It hardly needed explaining that it did not draw women’s attention, and thanks to that, men no longer continued challenging him to duels. Thanks to the robe, the attire travelers most favored, Damon was able to travel light and free. In that state, Damon continued his journey inland.
The first thing he keenly felt while traveling through Arcadia was that public order was maintained perfectly. In truth, traveling in Truvenia was by no means easy. All manner of monsters, not to mention even bandits, targeted travelers’ belongings and lives. There was even a saying that if one wished to live long in Truvenia, one should never travel. Having traveled often, Damon knew that fact well.
But Arcadia was different. In the month or so since he had begun traveling, Damon had not seen a single monster. Of course, there had been no bandit attacks either.
At the border areas linking city to city, a perfect guard network had been established. And in places judged to be somewhat remote, guard posts were invariably stationed. What was surprising was that it was difficult to find any tension on the faces of the guards. The guard approaching Damon now also wore a pleasant smile.
“Fine weather we’re having. Where are you headed?”
“I’m going toward Arkia.”
Damon, who had picked out a place name from the map he had bought not long ago for fifteen silver, gave a brief, vague reply. But the guard did not seem particularly concerned with his destination.
“Judging by your unfamiliar accent, you must not be from around here. Then I wish you a pleasant journey.”
From the attitude of the guard, who greeted him with a smiling face, Damon realized one thing.
It was that Arcadia’s public order was being maintained perfectly. Unable to hide his bewilderment for a moment, Damon murmured softly and moved on.
“What an amusing phenomenon.”
In such cases, the guards of Truvenia would never let a traveler pass. A traveler going alone made an excellent target for monsters or bandits. Therefore, it was customary to permit passage only when a group had gathered in numbers sufficient to defend themselves. Having traveled often, Damon knew that fact well.
“Should I say this is not exactly a good phenomenon for me?”
What he was searching for now was a deep mountain valley completely devoid of human presence. Damon had to continue his research in a place untouched by people and, without fail, infuse power into the Death Knights. Only then would he be able to possess the strength to stand against a dragon. To do that, it was essential that he avoid people’s eyes. If word spread that he was gathering dark mana, it was obvious that Arcadia’s army would swarm in like bees.
“Of course, it’s not as though I couldn’t deal with them, but it would become quite troublesome, wouldn’t it?”
Shaking his head back and forth, Damon moved on. Since many people generally lived in the coastal regions, it seemed right to enter the mountainous areas inland if he wanted to accomplish his purpose.
Only after walking an entire day was Damon able to leave the coastal region behind. Before him, a bustling city revealed itself.
It was the trading city of Lorvain. Built at a strategic point connecting the inland and the coast, it was a city prospering day by day thanks to its geographical advantages.
The specialties of the inland and the coast were traded right here. The taxes collected in that process were the source that fattened Lorvain. In addition, travelers entering the inland with merchants, or coming out toward the coast, had to stop here without fail to purchase goods. For a long journey, buying the necessary travel supplies was essential, and in the surrounding area, there was no city with a market this large other than Lorvain. Due to those various conditions, Lorvain had become a city of a scale not inferior to Peiryut.
Looking down at the well-ordered streets, Damon murmured softly.
“It seems it would be better to sell the ruby and the remaining pearls here.”
The places he had passed through until now, excluding Peiryut, had all been small villages. For that reason, Damon had been forced to hand over the pearls he possessed at extremely low prices. Since small jewelers could not pay an adequate sum, Damon had simply sold the pearls off as he could. It was enough as long as he could cover his travel expenses.
Of course, he had not even dared to dispose of the ruby. Even to Damon, who had no eye for jewels, the ruby looked like an enormously expensive item. However, he thought that a jeweler in Lorvain would be fully capable of buying the ruby, so Damon resolved to dispose of all the remaining jewels here.
“The more travel funds I have, the better……”
Having decided his route, Damon strode toward Lorvain in the distance.
As befitted a trading city, Lorvain had a structure completely different from other cities.
Unlike ordinary cities, which were surrounded entirely by walls except for one gate in the front and one in the back, Lorvain was a completely open city that possessed only small defensive forts on its outskirts.
In other words, it was a typical trading city without walls, with four forts installed at the northern, southern, eastern, and western edges of the city. Because of that, coming and going was extremely free. Of course, in terms of defense, it could not help but reveal limitations…… Due to his long experience in war, Damon immediately recognized Lorvain’s weak points.
“If one were to first surround and isolate the forts, it could be captured without much difficulty. If the supply lines were cut, the defenders in the forts wouldn’t be able to hold out for long……”
Of course, there was a strong possibility that underground tunnels had been dug to secure supply routes, but blocking them would be relatively easy. If water were drawn in through the waterways, the tunnels would quickly become useless.
However, given its nature as a trading city, the chances of Lorvain being attacked seemed almost nonexistent.
Unless it was a war between humans, that was. Thinking various thoughts, Damon slowly entered Lorvain. When he saw Damon, a lightly armed guard approached him with a smile.
“Are you a traveler?”
“That’s right.”
When Damon nodded, the smile on the guard’s face deepened.
“Welcome to Lorvain.”
