1.
Verdandi, the Empire-sponsored premier guild.
Their guild castle stood somewhere on the Inner Tower’s sixth floor.
Seated in her office, the treasurer, Mayrin, was browsing the Inner Tower auction house as usual.
It was part of managing the guild’s funds.
Securing promising equipment.
They needed to acquire loaner gear not for guild members already climbing the Tower, but for those about to begin their ascent.
So-called newbie gear.
In truth, that was the hardest kind to obtain.
They called it newbie gear, but it still had to maintain high quality to compete with other guilds and houses.
"Nothing good here."
She was scrolling down when—
"...?"
─────────────────
[Work Gloves] [☆☆☆☆☆]
[Enchantment Level: 20]
[Current Bid: 60,500 Gold]
─────────────────
She blinked repeatedly. It was an unbelievable sight.
Equipment that made no sense in every conceivable way.
"Is this even possible...?"
She quickly searched the community forums.
There, she learned that the item’s performance was comparable to +10.5 [Mana-Infused Bracers], a three-star item.
What was more, the source was a researcher affiliated with the Magic Tower who posted under their real nickname, so it was credible information.
"...Gale."
Gale, guildmaster of Verdandi.
He was an enhancement addict.
Every piece of his equipment was enhanced to +20.
Except for his gloves.
Recently, he had suffered five consecutive destructions while trying to enhance [Mana-Infused Bracers] to +20.
And right afterward—
"I’m done enhancing now. Hahaha!!"
What remarkable mental fortitude. If it had been her, she would have ripped the dwarf’s head clean off.
He had laughed, saying there was nothing to be done when that was how the odds worked.
But these gloves were on the level of +10.5 Mana-Infused Bracers....
Even if she recommended them, he probably would not buy them.
Though he said he was quitting enhancement, Gale still had his standards.
He was the sort who would rather die than hear people say, "Gale’s class is dead."
Even so, this equipment was appealing.
Simply loaning it to guild members who would soon climb the Tower would raise the guild’s competitiveness by an entire level.
If a novice climber wore +10.5 Mana-Infused Bracers, then, frankly speaking, they might be able to clear several floors with nothing but their fists.
Besides, aside from mages... most people could use work gloves.
Even mages could make full use of them if they were battle mage types.
They had already far surpassed the standard for loaner gear, so their usefulness went without saying.
Mayrin glanced at Gale.
He was staring into empty space, focused on something.
"Um... Guildmaster...."
Just as she was about to cautiously bring it up to arrange the budget—
Bang!
The office door flew open.
"Guildmaster! Why don’t you buy this?"
A tactless guild member, famous for never reading the room, approached Gale while holding out his community interface.
Climbers could share their interfaces with one another like this.
"You said you weren’t enhancing anymore. What do you think of these gloves?"
Hah, that oblivious idiot.
Does he have any idea how much gold the guildmaster just lost...?
Mayrin pressed a hand to her forehead.
Gale stroked his beard and looked at the gloves for a moment....
"Hahaha! No matter what, I’d never use equipment like that!"
"Oh? Is that so? Then are you finally looking to graduate into unique equipment?!"
"...Hahaha. Of course, kid."
That was when—
Ding!
[A higher bid has been placed on your watched listing, 「Work Gloves」. Current Price: 71,000 Gold.]
It was an item known as an auction-house notifier.
The voice announcing the higher bid rang from Gale’s pocket.
"...Hahaha!"
Mayrin closed her eyes.
He must be having a hard time lately.
It was a moment that made her worry about her guildmaster’s finances.
2.
[Yuna’s Safe Guard!]
[0:30:00]
"...Sheesh."
Yuna had locked the community.
Now she was locking it without even saying anything. She called me over, but she would not even answer.
It did not really matter. I had already had all the fun I needed.
The last bid I saw was 105,000 gold.
The price kept rising, and it was pretty amusing to watch one reason after another get attached to it.
Normally, based on my past experience with online games, standard equipment eventually settled at a value slightly below the expected cost of enhancing it.
But there were exceptions.
That logic became meaningless if the gear carried too much risk, could not be obtained anymore, or had demand and effectiveness strong enough to overcome that.
Remarkably, these work gloves seemed to meet every one of those conditions.
Posts titled things like, "The Effectiveness of Work Gloves," were already popping up everywhere.
Put simply, as newbie gear passed around by a group, they were something beyond best-in-slot.
And even for climbers looking beyond that stage, they were an attractive option.
What gave them the best value of all was... that despite being listed on the auction house, they had no thirty-day resale restriction.
Since they could keep changing hands, merchants seemed to have joined in as well.
Tap, tap.
I tapped the table and fell into thought for a moment.
"...."
Wait a second.
Did I just get myself a money printer?
