"What's going on with me today?"
Ais kept wondering as she looked over the board:
"Wanted: adult unicorn horn.…Mermaid blood, 20ml — 15 pounds.Mummy powder, 8g — 3 pounds.Rosselle the Great's notebook, 1 page — 5 pounds.…Star crystal, 50g — 160 pounds.Complete crystallization of a Hollow Man, one piece — 180 pounds.…"
Wants, materials rich with spiritual energy, supernatural materials. Organized quite neatly. The sight improved her mood fractionally. She glanced at Leel beside her — head lowered, covertly looking around with peripheral vision — and decided to calm down and focus on the task.
"Wanted: light-drawing dust, quantity to be agreed; three wild-rage herbs; one piece of spiritually rich timber."
She also wrote that she wanted to speak with whoever was selling Rosselle's notebook, then passed the note to the attendant.
The attendant showed it briefly to the gathering's organizer. The organizer wrote something in response.
The attendant reviewed it, then tore the note in two. One portion went to a second attendant at the board, who placed it on the table near the display. The other came back to Ais:
"The seller isn't present. The notebook is stored here."
His handwriting is better than mine. The brief line surprised her. And the storage arrangement struck her as slightly odd.
She wrote on the other side of the slip — "I'd like to confirm the notebook's condition first" — and passed it back.
After another wait, the attendant returned with a book. Standing beside Ais, the attendant opened it first, then handed it over.
You're keeping things quite casually. Ais noted inwardly and looked at the page of Rosselle the Great's diary inside — relatively intact.
After a quick scan, she found the diary contained only the Emperor's account of having initially intended to resist an arranged marriage — only to immediately reverse himself because the other party was too beautiful.
Infuriating. Same transmigrator background, and the Emperor landed in the body of a down-on-his-luck noble, got a wife without any trouble. I transmigrated into a gambling addict who'd been thrown out of his own home, and now I'm like this… The more she thought, the more lopsided things seemed. Ais snapped the book shut and handed it back to the attendant without a word.
When the attendant left, Ais sat with her arms folded, leaning against the sofa, visibly annoyed to the point where her lips were pressed together.
The Detective Ais's emotions have been quite volatile since entering this building. Though that is also somewhat charming. Leel turned at the sound of the book snapping shut, registered the scene, and quietly turned back.
A few more minutes passed. The pile of request slips gathered at the board had reached a sufficient volume, and the attendant updated the display. Those in the room turned to look — some muttered to themselves and left, some produced items to hand off to the attendant, and some spoke briefly with the attendant before heading further inside or up to the second floor to negotiate directly with their trading partners.
The gathering's organizer remained entirely unmoved throughout, reacting only when an attendant brought him a slip.
Chest is a bit sore, too. What is wrong with my body today? Ais noted this privately, glanced at the board, saw nothing worth attention, confirmed no slips were coming her way, and simply closed her eyes to rest.
As time passed, people occasionally drifted in through various entrances. The room remained comparatively quiet — just the soft movement of attendants and the murmuring of acquaintances who had spotted each other.
After a while, once she felt she'd sufficiently restored her composure, Ais gave a warning look to a participant whose eyes and mouth had both been impolitely active. Then she suddenly noticed that Leel beside her seemed somewhat different from usual: since entering the building, he'd barely said a word.
This occurred to her, and she leaned toward Leel quietly:
"Feeling bored?"
Hearing that Ais's voice had returned to its usual calm, Leel shook his head:
"Not really. With people coming and going, it's actually quite interesting."
Is it? Ais didn't quite follow, but didn't press:
"Then give it another thirty minutes — after that I'll take you somewhere busier."
"Sure."
Half an hour later, as promised, Ais collected the wild-rage herbs and the branch of a forest sprite, led Leel out of the unremarkable building, and they were done.
Both of these were only materials of a certain unusual quality with accumulated spiritual energy — influenced by supernatural forces but not directly constituting supernatural traits — so the pricing wasn't outrageous. Together they'd cost her 15 pounds.
In truth, Ais had wanted to buy more at the gathering, but given that Williamson Street sat right on the West District–Queen's District border, she'd been deliberately selective — she didn't want Extraordinaries who frequented the area deducing from her purchases that she was connected to the Witch pathway.
Take the "mummy powder" that had appeared on the board from the start: it was quite possibly one of the secondary ingredients for the Pleasure Witch's potion — specifically, 5 grams of genuine mummy ash. For exactly that reason, she'd shown not even the faintest interest in the mummy powder. To be safe, she would never purchase any ingredient belonging to the Pleasure potion's formula at this particular gathering.
Back behind a building, Leel pulled off the robe while asking curiously:
"Ais, what are you planning to use all this for?"
Ais smiled slightly:
"A secret — I'll tell you once we're back. For now, think about where you'd like to go."
Leel watched Ais tuck his robe back into the palm-sized compact mirror and answered without any particular preference:
"I'm not fussy — anywhere with enough people."
Ais didn't deliberate: "Then Hillston District. I hear foot traffic is quite high there."
Hillston District sat between the Queen's District and Joyewood, home to various large companies and banks — the economic, commercial, and financial heart of Ruen.
By four in the afternoon, the two of them finally boarded a public carriage back toward the West District. On the way, Ais made periodic stops at flower shops and plant stores to purchase various botanical powders, which only deepened Leel's curiosity about what she was planning.
Thanks to the detours, it was thirty minutes before they arrived near Green Park.
Getting out of the carriage and paying the fare, Ais looked at Leel — whose curiosity was plainly written on his face — and asked anyway:
"I'm planning to go out to the countryside. Coming?"
Leel nodded immediately:
"Of course. So can you tell me what you're actually trying to do now, Ais?"
Ais shook her head with a small smirk:
"I'm planning to use these materials to do something wicked."
Leel raised an eyebrow:
"What wicked things are there to do in the countryside?"
Pity we can't be proper friends — some jokes wouldn't land the same way. The thought occurred to Ais, and she abandoned the idea of dragging out the mystery:
"Quite a few, actually. For example — making a corpse into an animated dead using animal remains. I've always been curious about how corpses actually manage to move."
"Ah?" A pause. "But isn't that dark magic? How do you know it?"
If not for the nearby buildings still having occupants, Ais would have been tempted to use a classic villain's laugh to startle him. In the absence of that option, she skipped straight past the atmosphere-building:
"What if I told you I've always been a Witch who commands many forms of dark magic?"
"You don't seem anything like it," Leel said immediately.
Ais spread her hands:
"Nothing I can do about that. The potion gave me the knowledge — I couldn't not have it even if I tried."
"I see." Leel scratched his head, genuinely puzzled:
"Ais, you just told me outright that you know dark magic. Aren't you worried I'd misunderstand?"
"Because I don't think there's anything remarkable about it. I didn't seek out this dark magic on my own. If someone would misunderstand me over something like this, then they were never qualified to be my friend."
The deeper reason is simply that it doesn't matter. Ais kept that thought to herself.
Author's Note (this chapter):Take the "mummy powder" that had appeared on the board from the start: it was quite possibly one of the secondary ingredients for the Pleasure Witch's potion — specifically, 5 grams of genuine mummy ash. For exactly that reason, she'd shown not even the faintest interest in the mummy powder. To be safe, she would never purchase any ingredient belonging to the Pleasure potion's formula at this particular gathering.
Better to be cautious in Ruen. ·
If this gathering has Terrell, the mummy powder is probably fake anyway — the real ones get eaten up by the higher ranks.