Operations Commence
Back in his room, Roy drew a glass vial from inside his coat.
This was a kind of mana solution left over after he had imbued ten daggers with basic reinforcement enchantments.
He could blend in extracts from various herbs and fruits and brew dozens of cheap potions from it — or, just as he had with the daggers, use it to enchant other goods.
"Cheap stuff, all right. Look how cloudy it is."
The solution in the vial was thick with impurities. Its mana concentration was thin, and the smell was foul. Held up to the light, it cast mottled shadows — little better than spoiled fruit wine.
"Without better quality, I can't inscribe runes… and even the magic circle's performance would be cut in half."
Troll or ogre blood instead of cheap orc blood would have helped. Higher-grade herbs, and mana stones two purity grades better, and he might have produced something actually serviceable.
"Hah…"
From what Marek had told him, goods of that caliber were mostly shipped off to the neighboring march or the capital. There simply was no demand for them in this rural backwater.
Stock did surface now and then, but the timing had to be perfect — and right now he didn't have the coin to buy any of it anyway.
"Still a long road ahead."
Roy let out a long breath and accepted the compromise. He would have to make do with this, at least, and prepare for any emergency.
The baron didn't look like a man who made enemies, but appearances meant nothing. A lord was always a target for envy and jealousy.
In his previous life, Roy himself had been betrayed by his own disciple and died with a blade through him.
He was about to put his abilities to real use and start making money in earnest. Once he did, there was no telling who might come after him — or when.
"If I want protection even while I sleep, a bracelet or a ring would be best…"
He looked at his thin wrist and his small, childlike hands. He would grow soon enough, so a charm on a cord worn around the wrist made more sense than a ring.
Disposable would be better.
There were many kinds of amulets Roy could craft, and the ones that expended their power once and then vanished were by far the most efficient.
With this imperfect solution, a continuously active amulet would barely function at all, and he had nothing suitable for secondary materials either.
So — disposable. An amulet that spent every last scrap of its power in a single instant and then ceased to exist.
"This body needs something like this."
Roy brought over a small sheet of parchment and slowly poured the solution across it.
Parchment was naturally water-resistant, yet it drank up Roy's mana solution as if it found the stuff delicious.
He emptied every last drop from the vial and waited until the parchment had absorbed it all. Then he flooded both hands with mana and gripped either end of the sheet.
"Hah… will this even work?"
In his previous life he had needed the help of a large mana stone at this stage. His magical power had been so meager he couldn't freely cast even a spell of this level.
But things were different now.
"Shall we… begin?"
From here he had to weave the magic formula in earnest. Extremely delicate work. The slightest misalignment and everything would come to nothing.
Enchant
A complex, nearly incomprehensible magic formula began to pour rapidly from Roy's lips — a long, intricate incantation that would have been hard for anyone nearby even to write down if they tried to follow it.
When the spell completed, a magical pen that radiated light materialized in the air. And that pen began to move of its own accord, as if alive.
"Whew… I haven't gone rusty yet."
Inside Roy's mind were complex equations and magic circles no ordinary person could understand. Those diagrams began to be inscribed onto the parchment by the magic pen, stroke by stroke.
"Given the materials' quality, this is about the limit of what performance I can get. I'll make up for the solution's thin mana by pouring my own in right now…"
Because he was using low-grade materials he would never have looked twice at in his previous life, completing a single defensive amulet took nearly thirty minutes. Sweat beaded along his forehead.
"Even inscribing a formula I finished ages ago is this hard… I've still got a long way to go myself."
But Roy's expression wasn't bad. He had succeeded on the first try at crafting an amulet since his reincarnation, without a single failure.
With only this much material on hand, failure would have meant total waste. It was a real stroke of luck.
He had been especially careful after failing three times when enchanting the daggers earlier.
"This tension… it's been a long time."
Roy trimmed away the unnecessary edges of the parchment, carefully folded the section that held the magic formula, and wrapped it in a small piece of cloth. Then he twisted the cloth into a cord, wound it around his wrist, and activated a simple spell to link it with his own mana — completing the amulet bracelet.
"Crude."
Embarrassingly crude compared to the artifacts he had made in the past. But it was the best he could manage with his current circumstances.
Even so, it should block at least one surprise attack.
No one was likely to attack him right now — but it was precisely this kind of precaution that saved your life when it mattered.
The next day.
"Hm? Ain't you the young fellow from yesterday? What brings you back already?"
Marek had left the manor the moment the sky brightened and headed straight for the weapon shop. He would have preferred to come the evening before, but between selling the daggers and a long list of other errands, there had been no way to manage it once the sun was already going down.
