The Second Customer (2)
The oubliette connected this time was nothing like the last one.
Where he'd faced the First Customer, the place had resembled a dark ant tunnel. What spread out before him now was a dense, sprawling jungle.
Canopies of towering trees blotted out the sky, and blood-fed thornbushes walled off the gaps between the trunks like barricades. This must be what it felt like to fall into a labyrinth made by nature itself. Given a careful look around, he could probably find passages leading elsewhere, but the darkness on all sides was pitch-black, making it impossible to check.
However I look at it, this seems to be outdoors... torches would all burn to nothing out here, wouldn't they? Luminous Lamps will sell well in a place like this.
Perhaps thanks to the lush vegetation, breathing itself wasn't difficult. Lian rummaged through his trouser pocket, pulled out the Luminous Lamp he'd been carrying since yesterday, and swept its glow across his surroundings.
Good thing he'd forgotten to change his clothes.
"Whoa..."
The lamp's light laid bare the carnage in the dark.
Ankle-deep pools of blood gave off a foul metallic stench, and the corpses of monsters lay scattered carelessly in every direction.
Enormous lizard-type monsters.
The scales covering their bodies looked hard enough to deflect most weapons. One graze from those sharp scales, and a person's skin would peel away like soft tofu.
Squelch...
More than a dozen of those lizard monsters had been torn clean in two by some colossal force.
This customer is really strong.
She'd survived a battle against this many monsters with a single sword?
Having thought that far, Lian examined his fallen customer.
The woman lay face-down, limp, atop the sticky pool of blood. Her loose training robes had been stained dark red by the blood of the monsters and her own, and the wound splitting her back from shoulder to the opposite hip was deep enough to expose bone.
"Customer!"
Even at Lian's call, she didn't regain consciousness. Maybe it was the pride of a woman who called herself burden — even with her face half-submerged in the puddle of blood, her eyes refused to close. Those unfocused golden orbs stared blankly into the empty air.
To have kept up a conversation, acting perfectly calm, in this state... she hadn't been in her right mind at all.
The cold voice that had once berated his cheap potions flickered at the edge of his memory.
Why did she refuse to buy anything? Out of pride?
Pride wasn't worth more than a life. Lian couldn't understand this customer at all.
If I save her and ask, will she tell me?
Even as he pondered, he never stopped checking on the woman. The gaps between her breaths had grown so long that one wrong touch might stop them forever.
The potions in my shop won't be enough.
A wound deep enough to expose her spine. Cheap potions could barely manage first aid, let alone fix this. And he couldn't go back through the Back Window to find a cleric or a potion workshop — because even now, this very moment, the customer's breathing was fading.
Should I just dump cheap potions on her after all?
Only the worrying continued. Like a child afraid to make a choice, Lian couldn't move an inch.
1. The merchant must purchase goods of greater value than what he has sold.
— If the goods purchased are of lesser value, the merchant must bring back across the Back Window additional value exceeding the unpaid balance.
If he rashly used a potion and the customer died, he'd take a loss. He couldn't purchase goods from a dead customer, which meant the entire cost of the potions would come back around as unpaid balance.
Just like yesterday.
The woman's voice from overhead. The sound of a second hand made with her mouth.
Lian had an instinctive certainty: if that sound stopped, the customer's time would stop with it.
Tick. Tock.
Could he save her with the resources he had? Or rather — did he even have to save her?
Splash.
He turned and looked behind him. There was the Back Window, the one he'd climbed through. Warm light caressed Lian's cheeks.
"……"
What if I just went back to the shop?
There was no other way. Abandon the trade. No injuries, no losses. No profit either, of course.
Throb.
He pressed his right hand against his aching temple, then crouched down beside the customer and started thinking of another way. He couldn't have said why. Had the woman's life, laid on the scales, simply weighed more than he'd expected?
A means of recovery...
Then, suddenly — Lian remembered his conversation with the cleric Amone.
"Those dark grey particles healing your body, Merchant Lian — no matter how I look at it, that's divine power."
