Amelia
“Amelia?”
“Yeah, there's a town here too. Or are you just writing the place off because it's out in the sticks?”
“Oh, n-no, it's not that. It's just… it's been a while since I've left the house, that's alll…”
“What's it been, about two days since you showed up at my place?”
Two days already. Time really did fly.
When I'd first arrived, I'd been worrying about finding work in an unfamiliar land, and now here I was, studying magic. I had no idea whether I had any actual talent for it, but one thing was certain — my luck seemed to be holding up.
Musing on that, I turned to Sylvia.
“So, what should I buy?”
“Well, first of all…”
Sylvia ducked inside for a moment, then came back and handed me a list of ingredients. I copied it word for word into a comment on one of my old forum posts — in other words, I was using the gallery as a notepad. Plenty of people used it that way. Handy, really. No risk of forgetting anything. Granted, I wasn't in the habit of forgetting things anyway, but you could never be too careful.
A short while later…
“Off you go, then.”
Sylvia saw me to the door. Except there was one small problem.
“Um… I don't actually have any money.”
I had no money. None.
And so that's how I ended up receiving money from Sylvia.
One hundred gold.
An enormous sum. I wasn't sure of the exact exchange rate, but back home it'd come out to roughly ten million won. Which meant Sylvia had handed ten million won to a stranger she'd known for two days and sent her off to do the shopping.
...There's some kind of magic on this pouch, isn't there.
There was no other explanation. I had never once given her reason to trust me like this.
Still clutching the gold carefully, I set off toward town.
As I'd mentioned before, this was Barukh District 3. Not exactly a booming metropolis, but hardly some backwater either. A comfortable number of people, clean air, good water — right on the line between countryside and city, in other words.
“Hm…”
Still, I couldn't help feeling a little tense. This wasn't Lukfelton, the city I knew. Lukfelton's security was so tight that it had been an absolute nightmare for beggars like me — but the flip side of that was that nobody ever actually fought. There were so many guards on patrol it bordered on excessive; throwing a punch in an alley without one of them catching you was practically impossible. You'd be spotted, guaranteed.
Ugh, I should've finished reading that book before leaving.
I really should have read the second volume of Basics of Magic before setting out. After all, I still didn't know Barrier magic — an absolute essential for any mage. And here I was, wandering out without it.
“...I suppose that just means it's safe around here.”
The fact that Sylvia had sent me out at all was proof of how much she trusted this district. The security had to be solid.
With that thought, I pulled my robe tight around myself. I didn't know why, but Sylvia had insisted I keep it properly fastened and my face covered.
After following the road for a while…
“Oh.”
The entrance to Barukh District 3 came into view.
Sylvia's estate lay outside District 3 to begin with. It could still call on Barukh's services when needed, but there was a reason mages built their residences out in the outskirts — experiments had a tendency to damage the surrounding area, and the compensation for that ran astronomical. So instead, mages pushed as far toward the edge of the territory as they could while still staying within Barukh's reach. Some did take the risk and set up shop inside the districts proper, of course.
Lost in that thought, I carefully joined the queue.
This is going to take a while.
Longer than I'd expected, at any rate. They called it Barukh District 3, but the city was fundamentally built as a fortress. Picture a castle in the shape of a circle, then divide that circle into five wedges — District 1 through District 5. It made administration easier, and supposedly it really had simplified things once they'd carved up the zones that way.
So I waited for my turn at the checkpoint. And waited.
“Next!”
Finally, my turn. The guard at District 3's gate looked thoroughly exhausted — there was a whiff of alcohol about him, so he'd probably been drinking last night.
“Halt a moment. Beginning belongings check.”
With that, he ran some strange contraption over my body, sweeping me from head to toe. It looked remarkably like one of those security scanners at an airport checkpoint. I was still musing on the resemblance when the inspection ended.
“Pass.”
Thankfully, they just waved me through. I'd heard that in some other cities you had to pay a toll just to pass through the gates.
I slipped through the gate quickly, pulling my hood back up as I went.
Once inside Barukh District 3, I checked the map Sylvia had given me.
