You've Reached the Starting Line
When people are startled, they cry out. When they are truly stunned, their mouths snap shut.
The training ground was stunned silence itself. Even with its neck and tail not fully extended, the drake stretched past thirty meters, and the mere fact of its existence had half-emptied every mind in the room.
Raon turned his gaze to the right and studied the merchants' faces.
Only moments ago they had been cheering that Jesser had won, waving their hands in triumph. Now those same mouths were clamped shut as if they had swallowed their tongues.
Their eyes, by contrast, were peeled so wide they looked ready to split, busy taking in the drake that filled the entire training ground.
The other heirs are probably in the same state.
A faint smile touched his lips as he glanced at Dialun and Palen standing beside him.
Palen, who had felt a kinship with Dorian, had been so shocked he'd dropped to the floor. Dialun was staring at a drake too vast to take in at a glance, a string of drool hanging from his lip.
Those two have completely lost it.
Jesser, who had been standing in the center, looked as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. His pupils had gone slack, as though his soul had been knocked clean out of him after taking a proper beating from the Dorian he'd treated as invisible.
Last of all, Raon looked at Artis.
This one… hasn't changed at all.
As expected, he was no ordinary man.
He was the only person in the training ground who wasn't surprised, studying Dorian and the drake with unhurried, clear eyes.
Raon had thought it before, but it seemed a major merchant guild wasn't something just anyone could run.
"Their faces have all gone yellow."
Wrath looked around and grinned.
"Seeing those cocky fools go quiet feels like This King has just eaten mint chocolate ice cream!"
Raon smiled and nodded.
Yeah. That's satisfying.
Watching the merchants who'd been shouting that the fight was already over from the moment they returned now collapsing with ashen faces was deeply, thoroughly satisfying.
"Hooo…"
At the sound of a thin breath, Raon looked to his side. Dorian was trembling in the shoulders, fists clenched tight. The corners of his mouth were curled upward—he, too, seemed to be savoring the crowd's reaction.
A silence that was both brief and endless finally broke, and mouths that had been frozen as if time itself had stopped began to open.
"Th-that's a drake? Isn't that a dragon?"
"Even as it is now, it's way bigger than the one Young Master Jesser brought…"
"If you stretch out the head and tail, it'd be over thirty-five meters, wouldn't it?"
"Wh-where did they even get something like that?"
"Look at that. There's still life in the scales. That means they hunted it this time, just like Young Master Jesser!"
"Young Master Dorian only moved with the White Sword Dragon, just the two of them. So that means…"
"The two of them took down that monster."
The merchants swallowed dryly, awed by the drake's overwhelming size and by Raon's martial power.
"N-no…"
Jesser's lips trembled as he approached Dorian.
"Wh-what is this! Where did you get something like this!"
For the first time, Dorian appeared in the eyes of the man who had treated his younger brother's very existence as nothing.
"I hunted it."
Dorian shrugged, as if it were no great matter.
"Where did you hunt it!"
Jesser bellowed, as if he'd forgotten that he had spent all this time ignoring Dorian.
"Somewhere far away."
Dorian answered at his leisure, smiling the way he'd learned from Raon.
"You little—you're mocking me…"
"Ahem!"
Just as Jesser was about to lunge at Dorian, Artis approached with a pointed cough.
"Dorian. Unfurl the drake properly."
"Ah—yes, sir!"
Dorian ignored Jesser, ran over, and stretched the drake's head and tail into a straight line.
Even crumpled, it had been larger than Jesser's drake. Fully extended, the difference now looked like an adult beside an infant.
"S-seeing it like this, the size difference is way worse…"
"No kidding. Young Master Jesser's drake is about twenty-five meters, and Young Master Dorian's has to be over thirty-five."
"A gap like this, and you might as well say the heir's already been decided."
"Nngh!"
"We're finished…"
The merchants who had followed Jesser shook their heads and heaved sighs that seemed to sink into the earth, as if they already believed it was over.
Artis listened to their reactions and nodded.
"The result is in. With this…"
"Not yet! It's not over yet!"
Jesser raised a hand and stepped forward. The arrogance in his eyes had been replaced by naked urgency.
"What, exactly, is 'not yet'?"
Artis turned his gaze toward Jesser, slow and unhurried.
"I admit Dorian's drake is larger. But bigger isn't always better, is it? The durability of the claws, fangs, and bones will be better on the one I brought. And besides…"
He pointed at Dorian's drake, eyes narrowing to slits.
"Look at those wounds. The scales are full of cracks, aren't they? The inside is bound to be a wreck. There won't be much that's usable!"
"That's true…"
"Something that size, they must have stabbed it with Ganggi over and over. The insides could be ruined."
"The scales are pretty filthy, I'll give him that."
It wasn't only Jesser. The merchants who followed him raised their voices too, seizing at a last chance.
Raon enjoyed their desperate flailing and let out a quiet snort of laughter.
I'm even more confident about that.
The drake had lived a long time, so it carried scars here and there—but the cause of death was a single sword strike driven down through the skull.
Anyone who knew how to look would be more stunned by the cleanliness of the kill than by a size exceeding thirty meters.
