Hands Off My Snake!
“Huh? Why are you looking for a jewelry shop?”
“Because we have to go get the other one too, obviously.”
The boy recoiled in horror and shook his head violently.
“You can’t! It’s dangerous! There are always thugs hanging around Dunhel’s Jewelry Shop. If anyone causes a scene, they’ll kill you without a trace!”
“My own father nearly died at their hands. I absolutely cannot tell you where it is!”
“Right. So it’s Dunhel’s Jewelry Shop.”
“……Ah.”
“You really need to study harder, kid.”
I nodded roughly and pulled a coin pouch from my bag. I wondered how much would be appropriate for the two spirit stones and the book.
“I’m serious, you can’t! Even if you’re a noble lady, those guys won’t just hand it over nicely!”
“It’s fine. I have two knights with me, and a snake.”
[Spirit! I’m a spirit! A spirit!]
Rai emphasized it with all his might, but of course only I could hear him.
“I’ll take care of retrieving the item myself, so don’t worry about it. And this is payment for the two spirit stones. The book’s included. This should be enough, right?”
I took the coin pouch out of my bag and handed several gold coins to the nameless boy. As the number of coins falling into his palm increased, his eyes grew wider and wider.
When his eyes could stretch no further, his mouth fell open. What an amusing kid.
“Huk!”
“I’ve paid the price, so this is mine now, yes?”
“This is… this is way too much, miss!”
“I gave what I felt like giving.”
“I can’t possibly accept this much……”
“Shut up. It’s my money, so it’s my decision.”
Remember this! The more money, the better!
“But……”
“Just take it and stop arguing. Anyone who knows the true value of these items would pay a hundred times this much.”
I gave the boy the largest amount I thought he could safely handle.
Handing over too much money would obviously put his life at risk.
“Buy a ton of delicious bread and go home. It’d be good to visit the temple with your mother and father to get those wounds treated. And if there’s any left over, you should really try learning to read and write.”
The lives of commoners seemed far harsher than I’d imagined.
Having been lucky enough to be born a noble, I couldn’t truly understand their struggles. All I could do was vaguely guess how difficult it must be.
“Miss, no matter how you look at it, ten gold seems far too excessive?”
The boy kept bowing and scraping, and Philo looked like he thought I didn’t know the market value and had simply overpaid. Which, to be fair, was roughly true.
“Is it a lot?”
“It’s not just ‘a lot’! Ten gold is an enormous sum—a whole family could live on it for an entire year!”
“Yes! It’s enough to build a small house!”
The two of them desperately tried to dissuade me, but the money had already changed hands. I genuinely didn’t feel the slightest regret.
“I have nothing to spend it on anyway. It doesn’t matter. My monthly allowance is one gold.”
“……Huk!”
“Your allowance… is one gold?”
“Even then, since I’m only at the academy, I have nowhere to use it so it just keeps piling up. If you include the scholarship I received when I contracted a spirit, I probably have around a hundred gold?”
As I muttered to myself, both Hansen and Philo looked even more stunned than when I had pulled the snake from my clothes. Their faces went completely blank.
I could guess what had shocked them so badly.
“Our monthly salary……”
“How much is it?”
“Ah, never mind.”
“We spoke out of turn.”
“Hmm… It’s not less than one gold, is it?”
Their silence was answer enough.
Knights really do have it rough. Low pay, stuck escorting a kid like me, and then getting punished by their superiors for not greeting them properly…
Poor things. Truly pitiful.
My pitying gaze must have been too obvious, because neither Philo nor Hansen could lift their heads.
[What do you think, Rai? Should I comfort them by saying it’s not embarrassing to have a small salary?]
[I don’t think that would be very comforting.]
[Yeah, I figured.]
I shrugged once and started walking. I needed to find Dunhel’s Jewelry Shop before the sun went down.
People still parted like the Red Sea whenever I passed, and I was slowly getting used to it.
What exactly did commoners think nobles were?
The fleeting question crossed my mind, then vanished just as quickly.
Finding the jewelry shop wasn’t particularly difficult. It was the largest one in the city, after all.
[How about it? Do you sense a spirit stone here?]
[Yes, I can feel a faint presence. It’s definitely inside.]
Then this was the place. I crossed my arms and looked up at the shop’s signboard. It was so excessively ornate that it actually looked a little tacky.
[Good. Then you know exactly what you need to do now, right?]
[I just need to retrieve the spirit stone, yes?]
[You’re getting sharper. Well done.]
[Hehe.]
[Now go get it!]
A little praise was all it took for Rai to act like an eager puppy. I watched as he happily wagged his tail and disappeared into the jewelry shop.
Now all I had to do was wait. Perfect!
“Um… miss?”
I was standing there looking quite pleased with myself when Philo called out to me with a bewildered expression.
“The snake… is running away?”
“He’s not running away. He’s going to fetch the spirit stone. Don’t you know that?”
“The spirit stone the boy tried to sell before it was taken from him?”
“Yeah, that one. I paid for it, so it’s mine now, right? So of course I have to get it back.”
“……”
He looked like he had a lot he wanted to say. I answered all his unspoken objections on my own.
“What? I’m completely justified! Those jewelry shop bastards took it from that boy unfairly in the first place! They stole it without paying a single coin! So I’m going to steal it back! Don’t complain even if you want to!”
