The Dungeon Merchant (1)

Ssssaaaa—

The rain made his hair heavy. The boy lowered his head.

He could see his mother's corpse.

"……"

A forest swept through by the flames of a witch hunt. One child had survived. Unable to follow the family he loved, he was left behind, all alone.

The boy decided to become an adult. There was nothing more childish than pretending to be one — and yet, breathing out a cold breath, that was exactly what he resolved to do.

The child, left alone in the world, stretched out his hand. From his palm, dark grey particles trickled down, drop by drop.

Drip. Drip.

They resembled putrid rainwater. One drop. Two drops. The dark grey particles fell into the pool of blood his mother had made. The blood, diluted by the rain, turned black as the night sky — as if countless shadows were lifting up her corpse, as if regrets that could not be shaken off were clutching at his ankles.

Krrk…

In that moment, the body lying in the blood rose up from the darkness.

Krrk… krrkrk…

The corpse moved. Eyes bulging, it swung the arm pierced through by an arrow and scraped the ground with broken nails.

Krrkrk…

Red claw marks carved themselves into the mud. Blood overflowed from the chest impaled by the blade.

"……"

And so the corpse, bearing a stubborn lingering attachment, crawled out of the blackened pool of blood, dragging itself along—

Thud…

—and embraced its child.

So spoke the woman who had been watching.

Grown-up. At the first praise he had ever heard in his life, the boy lifted his head and looked at the woman in her beggar's rags.

A merchant and a child. Two people who were not yet adults.

"How much will you pay?"

『I will give you everything I own.』

The woman who had introduced herself as a merchant extended her hand. The boy, slipping free of his mother's embrace, took her trembling hand in his.

『Blame God.』

On a day of falling rain, a child was sold to a merchant.

…….

…….

"That's not something we sell."

So said the shopkeeper, standing behind an empty register. On a morning when the warm scent of herbs drifted past his nose, the customer who had climbed over the counter uninvited froze at his words.

The shop was as small and cramped as its shabby exterior suggested, its shelves lined left and right with bargain-bin recovery potions. A potion shop that did no business… no, it was closer to a general store that sold only a single product.

Clang—

The customer pulled a liquor bottle out of the register drawer. Swaying the high-proof liquor back and forth, she shrugged her shoulders with a blank face.

"Alcohol is one of the finest medicines there is. Why do you keep it hidden away in a drawer?"

"Because someone keeps sneaking drinks of it."

Someone who clearly had a guilty conscience.

The woman in the black suit obediently returned the bottle to the drawer. Clack. The sound of a sleeve wiping the fingerprints off the glass. No emotion whatsoever showed on her face. If a beautiful wooden mannequin came to life and walked around, it would look something like that.

Still, she apparently wasn't entirely without tact — under the shopkeeper's glare, she quietly stepped back out from behind the counter and smoothed down her clothes. Modest, restrained, and quite unusual attire.

The shopkeeper recalled that the woman's 'black suit' was the vestment worn by clergy of the Order of Order.

"The Goddess of Order commands us to hold temperance as a virtue. Drink falls under that as well, so I shall consume it for you — and thus dispose of it."

"I'm a merchant. And priests shouldn't drink."

"My temperance does not vanish with a single glass. So hand it over peacefully."

"You're not tempering anything."

No customers came, and the ones who did show up were never quite normal. So where, exactly, was the problem?

With a smile fixed on his face, the shopkeeper pointed at the door. Out.

"We shall see. Aren't you curious how large my role will become in the future?"

"Stop saying weird things."

No matter how he looked at it, she seemed to have come purely out of boredom. The expressionless customer rattled off her usual nonsense, then, obedient to the merchant's gesture, opened the door and left the shop.

Ding-a-ling~♪

The doorbell on the wooden frame saw the troublemaker out.

"……Business is bad, huh."

He wiped the smile from his face. A sigh carried out the complaints he'd swallowed so many times already. Maybe I'll rest a bit.

Ding-a-ling~♪

The moment silence fell, the shop door swung open again.

This time, a woman in a worn ochre robe shuffled in.

"Little child! Did you make lots of money?"

