Chương 51: Chapter 50: Coins and Consequences

The door opened. As Ella stepped through, pale globes of light drifted from the doorway, rising in silent pairs until they settled beneath the vaulted ceiling. One by one they bloomed to life, pushing the darkness back and revealing the chamber beyond. It was not just a room full of gold. The first thing my eyes found was the near wall. Perfect cubes of gold, no more than ten centimeters to a side, sat stacked in ruler-straight rows that stretched into the distance. Every one was identical. Not bars. Not ingots.

Cubes. Beside them stood neat rows of cloth bags, each sealed with a wax stamp I didn't recognize. Here and there, a handful of loose coins rested on the shelves beside them, here and there, a few loose coins had been stacked into little columns of five or six, waiting for enough companions to complete another bag. Beyond the gold, stone shelves stretched the length of the chamber, carved directly into the walls. The first shelves glittered.

Row after row of cut gemstones rested on dark fabric, each separated from the next by the width of a finger. Clear stones caught the light and broke it into impossible flashes, while deep red stones that looked like rubies burned beside warm amber gems, rich blues and greens that seemed almost too vivid to be natural. Some were no bigger than a fingernail. Others were the size of a clenched fist. Nothing had been arranged to impress a customer. There were no settings, no necklaces, no rings.

Just loose stones, sorted by kind and size, waiting as though they were stock in a warehouse instead of treasures fit for a crown. The light danced across them with every step we took, filling the chamber with shifting colors that played over the stone ceiling and the rows of gold behind us. Beyond the cut gems, the shelves changed. The glitter slowly faded farther down the shelves. Cut gemstones gave way to rough crystals, then polished mana cores, and finally to the ones that made me stop walking altogether.

At first glance they looked no different. But I could feel the circle. Some were simple enough that I recognized pieces of them. Others... I leaned in. My eyes caught one of the larger engravings. For a heartbeat I tried to follow the flow through the circle. The pattern split. Then split again. Within seconds I'd lost it completely.

"Don't." Ella's voice stopped me before my hand could rise.

"Some of those may activate when touched." She stepped beside me, her eyes moving across the shelves.

"The larger ones... whatever they are, we leave them alone. Until we've catalogued them, assume every engraved core in this room is dangerous." I immediately clasped my hands behind my back.

"Noted." She took another few steps before slowing.

"It..." she murmured.

"It looks different." I translated. Bill frowned.

"Different how?" Ella's eyes swept slowly across the shelves.

"There is more." She went silent for a long moment.

"A great deal more." Neither of us answered. Whatever she remembered this room looking like, neither Bill nor I had any way to compare it. Bill was the one that eventually broke the silence.

"So..." His eyes drifted back to the rows of gold cubes.

"Random question." Bill turned to me.

"Arcene."

"Yeah?"

"How much do you think one of those cubes weighs?"

"Enough that I wouldn't want one dropped on my foot."

"Helpful." I shrugged.

"I know gold's stupidly dense. I just don't remember the number." I pulled out my phone. The network took its usual sweet time before finally coughing up an answer and I left it alone on one of the shelve while it was loading the answer looking around the room aimlessly. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Here. Pure gold's about nineteen point three grams per cubic centimeter." Bill nodded slowly, eyes never leaving the stacks.

"Okay..." He held his hands apart, trying to frame one of the cubes from where we stood.

"They're... what? About this wide?"

"Maybe?" I copied the gesture.

"Let's call it ten-ish centimeters..." He frowned.

"No... maybe twelve."

"Close enough." His lips moved silently.

"Twelve cubed is..." He stopped.

"No, that's not right." He started over.

"Let's say ten. Makes the math easier." Another pause.

"... That's roughly twenty kilos." He looked back at the shelves, then laughed once under his breath.

"You don't carry this out in backpacks. You carry it out one at a time, grunting, and you do not even try to run while you do it."

"Which is why," Ella said, not looking up from the shelves, "the gems matter more than the gold, to you." She reached toward the shelves with the same care she'd use to pick Yato up off the floor. Her fingers passed over the deep crimson stones before settling on one of the clear ones. It caught the light in a thousand sharp flashes. She held it up between two fingers, turning it slowly beneath the light.

"This kind first." I frowned.

"You think it'll sell?"

"I think," she said carefully, "it is the least likely to invite questions." She set it back exactly where she'd found it.

"We ignore anything unusual." Her hand swept lightly across the shelves.

