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After leaving the intelligence broker's tent, Ian Prince felt somewhat reassured. With clues about Newt Scamander, the possibility of returning home had greatly increased.
Now, all he needed was to wait patiently for three days. At the same time, he had no intention of wasting this opportunity; a completely unfamiliar magical marketplace was, to him, nothing less than a treasure vault waiting to be explored.
"There must be potion ingredients and alchemy materials here that can't be bought in Great Britain. Besides, in this era, many potions and alchemy materials haven't gone extinct yet."
Ian was filled with anticipation.
He merged once more into the bustling crowd.
This time, instead of hurrying toward a specific goal, he slowed his pace and observed this exotic, magical world with the curiosity of a true traveler.
What first caught his attention was the locals' method of casting magic. Unlike European wizards, who relied heavily on wands, the wizards here used a far more diverse range of spellcasting methods.
In front of a stall selling woven goods, an elderly witch was demonstrating a brilliantly colored shawl to customers. Rather than using a wand, she moved her hands, adorned with several heavy copper bracelets, across the fabric while chanting rhythmic spells. As her hands danced, the patterns on the shawl seemed to come alive. The bird and beast motifs glowed faintly and even emitted soft cries. It was a technique that directly wove magic into objects.
"So they place greater emphasis on alchemical tools, huh? Interesting."
Ian continued wandering through the market.
At another stall, a burly wizard was hammering a piece of red-hot metal. Sweat poured down his face, and every strike of the hammer was accompanied by a powerful syllable, as though he were forging spells directly into the metal itself. The object he was crafting was a dagger, and complex magical patterns had already begun appearing along its blade.
Ian also saw wizards using various magical implements: wooden staffs carved with totems, gem-studded armbands, and even rattles made from animal skulls. Their spells sounded more primitive and rhythmic, more like songs or chants than the precise Latin pronunciations used in European magic.
"Interesting..." Ian nodded inwardly.
Africa's magical system had clearly followed a path entirely different from Europe's. It focused more on resonance with nature, totems, and one's own spirit. While it might not match wand magic in certain delicate operations, it likely possessed unique strengths of its own.
Even while observing the market, Ian did not forget the instincts of a Potions Master and Alchemist, treasure hunting.
His gaze swept across one stall after another like the most precise detection spell.
Most of the merchandise was exactly what it appeared to be: ordinary or low-quality magical items. But sometimes priceless gems were hidden beneath the dust, and discovering them depended entirely on one's eyesight and experience.
It was just like antique collecting.
Some unscrupulous wizards would use counterfeit goods, processing and disguising them as rare materials to deceive buyers. A single careless moment could result in a massive loss.
Of course,
That only applied to ordinary wizards.
Ian naturally wasn't among them.
His discerning eye was sharper than that of many professors.
In the corner of a stall piled high with dried herbs and animal organs, Ian discovered several inconspicuous black roots covered in dirt. The vendor had clearly mistaken them for ordinary Mandrake roots. Although Mandrakes were extremely valuable in Britain, they apparently weren't particularly rare here.
Because of that, the stall owner, whose eyesight clearly wasn't very good, had casually tossed them into the pile as common Mandrakes. Just as there were dishonest vendors who deliberately scammed people, there were also vendors like this one, who simply lacked the ability to distinguish genuine treasures from worthless goods.
Well...
Maybe that idiom wasn't entirely accurate, but the meaning was close enough. Ian always liked assigning his own interpretations to idioms, so at this point he wasn't particularly good at using them correctly anymore.
After all, he had lived in Great Britain for a very long time.
"This thing..."
The vendor hadn't realized the problem, but Ian recognized it instantly,
Tubers of the Dark Night Poppy.
It was an extremely rare magical plant that only grew underground in ancient battlefields or places ravaged by powerful dark magic. It was a top-tier ingredient used in advanced calming draughts and certain memory potions.
Its value far exceeded that of Mandrakes.
The dirt covering its surface and its unremarkable appearance perfectly concealed its true worth.
"How much for these?" Ian casually pointed at the pile of "Mandrake roots."
The vendor was a wrinkled old woman. She glanced at them and quoted a price in heavily accented English.
Ian didn't even bother haggling. He paid immediately, afraid the woman might change her mind. Carefully storing the precious roots inside a pouch enchanted with the Undetectable Extension Charm, he couldn't help but feel secretly delighted.
Unlike places with formal magical education systems, Africa had no wizarding schools. Instead, most wizards here inherited their knowledge through family lineages or master-disciple traditions.
And that made treasure hunting incredibly easy in this region.
After all, the accumulated knowledge of many wizarding families across several generations was extremely limited. Their knowledge was isolated, and their overall standards were sometimes not even comparable to Hogwarts upper-year students.