He let Damon pass without even asking his destination. Damon himself was bewildered, as he had been able to pass even more easily than through the garrisons at the city borders. It was truly worthy of a trading city’s guards.
“Thank you.”
After uttering the brief words, Damon moved on. Perhaps because there were no walls, fences and barricades had been set up here and there, but it was difficult to find any tension in the soldiers’ attitudes.
‘Is it because of its nature as a trading city?’
Glancing at the soldiers gathered in groups of three or five, chatting idly, Damon silently walked toward the city center. To be honest, he had no need whatsoever to concern himself with this place’s defensive condition.
After entering the city, Damon headed straight for the central district. To dispose of jewels, he needed a large jeweler, and such places were usually located in the center.
As befitted a trading city, Lorvain was extremely lively. Stalls and shops were piled high with specialties from various regions, and many people filled the market, either to sell goods or to buy them. Damon pushed through the bustling crowd in search of a jeweler. The jeweler he sought soon came into view.
Finding a splendid jeweler with a large sign reading “Romein’s Jeweller,” Damon entered without delay. A clerk who looked very young greeted him.
“Welcome. How may I help you?”
Seeing him, Damon deliberately frowned.
“Call the owner, not you. I think that would be better.”
An expression as if he had bitten into a bug appeared on the clerk’s face. Judging by his voice, this fellow did not seem older than himself at all, yet he was speaking down to him right away, was he not? But there was nothing he could do. Recalling the shop’s policy that the customer was king, the clerk politely bowed at the waist.
“In that case, I shall show you to the manager. Please follow me this way.”
Following the clerk as he turned around, Damon strode into the inner room.
Click.
The door opened, and an elderly middle-aged man greeted Damon. With his head half bald and his face gleaming with oil, he had the typical appearance of a merchant. In addition, from the way his eyes kept darting about, one could tell he was thoroughly seasoned in business. It seemed he was the manager of this shop.
“Welcome. But why have you sought me out……”
“I came to sell jewels.”
At Damon’s words, an unimpressed expression appeared on the manager’s face. It was an expression that said, what sort of jewel could a shabby traveler possibly have brought? But when Damon took out the jewel, his reaction changed completely. The moment he saw the large ruby radiating light in Damon’s hand, he was so shocked that his eyes nearly popped out.
“S-such an item……”
He accepted the ruby as if snatching it away. The manager began examining the ruby thoroughly with a magnifying glass. A little while later, he realized that his expectations had been correct. Judging by his long experience, this was undoubtedly genuine.
‘There’s no mistake. This exquisite craftsmanship. This must be a piece crafted by a dwarf.’
If his eyes were accurate, he could assert that this jewel was truly a treasure of tremendous value. Of course, the ruby’s value was considerable, but its true worth lay elsewhere. That was the question of who had crafted it. If this truly had been made by a dwarf, then, quite literally, its price would be whatever one named.
Antony, the manager of Romein’s Jeweller, who was peering into the ruby, sensed that the opportunity of a lifetime had come to him. An opportunity to hold forever the manager’s position he had obtained after many twists and turns. Antony looked at the god of wealth before his eyes and quietly reaffirmed his resolve.
‘I must never let this man go. No matter how much I have to pay, I must buy this.’
Judging by his long experience, he could conclude that the ruby was undoubtedly a dwarf-crafted item.
Dwarves were a short-statured demi-human race that mainly lived gathered in remote mountain regions. They had a lifestyle similar to humans, but did not live in groups larger than tribes, and they were especially outstanding in craftsmanship involving precious metals.
Their extremely delicate craftsmanship was known to be impossible for any other race to match. No matter how excellent a human craftsman might be, he could not even imitate the skill of dwarves.
Even if made with the same materials and the same tools, items created by the hands of dwarves were different in some way. Of course, the value assigned to them was also several times higher.
Because of that, in the past, most of the high-quality items used in the royal courts of Truvenia had been made by dwarven hands. The rulers of most kingdoms considered it a point of pride to possess dwarf-crafted goods. And that tradition had carried over intact to Arcadia.
What was peculiar was that the value of dwarf-crafted goods had reached its peak in Arcadia. Of course, it was true that in Truvenia as well, if something had been made by a dwarf, even the same item would easily be more than twice as expensive. But in Arcadia, even by the most conservative estimate, it possessed a value over ten times greater. That was because only an extremely small number of dwarves resided in Arcadia.
Unlike Truvenia, where one could often encounter dwarves in deep mountain valleys, it was extremely difficult to see dwarves in Arcadia. Their numbers were already small, and the dwarves of Arcadia had an extremely closed-off disposition, so they had almost no exchange with humans. Therefore, obtaining their crafted goods was literally like plucking stars from the sky.
Because of that, dwarf-crafted goods had become items whose price was whatever the seller called.
In other words, aside from goods brought over from Truvenia and those occasionally plundered by attacking dwarf villages, there was no way to obtain dwarf-crafted goods. Of course, that was nowhere near enough to satisfy the possessive desires of the many rulers, so naturally, the price had no choice but to rise.
The ruby Antony was now looking into was, without the slightest doubt, a dwarf-crafted item.