“No, that’s not the issue… How exactly is a snake supposed to… do that?”
“Ah, that.”
“Snakes are creatures with very low intelligence.”
“Normal snakes are, but this one is special. Anyway, don’t bother asking for details. It’s too annoying to explain.”
Philo still looked deeply skeptical, but I saw no reason to explain further.
The fact that Rai was actually a spirit was still something only I knew. I hadn’t meant to hide it, but I kept putting off explaining because it was bothersome, and now it had become this.
I had considered confessing to Teacher Iel, but I stopped myself because I was sure I’d get scolded for acting on my own again.
“Then what should we do?”
“Just wait for Rai to come back out.”
“That’s your answer?”
“Yep.”
The knights seemed to have expected they would get to do something heroic, but I hated troublesome things with a passion. Sending Rai in to sneak around was the peaceful solution.
There was no need for all of us to barge in when all we needed was to quietly retrieve one spirit stone.
‘Rai is the best at this kind of thing anyway.’
While waiting for Rai, I casually came up with a plan.
Once he brought back the spirit stone, I’d figure out what kind of spirit I could summon with it. If it seemed useful, I’d contract it myself and then let Rai absorb the stone.
It would be a waste to leave it for someone else to contract. That would lower its rarity. Since I was the one who found it, there was no reason to share it with anyone else, right?
‘But contracting three spirits might be a bit much… Wait, no. If I take this one too, that makes four. Rai, Undine, and two spirit stones.’
I briefly pondered whether my greed was getting out of hand.
To be honest, it was theoretically impossible. Contracting four different types of spirits, that is.
Most spirit masters only contracted one type of spirit, and that was because of affinity.
For example, since I had contracted a water spirit, I would never be able to summon a fire spirit no matter how hard I tried.
Water and fire were completely opposite attributes; their mere existence weakened each other.
I could probably summon an earth spirit, which had good affinity with water, but there weren’t many spirit masters who bothered.
Contracting both water and earth spirits made it difficult to reach higher realms.
If one aimed for the heights of an upper spirit, it was normal to focus on only one type.
“Hmm… I’ll just take it first and worry about it later.”
A greedy person never knew how to let go.
Leaning against a tree while waiting for Rai, I opened the book again and skimmed through the parts I had skipped earlier.
“Why do spirits help humans? This has been one of our oldest conundrums.
Have you ever considered what meaning there could possibly be in it? Do spirits simply enjoy serving others? Or do they receive souls or sacrifices from us like devils?
The answer is neither.
According to creation mythology, when the Creator God made the human realm, He made the land so abundant that both the heavenly and demonic realms competed fiercely to claim it. To maintain balance, the God gave birth to dragons upon the land, bestowed blessings to strengthen humans, and commanded the spirits to aid them.
But there is a great contradiction here. Spirits are not only summonable by humans. It has not been confirmed whether celestials or demons can command spirits, but what is certain is that most of the higher races of the middle realm—dragons, elves, and dwarves—can indeed command them.
If the God told the spirits to help humans, that would be strange. Did He mean for them to help everyone in the middle realm? If so, another question arises.
Why do spirits help all living beings in the middle realm?
Asking the spirits yields no answers. They still hold many secrets. I wonder if I will be able to solve this mystery before I die.”
The book was filled with philosophical musings about spirits. There wasn’t a single line about everyday life—it began with spirits and ended with spirits. The author seemed like a serious spirit otaku.
Once I finished reading it, I thought it might be nice to pass it on to Teacher Iel. Of course, I’d pretend I had only found the book.
That aside.
“Why isn’t Rai coming out?”
It had already been ten minutes. Something felt off. He wasn’t the slow type at all. Rai was actually quite quick and nimble.
I started walking toward the jewelry shop to look for him. I was getting annoyed that it was taking so long just to retrieve one spirit stone.
This body has no patience!
[Rai?]
I called out irritably, but there was no answer. It seemed he was too far away.
There were several limitations to our mental communication.
Through experimentation, I had discovered that ten meters was the limit. Rai had said that once we grew closer, we would be able to communicate from much farther away.
[Answer me right now! If you’re just picking up random things and eating them, you’re in big trouble!]
It felt like sending a cat into a fish shop, and I was starting to worry. Maybe he was pretending not to hear me because he was causing trouble.
Feeling increasingly anxious, I quickened my pace, and the two knights hurried after me.
[Kyaaak! You human bastards! Let go of this!]
It was only when I nearly reached the entrance of the jewelry shop that I finally saw Rai.
Once he entered my line of sight, his voice became audible again.
Rai was being held by some strangers right at the entrance of the shop. Well, it made sense—if a snake was slithering around the city, people would normally try to catch it.
That’s why I told him to wear a ribbon!
What truly angered me as I approached wasn’t the simple logic of the situation, but the way those men were laughing mockingly the more Rai struggled.
“Hey, you!”
[Master!]
“Who the hell are you?”
They looked a bit too young to be considered full adults. Their faces suggested they weren’t even twenty yet. They all turned to look at me.
Of course, in this world sixteen was considered adult, but to my eyes they were just rude, delinquent teenagers.
And they looked like very bad news.
“What do you think you’re doing? Let go of my snake right now!”
[Sob sob, I knew you’d come to save me! I believed in you!]
“The only one allowed to bully him is me.”
[……Master?]