That was also why many pure-blood family wizards looked down on wizards from remote regions, the abilities of those remote-region wizards were genuinely limited.
Of course...
There were still monsters among them.
And the strong ones were truly terrifyingly strong.
It was just that such people were, after all, a minority.
Very soon, Ian struck gold again.
At another stall selling scrap metal and ores, Ian's attention was drawn to a dark-red lump of metal that looked rusted.
Most people would have assumed it was junk, but Ian sensed within it a faint yet incredibly stable flame-aligned magical power.
This was Sun Iron!
Most likely a fragment of a meteorite, it was an exceptional material used in crafting top-tier alchemical instruments, capable of perfectly conducting and amplifying fire- and light-attributed magic.
It had been mixed in with a pile of genuine scrap metal, lying there unnoticed for who knew how long.
"This thing looks pretty average. Can you lower the price a little?" Ian casually asked.
Once again, he easily acquired the treasure at an absurdly cheap price.
And so, while wandering through the market, he purchased several kinds of magical materials that were extraordinarily precious in the outside world, yet seemed to be underestimated or misidentified by the vendors here.
Based on the materials alone, this trip to Africa had already been worth it.
Morning light pierced through the dense fog of the rainforest, shining down upon the muddy ground of the African wizarding marketplace.
Ian disguised himself as an easy mark.
Then he found another alleyway and transformed back into a young boy.
Now he was even more in his element.
He changed into coarse linen robes more suited to the local style, hung a worn leather pouch from his waist, and wore an expression that looked both careless and shrewd.
"The potions over there are interesting."
Ian walked toward a stall covered with bottles and jars. The owner was a wrinkled old woman dressed in extremely expensive silk robes, stirring a bubbling green liquid with a bone stirrer.
"Ancestral potion! Strengthens the body! Wards off evil and disaster!" She shouted in a hoarse voice.
Ian crouched down and picked up a bottle of deep-purple liquid. The label read "Nightshade Blossom Juice," but the color was too dark and the texture too thick.
"You gathered this 'Nightshade Blossom Juice' yourself?" Ian asked casually.
"Of course! Picked it by the swamp just last night!" The old woman declared proudly.
Ian gently shook the bottle and brought it closer to smell it.
A pungent rotten stench drifted out, mixed with a cloying sweetness, that was the characteristic scent of Death Mushrooms.
"You got it wrong," Ian said with a smile as he set the bottle down. "This is juice from a Corpseheart Mushroom. It looks similar to Nightshade Blossoms, but it's highly poisonous. One sip will rot your intestines and stomach apart. You won't die until three days later, and before death, you'll see the person you love most turn into wriggling maggots."
The old woman's face turned pale.
"N-No way! It was obviously Nightshade Blossoms when I picked them!"
"Nightshade Blossoms near swamps are light purple with silver-edged petals," Ian explained patiently. "The one you picked had a black stem, right? That's a Corpseheart Mushroom. It only glows during a full moon, specifically to lure fools into picking it."
The old woman froze, then hurriedly shoved the "potion" into the farthest corner of her stall.
"T-Then that bottle's free! Take it!"
Ian smiled.
He knew this "gift" was really because she was afraid he'd report her for selling poison.
He picked up the bottle and tossed it into his pouch. Although Corpseheart Mushrooms were highly toxic, after specific alchemical processing, they became a key ingredient for making Soul Manifestation Agents.
And just like that, Ian got his first taste of the joy of shamelessly taking advantage of others.
Of course,
He wouldn't target vendors who clearly lived in poor conditions.
After all, he still had at least a little conscience left.
The best targets were profiteering merchants with valuable goods.
Next, he arrived at a mineral stall. The vendor was a muscular wizard with a necklace made of beast fangs hanging around his neck.
"Look! 'Thunderstone' freshly dug from a volcano! Contains tremendous energy!" he shouted while holding up a gray-black rock marked with lightning-shaped patterns.
Ian picked up the stone and lightly traced the patterns with his fingertip.
There was no magical fluctuation, and the markings looked unnatural.
"This 'Thunderstone' of yours was made by taking ordinary volcanic rock and burning patterns into it with electricity, wasn't it?" Ian sneered.
The vendor's eyes flickered nervously.
"What… what do you know?"
"A real Thunderstone forms when meteoric iron is struck by lightning. It contains metallic crystallization inside," Ian said as he flipped the stone over. "Yours is full of air bubbles. The iron content isn't even five percent. It might fool amateurs, but fool me?"
Sweat formed on the vendor's forehead.
"T-Then what do you want?"
"I'll buy this stone," Ian said, taking out a few copper coins, "but you'll have to throw in that pile of 'junk' over there too."
He pointed toward an inconspicuous pile of dark-red fragments in the corner of the stall that looked like discarded iron slag.
