Ruby Lab (Part Two)
The next day.
The idea of having to see those con artists myself—Ruby, Emerald, or whoever else they were.
I led Pieter Dmitri, the office manager, and set off to track down the company called Ruby Lab.
Ruby Lab was situated in a remote area just outside Clovan City, a couple of hours away by carriage. We disembarked from the carriage.
“Aaaah… my back.”
Riding a carriage for a long time was heavy labor. On top of that, the roads here were unpaved and truly nothing more than dirt tracks. The carriage ride was no pleasant one.
“You didn’t have to come with me.”
“I had to. That dwarf office manager has ears thinner than onion skin…”
“……”
I couldn’t trust him. If I sent him alone and he got scammed again, who would pay for the damages?
As we slowly walked along, admiring the scenery, Pieter Dmitri suddenly spoke up.
“Are you curious about why I became a prosecutor?”
He was talking about his past.
He had been with me since I was hired as a capital defense prosecutor.
In truth, among public servants, the dwarf race was far from common. No, it was an extremely rare case.
Dwarves with high curiosity and excellent craftsmanship rarely took up desk jobs.
That was why I had wondered at first, but I never asked.
“Not really.”
I hadn’t even planned to. It was someone else’s personal matter, and if I asked, he might have to tell me his own story.
But he kept talking all on his own.
“When I was little, my father’s weapons shop was quite famous.”
Thanks to his father’s superb craftsmanship and ideas, his childhood had been quite prosperous. The weapons shop was always full of customers.
But because my father was obsessed with experimental ideas, he didn’t reap any commercial benefits.
No, in the end, he ended up losing everything he had made.
I couldn’t know the full details, but it seemed his stubborn artisan life had left his family in quite dire economic straits.
“I envied my friends who could live under one roof with their families.”
Starting around the time of puberty, his whole family had scattered and he was the only one earning a living inside the house.
For that reason, Pieter Dmitri left the technical path most dwarves took and chose a desk job that paid a steady salary.
“Not worrying about next month’s living expenses is a blessing greater than you might think.”
I nodded. I felt the same.
“After that, it became clear. Dwarves have to change too. No more clinging to handmade works. Mass-produced goods sell in the market for a reason. That’s what I mean.”
With a firm expression, Pieter Dmitri spoke. I looked at him silently.
“Why do you pay so much attention to weapon crafting?”
“……”
The image of him ordering the rune cannon was still vivid in my mind.
Anyway, it seemed his son resembled the father he hated most. Pieter Dmitri was no exception.
After this pointless conversation, we reached a place where buildings were sparse.
“This… is it a village or what?”
I couldn’t tell whether this was a factory zone or farmland. The structures that could be called buildings were all buried under growing crops.
Among them, we stood in front of a building that looked like it would smell terrible even from a distance—one of the ones collapsing.
“So, this is it?”
Overall, the buildings seemed to have given up on withstanding the weight of time.
Cracks ran across the walls.
The roofs were covered in rusted tin sheets with holes, and if it rained, leaks would certainly appear in more than a few places.
“Prosecutor, you shouldn’t judge by appearances. Innovation always starts in the lower places.”
Pieter Dmitri muttered to himself as if lecturing someone else.
We opened the rusty gate on which the sign “Ruby Lab” was barely hanging.
Squeak—
Inside, the place was overgrown with weeds. In the corner, farming tools lay unused.
Beyond that, a faded sign for “Ruby Lab” was hanging.
“Manager, is this really the place where they develop superconductive magic stones?”
By now, even Pieter Dmitri was looking around in disbelief.
He was poking at the magic stone emblem with his finger as if the address might be wrong.
At that moment, a voice came from inside.
“Who is it?”
A man in a full-body protective suit emerged from the doorway.
Whatever substances had stained it—manure from the fields or unknown filth—gave off a foul stench.
When I looked at him with a wary gaze,
“Ah…”
He picked up a farming tool nearby and brought it close to his body.
A mist rose from his entire body and the filth on his protective suit was cleanly washed away.
‘Alchemist!’
Those who see through the language of the world that connects all things and cut the fixed value of matter.
People who turn stone into water and create new materials from water are alchemists.
Pieter Dmitri’s face lit up instantly.
“Pieter Dmitri reporting for duty.”
Pieter Dmitri stepped forward and extended his hand to the man in the protective suit.
The man removed the glove attached to his suit and shook Pieter Dmitri’s hand.
And they exchanged business cards.
“Thank you for coming all this way. When I received the call, I thought it was a joke, but I had no idea the Erastro Group would be interested.”
“Haha, the interest in superconductive magic stones is that hot. The Erastro Group is always open to new technology.”
Again, I was selling the Erastro of the Dmin Company.
In truth, the president of Dmin was interested.