The beggar woman waved her dirt-caked hands around. Unlike her old-woman way of speaking, her voice was astonishingly young, soft with warmth.

Her hood was pulled down past her eyes. Because of that, her face could not be properly seen — but the silver-white hair slipping out from under the hood didn't carry a speck of dust.

"You're here again."

"Got any booze?"

"No."

An unknown woman who barged into the shop every spare moment. Whether he'd earned any money, whether he was keeping the place clean — she would pile up trivial nagging and then leave.

(『Little child, I wish to buy you.』)

Once upon a time, in a past now forgotten, there had been a woman who introduced herself as a merchant.

(How much will you pay? — 『I will give you everything I own.』)

The woman who came to the child left all alone had bought him with 'everything she owned.' Money and clothes, a place to sleep. How to write, how to hold a kitchen knife. Even the shop of her own.

And so, having dumped the shop onto an orphan who knew nothing, she went and lay down in the gutters, becoming a beggar who picked up coins for a living.

Is this right?

"Hmmm… so business is bad today too."

The beggar woman surveyed the shabby shop. Leaning her cheek against her palm, she sighed and began grumbling that the goods on the shelves were exactly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the same as this morning — her tone one of genuine sympathy.

But the shopkeeper felt an inexplicable wrongness in the beggar's demeanor. The voice flowing out of her was like a tape recorder, without the slightest rise or fall of emotion. It was as if she were imitating the sympathy of someone who pitied him.

"Years pass and nothing changes. It's a miracle you haven't gone under."

"You never taught me how to run a shop."

"At this rate, how am I ever to buy you back from myself?… Lian."

In an instant, the beggar woman who had spoken the name Lian swept her gaze over the merchant, the way one evaluates goods up for sale.

"……"

The beggar who had bought a child. Her demand was a single one: buy yourself back from me.

"…How much did you say I needed?"

"Seven people willing to die for you."

"That's not very specific."

"Hehe… the easiest way to win a person's heart is money, little child. So grow the shop. Bring in regulars."

It was an unreasonable demand. What was this beggar's goal? No matter how he turned it over, no answer came. The shop was shabby, there were no customers, and he had no wisdom for living. Years after inheriting the store, he was still treading water. Everything in life remained difficult and burdensome.

"……"

A merchant.

Lian lowered his head. The palm he looked down at was red. The memory of being smeared with his mother's blood flashed before his eyes.

Flinch!

He raised his head. The vision was gone, and only the beggar remained, watching him. Beneath her baggy hood, the corners of the woman's mouth curled into a smile. That smile whispered: a discarded child with no goal in life, no will of his own. A human being who had sold his life to another.

(『Blame God.』)

And yet — even so — Lian smiled. Because he was in the middle of a transaction.

Hold tight…

Just as his dead mother had once held him, he wrapped his own cold arms around himself. Only then did the breath rotting in his lungs finally escape.

"……I can do it, that's all."

His mouth barely opened. He had nothing left to lose, did he? Somehow, it would work out. Right. I can hold on.

He drew a breath. When he looked down at his palm again, nothing stained it. Not a single drop.

"You've become an adult."

"It's nothing special."

"Well then, little child… I've had a thought."

Right after that, the 'thing' that had been gazing at him so fondly approached the counter, wearing its benevolent smile.

"You've grown used to running the shop by now, haven't you?"

"……?"

"Let us try something a little more profitable."

Lian frowned. What was she talking about? Unfortunately, no further explanation came. The beggar woman took a step closer. With a tender smile etched on her lips, she drew one hand from within her robe, stretched out a slender finger, and pointed past Lian's shoulder.

Turn around and look.

'Behind me? That's just a wall, isn't i… wait, what is that?'

He turned at the beggar woman's gesture. In that instant, Lian's thoughts cut off and he shot up from his seat.

Behind the counter. Between the decorative shelves, in the middle of the wall — a window shrouded in a black curtain had appeared. It had not been there a moment ago.

"What is tha—"

"A new sales channel. Call it the Back Window."

The window by the front door was bright. Warm sunlight streamed through it. The window the beggar woman pointed to, by contrast, was dark to the point of excess — far too ominous to keep at one's back.