"Those? They're useless!" the vendor said unwillingly.
"I know," Ian replied with a smile. "That's exactly why I want them."
What he knew, however, was that the pile of "scrap" was actually residue left behind after molten core lava cooled. It was rich in rare elements and an excellent material for repairing a time machine's energy core.
But the vendor clearly only recognized flashy gimmicks like "Thunderstone" and was completely blind to the real treasure.
And so, a scene that usually only appeared in fantasy novels was personally reenacted by Ian through sheer expertise.
His third stop was a stall selling animal organs.
The vendor was proudly showing off a string of dried bat wings.
"Vampire Bat Wings! Used for Flying Potions! Excellent effects!"
Ian picked up one of the wings and lightly squeezed it,
It instantly crumbled into powder.
"These wings are at least ten years old," Ian said, shaking his head. "Vampire bat wings must be used within three months of drying, otherwise all magical power dissipates. This pile of yours is only fit for fertilizer."
The vendor coughed awkwardly twice.
But Ian's gaze suddenly sharpened.
At the very bottom of the stall was a tiny dark-green scale, no larger than a fingernail and completely unremarkable.
"What about that scale? How much?" he asked, pointing at it.
"Oh, that? Nobody wants it. You can just take it," the vendor said carelessly.
Ian picked up the scale, inwardly ecstatic.
It was a shed scale from an African dragon hatchling, an extremely rare material. Adult dragons rarely shed scales, while young dragons were nearly impossible to approach safely.
This kind of scale contained powerful regenerative magic and was a key material for repairing damage to the outer shell of the time machine.
Without revealing anything, Ian carefully stored the scale away.
He continued wandering through several more stalls, using similar methods to "pick up bargains" again and again.
A bottle of River Styx snake venom that had been mistaken for "ordinary snake poison", in reality extracted from a two-headed serpent and capable of dissolving magical barriers.
A packet of Stardust Grass ash being sold as "decorative powder", actually the remains left behind after ancient wizard rituals, capable of strengthening divination magic.
And a fragment of Ancestral Spirit Bone that had been treated as an "ordinary stone."
Lost tribal runes were carved upon its surface.
Ian's pouch gradually became heavier, filled with underestimated treasures.
Sitting on a stone near the edge of the marketplace, he counted his spoils with satisfaction.
Although each individual material wasn't outrageously valuable on its own, together they were enough to support multiple alchemical experiments and magical repairs.
More importantly, through these transactions, he had completely blended into the environment.
The vendors saw him as someone who "knew his stuff" and even proactively invited him to inspect their "good merchandise," no longer treating him as some suspicious outsider.
Of course,
Treasure hunting was only secondary.
As he wandered deeper and deeper into the marketplace, Ian gradually noticed something strange.
He had seen stalls selling magical tools, herbs, potions, amulets, and even secondhand Muggle goods,
But not a single shop specialized in selling wands.
He deliberately asked several vendors where he could buy "spellcasting tools," and every answer pointed toward the deeper part of the market.
Filled with curiosity, Ian followed their directions to a relatively quiet district of the marketplace.
The stalls here were far more orderly, and the goods being sold were obviously more refined and professional.
Then he found the answer.
There were no wand shops here.
Instead, there were several "magic inscription workshops."
The largest shop had a striking wooden sign hanging above its entrance, engraved with complex patterns and writing displaying both the shop's name and its services.
The walls of the shop were covered with all kinds of items: swords of varying lengths, metal rods, daggers made from beast bones, polished gemstones, and even animal fangs.
But they all shared one common trait,
Their surfaces were engraved with extremely intricate, delicate runes and patterns brimming with magical power.
"Welcome."
The owner of the shop was a sharp-eyed old craftsman with slender fingers. Wearing specially made magnifying lenses, he was fully focused on carving the final stroke onto a short ebony rod using a faintly glowing engraving needle.
As the final rune was completed, the rod emitted a faint glow.
Magical power flowed smoothly through the runes like water.
The core of European wands lay in the combination of the inner magical core and the wand wood itself. External runes were mostly decorative or auxiliary.
But Africa's "spellcasting tools" seemed entirely different.
Here, the emphasis was clearly placed on the external magical inscription system.
Different combinations of magical inscriptions obviously produced different magical effects and affinities.
Some inscriptions specialized in flames, some in healing, while others focused on protection or mental power.
Wizards selected inscription tools suited to themselves, or commissioned craftsmen to custom-make them, and then cast enhanced magic by stimulating and channeling those inscriptions.
"So it really is just as I thought. The people here prefer inscription tools that precisely direct magical attributes instead of wands. But if that's the case, why can they still cast ordinary spells with just their fingers?"
Carrying this curiosity and anticipation, Ian decided to speak with the shop owner.
(End of Chapter)
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