What was this easy life?
By my standards, enhancing Work Gloves to +20 was not particularly difficult.
Tap tap tap.
My fingers drummed faster against the table.
Not because I was happy. I was just naturally suspicious.
There was no way the world would give me a life this easy.
But no matter how hard I thought about it—
"What the fuck?"
There was not... there really was not any problem with it.
That was when—
"You swore."
A sleepy voice drifted from behind me.
When I turned around, Ruby was buried in her books, still so drowsy she could barely lift her head. She looked at me and gestured.
"I’m telling."
"What are you talking about? You must have misheard because you’re sleepy."
No way.
My instincts told me that if Dolores heard about it, I would get dragged away.
I would be pinned across her lap and made to undergo proper-language lessons for hours.
"...."
But she really must have been half-asleep, because she dozed off again.
Safe.
Anyway, after thinking that, my mind actually cooled down.
People should be humble.
If I just kept duplicating +20 Work Gloves, I would never cure Dolores’s illness.
Nor would my blacksmithing ever improve.
I needed to always strive to improve.
Usually, good results came at the end of that drive to improve—as long as there was no AI involved.
"Right. I’m a blacksmith."
Hah. I was suddenly getting fired up.
I cautiously stuck my head into the hallway and checked my surroundings.
She had definitely said it would be a disaster if I went to the workshop at night, right?
There should be no problem if I went during the day.
I immediately hurried downstairs.
Then I crossed the garden and headed for the workshop.
3.
The eighty-eighth floor.
The Dwarf Company reception room.
Elliott, the Company’s president, was personally receiving a guest.
Normally, dwarves handled inquiries and customer service.
But this case was different. Their visitor was a major spender.
"You must have had quite the journey—"
"Our president is extremely angry."
The employee before him got straight to the point the moment they met.
He belonged to the Golden Scales Trading Company.
It was called a trading company, but they were merchants through and through.
They had no intention of climbing the Tower... All they did was cling to it and scheme over how to siphon climbers’ money.
They bought up zero-star low-grade equipment, enhanced it to five stars, and sold it at exorbitant prices under the name of "premium newbie gear."
Using the Company’s enchantment rooms, naturally.
"...And what exactly has made him angry?"
Keeping his smile, Elliott asked gently.
"It is a matter of trust."
The employee continued, drumming 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 is what you told us."
That was right.
And it also meant that the market price of +5 gear was reliably guaranteed.
It was the ultimate newbie equipment, with no higher ceiling.
"Then what is this?"
On the auction-house interface the employee opened, a +20 item appeared before Elliott’s eyes.
The auction price had already climbed to 120,000 gold.
"Our trading company currently possesses countless pieces of +5 equipment. We trusted your enchantment policy."
"...."
"But now the market has been given the impression that the cap has been lifted. A decline in equipment values is as clear as day, and the losses we will have to bear cannot even be—"
The edge in the employee’s voice steadily sharpened.
Elliott simply listened, still wearing a smile.
In truth.
It was not that Elliott failed to understand why the employee in front of him was angry.
But the person most dumbfounded and most furious was Elliott himself.
It wasn’t us.
The instant those gloves appeared on the market—
He had combed through every log from every enchantment room in the Company.
There was nothing.
To begin with, it should have been impossible.
Of the tests conducted with the Company’s enchantment machines to take zero-star equipment from +5 to +6, there had been only one success out of more than 162,000 attempts.
It was impossible to the point that attempting it had no meaning.
But +20? It was enough to drive him completely mad.
The only thing Elliott could say here was—
"...We are investigating the matter."
That was all.
If one of their employees had made a mistake, they could discipline them. That would have been the easiest outcome, and honestly the most ideal one in this situation.
They would have even paid a performance bonus to reproduce +20.
But that was not it.
Which meant someone had truly performed that enchantment personally.
And outside the Company, at that.
If they openly said that they had not done it—
There is, in fact, a good enchantment business where the cap has been lifted. Go there instead.
That would amount to confessing it themselves.
The Company’s authority would utterly collapse.
Surrounded on all sides, Elliott felt a headache coming on.
"Our Company is also currently conducting an ‘internal’ investigation."
He emphasized the word internal.
"The investigation will require some time... We would appreciate it if you would trust our Company’s integrity and wait."
And besides.
"...As a token of our sincere apologies."
You cannot afford to give up on enchanting either, can you?
"For the next two days, we will offer a five-percent discount on enchantment fees in Room Seven."
"...!"
The employee’s eyes widened.
Under the Dwarf Company’s strict fixed-price policy, it was an extraordinarily generous discount.
Of course... there was no reason to get excited too quickly.
Naturally, they would lower the success probability by five percent as well.
