After getting out of the bath, I met with Gaien.
“This is the sword imbued with the archspirit’s mana,” he said, handing it to me.
I could feel the tremendous amount of mana trapped within it. I doubted there existed a more powerful fire attribute magic sword anywhere in the world.
“Are you sure you want me to have it?” I asked.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “And I’ve got a request for ye, Miss Ellie. Of course, ye can refuse if it’s too much.”
“You did mention that the other day. I will at least hear you out.”
Gaien hesitated for a few moments before finally opening his mouth again. “I want ye to take my daughter with ye.”
“Huh?! What are you saying, dad?!” Kagali shouted.
This was exactly the request I’d been expecting. Kagali, on the other hand, was flabbergasted.
“Ye should leave this city and see the world—live through yer own experiences! That was yer wish too, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I...”
“I hear Miss Ellie’s been gathering skilled artisans and researchers in Milista. Ye could learn a lot there.”
“Milista?” Kagali repeated.
“It’s a village in the Sarjas Region, the former Haldorian vassal state that was recently incorporated into the empire,” I said. “You must have heard of the name, at least.” I paused for a second. “I called Milista a village, but in reality, it’s grown so much under the empire that it’s practically a city now. There are even regular carriages going back and forth between it and the imperial capital.”
“I see...” Kagali replied. She seemed to be deep in thought.
“Yer already pretty much as skilled as me when it comes to technique,” Gaien told her. “All ye need to surpass me is experience.”
“But are you sure I should leave now? I haven’t even found my answer to the question you asked me yet!”
“Yer answer might not be in the city, Kagali. Ye might just find it elsewhere.”
“Dad...”
“Besides, it’s high time ye stopped emulating me. Ye won’t get any better by studying what I do. Ye gotta find yer own style.”
“But I—”
“Do ye think a copy of meself can surpass me? If ye wanna call yerself my disciple, ye’d better learn to swing yer hammer better than I do!”
Surpass him, huh? Kagali had been the first one to bring that up, but now Gaien had seemed to fully accept the idea.
“You’re right... Ellie, please say yes!” Kagali begged.
“All right,” I replied. “I’m always happy to welcome skilled artisans. I’ll set up a workshop in Milista for you, Kagali.”
“I’m in yer debt,” Gaien said. “And there’s something else I wanted to ask ye. Would ye agree to let Kagali craft that rapier ye wanted? With her mystic eyes, she’s better equipped than me to forge magic weapons.”
“Well...”
I couldn’t help but hesitate. As Gaien had said, Kagali’s potential certainly surpassed his when it came to magic weapons. However, at the moment Gaien was still more skilled than she was.
Should I pick the best at this point in time, or the one with the potential to outshine him?
“All right, I’ll trust you with it, Kagali.”
Bulat Haldoria was a true monster. If I wanted to defeat him, I needed to have the most perfect weapon in existence.
Now that I’d made my decision, I’d need to provide Kagali with the best environment. I’d come to this city to commission a weapon, and I definitely hadn’t expected to nurture a weaponsmith from scratch instead.
“Thank you, Ellie. I’ll make you the best rapier in the world.”
“I expect nothing less.”
This day, which had ended up being a lot busier than I’d expected, finally drew to an end.
Over the next few days, I met with Lekius to finalize our deal, and with Nestart and Arte to discuss our future plans. I also shared a few glasses with Tida. Then, it came time to leave Hephaest.
After bidding everyone farewell, we left the inn and got ready to depart. In the near future, I’d need to spend a lot of time at the Hilgardie estate, so I’d have to make preparations for my work to follow me there. I expected to be very busy in the coming days.
“Are you sure you don’t want to travel with us, Tida?” I asked.
“Yup. I’ll make a detour up north before returning to the capital,” she replied, a bottle of alcohol in hand as usual.
“All right. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but be careful on the way.”
Nestart, Arte, and their two servants had already departed the day prior. We planned to first go back to the capital before joining them. Lunoa and Misha had already gone to the carriage to load our belongings, and I was walking there myself when a voice stopped me.
“Miss Ellie Leis.”
“Gazaru?” Once again, I’d run into my former rival firm owner, who’d been sentenced to slavery for the crimes he’d committed against me. “Is something the matter? I imagine you didn’t just run into me by chance.”
