Chapter 19
1.
The Imperial-sponsored premier guild, Verdandi.
Their guild castle was located somewhere on the sixth floor of the Inner Tower.
Maylin, the treasurer sitting in the office, was browsing the Inner Tower’s auction house as usual.
It was part of managing the guild’s funds.
Securing promising equipment.
They needed to prepare rental equipment not for guild members already climbing the Tower, but for those preparing to climb.
Colloquially, low-level gear.
In truth, that was the hardest kind to acquire.
It might be called low-level gear, but it had to maintain high quality for competition between guilds and families.
“There’s nothing.”
It was just as she was scrolling down.
“……”
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[Utility Work Gloves] [☆☆☆☆☆]
[Enchantment Level: 20]
[Current Bid: 60,500 gold]
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She blinked again and again. It was an unbelievable sight.
No matter how she tried to explain it, this equipment made no sense in every possible way.
“How is this possible…?”
She quickly searched through the community.
She learned that the equipment’s level was comparable to a +10.5 Mana-infused Armguard, a three-star piece of equipment.
The source was reliable, too, since it was posted by a researcher affiliated with the Mage Tower under his real nickname.
“…Sakpung.”
Sakpung, the guild master of Verdandi.
He was an enhancement addict.
After all, every piece of equipment he owned was enhanced to +20.
Except for his gloves.
Recently, he had suffered five consecutive destructions while attempting to enhance his Mana-infused Armguards to +20.
And immediately afterward.
- I’m done enhancing. Hahaha!!
What a strong mentality. If it had been her, she would already have ripped the Dwarf’s head off.
He had laughed and said there was nothing he could do about the probabilities.
But these gloves were equivalent to a +10.5 Mana-infused Armguard….
Even if she recommended them, he probably wouldn’t buy them.
He had said he was quitting enhancement, but Sakpung still had a reputation to uphold.
He was the sort of person who hated hearing, ‘Sak’s reputation is dead,’ more than he hated death itself.
Even so, this equipment was attractive.
Simply lending it to guild members who would soon begin climbing the Tower would raise the guild’s competitiveness by an entire level.
If a novice climber managed to wear a +10.5 Mana-infused Armguard, they might be able to climb several floors using nothing but their fists, to put it bluntly.
Besides, everyone except mages could use work gloves for the most part.
Even a mage could use them sufficiently if they belonged to the battle mage class.
They had already gone far beyond the level of rental equipment, so their usefulness went without saying.
Maylin glanced at Sakpung.
He was concentrating on something and staring into the air.
“Um… Guild Master….”
Just as she cautiously began to speak about the budget allocation.
- Bang!
The office door burst open.
“Guild Master! Why don’t you buy this?”
A notoriously insensitive guild member approached Sakpung with the community interface floating in front of him.
Climbers could share their interfaces with one another like this.
“I heard you’re not enhancing anymore. What do you think of these gloves?”
Ugh, what an oblivious idiot.
How much gold had the guild master just lost….
Maylin pressed a hand to her forehead.
Sakpung stroked his beard and stared at the gloves for a moment, then said,
“Hahaha! Even so, there’s no way I’d use equipment like that!”
“Oh? Is that so? Then are you looking to graduate to unique equipment soon?!”
“…Hahaha. Of course, you fool.”
It was at that moment.
- Ding!
[A higher bid has been placed on the item of interest ‘Utility Work Gloves.’ Current bid: 71,000 gold]
The device known as an auction-house notifier.
The voice announcing a higher bid rang out from Sakpung’s pocket.
“…Hahahaha!”
Maylin closed her eyes.
‘He must be having a hard time lately.’
It was the moment she began worrying about her guild master’s finances.
2.
[Yuna’s Safeguard!]
[0: 30:00]
“…Ugh.”
Yuna locked the community.
Now she locked it without even saying anything. She didn’t answer when I called her, either.
It didn’t really matter. I had already enjoyed everything I could.
The last bid I had seen was 105,000 gold.
The price kept rising, and it was pretty entertaining to see one reason after another being attached to it.
Normally, based on my past experience with online games, ordinary equipment converged at a price slightly below the expected value of its enhancement.
But there were exceptions.
If the equipment carried too much risk, was impossible to obtain, or had such strong demand and effectiveness that it could overcome that gap, the logic no longer applied.
Amazingly, the work gloves seemed to satisfy all of those conditions.
Posts titled ‘The Utility of Work Gloves’ kept appearing everywhere.
Simply put, as low-level gear passed around by an entire group, they were something beyond endgame equipment.
Even for climbers looking beyond that level, they were an attractive enough option.
What made them especially valuable was that, despite being listed in the auction house, they had no resale restriction for thirty days.
Since people could buy and sell them repeatedly, even merchants seemed to have joined in.
- Tap, tap.
I tapped on the table and fell into thought for a moment.
“……”
Wait a second.
Hadn’t I obtained a money printer?
