Earning Pocket Money (2)
Securing a venue proved no trouble at all. The busiest commercial district in Esterji Fortress City clustered around the Adventurers' Guild, and Vitten sorted that out with a few well-placed connections.
"Haha, and who else would I be, if not Vitten the Red Wolf!"
As it turned out, Vitten was something of a celebrity among adventurers. A self-made man, apparently—he'd started out as a mercenary and clawed his way up to the Grand Duke's personal guard. Judging only by the way Thalia pushed him around, I'd never have guessed he had such an impressive side to him.
While Vitten raised the stall with the burly lugs he called brother, Thalia ran herself ragged procuring the long list of supplies I'd demanded.
Meanwhile, I trained under Caroi. He showed no intention whatsoever of cutting me any slack, and I had no intention of skipping practice over something like this. Obtaining the lava spirit's core would undoubtedly be a tremendous opportunity—but I knew full well that instruction from a master as exceptional as Caroi was an opportunity no less precious.
"One more lap! Grit your teeth and run!"
"Chris is watching! Picture Mabel laughing at you!"
In exchange, lessons wrapped up by midday. After restoring my pulp of a body with a special tonic, I slipped out through the back gate of the detached palace in a carriage Lily had arranged.
Thick paper had been pasted over the carriage windows, blotting out the view outside.
The most critical part of this operation was that no one could catch on that I was the Grand Duke's son. A duke's heir sitting cross-legged behind a street stall would hand fresh ammunition to anyone who already looked at me with a sour eye.
Shrouded from sight, I crossed Esterji Fortress City and drew up before the Adventurers' Guild.
The stall looked far too convincing for something thrown together in haste. The counter was decently wide, and a cloth screened the entrance to the workshop behind it, keeping our secret perfectly sealed.
"Vitten, we're open."
I lifted the curtain a sliver and murmured to Vitten. He gave the disguise helmet draped over his head one last check, then let out a bellow loud enough to startle the whole street.
"The miracle item everyone's been waiting for! Wondrous healing miracles, handcrafted by an Awoken Ability user—yours today at prices you won't believe!"
The pitch was smooth enough to make me wonder about his past.
But for all Vitten's efforts, customers didn't come easily. Stalls like ours were as plentiful as the people, and the other shops were shouting far more provocative lines.
"A full refund if it doesn't work!" "His Grace the Grand Duke won't touch a meal without it!" "We brewed it morning and night, and even our dog awakened an ability!"—and so on, and so forth.
This was why medicine was such easy prey for fraud. Since effects were hard to prove on the spot, all a huckster had to do was make the sale.
The other shops fared no better. While nearly every stall swatted at flies, one shop alone was packed to bursting. At first I took the crowd for general market traffic, but I was wrong—most of that throng was a queue for that single store.
The shop kept five barkers on staff. One of their cries pierced the curtain and lodged itself in my ear.
"The very product favored by the young lord Iden Esterji himself!"
What?
"Unprecedented! One of a kind! The dual Awoken Ability of fire and ice that stunned even Lord Solitas Himself! That mystical essence is sealed within this very bottle!"
I was so dumbfounded I nearly bolted out of the workshop. Who gave them permission to sell my name, the shameless, conscienceless swindlers?
"A mere 20 Bart, and superior power is yours!"
The price had no conscience, either.
Most of those lining up were mercenaries or adventurers. Men in ragged clothes under battered armor, jangling scuffed leather scabbards worn smooth by their hands.
People who earned today to eat tomorrow. I'd seen plenty of their kind in the fortress cities of the Central Plains, too. For them, being weaker than the next man was reason enough to die on the job—so even a scam they could see through with their own eyes pried their wallets open.
"Thank you kindly! An excellent choice!"
What made those bastards shrewd was none other than this: they were selling my name.
Unlike my sister Mabel or Chris, my name carried a hefty price tag with no real power base behind it. Which meant anyone could poke me without fearing the consequences.
"Just give the word. I'll go flip that stall right over."