Sensing something wrong, Lian looked back at the beggar.

"…What's on the other side?"

"The people who will pay the highest price for your goods."

Knock… knock knock…

A knocking sounded from beyond the curtain. Knock knock… knock knock… knock-knock-knock…! It grew more and more frantic. As if the customer were rushing the merchant. As if begging him to open it, quickly.

"The rules are simple, you see. Sell the customer an item, and obtain something more 'valuable' in return. That is called turning a profit."

"…And if I can't?"

"There's a guidebook on the shelf. Read it carefully~."

Knock knock knock.

The ominous knocking continued. If shadows could whisper, this is the sound they would make, wouldn't they?

"From today on, you will be busy. The story has begun."

The laughter-laced voice pressed down on Lian's shoulders heavier than it ever had before.

…….

Lian, back then, did not know. How far down that window would drag his life.

…….

…….

There is a rumor.

In an underground space where monsters and treasure are entangled — an Oubliette — a mysterious 'merchant' is said to appear. He sells the things one needs to survive, and in exchange, takes what is dearer than life itself.

Knock knock knock!

Shaaaash—!!

The merchant, hearing the knock, drew back the curtain. In that instant, blood that had leapt up from 'the other side' splattered against the glass. Red droplets ran down like rain, soaking the window frame. Click.

A novice merchant: Lian. With trembling hands, he flung the window wide open. Hanging at the corners of his mouth was a forced, plastered-on commercial smile.

Clang! Crash!

"Die! Die!"

"There's too many! Somebody help over here!"

Beyond the window, hell spread out before him. The surroundings were dark as a cave, and the people, clinging to a single light-emitting stone, fought against 'something.' Their armor was already drenched in blood. Severed fingers and monster heads rolled across the ground like garbage.

"Haah…! Haah…! It's the dungeon merchant! He really exists!"

And one of them — the man who had knocked on the Back Window — held a dying comrade whose chest had been pierced through by an arrow, and shouted desperately at the 'merchant' beyond the glass.

"Recovery potion! Quickly!"

So the beggar woman had said. A merchant is one who buys things of value as cheaply as possible — and sells them as dearly as possible.

"Please, give us potions! I'll pay any price!!"

The trick to haggling is simple. All you need is for the customer to be desperate. From that moment on, the merchant sets the price.

"…Hello there! I'm the dungeon merchant!"

Sell a potion to a dying customer. In exchange, take something worth more than the price of a life.

Treasures barely wrested from the depths. The weapons gripped in their hands. Luminous Lamps to light the dark. Everything else besides.

Demand too ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠much, and the customer dies without ever escaping the dungeon. But lower the price out of conscience, and this time it is the merchant who must step into that hell. Because ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠once the 'window' opens, a profit must be made.

This is no work for a human being.

And so Lian smiled. For the sake of those who might die at any moment. For the sake of himself — a man in a position even more wretched than theirs. Because even if we die here, we wish to be remembered by others with a smiling face.

"Potions and exploration gear, plus simple recovery magic, all ready to—"

Thwunk!

An arrow shot through the wide-open window. Flying in from the darkness, it pierced Lian's left eye and burst out the back of his skull.

CRASH!

A sudden accident. Lian's body toppled backward, vanishing from the window.

The man who had begged for a recovery potion cradling a thread of hope stared blankly at the empty window.

Crackle… grind…

But then—

Grind…

"……Potions… and, what was it… in any case, everything's in stock…!"

Grind!

A blood-soaked hand gripped the window frame. The 'merchant' whose left eye had been pierced through by the arrow hauled himself up, step by unsteady step.

Scatter…!

Without even thinking to pull the arrow out, drenched in blood, wondering why his terrified customers looked at him so strangely — and still holding onto that smile. From his pierced eye socket, dark grey particles flowed out like tears.

'Hurts… told you this is no work for a human being. But if I don't do it, who will?'

He wrenched up the corners of his mouth, stiff with agony. Leaning against the window frame, Lian flashed a shaky grin at his frozen customers.

"What will you be needing?"

It was time to do business.