Of course, this time I had obtained his permission in advance.
The moment I mentioned my position as a capital defense prosecutor, suspicion only heightened, so there was no other way to hide my true identity.
“I see. But how did you learn about our development project? It’s still in the very early research stage…”
The lab representative looked at us with bewildered eyes and asked.
“The representative’s fame is well-known even in Clovan City. Here is my colleague Ivan.”
Beforehand, I had asked him to keep my identity hidden.
Since I had become a famous person, Pieter Dmitri readily agreed.
Thus, the identity Pieter Dmitri had created was that of a staff member in the investment planning department of the Erastro Group.
To pose as an investor looking for Series B and C for those who failed in their first funding.
Upon hearing this, the man’s face showed a mix of doubt and relief.
I extended my hand and the man awkwardly shook it.
From his hand, the life of a man was transmitted intact.
The hardened calluses engraved deep in his fingers.
And the raised fingerprints unique to alchemists.
“An alchemist, huh?”
In response to my words, the man rubbed his hand with his clothes.
“I’m surprised you could tell just from that hand. Derek Kramer. I am the representative of this smelly Ruby Lab.”
* * *
Derek led us inside.
Despite the shabby exterior, the inside had a surprisingly lab-like feel.
It was on the scale of the lab located in a prestigious school in Clovan City, but it still had the necessary equipment.
Several employees who looked like researchers moved busily between the experimental devices.
Derek guided us to a small room next to the laboratory.
“It smells strongly of barn. It seems they don’t purify the wastewater from the slime farm next door properly. I don’t know what to offer.”
Derek placed a liquid in a small flask on the table and said,
“This is a fatigue recovery potion. It should be a bit better than the ones sold in stores.”
Whether it was handmade or not, the fatigue recovery potion was roughly poured into the experimental flask.
One of the principles I had set when working as a prosecutor was not to eat what others gave me.
There is no more futile death than eating blind food and dying.
So, after seeing Pieter Dmitri drink it first, I drank it too.
The potion slid down my throat and spread a fragrant aroma. A surge of energy swept through my whole body.
The stale smell that had filled the space receded and my eyes brightened.
“Wow! Manager, this potion is no joke. If we sell this, it will be a huge hit.”
Pieter Dmitri shook the empty flask and exclaimed as if impressed.
It was no exaggeration.
The fatigue recovery potions I had ever eaten before could not even compare.
It was comparable to secretly brewing and drinking coffee in secret.
Even if there were side effects, the effects were valuable enough to endure.
“If you have that kind of ability, you would have been fought over by large research labs or imperial institutions, but you’re running a business.”
I placed the empty flask on the table and said.
“You speak the same words as my wife. She said she would live off the steady salary coming in as her future hope.”
Derek looked a bit bitter.
“But what can I do? The lingering attachment remains in my heart…”
He let out a long sigh.
His facial features that had once been called handsome were now weathered by the winds of time.
He had suffered quite a lot in the meantime.
“Manager, it’s darkest just before dawn. Soon, light will dawn on the representative’s life! And on my bank account too!”
Pieter Dmitri clapped his hands loudly.
“What? A bank account?”
Derek asked with a puzzled look and Pieter Dmitri waved his hand in denial.
“No. No.”
Derek smiled wryly and handed over a pamphlet.
“Since you came this far, there’s nothing much to show yet, but we’ll show you the material we’re developing in our laboratory instead. Once it’s completed, it could be used by all classes.”
The way he casually handed it over made me accept it without thinking, but it was confidential material containing the research project.
“Can you show this to just anyone?”
As I flipped through the pages, they were filled with secrets spanning years of their research.
But nowhere was there anything about superconductive magic stones.
“Normally no, but since our research funds are drying up, I wonder if it will even see the light of day. It would be better if it remained in someone’s memory.”
A hint of resignation passed over his face.
“If I had just enough investment to last about a year, I could somehow manage it. I’d have to pay those friends their wages… Ugh, I can’t face their faces after all this time I’ve trusted them.”
After saying those words, Derek prepared to return to the laboratory and stood up.
When I rubbed the small stone in the office on my clothes, a faint barrier rose above it.
It seemed like a barrier to prepare for possible radiation exposure.
It was not something everyone could do—changing the nature of a substance with mere contact.
Only alchemists with high skill could do it.
“Um… but… do you have any information about superconductive magic stones?”
Pieter Dmitri asked cautiously toward Derek, who was about to stand.
“Superconductive magic stones? What’s that?”
“It’s Ruby’s secret weapon that’s heating up the stock market right now. It’s a revolutionary technology that completely erases the resistance of existing magic stones, allowing magic power to flow infinitely without loss and completely transforming the world!”
Derek stared silently at Pieter Dmitri and slowly opened his mouth.