Vitten growled.
"No need. Flipping their stall won't make my business any better."
To scrape together 190,000 Bart, I needed to earn 10,000 a day, which left no room for brawling with small fry.
For a long while after that, all I could do was watch the swindlers rake in coin. Customers shunned my stall so thoroughly I began to wonder if the world itself was playing a joke on me.
When a red dusk began to settle over the street, I started to admit that the strategy had failed. Besides, I felt sorry for Vitten, who had shouted himself hoarse for nothing.
Then it happened.
"Healing miracles, you say?"
My first customer appeared as if conjured by magic. From his very entrance, he was no ordinary man.
"Hey, that old man over there—isn't that the Silver Hawk? I heard he retired because of the Overflow."
"Overflow can't be cured even by holy magic. Looks like he's still chasing after medicine."
"A drowning man grabs at straws. He can't just lie down and die."
"Throwing good money away, if you ask me. He'd be better off handing it to me for free."
The customer was a white-haired old man. The reactions around him alone told me he had forged a name in the martial arts over a lifetime.
But for all his renown, the old man's body was a wreck. His meridians were twisted and blocked from head to toe—I honestly wondered how he managed to stay upright on two legs at all.
"I have tried every medicine men call good," the old man rasped.
"I have received blessings, too, and they did nothing. All I have left to lean on is a miracle—so today, once again, I shall carve off a piece of my flesh for your kind."
The old man drew a pouch from his coat and tossed it. It landed on the counter with a dull, heavy thud.
"Cure me and it's yours. If you can't, take down that sign and get lost."
"Uh, what do we do? Says it's Overflow," Vitten whispered, looking troubled.
Overflow.
So that was this world's name for the condition. Qi deviation, in other words.
This world had no such thing as internal cultivation methods, and no particular reason to learn any. Why bother, when the materials of the teeming spirit-creatures—monsters—could simply be bought with coin and consumed?
Strength gained quickly and cheaply exacts its price in equal measure. No wonder the temples' blessings went unheard. Old Colin had told me before: what is not a sickness, not even holy magic can touch.
"Would you mind if it took a little time?"
The old man's face flickered with surprise. "I have waited five years. A few days more is nothing."
"Five minutes will do."
Behind the curtain, I took up my pen and began to draw a talisman.
The Qi-Release Talisman was an offensive charm meant to scatter an enemy's energy, but in a case like this—where a man's own energy turned on his own body—it could serve as a cure.
"It's done."
Vitten took the talisman from me.
"Keep it against your chest, awake or asleep. That is all."
"...That's all? I need only carry it on me?" The old man couldn't quite bring himself to believe it.
"Yes."
The talisman's task was simply to buy time for the twisted meridians to settle back into place. Give it a few months, I judged, and he would manage daily life again.
"That said, you will never fight with a weapon again. This does not return your body to what it was—it only removes the affliction that has been devouring it."
"Martial arts mean nothing to me. So long as the illness is cured...!"
The old man reached out a trembling hand. The moment Vitten pressed the talisman into his palm, tears began to fall, drop by drop, down his wrinkled face.
He could not string together a single word, standing rooted where he was, weeping in silence.
"What's going on?"
"Hey, look over there."
Just as the crowd began to whisper, the old man flung both arms toward the heavens and cried out.
"It's a miracle!"
His shout rolled through the market street like a bell.
"A miracle! A miracle has come to pass!"
The old man hollered until his voice nearly burst, then clutched the talisman to his chest and sprinted off toward who knew where.
"Hey, did you just see an Overflow patient running?"
"What in the world just happened?"
"Did they say the Silver Hawk's been cured?"
Chaos descended upon the market. In the midst of it, Vitten opened the pouch the old man had left behind.
"...Lord Iden."
Vitten's voice was trembling as hard as the old man's had been.
"This isn't Bart. It's gold."
The old man's cure became the springboard from which my business leapt without end. On the first day, the opening stock sold out before the sun went down; the next day, everything sold out even faster.