“No, you’re right. I asked for permission to come see you because I heard you’d be leaving the city today.”
“What do you want with me?”
“To give you this,” he replied, handing me a small note. “I know I was given a relatively comfortable position here because you asked for it. This is my way of repaying you.”
“You want to repay me? I thought you resented me.”
“At first I did, but not anymore. I stopped when I noticed I’d been dancing in the palm of your hand the entire time. You’re far better at everything than I am—business and scheming alike.”
“So, what is this about?” I asked, pointing at the memo.
“I met a man asking a lot of questions about you in this city.”
“That’s not a particularly rare occurrence.” I was a Special License holder. Plenty of people flocked to me seeking profit.
“It’s not what you think. He definitely wasn’t a merchant looking for easy money. He did a decent job of hiding it, but he didn’t actually seem to be after you. He seemed particularly interested in that girl, Alice.”
“What?!”
“I mostly gave noncommittal answers, but I got curious, so I looked into it. That man’s not investigating you for his own sake. He’s doing it for his employer—a big shot at that.”
I silently awaited his next words.
“The famed Lotton Flywok, the Clairvoyant, of the empire’s Merchants’ Guild Council,” Gazaru declared. My eyes narrowed immediately, and he added, “I see you expected him to be behind this. Well, I suggest you be careful. I wrote down the names and addresses of all his subordinates I was able to track.”
I unfolded the piece of paper and read through it. I’d already found several of the listed names and addresses while investigating Flywok, but there were some I’d never seen before. I was impressed. Gazaru had taken his investigation this far in such a short time—and as a slave at that. He used to be a corrupt merchant who didn’t have anything on his mind other than money, but he’d still managed to build up his firm to a remarkable size before losing it to me. It looked like despite everything he was a much more competent man than I’d assumed.
“Thank you for giving me this,” I said.
“Sure,” Gazaru replied before immediately excusing himself.
I turned to Mireille, who was next to me. “Look up how much money he still has to repay.”
“Are you going to buy his freedom?”
“I could use his intelligence-gathering skills. If he can take even a fraction of the work off of Barl’s plate, it’ll be well worth it.”
At the moment, Barl was in charge of gathering information, mediating with the underworld, handling the firm’s security, and much more. He handled all this because there was no one else with the skill set to replace him. If Gazaru could do some of it, Barl wouldn’t have to shoulder so much alone anymore. Now that I’d witnessed how effective Gazaru could be, I definitely wanted him to work for me.
“Understood. In that case, I’ll see that he’s released from his slave status and hire him.”
“I’ll leave it to you.”
◇◆☆◆◇
There were three big turning points in my life. The first was when I decided to follow in my father’s footsteps and become a merchant. The second was when, after losing myself to my obsession with money, I was defeated by the most fearsome and beautiful devil in the guise of a merchant. And the third was when that beautiful devil lifted me up again.
— Excerpt from the memoirs of Gazaru Jackman, Head of the Intelligence Department of the Traitre Commercial Firm.
“Who do you think that ‘beautiful devil’ he refers to is?” a business student asked his friend between bites of his sandwich.
“Huh? Ah, you’re talking about Gazaru Jackman’s memoirs. Our Information Science prof mentioned him earlier, right?”
The second student finished his own sandwich and washed it down with a glass of milk before grabbing his friend’s Information Science textbook. Gazaru Jackman was famous for combining two fields that used to be thought of as completely separate: intelligence and economics. His writings were part of every business program’s basic courses.
“Apparently, the leading theory is that it refers to Lunoa Carlton, the Merchant of the Wilderness. She created a brand-new trade route across the center of the continent by killing countless monsters herself, and she specialized in delivering goods. This says that she had a bit of a wild personality too.”
“I’m sure she did. You know, she’s the one who beheaded a dragon that was blocking a road. She also once called forth a tornado so powerful that it razed a bandit group’s stronghold to the ground. But according to the sources we have left from that time period, their ages don’t seem to align, so I’m not sure the person Gazaru talks about is her.”
“Yeah? You know what? Why don’t we pick that as our research topic next year?”
“Sounds like a fun project.”
— A conversation between two students sometime before they created a stir within the historical studies community.