"...Very well. Please conduct the investigation swiftly."
Somewhat appeased, the employee nodded and rose from his seat.
Power without alternatives.
A monopoly corporation with no replacement.
That was the Company’s true weapon.
4.
Dolores sat at the table in her room, humming to herself.
Sunlight streaming through the window settled softly over her hair.
"...."
She felt good.
One pleasant thing after another kept happening.
A double blessing. There was no better way to put it.
It felt as though all the happiness she had gathered over the past several decades was pouring down on her at once.
Lionel.
Every bit of that happiness came from that boy.
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.
"...?"
Dolores set down her cup and opened the chat room from which the notification had come.
The Inner Tower interface allowed people who had exchanged contact information to message one another like this.
[Dawn Apostles]
A room that rarely received messages.
Everyone was too busy, so it only came alive a few times a year.
It was the chat room she shared with the sworn sisters who had climbed the Tower alongside her.
Yet, for the first time in a while, a message had arrived in that room.
When she opened it....
─────────────────
[Day 1456 of Wishing for Retirement]: (Photo)
[Day 1456 of Wishing for Retirement]: Anyone who knows where this is, has seen it, or owns it, contact me first.
[Day 1456 of Wishing for Retirement]: The prince’s collector mania is fucking out of control right now, so hurry up and do something. Anything, just please hurry.
─────────────────
She tapped the photo.
"Pfffttt!!"
Dolores set down her teacup and covered her mouth with a hand.
Because the photo showed....
An auction-house image of the gloves sitting right in front of Dolores.
Dolores laughed for a long time, then laughed some more.
Click.
Slowly, she moved her fingers and attached a photograph.
+20 work gloves, laid atop red velvet.
─────────────────
[Dolores]: (Photo)
─────────────────
She pressed send and lifted her teacup again.
Then—
Ding, ding, ding!
─────────────────
[Day 1456 of Wishing for Retirement]: ?
[Day 1456 of Wishing for Retirement]: ?
[Day 1456 of Wishing for Retirement]: Dolores, what is this?
[Day 1456 of Wishing for Retirement]: Lady Dolores?
[Day 1456 of Wishing for Retirement]: Elysia von Dolores?
[Day 1456 of Wishing for Retirement]: Lady Elysia von Dolores, great ruler of the fifth floor and duchess of House Dolores??
─────────────────
Smiling, Dolores closed the chat window.
She was not worried.
That woman could keep a secret. She was the kind of woman who would choose silence rather than report it to the imperial family.
In fact, all of her sworn sisters were the same.
Normally, she was a woman whose reactions were difficult to see, so Dolores would have liked to enjoy watching her a little longer.
But it was about time to pick out some good reactions to show Lionel.
Which would be best?
She opened the auction house.
Then she slowly opened the direct messages sent by potential buyers.
And the moment she opened her DMs, one message caught her eye.
"...."
─────────────────
「Dwarf Company」
─────────────────
Dear Seller,
We sincerely thank you for the deep trust you have consistently placed in our Company.
Regarding the [Work Gloves / Enchantment Level: 20] which you have listed, our Company’s thorough investigation has confirmed that the enhanced item was produced due to a system malfunction and error within the Company’s enchantment process.
Accordingly, our Company respectfully requests the following of you.
Please either visit our headquarters on the eighty-eighth floor in person or, if travel is inconvenient, register a retrieval request for the item through our headquarters delivery system.
As compensation, our Company will immediately provide you with a reward equal to twice the current auction price.
Furthermore, we pledge confidentiality regarding this matter and will permanently register you as one of our Company’s premium customers.
We respectfully await your careful reply.
─────────────────
Dolores slowly read the message.
"Delete."
This was not the kind of good reaction she wanted to show Lionel.
He was at an age where he should only see and hear good things.
"What nonsense."
Hoping they would stomp their feet and keep trembling with anxiety, she took another sip from her teacup and rose from her seat.
The moment she pulled aside the curtain a little and looked down toward the garden—
"...."
The corners of Dolores’s lips curled upward.
There was Lionel, who should have been idling around with Ruby.
Pitter-patter-patter-patter!
From the middle of the garden, he looked around and cautiously sneaked toward the workshop.
Dolores smiled brightly.
Lionel.
From today onward, we’ll be sleeping together every night.
Normally, she would have simply watched with a smile, but....
"With your hands like that, what are you...."
Dolores flung the window wide open.
Lionel, you must not overdo it.
Whoosh.
She jumped straight out through the window.
In the distance, the servant tending the garden went wide-eyed.
It was not the sort of landing someone like Dolores—who always acted gracefully out of consideration for a noble’s dignity—would make.
Swish.
That was how much more important Lionel was to Dolores.
She slowly followed behind Lionel.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register