Treasures Don't Advertise Themselves
There was a place like this right in the middle of the Capital?
Zick stared blankly at the underground plaza. Hooded figures in black moved with quiet purpose, weapons of unknown origin lined the stalls, illegal magic tools and banned potions sat out in the open. Everything looked so blatantly shady that it somehow came off as bold.
He sidled up to Reno.
"Reno, don't tell me this is the place you meant when you said we could get dwarf-made gear?"
Reno nodded without a hint of concern.
"Yes. If luck is on our side, the capital we currently have should be more than enough to secure something on the level of dwarf-forged equipment."
"But gear like that was available in the commercial district we saw this afternoon. Why come all the way to a place this dangerous?"
"If we paid full price in the commercial district, our funds would barely cover a single sword. Here, though, you'll find goods from merchants dodging taxes or nobles quietly offloading items with complicated histories. Everything is dirt cheap."
"So you're saying smuggled goods and stolen property are mixed in. We're a hero party, at least in name. Is this really okay?"
"Legal and illegal are usually only a sheet of paper apart. As long as we carefully pick out the items that won't come back to haunt us, there's no problem."
Reno was already humming under his breath and walking ahead. Red magic-stone lamps hung from the ceiling, casting a dim glow over the gloomy plaza, and the soft clink of gold coins rang out here and there. Reno moved through it all like a fish returned to water.
"Oh."
Zick stopped in front of one display. A sword with glittering gold ornamentation rested there. A red jewel was set into the hilt, and a dragon motif was carved into the scabbard—just looking at it made him want to gasp in admiration.
"Reno. That one looks pretty good, doesn't it? If I wore that, I'd look like a legendary hero, right?"
Reno studied the sword for a moment, then shook his head firmly.
"The decoration is excessive and the balance is a mess. The jewel is cheap glass, and the design on the scabbard isn't a dragon—it's a long-tailed lizard. On top of that, they only polished the surface of the blade. Clash it three times in actual combat and the edge will chip. Legendary hero? You were about to become a legendary sucker."
Zick quietly took his hand off the sword and closed his mouth. The two of them walked on.
A little later Zick stopped again in front of another stall. This time a large placard was attached to it.
A masterpiece born from the hands of the legendary dwarf artisan Valgar!
Zick's eyes lit up.
"Reno. What about this?"
"Absolutely not."
"You didn't even look this time and you're already saying no?"
"They claim it's a masterpiece by a legendary dwarf artisan and put it out at that price? The moment you take advertising like that at face value, you're finished as a merchant. You might as well take the sign down that same day."
The stall owner flinched and his shoulders trembled. Reno added with a gentle smile,
"Of course, it wouldn't be bad as a decoration."
Zick looked at the placard again. The wording that had seemed plausible just a moment ago suddenly looked deeply suspicious.
"I almost got fooled again. Places like this really are scary."
Reno gave a short laugh.
"It isn't the black market that's scary—it's that you're far too naive, Zick. A real merchant looks at the item first, not the slogan."
After that Zick pointed out a spear said to be imbued with red aura and a cursed bracelet that supposedly doubled the wearer's strength, but Reno cut every single one of them down without mercy.
"This is just a painted lump of iron. And that one isn't cursed—it's mold."
At last Zick threw up both hands.
"Then what exactly are we trying to buy if everything I pick is a no?"
"Zick. Truly good items never shout about how good they are. They hide quietly. Like that one over there, for example."
Reno's gaze settled on one corner of a stall. What he pointed to was a plain, battered suit of armor with no flashy decoration whatsoever.
"That? It just looks like ordinary armor."
"That's exactly why it's good. True value never shows itself on the surface."
Without the slightest hesitation Reno walked up to the stall owner and smiled brightly. Behind that easygoing smile was a blade. Zick felt it in his gut—someone was about to bleed.
"Shopkeeper. How much for that armor?"
The owner propped his chin on his hand as if the whole thing was a bother and named an absurdly high price, clearly inflated far above the surrounding market rate. Behind his glasses, Reno's eyes turned sharp.
"Expensive. It hasn't been maintained at all. The leather seams at the shoulders have loosened, and the lining has taken in moisture. You'll have to knock off the repair costs."
"Listen, kid. It may look like this on the outside, but the material is solid wrought iron. It's sturdy!"
The merchant snorted, but Reno calmly took out his ledger.
"Wrought iron? Looking at the luster, it's a low-grade pig-iron alloy with poor mana conductivity. The color is uneven as well, so the marketability is already low. Factor in the repair costs plus a full repaint and that price is impossible."