“Medicinal herbs… and candy. Plus one thing I want.”
Sylvia clearly knew how to handle people. Tacking on permission to buy one thing of my choosing at the end — a clever way to light a fire under someone. Impressed despite myself, I followed the map until I arrived at a quaint, old-fashioned shop. The sign read:
{ Amelia's General Store }
This was the place. Sylvia had said she always bought her ingredients here.
With that in mind, I opened the door and stepped inside —
Whooong—!
Something came flying straight at my face. Not that I was about to just take it. There's a prejudice that mages are physically weak, but I wasn't that weak. Years of living on the streets had given me immunity to just about everything, and I was remarkably strong to boot. My reflexes weren't bad either.
So I casually swatted the incoming object out of the air.
Ting—!
Deflected it, checked what it was —
“...An iron ball?”
It was an iron ball. A very hard one, at that. So hard, in fact, that my hand — which had blocked it — was swollen red.
I was still standing there in a daze when someone came rushing out from the back.
“I-I'm so sorryyy…!!”
A woman with pink hair and spectacles emerged, singed in more places than one. One look at her and I knew immediately.
This woman was a mage.
“Uh… is this thing important by any chance?”
“Oh, noo? It's just an iron ball that rolls around my workshop…”
“Then why did it come flying at me?”
I kept my tone gentle. I had no idea how strong she was — but since I had zero intention of fighting anyone, there was no reason not to be polite.
“Ah, th-that… my experiment went wrong and… I'm sorry…!!”
The pink-haired woman bowed her head over and over, clearly mortified. If anything, all the apologizing made me feel guilty — until I looked at my hand and the feeling evaporated entirely. It still stung like hell.
“Ah, right… well. Anyway, I've come to make a purchase. Mind if I check my list with you?”
“Oh, yes, of course…!”
Cross-referencing the comment in my gallery against my own memory, I confirmed nothing was missing and read the list aloud. Whereupon —
the pink-haired woman's face went white as a sheet.
A wave of unease washed over me.
“Is it… hard to get these ingredients?”
That would be a problem for me too. Sylvia had ordered them, so I'd naturally assumed they'd be in stock — but if they weren't, what was I supposed to say? I heaved a long internal sigh, and the woman in front of me shook her head vigorously.
“Of course we have them…!!”
“Then why the face?”
Not to brag, but street life had made me an excellent reader of expressions. Which muscles twitched, which emotion it meant — I could tell them apart like that. Granted, it didn't work on people who kept their faces under ironclad control.
So I asked —
“Ah, um… could you perhaps be… Miss Syl's discipleee…?”
“Syl? No.”
Syl was the name of a Grand Archmage. I was most certainly not her disciple. How could I possibly be? That would be the luck of a lifetime.
As I answered, the woman's expression turned strange and unreadable. Then she disappeared into the storeroom for a moment and emerged carrying the ingredients.
“That'll be sixty-four gold.”
“...Right.”
Honestly? I was completely flustered. Sixty-four gold for these ingredients meant about 6.4 million won. What on earth were these things made of, that a single ingredient cost 6.4 million won? Was I even supposed to be carrying this around?
The stray thoughts came quickly — and just as quickly, I shoved them aside, gingerly tucking the glass vial of ingredients into the pouch of my robe. Then I paid.
“Here you go.”
“Th-thank you very much.”
Oddly enough, her speech had gotten noticeably calmer. Something felt off about the whole thing, but I let it go and slipped out of the general store.
The sign came into view again.
{ Amelia's General Store }
“...That woman must be Amelia, right?”
I hadn't actually asked, so I couldn't be sure, but it seemed likely. She looked like she'd walked straight out of a comic book, come to think of it.
Indulging that pointless line of thought, I left the shop behind and set off on the second errand. I had to keep moving before nightfall — once the sun went down, things could get dangerous.
So, map in hand, I headed for the next stop.
“A candy shop?”
I'd already confirmed it on the map, but still. Curious. A candy shop, of all things.
Wondering what that was about, I quickened my pace.