He looked down at his left arm. The arm the Tall Woman had torn off had now regenerated up to the elbow. The dark grey particles, pooling on the severed surface like rainwater, had been steadily repairing his body bit by bit.
...Could this power not heal other people's injuries?
"……"
He recalled the Recovery Magic Amone had shown him. Wherever those pure white particles touched, things returned to their proper state. His own left arm, too, had only begun to heal after the dark grey particles pooled over the wound.
Do the particles trigger the Recovery Magic when they make contact?
A power that mended wounds. The principle had to be similar. And if so...
Swoosh.
He extended his left arm, healed to the elbow, forward. Bending over at an angle, he positioned the severed surface above the customer's wound.
"……"
He bit his lip. Would this even work?
The unfocused golden eyes caught Lian's gaze.
...The customer with the purple eyes had worn exactly that same look.
I wish I could have done something for you, Merchant.
Lian put on his Commercial Smile. As if a good idea had just come to him.
"...You're dying anyway, so help me with an experiment. I'll give you a discount."
He murmured it in a light voice.
Tick. Tock.
Come to think of it, this was a trade with nothing but upside. He'd get to practice Recovery Magic. How often did anyone get the chance to use a dying person as teaching material?
The right answer is to cut my losses and go home? No — I'm going to profit off this.
He was going to save her. Muttering that it would actually be a good deal, Lian gave his left arm a light flick.
Swish. Swish.
He shook his arm toward the woman's wound — but the dark grey particles clung stubbornly to the severed surface and refused to fall.
"Khoff!"
The woman coughed up blood. The sound of a death rattle. Lian's movements turned frantic — but the particles still wouldn't leave his body. And so, finally, Lian gripped his own left arm with his right hand and—
Crunch...!
drove his fingers into the severed surface.
"Ugh...!"
Crunch. Grind.
A dizzying pain bent him at the waist. Lian gritted his teeth and worked his fingers.
Squelch.
Only then did the dark grey particles begin to flow out along with the blood.
...It's working.
"Ngh...! Ghh...!"
His blood-soaked fingers burrowed between the muscle fibers. He scraped out the flesh with his nails and dug deeper.
It's fine. This is more bearable than when the spider monster was gnawing on me.
Crunch! Grind grind!
Sticky blood streamed down, and the greater the pain grew, the more particles poured out. The dark grey particles mixed with shreds of his own flesh and pattered down onto the woman's wound — as if... as if he were stuffing her wound full with pieces of himself.
Like sprinkling cheese over a steak... this is going to be expensive.
Time drifted on, aimless. Only after he'd scraped himself down from the elbow all the way back up to the shoulder did Lian manage to roughly fill the customer's wound with the dark grey particles.
Squelch!
That much information was enough. He yanked his fingers out of his mangled left arm, and only then exhaled the breath he'd been holding, curling up over the pool of blood.
"Haah...! Haah...!"
He couldn't breathe. He knocked his forehead against the puddled floor, again and again. So this is how hard buying and selling could be. For the first time in his life, he genuinely respected every merchant in the world.
Being a merchant... really isn't something a human being should do...
He barely managed to pull himself together and turned to look at the customer.
......
Still not a twitch.
Too late?
He poked her cheek with his bloodied fingers. No reaction.
Crack.
Before he knew it, he was biting his lip again.
"...It's fine. This was a win. I learned this method doesn't work, didn't I?"
He inhaled the awful stench of blood and deliberately raised his voice.
"Thanks to you, customer."
"……"
"……"
The silence was deafening.
Back to the shop, then. I've done everything I can do.
Squelch...
He put on a satisfied smile and wiped his forehead with his bloodstained hand. Then he rose from the cold pool of blood and staggered toward the Back Window.
......
......
...And so — even as he headed for the shop, even as he stopped again and again to glance back at the customer, Lian, letting out a sigh he couldn't name, took hold of the Back Window's frame.
Shaaaa—.
The sound of rain.
Lian turned around. The dark grey particles scattered across the customer's back were pulling in the shreds of his flesh that had flowed down along with them.
Shaaaa—.
The particles and the flesh began to pool over the woman's wound like falling rain.
......
......
"Blame the gods."