"I've come to sell daggers."
The shopkeeper's face twisted the instant he heard it.
"Didn't you hear what I said? You bring 'em back to resell and you'll only get half."
"These aren't the ones I bought here yesterday."
Marek unrolled a tightly wrapped cloth across the counter in front of the owner. Six daggers lay revealed.
"Different, my foot. Those are the ones you bought right here."
"No, sir. They only look the same. They're entirely different goods."
"Enough. I'm not buying. Take 'em and go."
Marek had no choice but to do as Roy had instructed.
"Even if I do this?"
He suddenly took one of the daggers in hand. The shopkeeper flinched and stumbled a step back.
"W-what are you doing?"
"Hm? Ah — don't worry. I didn't pick it up to stick you with it. Just take a look at this, would you?"
A moment later the dagger in Marek's hand began to glow with a blue light. The shopkeeper's eyes went round; he leaned in close.
"What in the world…?"
"See? I told you they weren't the same as the ones I bought here."
"Well, I'll be. That's something else."
With the man hooked, Marek bought a five-silver dagger from the shop — and split it cleanly with one of Roy's. Watching the owner nearly faint from shock, Marek couldn't help a thin, satisfied smile.
"So. These daggers. Are you buying, or aren't you? If not, I'll take them to another shop."
Mercenaries.
As always, they were men who would race to a war, a monster subjugation, or anything else the moment someone put coin on the table — no regard for time or place. Even those who had already staked their lives on the work had chosen it, in the end, so they could eat and live. Coin was fine; dying a dog's death for someone else's sake was not. And if you wanted better odds of walking out of a blood-soaked battlefield, you had no choice but to rely on one another.
So mercenaries formed bands.
Through endless wars large and small, countless mercenary groups rose and vanished again into the back alleys of history.
Among them was one famous for never knowing defeat.
Its name: the Karl Mercenary Group.
Taking the name of Karl, the strongest hero of antiquity — said to have slain a Demon King alone — the company spread its renown across the continent as the long age of war dragged on.
Its most famous figure was Kruger, called the first Mercenary King. With both martial strength and the goodwill of his peers, there was scarcely a mercenary who would not follow him. Under his name, the majority of mercenary bands were absorbed into the Karl Mercenary Group.
True to the title of Mercenary King, Kruger seized wealth and power alike, then led the men who followed him to occupy a ruined city-state and found a nation of mercenaries — a powerful mercenary state where strength itself was the law.
In time the war-churned continent cooled, and the number of nations seeking hired blades dwindled. Now the Karl Mercenary Group held contracts with many countries across the continent, focused on purging sea beasts and maintaining public order. The branch offices of the Karl Mercenary Group that stood in each nation and each territory were the fruit of those agreements.
And of course, here — in the Greenhilt Barony — a branch of the Karl Mercenary Group existed as well.
"What the hell took you so long?"
"Why all the fuss? The meeting hasn't even started."
"You're the one shipping out on the expedition tomorrow and you show up late to the briefing. That's why."
"I'm here now, aren't I?"
"Yeah, but… what's with that dagger?"
Karl Mercenary Group, Greenhilt Branch.
On the third floor of a large building in the middle of town, a meeting room was packed with hard-faced mercenaries.
"This? Shopkeeper down the street recommended it, so I bought one."
"One? You think one's gonna cut it? You know how tough orc hide is."
"What kind of idiot tries to cut an orc's throat with a dagger? This is for emergencies — or for field dressing."
"How much? If it's that good, I'll grab one too."
"Wanted more, but he said the rest sold out and this was the last one. And you can't buy it anyway. I paid four gold for this single piece."
"What? Have you lost your damn mind? Who spends good gold on a dagger? Four gold would buy you a hundred of the things!"
"You little bastard. Looking to die? Am I your equal? Lecturing your senior like that?"
Stung by the junior's scolding, Galbert yanked the dagger he had just bought free of its leather sheath in a flash of temper.
The crude, shabby dagger — crude hilt, crude blade — lay bare before the eyes of mercenaries who prided themselves on knowing quality steel.
"Pwahahaha!"
"Kahaha. You paid gold for that piece of junk?"
"Bought it down the street, right? Old man there didn't seem the type — he really cleaned you out. Kahahaha!"
But Galbert didn't so much as flinch under his comrades' mockery. He only curled his lip, looking down on them as if they were the fools.
"What would you lot know about this? You don't even have eyes to see."
Just as Galbert was about to send mana into the dagger for all to see —
The meeting room door scraped open.
"Quiet! Meeting starts now."