from their seats one after another, as if they'd rehearsed it.
"……?"
But they were not traveling together. Stunned by the absurd timing, they traded awkward glances before crying out in unison:
"Wait — you lot too?!"
Some wore hats, some had covered their faces — a flimsy assortment of disguises — but every one of them knew the others. They were all tavern keepers operating here in the Imperial Capital. They sized each other up for a moment, then raced to the Morne Merchant Guild like men in a contest.
And there, money clutched in both fists, they made their demand:
"The air conditioner! Sell me an air conditioner, I beg you!"
"Wh-what in the world…"
A sea of humanity. There was no better word for the scene.
From the entrance of the shop, a line of people stretched on without end. Accounting for the crowds already inside, the number of consumers gathered had to be even greater.
And the item that had all of them standing in the sweltering midsummer sun, sweating buckets as they waited their turn —
"You mean to tell me every one of these people came to buy that air-thingamajig?"
— was the air conditioner itself.
Its popularity had exceeded all expectations. The secret to that popularity could be traced back to Guild Master Morne's decision to lend units free of charge to restaurants and taverns frequented by the public.
There was a saying, wasn't there? No one who's only done it once. Plenty of people had never done it at all — but no one had ever stopped at just one. It meant something was so addictive that once you took the first step, there was no getting out. The coolness of the air conditioner was exactly that kind of addictive.
"That mustached gentleman over there — isn't he a servant of Count Elpinel's household? I've seen him more than a few times."
"Looks like it."
The air conditioner craze had even spread to the nobility. Using one cost far less than the upkeep of a mage — and came with none of the performance variance, to boot.
"Hmph! A passing fad, nothing more. Do you imagine the mages will simply stand by and watch?"
"…True enough."
The guild masters who'd hesitated out of deference to the mages were indeed green with envy at the sight of such sudden success — but that was as far as it went. They were certain the mages would never let it slide, and that this popularity would fizzle out before long.
Surely it would have been so…