"Uh, um…"
Dorian rubbed his Belly Pouch, uneasy. He hadn't hunted it himself, after all.
"That's not exactly wrong."
Artis looked from one drake to the other in turn and nodded.
"Ah, then…"
"However. I am not the one who decides that."
He pointed toward the training ground doors, from which the sound of heavy footsteps was approaching.
"The client will decide in person."
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the doors opened, and men entered whose thick, packed muscle would not have looked out of place on orcs.
The most striking of them was the gray-haired old man walking at the head of the group. His muscles were more massive than anyone else's, yet he stood no taller than a child, a long beard trailing down his chest.
"Oh!"
Wrath looked at the old man and smacked his lips.
"It's been a while since This King last laid eyes on a shorty!"
A shorty, huh.
Raon narrowed his eyes at Wrath's words.
So demons call dwarves "shorties"?
Just as Wrath had said, the master of the Gray Hammer Guild was not human. He was a dwarf—and not just any dwarf, but a name among names, renowned across the continent.
"I greet the master of the Gray Hammer."
Artis stepped forward and bowed his head to the dwarf.
"That's too much courtesy, Guildmaster of Sepia."
The dwarf stroked his beard and dipped his head slightly in return.
"Meeting Master Borgos, who stands among the Continental Master Smiths, calls for at least this much courtesy."
Artis smiled and shook his head.
Borgos…
This dwarf was a man who stood at the peak of the Continental Master Smiths, alongside Vulcan, who had forged the Heavenly Sky Sword, and Kuberad, who had forged the Requiem Sword.
"Flattery won't get you anyth— huh!"
Borgos, who had been waving the praise away, suddenly went wide-eyed and bolted forward.
His legs were short, but he covered the ground at astonishing speed and came to a halt in front of Dorian's drake.
"Wh-what is this!"
The eyes of a man who looked as if he wouldn't flinch if a meteor fell from the sky trembled as if he'd been struck by lightning.
"A drake of this size! That's nearly an adult dragon!"
He had lived a long life as a craftsman, but he had never seen a drake this large. He chewed his lip.
"And it's a water-attribute drake, with the finest frost for forging weapons!"
"Look at these wing bones! They don't look like they'd break, do they!"
"And these scales! They're so steeped in frost that if you just packed them together you'd have scale armor a blade couldn't cut!"
The craftsmen who had come with Borgos examined the drake and let out great booming laughs. They looked ready to haul it home that instant and start forging.
"You idiots."
Borgos clicked his tongue at his craftsmen.
"You're looking at everything except what you ought to be looking at."
"Sir?"
"Wh-what do you mean…"
Ignoring their confusion, he headed for where the drake's head lay.
"A single blow."
Borgos swallowed dryly as he studied the small sword mark risen at the center of the drake's skull.
"Sir?"
"This means this colossal beast was slain with a single stroke of the sword."
He lifted his gaze. Those trembling pupils came to rest in front of Raon.
"Was it you?"
Borgos let out a thin breath and approached him.
"Unbelievable sword power from such a young-looking face. The word genius isn't enough to contain it."
True to the name of a Continental Master Smith, he had accurately gauged the martial power Raon had been concealing.
"May I ask your name?"
Raon nodded with courteous respect. He liked being treated with proper manners, even though they were of different races and he was so much younger.
"Raon Zieghart."
"I've heard that name. The swordsman they call the White Sword Dragon."
The rumors had reached even the Gray Hammer Guild. Borgos already knew his epithet.
"I've seen many swordsmen who carried the name Sword Dragon, but you stand above them all. Now I understand why this monster fell in a single blow."
He looked down at the Heavenly Sky Sword and nodded.
"Guildmaster of Sepia. Our guild will take this drake."
Borgos didn't so much as glance at the drakes the other heir candidates had brought. He walked straight to Artis.
"W-wait a moment!"
Jesser clasped both hands together and squeezed himself between Borgos and Artis.
"Please look at the drake I hunted as well! It's smaller, but I hunted it cleanly—there are almost no wounds on the hide! And it's a wind-attribute drake, so the skeleton should be sturdy as well…"
"Do you take my eyes for rotten fish?"
Borgos's voice dropped until it was cold enough to freeze the air.
"Wh-what do you mean…"
"I examined your drake the moment I walked in. With the Jesser name behind it, I assumed you'd brought something of quality."
"Ah—then…"
"But that name appears to have been empty fame."
Borgos glared at Jesser, his eyes narrowing.
"The outside of the drake you brought is certainly clean. But you dealt a great deal of trauma to the inside. Not content with tearing through it with Ganggi, you even detonated magic, didn't you."
"Th-that's…"
"Do that, and the bones shatter and the underside of the scales melts until almost nothing is usable. In other words, it's defective goods."
"Ah…"
Jesser's face went paper-white, stiff as a sheet.
"I've been holding a hammer since long before you—no. Long before your father was born. Trying to deceive me with shoddy rhetoric? You took me far too lightly."
Borgos clicked his tongue in disgust and turned his back.
"You did something stupid, Jesser."
Artis looked down at him and let out a short sigh.