"No strange colors. No stones that glow. Nothing that someone might believe impossible." Bill nodded.

"So... gold, coins, and the boring gems."

"Yes." Ella nodded.

"The familiar gems." He looked back across the shelves.

"So, anything exotic stays here until we know exactly what it is, and have an idea of what someone from our world would think it is?" I asked.

"Yes." Bill nodded once.

"That sounds considerably safer."

"It is." Ella turned toward the door.

"Then we have what we came for." We followed her out and the deep click echoed through the chamber once more as the vault sealed itself behind us. We crossed the keep in silence, climbed back into the carriage and left the city behind. The drive home was quiet. Bill stared out the window almost the entire way. I didn't need to see his face to know he was still trying to fit everything we'd just seen into a world that had tax codes and bank statements. Eventually he sighed.

"Picture the headline," Bill said. I glanced over. He didn't."'Young lawyer caught laundering millions in gold." He paused.

"Claims it came from a magical kingdom.'" I couldn't help but add while smiling"Not my best defense. And it gets better." He started counting on his fingers.

"Primary witness: Alleged queen of that kingdom. Status: illegal alien. Literally." Even Ella glanced over at the word she clearlly had no idea what an illegal alien is.

"Second witness: His missing best friend, officially missing for days, suspect in another open case." Another finger.

"Third witness: a freaking cat." I snorted.

"Yato's testimony would be questionable."

"He's probably the most credible one." The joke lingered for a moment before fading. Bill rested his head against the window.

"This is the first time in my career I've known exactly what the truth is..." He let out a slow breath.

"... and exactly how guilty it's going to look." I nodded.

"Yeah." He was quiet for another few seconds.

"I'm still calling Léon. But this is insane." By the time we reached the house, both suns were hanging low over the trees, turning the forest to copper and gold. The air had begun to cool, carrying the smell of pine and damp earth through the open clearing. Yato was awake on the porch railing, tail flicking lazily as we climbed down from the carriage. He watched us with the particular expression only a cat can manage—as though we'd been gone far longer than was acceptable.

Susanoo barreled over to Bill, nearly taking him off balance in his enthusiasm. After a quick greeting and a scratch behind the ears, he wandered over to the carriage, sniffed each wheel with great concentration...

"... and lifted a leg." Bill closed his eyes for a second.

"He's declaring war on the royal transportation system." Bill sighed. I shrugged.

"I think he's just establishing jurisdiction." We watched his dog finish the job with obvious satisfaction.

"He's gonna start a diplomatic incident." Bill watched Susanoo finish inspecting the mess he had just made, then looked down at his own hands.

"You know..."

"Hm?"

"I've spent the last hour thinking about money laundering, tax fraud and criminal conspiracy." He looked at me.

"But now that we've stopped talking about it..." I smiled.

"I was wondering when we'd get here." He pointed at me.

"When do I get to shoot lightning?"

"Sooner than you'd think."

"... Really?" Instead of answering, I reached for the lighning core in my pocket with my left hand and raised the other. The circle flashed into existence beneath my palm, almost instantly. I'm getting quite good at this. A lance of white-blue lightning cracked across the clearing and struck a fist-sized rock near the edge of the path. It burst apart with a sharp crack, fragments skipping across the dirt before the thunder rolled back through the trees. Bill didn't say anything.

This spell had turned out to be a total disappointment when it comes to real combat, but go does it look cool as fuck. He looked at the scattered pieces of rock. Then at my hand. Then back at the rock.

"... I need magic." I laughed.

"You need patience."

"No." He shook his head with absolute conviction.

"I'm pretty sure I need to be able to cast lightning."

"Three days with a catalyst." He grimaced.

"Three days?"

"Three days."

"Ok I can live with that and then lightning?"

"No."

"... No?"

"Then you carve your first circle."

"And then lightning?"

"No. You spend about another week getting to the second." Bill's expression slowly collapsed.

"You're telling me becoming a wizard consists primarily of waiting."

"So far? Pretty much." He let out a theatrical sigh.

"Anime has lied to me." He looked back toward the broken rock with genuine disappointment. I clapped him on the shoulder.

"Come on, my young apprentice. It lied to both of us. Besides..." I glanced at the shattered rock.

"... lightning's cooler than it is useful sadly." Bill looked at me.

"... Did you just Palpatine me?"

"Maybe." I laughed. He followed me toward the house, muttering under his breath.

"... I'm still learning lightning first."