In the afternoon, after I’d spent time with Plumbum, I decided to take a day off and relax in the salon. However, I was interrupted by a panicked Erza.
“Ryota! Ryota, this is bad!” she screamed.
“What is it?”
“Have you lent your magic cart to anyone?”
“My cart? No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“I see… Um, please come with me!”
I didn’t know what was going on, but she clearly didn’t like it, so I went with her.
She guided me to the room that served as her Swallow’s Returned Favor branch office.
When we went inside, she jogged over to a terminal. It was an item transporter that used the master and slave rocks.
This one was connected to my magic cart.
“Look at this!”
I quickly realized why she was panicking. Money was spewing out of it─because it was being teleported here.
“Five-hundred-piro tokens… Why?”
“I don’t know. This one comes from your magic cart, so I was hoping you would know something.”
“Hmm.” I put a hand to my chin in thought, but nothing came to mind.
I stayed there a moment and watched on. Tokens worth 500 piros came out at irregular intervals.
“It’s like a magic hammer.”
“There you are, low level.”
“Eve? Wait, what are you doing with him?”
She came in with Prince Ryo in tow. One bunny-suited bunny, and one shoujo manga prince… In a word, this duo was surreal.
“This fake low level is defective,” she complained. “Useless.”
“Defective?”
“His carrots taste bad.”
“Oh… You used the portrait in a dungeon to try and farm carrots?”
Eve nodded. She’d tried to produce Ryota-brand carrots on her own, but Prince Ryo didn’t have S-rank drops, so his carrots weren’t as tasty as the original’s.
“I’m surprised you used it.”
“Bunnies will do anything for carrots.”
“Sure seems like it,” I replied.
Eve unhappily chopped Prince Ryo. She wasn’t a monster, so he just accepted it.
That killed him in one hit.
“Ryota! The money!”
“Huh?” I turned back to Erza and saw a 500-piro token fly out of the warp device. “That timing is suspicious. Could it be?”
“What do you think, Ryota?”
“Do you have a portrait?”
“Yes. I have some that I bought from Celeste today…”
“Give me one. Take the cost from my account.”
“Okay!” She went back to her desk, wrote something down, and brought a portrait over.
I accepted it and summoned Prince Ryo. Then, I killed him where he stood. As I did…
“Ryota! There’s another!”
“They appear the moment he disappears, don’t they?” I bought another portrait. This time, after summoning him, I created a slime outsider from a bean sprout and had him attack it. After Prince Ryo had defeated it, he disappeared, and another 500-piro token appeared. “Looks like we’re right.”
“Yes, but why…”
“Hmm.”
The two of us cocked our heads in thought together, but we just couldn’t figure it out.
Meanwhile, one more friend─Alice─came into the office.
“I’m back!” she greeted us. “Plumbum’s a funny girl!” She was as cheerful as ever, with her buddy monsters riding on her shoulders.
“Alice? Did you just say Plumbum?”
“Yep! I was just hanging out with her. Burny and Plumbum really hit it off!”
Burny was one of her buddies, a chibified will-o’-wisp monster. Its original form was Phosphorus, the spirit of the dungeon Phosphorus.
“They hit it off? Well, I guess they are both spirits.”
“Yep! And they combined their power to do…this!” Alice said, taking out a portrait of me.
She summoned Prince Ryo, something she’d obviously done many times before. Her chibi buddies swarmed Prince Ryo and beat him to a pulp, and 500 piros was transported in again.
“Your clone, uh, Prince Ryo. Every time someone uses him, you’ll be paid a fee,” she explained. “Umm… A likeness fee, or something? I think. Anyway, Burny said people shouldn’t be using you for free.”
“So that’s why?”
Phosphorus was the spirit of a dungeon that dropped money. He and Plumbum had worked together to evolve the portraits.
“Whoa, whoa, that’s awesome! Look how many people are using you─I mean, Prince Ryo!” Alice clapped gleefully as she watched 500-piro tokens flood in one after another.
Every time Prince Ryo was used, I’d be paid a fee. But forget that─I’d noticed something more meaningful.
“Is this the first time in history that two spirits have worked together?”
“Is it true, Burny? Ooh, it is!”
I knew it.
I look away for one minute, and the Prince Ryo portraits have evolved already.