"I-I only brought the goods however I could, just as Father said!"
"I never said that. I said that even if you bring stolen goods to a client, the goods themselves must not be defective. You completely misunderstood."
"Ahh…"
Jesser dropped to his knees on the floor and hung his head. It was the face of a man who had finally understood that it was over, sinking into despair.
"W-we're finished…"
"Young Master Jesser, ending like this…"
"Young Master Dialun didn't even get a glance."
"Th-then is Young Master Dorian really the heir?"
The eyes of the merchants who had stood behind Jesser and Dialun trembled pitifully, like a butterfly's wings caught in a wave.
"Anyone predict a result like this?"
"Uh, no. Who would've picked Young Master Dorian?"
"Then isn't this a chance? A chance to stand behind Young Master Dorian?"
"That's true…"
"Play it right and we could even make executive…"
The merchants abandoned the rotten vine and, hungry to climb the newly lowered rope named Dorian, lifted their backsides off their chairs and licked their lips.
They looked ready to be the first to rush to Dorian the moment the result was official.
"I'll buy your drake."
Borgos approached Dorian and held out his hand.
"Uh…"
Dorian didn't take it. He turned and looked back at Raon and Artis.
"……"
"It's all over. What are you waiting for?"
Raon said nothing. Artis furrowed his brow.
"No. It's not over yet!"
As if he'd taken the hint from Raon's silence and Artis's words, Dorian smiled and still did not take Borgos's hand.
"Now we start the haggling!"
He raised his voice with real confidence.
"Correct."
Artis nodded softly and came to stand beside Dorian.
"If you've brought the goods according to the client's request, driving the price of those goods as high as it will go is also a merchant's work."
For the first time, a smile of genuine pride bloomed at the corner of his mouth.
"You've finally taken your place at the starting line, Dorian."
Dorian and Borgos entered a conference room inside the headquarters and began negotiations.
Behind the two of them stood Raon and Borgos's head disciple.
"As originally commissioned, I'll buy the drake's horns, fangs, claws, hide, and bones—the lot of it."
Borgos lifted his gaze and met Dorian's eyes.
"I'll be honest. The drake you lot hunted is the finest I've ever seen. I don't even know the market price."
"Ah—yes, sir."
Dorian nodded stiffly.
"An ordinary drake carcass goes for about eight hundred to a thousand gold coins, so how about four gold bars?"
Borgos wrote four gold bars on the contract Dorian had provided.
"Four gold bars?"
A single gold bar was worth a thousand gold coins. It was a truly staggering sum.
"Mmm…"
Dorian glanced back, as if seeking an opinion.
Raon looked at him and rolled his eyes slightly to one side.
"I-I'm sorry, but that price might be a bit difficult."
Dorian swallowed dryly and shook his head.
"Then I'll add three hundred gold coins to the four gold bars. How's that?"
Borgos added three hundred gold coins to the amount written on the contract.
"So that's four thousand three hundred gold coins…"
Dorian turned around, breathing hard.
"Hmph."
Raon lowered his gaze this time as well, as if still unsatisfied.
"Th-that one's not great either…"
"Ahem! Fine. Four gold bars and six hundred gold coins!"
"Hahk!"
Dorian turned around again. Raon still did not lift his eyes.
"Nngh…"
Borgos groaned without even waiting to hear Dorian speak. He had figured out who was really setting the price.
"Alright! I'll raise it so high you can't refuse! Five gold bars!"
Five gold bars. The price had climbed all the way to five thousand gold coins.
"Gaaaaah!"
Dorian let out a strangled cry and whipped around. Both hands were trembling, as if begging to accept already.
Raon shook his head, his expression perfectly calm.
"Hahk!"
"Uh…?"
"Ha!"
Dorian, Borgos, and even Borgos's head disciple went wide-eyed.
Unlike the three of them, standing there in shock, Raon folded his arms and sipped his tea in perfect peace.
"Hey."
Wrath tilted his head.
"How much is that drake even worth?"
How would I know.
He'd heard that the stuffed drake Dialun had brought was worth about a thousand gold coins, but he had no real idea what this one was worth.
"Then why keep rejecting?"
There's a saying that when you haggle, you should refuse three times.
"You already did it four times."
I tried one more just in case.
"Is this bastard actually insane…"
Wrath let out a breath of pure disbelief.
"This is driving me mad."
Borgos frowned and lifted his head.
"If I walk out of here like this, you might have to retake the succession test. You know that, don't you?"
He gripped the table as if making a threat.
"Hiek!"
Dorian turned around in a panic, but Raon remained perfectly calm.
This wasn't a bluff. Artis had told them to bring a drake. He had never said they had to sell it.
"Th-the test was to bring back a drake's cl-claws and fangs, horns, and bones. Tell him it wasn't about closing a sale. Guh!"
In the middle of repeating it, Dorian even spat out the unnecessary words tell him.
"Nngh…"
Borgos looked up at Raon, his jaw trembling.
"What is he, some kind of shadow power broker?!"
Wrath's mouth fell open at the sight.
"If you're going to pull this, YOU sit at the table!"