"Wh-what are you talking about?! In the black market you'd have to stand in line just to get something this thick!"
A faint tremor had entered the merchant's voice—the anxiety of a man whose weak point had been struck. Reno flicked the beads of his abacus as if delivering the finishing blow.
"Items like this don't rise in value the longer you hold them. They simply lose opportunities to be sold. Wouldn't it be better to clear it out while customers like us who are actually willing to buy have shown up?"
The amount Reno offered was less than half of the owner's original price. The merchant ground his teeth, sweat beading on his forehead.
"Tch. At this rate you're basically a bandit without a sword. Take it. Just take it!"
"It was a pleasure doing business."
"Don't ever come back!"
Reno smiled kindly as he collected the armor. Standing beside him, Zick watched the terrifying negotiation with his mouth hanging open.
"You shot down everything I picked, but the one you chose is just ordinary armor?"
"Only if you look at the outside."
Reno glanced around carefully, then tilted the armor so that only Zick could see deep into the seams on the inside. Zick's pupils locked in place.
In a spot invisible from the exterior, an extremely fine magical formula had been engraved with exquisite precision. All those days of studying formula interpretation with Ainz until his head felt ready to explode had paid off. This was no simple durability reinforcement. It was a high-grade formula incorporating impact dispersion, mana-flow stabilization, and even auxiliary circuits for the joints.
Recognizing the value of the formula etched into the armor, Zick sucked in a breath.
"Reno, how did you even notice this? Formula work of this level is a masterpiece personally engraved by a master-class formula engraver!"
Reno winked with one eye.
"This is the merchant's eye. Spot the true value of an item and buy it cheap. That is the fundamental of commerce."
Zick nodded blankly. He had always thought of Reno as the porter who simply managed the party's finances. But Reno's real talent wasn't bookkeeping—it was the insight that saw straight through to an object's true worth.
"I already knew you were impressive, but I've got to reassess you after this."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
Reno's one-man show continued after that. A rusted dagger with a hidden poison-discharge groove along the inside of the blade, staff components with outstanding mana efficiency—he found them all with uncanny precision and haggled the prices down without mercy. Zick followed behind with both arms full of equipment and thought, with complete sincerity, that bringing Reno into the party had been one of the best decisions he had ever made. Swinging a sword on the battlefield wasn't the only role a party member filled. Protecting the party's money was also a job someone absolutely had to do.
They had been wandering the black market for quite a while when Zick's feet suddenly stopped. It felt as though the tips of his toes had stuck to the floor; he could not take another step. No one had shoved him from behind, and no strange sound had reached his ears. A peculiar sensation simply rose from deep inside his chest and pulled every nerve toward a single point.
At first he dismissed it as a trick of the stagnant air unique to the black market. He shook his head hard and tried to walk again, but he could not manage more than two or three steps before his feet locked once more. The more he tried to ignore it, the more violently the intense pull wrung his heart. The surrounding noise grew distant, as if submerged underwater, and only one direction remained fixed in place like a compass needle.
The moment that irresistible, enormous attraction wrapped around his entire body—
Over there.
A low whisper brushed across his mind. It was not a sound circling his ears but a secretive voice that seemed to resonate directly inside his head. The conviction was far too clear and distinct to dismiss as imagination.
Zick swallowed without realizing it. Then, like a man under a spell, he slowly turned his head in the direction the voice had indicated.
His gaze landed on the most remote corner of the plaza. An old woman sat blankly against the dark wall. In front of her, nothing more than a single worn cloth had been spread out like a mat. Scattered carelessly across it were broken magic-tool fragments, cracked ornaments, and other odds and ends that even a junk dealer would not bother looking at. Compared to the glittering displays of the other merchants, it was a pitiful sight. No customers, of course—even passersby naturally averted their eyes from such a stall.
Yet Zick's eyes refused to leave a single object among that mountain of trash: a small, ancient metal bracelet so thickly covered in black rust that its original shape was almost impossible to make out. It was neither equipment nor a jewel—just a discarded scrap of scrap iron. Even so, his feet were already carrying him toward it of their own accord. The surrounding noise faded, and only that old bracelet filled his vision.
"Zick? Where are you going all of a sudden?"
Reno called from behind in a puzzled voice, but Zick could not answer.
Thud. Thud.
The moment Zick stopped in front of the old woman's stall and touched the rusted metal bracelet, the divine mark etched on the back of his hand throbbed very faintly and began to emit light in time with the beating of his heart.