“…What kind of fairy-tale talk is that? We’re researching the technology to decompose magic stone particles and recycle the resulting residue. That way, even commoners can use magic stone fuel at a lower price.”
With those words, Derek pointed out the hollowness of the superconductive magic stone concept and spent about two hours explaining the magic stone residue recycling technology and its economic value under research at Ruby Lab.
* * *
“So, they’re using the residue from refined magic stones.”
On the way out of the Ruby Lab factory and toward the bus stop where we would take the carriage, Pieter Dmitri said in a weak voice.
“That’s right. Honestly, Manager, you didn’t believe the talk about superconductive magic stones either, did you?”
Making the resistance value of matter zero and continuously creating magic power was nothing but a hollow story, no matter who said it.
Still, the reason I had come here was to confirm something.
“Manager, but where did you hear about superconductive magic stones?”
I needed to confirm whether Ruby’s side was directly producing rumors and drafting a large-scale scam plan.
To my question, Pieter Dmitri avoided the direct answer and gave a small response.
“That… I heard it at the Jacob investment briefing. They showed us Ruby’s stock price rising 1,000 percent compared to last year. How could I not be impressed?”
Investment briefings were places where they sold dreams and hopes to the gullible, so I could understand that.
“Jacob? Jacob Department Store?”
“Yes…”
The industry didn’t match at all.
Jacob Department Store was a complex distribution company with nothing to do with financial investment.
This smelled fishy.
At that moment, Pieter Dmitri looked around awkwardly and said,
“Prosecutor, it seems no carriage is available here.”
Now that I thought about it, it seemed we had been walking for a long time.
All that appeared were abandoned farms and barns. There were no people or carriages passing by.
The wind blew and weeds that had grown wildly brushed against each other, covering the space.
“We’ll just walk.”
With no choice, we decided to walk to the nearest place.
I briefly considered asking for a portal from the Capital Defense Force Portal Support Division, but seeing Pieter Dmitri’s troubled expression, I thought it would be better to walk a bit.
Pieter Dmitri and I walked in silence for a while.
After about two hours,
no sign of people or passing carriages remained.
At that moment—
Rustle—
A strange sound came from the surrounding bushes.
When I turned toward the direction the sound came from, a group of people was approaching, holding crude swords.
Three boys who looked like they were still children were advancing toward us, pointing their swords.
As I just watched the scene,
“Hah! You’re the ones who came out with their guts hanging out. Walking through here without any weapons?”
One of the boys with his head shaved short approached with a clumsy swagger.
His appearance was unaccustomed to wearing adult clothes like an ill-fitted child.
In the awkward situation, I blurted out without thinking.
“Is there a restaurant nearby?”
I had been walking for quite a while and my stomach was growling.
But as if ignoring my words, the boy scrunched his face and swung the sword in his hand at us.
The rusty sword advanced with fierce momentum, but it was enough to dodge just one step.
Whoosh—
I stepped back with my right foot and twisted my waist to dodge the sword.
“Hey? Trying to avoid this? Hey! Come out!”
As the boy pointing the sword said this, two boys with childish faces emerged from the thicket.
The boy again pointed his sword at us and walked slowly forward. Behind him, a slightly younger boy with a taut bowstring was aiming an arrow.
Pieter Dmitri was simply watching the scene.
“If you don’t want to die, lay down everything you have.”
The boy holding the sword seemed to be the leader of the group.
With a sharp gaze, he advanced toward us.
“There’s a magician too! If you ignore me because I look young, you won’t even find a body.”
Only then did I notice that a boy with bright red hair tied short like the sun was standing a distance from the group, eyes closed, muttering something.
When he opened his eyes, a small magic circle floated in the air and began to split with a dripping sound.
Pieter Dmitri glanced at me.
It was a question of what I would do.
“Hmm.”
The magic circle was crude, the hand holding the rusty sword trembled slightly.
These children were not capable of killing anyone, let alone smashing rotten wood properly.
For some reason, they were only trying to scare people to steal something valuable.
Upon closer look, the clothes they had thrown on were being wildly blown by the wind like scarecrows.
They were wearing clothes that didn’t fit their bodies, as if they had picked up discarded adult clothes.
I lightly clenched and unclenched my fists.
Kuaak—
The clear autumn sky split and, through the gap, a blue lightning bolt fell toward the boy who had opened the magic circle.
Kyaaak—
A sharp scream came from the magician boy’s mouth.
Upon closer inspection, it was a girl.
At the same time as she screamed, I threw a dagger and cut the bowstring of the arrow. I rushed straight forward and snatched the rusty sword from the hand of the boy at the front.
Then, facing the frightened children, I said,
“Let’s eat.”
From somewhere, a faint smell began to waft.