I took a puff of my pipe and began to speak.
“Would saving all my comrades happen to be part of the deal? Please answer honestly, even if it means there will be disadvantages.”
“No! There’s no way!”
“Hayes, you son of a bitch-.”
Whoosh. A red line cuts across the world.
Amidst the corpses of mercenaries burning to death, I exhaled smoke.
“You chose to give up without even hearing the terms of the deal.”
“…The magic I possess isn’t that valuable.”
“Hayes, you’re a very quick calculator, aren’t you?”
Tap. I tapped out the ashes from my pipe and asked Hayes.
“The magic you possess is ‘Inner Refinement, right?”
<Inner Refinement>.
It was the core magic of knights, forging weapons by hammering the inner self.
In truth, it had an atypical aspect to it as magic, but strictly speaking, it was a traditional and historically deep magic created directly by the first
emperor.
Hayes answered urgently to: my words.
“That’s right. It’s Inner Refinement magic. I just have to teach you this, right? Even a guy like me learned it in a week.
Someone as smart as you, Magician, could learn it in three days if I stick by your side―.”
“My teacher rolled around in the mercenary world for decades. He’s Hayes-nim’s great senior.”
Inner Refinement magic was something even bottom-tier mercenaries who lacked the confidence to climb up the ladder and instead chose to fleece others could learn if they were lucky.
There was no way Kelton wouldn’t know such magic, and therefore, I had naturally learned Inner Refinement magic as well.
“According to the experiment, I’m the type who can’t learn Inner Refinement magic? My teacher told me I didn’t have the aptitude for a knight, so I should focus on improving my understanding of the elements.”
It was meaningless even if Hayes taught me Inner Refinement magic.
I couldn’t learn Inner Refinement magic anyway.
In the first place, I already knew Inner Refinement magic itself.
Despair settled in Hayes’ eyes.
He thought the magic he possessed was useless to me, but if that were the case, would I have spared Hayes?
Judging by how he couldn’t even make such basic judgments, his intelligence seemed to have dropped to the level of a dolphin, seized by fear.
Intelligence was originally like a rubber band, stretching and contracting depending on the situation. It was a natural phenomenon.
I extended my left hand forward and whispered.
“Hayes-nim. It’s a deal.”
Creak. Something was grasped in my hand.
As if someone had cut and pasted the world, suddenly and without warning.
Unique Magic <The Balance>.
It was a magic imbued with the wishes of a person.
I presented the terms.
“What I want is to permanently receive Hayes-nim’s Inner Refinement magic. If you accept this deal, Hayes-nim will no longer be able to use Inner Refinement magic for the rest of your life.”
“I can give you this kind of magic anytime.”
Hayes answers. Simultaneously.
Thud. Something was placed on the Balance’s plate.
It was a small dagger.
The Balance tilted towards Hayes’ side. It meant the weight was not balanced.
I said to Hayes.
“State your terms.”
“Save me. That’s enough.”
“Anything is possible.”
The Balance tilted again. This time, it was towards my side.
Immediately after, the unbalanced Balance achieved equilibrium.
The price is equal. In this case.
“The deal is sealed.”
Ding-! A clear chime rang out. It was a chime that only I and Hayes could hear.
The Balance turned into white flames, and the Balance, which had turned into white flames, flew towards us and embedded itself in us.
Immediately, I shouted to Leon.
“Leon-nim! The dagger!”
“Here it is.”
I grabbed the dagger Leon handed me and activated the magic newly engraved within me.
Mana was consumed, and magic was imbued into the dagger.
It was like putting a coat on the dagger.
A blue dagger flickered and overlaid Leon’s dagger.
I fiddled with the dagger that had turned blue.
Since it could only be used on daggers, the reach was short, and I couldn’t even achieve the body enhancement, which was one of the characteristics of Inner Refinement magic.
“Magic….”
But I blankly stroked the dagger.
I was captivated by the ecstatic feeling of having a new magic in my
I reversed the magic and handed the dagger back to Leon.
“Let’s go.”
“Are you going to let him go like that? He tried to kill us?”
“Should we catch him and lock him up in prison?”
“If it were me,
I would have.”
hands.
“Certainly, the terms of the deal were only to save him. It’s not a lie even if we catch him and lock him up in prison. But such wordplay isn’t fair. I will promise Hayes-nim complete freedom, as he truly wanted.”
I had to do that, even if I didn’t want to.
The Balance was being activated under such restrictions.
“Leon-nim is free to kill Hayes-nim or catch him and lock him up, but I will have no choice but to stop Leon-nim with all my might. Just keep that in mind.”
“…I understand.”
Leon retreated obediently. His expression was confused, as if he was replaying the events of just now in his head.
As soon as our conversation ended, Hayes hurriedly left. He was frightened by the brutal words of killing him or catching him and locking him up.
“Wow. Amazing.”
And Chris clapped his hands and approached.
Perhaps he had seen all sorts of things while working as a peddler. He was calm even amidst the deaths of several people.