What was this easy life?
By my standards, enhancing the General-Purpose Work Gloves to +20 hadn’t been particularly difficult.
- Tap, tap, tap.
My fingers began tapping on the table faster.
It wasn’t because I was happy. I was naturally suspicious.
There was no way the world would give me such an easy life.
But no matter how much I racked my brain.
“What the fuck?”
There wasn’t, specifically… anything wrong.
That was when.
“You swore.”
A languid voice came from behind me.
When I turned my head, Ruby was still drunk with sleep and could barely lift her head.
Buried in her book, she looked at me and beckoned.
“I’m telling.”
“What are you talking about? You must’ve misheard because you’re sleepy.”
No.
I instinctively felt that I would be caught if Doloris heard me.
I’d be pinned helplessly on her thigh and subjected to several hours of proper language education.
“……”
But perhaps she really was sleepy, because she fell asleep again.
Safe.
Anyway, once I thought about it that way, my head actually grew cooler.
People should be humble.
If I kept copying the enchantment on the +20 work gloves, I would never be able to cure Doloris’s illness.
Nor would I ever improve as a blacksmith.
I needed to keep striving to improve.
Usually, at the end of that striving, good results came—as long as there was no AI around.
“Right. I’m a blacksmith.”
Ah, I was suddenly getting fired up.
I peeked into the hallway and checked the situation.
She had definitely said it would be a disaster if I went to the workshop at night, right?
There shouldn’t be a problem if I went during the day.
I immediately dashed downstairs and
crossed the garden toward the workshop.
3.
The 88th floor.
The Dwarf Company’s reception room.
Elliott, the company’s representative, was personally handling the matter.
Normally, dwarves handled inquiries and customer support.
But this case was different. The other party was a major spender.
“Sorry to make you come all this way….”
“Our chairman is extremely angry.”
The employee in front of him got straight to the point as soon as he saw Elliott’s face.
This man belonged to the Golden Scales Merchant Guild.
It was called a merchant guild, but they were the most shameless speculators of all.
They had no intention of climbing the Tower. They only schemed about leeching off the Tower and bleeding climbers of their money.
They bought up zero-star low-grade equipment, enhanced it to +5, and released it on the market at high prices under the name of ‘premium low-level gear.’
Of course, they did it through the Company’s enchantment rooms.
“…In what respect, exactly, is he angry?”
Elliott asked gently, maintaining his smile.
“It’s a matter of trust.”
The employee continued, tapping his fingers on the table.
“What has the Dwarf Company said until now? That +5 was the limit for zero-star equipment… that anything beyond that was systemically impossible. That there was no way to do it. That’s what you told us.”
That was true.
Those words also meant that the market price of +5 equipment was reliably guaranteed.
It became the ultimate low-level gear, with no higher tier to compete against.
“But what is this?”
The auction house interface the employee had opened displayed a +20 piece of equipment before them.
The bid had already climbed to 120,000 gold.
“Our merchant guild currently possesses countless +5 items. We trusted your company’s enchantment policy.”
“……”
“But now the market has been left with the impression that the ceiling has been removed. The resulting decline in equipment value is obvious, and the losses we’ll have to shoulder are impossible even to estimate—”
The edge in the employee’s voice grew sharper.
Elliott listened silently, maintaining his smile.
In truth.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand why the employee in front of him was angry.
But the person who found this most absurd and was angriest of all was Elliott himself.
‘It wasn’t us.’
The moment those gloves had appeared on the market.
He had searched through every single enchantment room log belonging to the Company.
There was nothing.
It couldn’t have been possible in the first place.
Using the Company’s enchantment machines, the number of successful attempts to take zero-star equipment from +5 to +6 was exactly one out of more than 162,000.
It was so impossible that attempting it was meaningless.
But +20? It was enough to drive him completely insane.
The only thing Elliott could say here was
“…We’re investigating.”
That was all.
If one of the Company’s employees had made a mistake, they could simply deal with it. That would be the easiest solution, and in the current situation, the most ideal one.
They would even pay an incentive to reproduce the +20 enhancement.
But no.
That would mean someone had truly performed the enchantment ‘directly.’
And outside the Company, at that.
If they said it hadn’t been them.
‘There’s actually an excellent enchantment shop where the ceiling has been removed. Go there and do it.’
It would amount to confessing that themselves.
The Company’s authority would collapse completely.
In this hopeless situation, Elliott felt a headache coming on.
“The Company is also currently conducting an ‘internal’ investigation.”
He emphasized the word ‘internal.’
“The investigation will take some time, so… we would appreciate it if you would trust our company and wait.”
And in any case.
“…As a small gesture of consolation.”
You couldn’t give up on enchantment, either, could you?
“For the next two days, we’ll offer a five percent discount on the enchantment fee for Room 7.”
“……”
The employee’s eyes widened.
According to the Dwarf Company’s policy of ‘sticking to list price,’ this was a remarkably generous discount.