Which meant I spent hours on end drawing talismans, wrestling arms that quivered from the morning's training.
Even so, my spirits were high. The money was one thing, but delivering potential fraud victims from their fate was satisfying in its own right.
In truth, I was poaching customers from the competition at a roaring clip. For the first few days, my visitors were mostly warriors suffering the same Overflow as the old man, but as time went on, their requests grew ever more varied.
Heal my sickness. Mend my broken arm. Help me awaken my ability...
I couldn't grant them everything, but within the domains where talismans held power, they performed with potent, immediate effect.
There was no long wait, either. Customers could feel the effect the instant the talisman touched their hands—of course they flocked to us.
"Hey, you paid your spot fee?"
"Who said you could set up shop here?"
The gnats came buzzing too. Their lines sounded rehearsed somewhere... this was supposed to be a different world, yet these thugs were as steadfastly the same as pine trees.
The low-rent thugs were all settled at the Vitten stage of proceedings. I never needed to lift a finger.
A single headbutt from Vitten sent them sprawling, and they fled down the alley spitting curses—you'll regret this, just you wait.
Of course, they were in no position to make me regret anything. If anything, quite the opposite.
Ten days after opening, my balance broke 100,000 Bart. By then I could almost feel the lava spirit already cradled in my arms.
"Vitten, the lava spirit's still safe and sound?"
"Thriving, my lord. It's grown so plump it's all but squeezing through the bars of its cage."
A strange question even began to nag at me. When money raked itself in like this, did I truly need to become Grand Duke at all?
Just as sales soared past 100,000 Bart and sprinted toward my target of 200,000, I received a visit from someone I had never expected.
I had just arrived at the guild for another day of business when I spotted a middle-aged man in luxurious clothes standing squarely where the carriage was meant to halt.
"What do you want?" I asked through the closed window, keeping my identity hidden.
"The name is Adras, good sir. I have come to bask in the presence of the healer whose fame fills every street."
"I don't know you."
"How hurtful. Have we not been the best of neighbors these past ten days?"
...So this was the bastard peddling my name.
His shop had lost a fair share of customers, but business still boomed. His main line wasn't medicine—it was elixirs that sparked Awoken Abilities.
"I'm not interested in you."
"Then let me come straight to the point. How about we go into partnership?"
"I believe I said I wasn't interested."
"Just a moment of your time."
The man slipped a hand into his coat and produced a glass vial of clear water.
"My flagship product. I call it 'Essence of Elements'—though in truth, it is common water. I scooped it from the river in the residential quarter."
He was confessing outright that it was garbage.
"With this worthless water, I earned 300,000 Bart each and every month."
"So?"
"I merely ask you to imagine. If my knack for turning plain water into gold were joined with your Awoken Ability, what mountains of wealth might we build?"
I shot Vitten a glance.
"Your orders, my lord."
"Tell him to get lost."
"You heard him. Unless you want things to turn ugly, clear off."
Vitten thrust his disguise helmet forward in menace. A few days prior, that very headbutt had taught a lesson to more than a dozen thugs.
"...So that is your answer. Very well. The regret, after all, will be yours—not mine."
The man unspooled clichés as stale as any street thug's.
"Keep only this in mind. I earn 300,000 Bart a month, yet less than 30,000 ever finds its way into my hands. Ponder the reason for that at your leisure."
The man tugged his hat down low and departed.
His parting words left the whole day with an uneasy aftertaste. Not until the following day did I grasp what he had meant.
"You say heretics skulk in this place?"
"It is so, Your Eminence. Their blasphemy passes all description."
I had shown up for work as usual when the market suddenly grew raucous, and a swarm of men-at-arms in white armor, swords and shields at their sides, came pouring in.
At the head of the column stood yesterday's conman, and beside him a white-haired old man who looked somehow familiar—clad in a baggy priest's robe, a thick tome of scripture in hand...
"We're rusting away here! Guide me at once!"
...Colin?