Chương 41: The Market's Price

The big market smelled different. Roasted meat, horse dung, old cloth, metal, charcoal, damp leather. People shouldered past one another, and prices moved faster than words. Kichan felt his hunger first. The market road was not a straight line. Tent ropes hung low, and baskets of dried fish, ceramic jars, leather gloves, and bundles of herbs ate into the path little by little. Cart wheels had left tracks in mud that had dried and hardened, and children ran across them until a merchant yelled.

In front of a meat skewer stall, two men who looked like mercenaries held sticks and haggled. In front of a cloth shop, a pilgrim woman fingered the edge of an old cloak, and the merchant beside her held up three fingers with a smile. He was smiling, but his eyes were not smiling at all. Kichan looked at those fingers and grew more tired. The problem was money. In the village, he could get by on meals paid with medicine and goodwill.

Here, a single loaf of bread, a place to sleep, a scrap of road information came with a number attached.

"How come nothing's free." Ren kept trying to bargain, but he was pushed back. Kichan could not read the price tags even when he looked at them. Dangerous contract words caught his eye, but the price of bread confused him to the end. Ren smiled, pleaded, showed his palm, then shook his head again. The merchant wore the same expression from start to finish. To Kichan, it was not the face of a man selling bread. It was the face of a man weighing the pockets of the lost. Then Dust disappeared.

By the time Kichan noticed, Dust was already dragging over a rusted, dented lump of metal from somewhere. It was impossible to tell whether it was a piece of an old horseshoe or a broken axle part. Dust placed it on Kichan's palm and kept rubbing it against his fingertips.

"What. You want me to sell this?" Dust struck its legs twice. It meant no. Dust rubbed the metal lump against Kichan's finger again. Kichan stopped himself from getting annoyed. The Rohonc sense activated late. The grain inside the metal opened. Impurities, weight, and a color that could be traded caught at his fingertips. Kichan looked at Dust.

"What? You want me to make gold?" Dust struck its leg once. It meant yes. Kichan knew it was insane, but he tried to do just a little. Really just a little. Only enough to change the surface color, or to check how far the metal grain would follow. But the sensation at his fingertips went deeper than he thought. The rusted lump crumbled inside, impurities pushed out, and the color changed from within. The dull brown vanished, and a heavy, brilliant yellow chunk remained in his palm. Kichan held his breath.

"... It worked?" Dust flicked its legs proudly. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Kichan immediately closed his hand.

"Let's stop here. If I make more, something's going to blow up." Dust flicked its legs again. It meant make more. Kichan glared at the gold lump, then shook his head.

"Gold's no good. This is too obvious." He picked up the remaining iron piece. This time, he did not push it toward gold. He turned the metal grain inside in a different direction. Rust and impurities pushed out, but the color did not turn yellow. A strangely dark silver-gray chunk remained. Kichan lifted it and narrowed his eyes.

"Huh? This is light." Kichan did not say exactly what it was. It felt like titanium he had seen on Earth. Light and hard, and less dangerous-looking than gold. That illusion did not last long. Ren took the silver-gray metal and went toward a metal merchant. Kichan wrapped the gold lump in a cloth scrap and hid it deep inside his clothes. He absolutely did not take it out. The metal merchant had first looked at it like cheap tin or lead.

He lowered the small lens perched on his nose bridge and rolled the chunk on his fingertips. His face showed annoyance first. Then he lifted it, and his expression changed. His eyebrows rose a very little. It was light. He tapped it, and it changed again. The smile left the corners of his mouth. The sound was different. He tried to scratch it with a small knife tip, and the knife tip was damaged first. Beside him, a magic-supply merchant playfully leaked weak mana. He had been smiling at first.

Like the common bluff in a metal merchant's alley, the face of someone poking a new item once. A thin line of light stood on the silver-gray metal surface. It did not spread. It did not scatter. The mana found a path inside the metal. The magic-supply merchant's smile stopped first. His pupils followed the light on the metal surface. He slowly withdrew the hand he had stretched out playfully and looked down at his own fingertip once.

It was the face of someone realizing the mana he had just leaked had not moved according to his will. Then the metal merchant's hand stopped too. The people watching around them also closed their mouths one beat late. Kichan immediately tried to take it back.

"Not for sale." The metal merchant urgently called out a price. The first price he named was strangely high. High enough that the surrounding merchants went quiet. One mercenary chewing a meat skewer stopped chewing, and the cloth merchant forgot the price he had been calculating on his fingers. Someone tried to laugh and stopped, and someone else looked back and forth between Kichan's hand and Ren's face. They were faces that said this was strange. But not faces that said it was completely impossible.

Seeing the magic-supply merchant stiffen and the metal merchant raise the price, people exchanged glances. They did not know why it was being priced so high, but they understood that the item was not cheap. One of them raised the price first. It was another metal merchant wearing a leather apron. The first metal merchant immediately turned his face. Words sped up. Numbers passed back and forth.

Kichan could not follow the numbers, but he saw fingers opening one by one and the breath of the people around them growing shorter. The cloth merchant cut in. He looked like he knew nothing about metal, but seeing the magic-supply merchant beside him, he raised the price. The mercenary holding the meat skewer tried to say something, then touched his own pocket and closed his mouth. In an instant, it became competition rather than haggling. Kichan looked at Ren. Ren's face was stiff too. There was no money.

They had to travel. There was the village too. In the end, Kichan handed over only the silver-gray metal. The gold lump stayed deep inside his clothes. The money pouch grew heavy, but his mood did not improve.

"This feels like the difficulty level of life just got easier all of a sudden." The metal merchant smiled and said no. But his hands were already wrapping the silver-gray metal in cloth twice. Kichan did not like that hand movement. The man was sharp. He did not seem like an ordinary merchant. He thought about splitting the gold lump in two later. For now, Ren had to come with him. He needed someone who knew the road and could move words. But if he ever met someone returning to the village, he had to send half.

It was the share of the child who had paid for meals, the child's mother, and the village people. The rest he hid even deeper. Dust flicked its legs proudly on his shoulder. Kichan spoke low.

"Things got weird again because of you." At the end of the alley, someone had watched the whole process. That night's report contained this: `Metal transmutation witnessed. Gold unconfirmed. Unidentified silver-gray metal presumed sold to market metal merchant. Authenticity verification required. `