Of course… there was no need to get your hopes up too quickly.
They would naturally lower the probability by five percent as well.
“…Well, please investigate quickly.”
The employee nodded as though somewhat convinced and rose from his seat.
Power without an alternative.
A monopoly with no replacement.
This was the Company’s true weapon.
4.
Doloris hummed as she sat at the table in her room.
Sunlight streaming in through the window settled softly on her hair.
“……”
She was in a good mood.
Good things had been happening one after another.
A double blessing. There was no other way to describe it.
It felt as though all the happiness she had gathered over the past several decades was pouring out at once.
‘Lionel.’
All of it was happiness that came from that child.
She lifted her teacup and took a sip.
A smile spread across her lips.
That was when.
- Ding.
The Inner Tower interface appeared before her eyes.
“……”
Doloris set down her teacup and opened the chat room where the notification had arrived.
The Inner Tower interface allowed her to exchange messages with people whose contact information she had exchanged.
[Apostles of Dawn]
Normally, this was a room where messages rarely rang out.
Everyone was so busy that the chat room only became active a few times a year.
It was the chat room for the sworn sisters who had climbed the Tower alongside her.
But a message had arrived in that room after a long time.
When she opened the screen….
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[Retirement Wish Day 1456]: (Photo)
[Retirement Wish Day 1456]: Whoever knows where this is, has seen it, or has it, contact me first.
[Retirement Wish Day 1456]: His Highness the Prince’s collecting obsession has gone fucking insane, so hurry, somehow, hurry. Just somehow, please hurry.
─────────────────
She tapped the photo.
“Pfft-hahahahaha!!”
Doloris set down her teacup and covered her mouth with one hand.
Because the photo showed
a picture of the auction listing for the gloves currently in front of Doloris’s eyes.
Doloris laughed for a long time, then laughed for a long time again.
- Click.
She slowly moved her fingers and attached a photo.
The +20 work gloves resting on red velvet.
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[Doloris]: (Photo)
─────────────────
She pressed the send button and picked up her teacup again.
And then.
- Ding, ding, ding!
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[Retirement Wish Day 1456]: ?
[Retirement Wish Day 1456]: ?
[Retirement Wish Day 1456]: Doloris, what is this?
[Retirement Wish Day 1456]: Lady Doloris?
[Retirement Wish Day 1456]: Elysia von Doloris?
[Retirement Wish Day 1456]: Elysia von Doloris, Duchess of House Doloris and Great Ruler of the Fifth Floor??
─────────────────
Doloris laughed and closed the chat window.
She wasn’t worried.
She was a tight-lipped woman who would choose silence over reporting anything to the Imperial Family.
In fact, all of her sworn sisters were the same.
She rarely had the chance to see these women react, so she had wanted to enjoy it a little longer, but
it was time to start choosing the good reactions to show Lionel.
Which one would be best?
She opened the auction house.
Then she slowly opened the DMs that had arrived directly from prospective buyers.
And the moment she opened the DMs, one message immediately caught her eye.
“……”
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「Dwarf Company」
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Dear Seller,
We sincerely thank you for the deep trust you have always shown our Company.
Regarding the [Utility Work Gloves / Enchantment Level 20] you listed, the results of our Company’s detailed investigation have confirmed that the enhanced item was created by a system mishap and error that occurred during our enchantment process.
Accordingly, our Company respectfully requests the following of you.
Please visit our Company’s headquarters on the 88th floor in person, or, if traveling is inconvenient, register a retrieval request for the item through our headquarters’ delivery system.
As compensation for this matter, our Company will immediately pay you a reward equal to twice the current auction bid.
We also promise to maintain confidentiality regarding this matter and will permanently register you as a valued customer of our Company.
We respectfully await your careful reply.
─────────────────
Doloris slowly read the message, then
“Delete.”
This was not the sort of good reaction she wanted to show Lionel.
He was at an age when he should only see and hear good things.
“What nonsense.”
She hoped they would stamp their feet and continue trembling with anxiety.
She took another sip of tea, then rose from her seat.
The moment she slightly drew back the curtains and looked down toward the garden.
“……”
The corners of Doloris’s lips pulled upward.
There was Lionel, who was supposed to be fooling around with Ruby.
- Tododododo!
He was cautiously looking around in the middle of the garden and sneaking toward the workshop.
Doloris smiled brightly.
Lionel.
Looks like we’ll be sleeping together from now on.
Normally, she would have simply watched him with a smile, but….
“With your hand in that state, what are you doing….”
Doloris flung the window wide open.
Lionel, you mustn’t overdo it, okay?
- Whish.
She jumped straight out through the window.
A servant tending the garden in the distance opened his eyes wide.
It was not the sort of landing someone who always acted elegantly, mindful of noble dignity, would make.
- Swish.
That was how important Lionel was to Doloris.
She slowly followed behind Lionel.