"Emotion carries power."
He had dreamed. A nightmare it was.
A merciful hand stroking his cheek — a nightmare gentle to the point of strangeness.
……
"...Haak!"
Her halted breathing returned. The woman sucked in air in great, ragged gulps.
"Koff! Koff!"
Violent coughing wracked her, and the blood pooled in her lungs came surging out. Her body heaved violently, like a fish hauled up from deep water.
"Koff!"
Suffocating. Painful. Agonizing. Surely it couldn't hurt more than having the skin flayed off your back and being dragged across stone flooring.
"Koff...! Urgh...!"
And yet — thanks to this horrific pain, she realized, of all things, that she was still alive.
"This place..."
She blinked her heavy eyelids. She was sure she'd collapsed face-down in a pool of blood, but now she lay on her back, using a monster's corpse for a bed.
Reflected in her hazy golden eyes were the colossal trees that blotted out the sky, the thornbushes walling them in like a barricade, the reeking pools of blood — all of it swallowed by a blackness so deep it devoured everything...
And there, at the very center of it all: a single window, pouring out a cascade of light. Warm light spilled from a rotten, blackened wooden frame. The radiance pushing back the dark settled onto the woman's cheeks, and her eyes, regaining their focus, glittered gold.
"You're awake? Nothing hurt when you moved, I hope?"
Amid the falling cascade of light, Lian stood with his back to the window, looking down at her with his Commercial Smile.
"……"
Light streaming in from behind him. Was that what people called a halo? The woman blinked blankly as she pieced the situation together... and then, before long, gave a hollow laugh.
"I thought I had survived, but it seems this is heaven."
"What?"
"So you must be the one paired with this one."
Smack!
She'd been slapped across the cheek. A light blow, barely more than a tickle — but more than enough to rouse her fogged mind.
She blinked a couple of times, then bolted upright.
"……"
She brought her eyes level with Lian's. Only then did the smell of blood saturating the air sting her nose. Strength gradually gathered in her fierce eyes until they had returned to their original, razor-sharp glare.
Rustle...
She ran her hand over her blood-soaked robes. At the motion, the torn fabric slipped down her shoulders, revealing a delicate frame that seemed out of place in this slaughterhouse. Fortunately, the slipping robes caught on her generous chest and stopped there.
"……"
She ran her fingers along her own back and frowned.
The wound was gone. Wasn't this the grave injury that cheap potions couldn't even stanch? She had bled nearly a fatal amount, yet she wasn't even dizzy. It was as if her body had been returned to the state it was in before the wound was ever dealt.
Sweep—.
One thing only. From her right shoulder to her left hip — a single dark grey scar slashed across her back.
Faint, but undeniably there. As if to say the past never truly disappears.
"Sorry about the scar. That was my first time using Recovery Magic."
"……"
"I'll give you a discount."
The woman glared at Lian. Not because he'd scarred her skin. What her golden eyes held was an anger without any discernible source. Her vertically slit, reptilian pupils stirred a primal fear in Lian's instincts.
"...It was you who saved this one."
"It was profitable."
"Why?"
Why, she says. Lian worked his stiff lips, choosing his words. Squelch.
While Lian was still hunting for the right reply, the woman, having steadied her breath once, pushed herself up from the pool of blood.
"This one told you the weak need offer no help."
"Hold o—"
It happened in an instant. She seized Lian by the collar and shoved him flat onto his back.
SPLASH!
Lian crashed down into the pool of blood, and the woman came down on top of him, draping herself over his body. Her ample chest pressed down against his sternum. Their eyes met, inches apart.
"What are you d—"
"This one said the weak need offer no help!"
A trembling voice cut off his words. Passion churned in that tremor — was it fury, or something else entirely? He couldn't tell for certain. But those reptilian golden eyes were fixed on Lian's mangled left arm, and so—
Because I'm getting paid.
Lian forced down the answer that leapt automatically to his tongue and swallowed it.
Splash.
The customer had been saved. It was time to collect his fee.
"Then take responsibility."
"For what, exactly?"
It seemed he'd run into a piece of work of an entirely different breed from Amone.