“Hiring Ruina-nim was my best choice. Otherwise, the gamble I tried with all my fortune would have failed spectacularly.”
“What are you trying to sell?”
A peddler was a profession that made money by exploiting price differences in each region.
Therefore, a peddler’s gamble would be to buy a lot of specific products and sell them, and I was curious about what products he had purchased.
“Are you curious?”
“Yes.”
“Come this way.”
Chris led me to the wagon and uncovered the cloth covering the cargo box.
The cargo box was full of wooden containers.
Barrels.
Barrels were containers for storing and transporting liquids such as beer, and judging by the faint vanilla scent that stung my nose, they were oak barrels.
Chris smiled and asked.
“Are you curious about what’s inside?”
“Is it wine?”
“That’s right.”
Wine. I recalled our destination and glanced at Leon.
Leon carefully asked Chris.
“Why wine? Shade Graften is famous for its grapes, and there’s even a grape festival coming up soon, so grapes will be rotting.”
“That’s the thing.”
Chris gestured. It meant to lower our bodies.
As we leaned forward as requested, Chris whispered.
“There’s a rumor that Shade Graften’s grape harvest has been poor for the past few years.”
“How many years?”
“That’s right.”
“How many years has the harvest been poor, and the rumor hasn’t spread? It’s a place where they hold a big grape festival, too?”
Chris nodded.
“Leon-nim is right. If it were a normal poor harvest, there’s no way the rumor wouldn’t spread. But this is only limited to ‘top-quality grapes.’ So the festival is proceeding normally, and other parts are the same.”
“Then…I can understand why the rumor hasn’t spread.”
“Well, eventually it leaked out, and the news reached the ears of a peddler like me.”
“But what does that have to do with wine?”
Certainly, as Leon questioned, I understood that the production of high-end wine had been suspended for several years due to the poor harvest of top-quality grapes, but what did that have to do with buying a lot of high-end wine in Shade Graften?
They were sellers, not buyers.
At those words, Chris raised a finger.
Chris, who had focused our attention, slowly opened his mouth.
“From here on out is the main point, but my prediction is that Shade Graften will soon need a lot of top-quality wine.”
“Why?”
“From there on out, it’s a trade secret…but since we’re traveling together, I’ll give you a little hint.
There’s a rumor that a high-ranking person is secretly traveling to enjoy the festival.
If that happens, they’ll need a lot of high-end wine for hospitality, but haven’t the grapes been poor in recent years?
The reserves will be small, so if we sell high-end wine, they’ll buy it right away.”
If that information was true, it was a somewhat reasonable prediction.
However, it wasn’t certain.
I muttered softly.
“So that’s why it’s a gamble?”
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime gamble.”
They weren’t necessarily visiting, and they were traveling ‘secretly.’ I wondered how he was risking his entire fortune on such information.
If the high-ranking person didn’t visit, if they did visit but the high-ranking person and their entourage didn’t enjoy wine, or even if they enjoyed it but the territory had a lot of wine in reserve, Chris would have to hug the oak barrels and jump into the lake.
If he succeeded, he could sell the already expensive high-end wine for even more, but the probability of success was that much lower.
The probability of the high-ranking person’s movements leaking to the outside and the probability of that rumor reaching the ears of a mere peddler were even lower.
“I think the probability of success is high.”
“Is that so?”
“Even though I look like this, I’m a peddler who has accumulated some experience. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to prepare this much
volume, right?”
There was no way a noble lady would be a peddler alone for fun, so the capital to prepare that wine was earned solely by Chris.
He wasn’t a rookie.
Chris stroked the oak barrels and said.
“The reliability of the information itself is high. That’s for sure.”
“If that’s the case, that’s a relief. Shall we start soon?”
“It seems like it would be good to do that.”
I climbed into the empty space in the cargo box. Leon did the same.
Clatter. The wagon departs.
Leon crosses his arms and sinks deep in thought.
Shade Graften, which he thought was where the Holy Grail was buried, had a poor harvest for several years, so his head must have been complicated.
After a while, Leon unfolded his arms and met my eyes.
“Ruina-nim.”
“Yes.”
“Can you…steal magic?”
“It’s not stealing, it’s a deal. By the way, were you worried about that?”
He was replaying the deal I had with Hayes, not the Holy Grail.
I didn’t know if this guy really intended to become a paladin or not.
“Aren’t you worried? They say the grapes are having a poor harvest.”
“I wasn’t planning on getting the answer right from the start anyway.”
“You’re very calm, aren’t you?”
“I’m used to it.”
If he was okay with it, I didn’t care.
Let’s train.
I held up the lamp and stared at the flames quietly burning inside.
“Ruina-nim? What are you doing?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, your body is twisted, are you okay?”
It’s nothing much. It’s just that my body is changing because I’m suppressing the desire to swallow the flames.
I have to endure it.
“That’s Shade Graften over there.”
“It’s a pretty town.”
Fifteen days later. I loosened my twisted body as I looked at the village fence in the distance.
Finally, I’ll get to taste some wine.