[188] 5. Shelter of the Nor (3)
Shirone's guess had been right, and the merchant went further—he even guessed they'd only recently entered Purgatory.
"Hmm, I could haggle, but I don't think you lot can afford it. Spirits are damn hard to find even in Purgatory. I'm taking them back to the mainland; I'm only stopping at the shelter for a bit."
Shirone had expected the price wouldn't be low, but when the man refused even to haggle, a cold jolt of fear ran through him.
Could they buy it with three White Elixirs? If he blustered and then came up short, Amy's disappointment would only be worse.
Needing a point of judgment, Shirone put bargaining aside and asked directly.
"I heard you can contract with spirits. Can you do that with this one?"
"Contract? Ah, a contract. Of course you can. But what's the point of contracting with a fire spirit?"
"If you contract a fire spirit, you can use fire magic."
"That may be, but… people don't usually waste precious spirits on contracts. When a spirit comes into a village, life gets a whole lot easier. So villages pool elixirs to secure one. Folks on the community outskirts live in such harsh places and have so many elixirs they buy with contracts in mind—but those are the sort of people who gamble their lives away, aren't they? I don't think you two are cut out for that life."
"Anyway, contracting is possible, right?"
When Shirone repeated the question, the merchant nodded as if to say yes.
That was the typical reaction on the mainland. Ragged people who couldn't actually pay would speak up, and sometimes organized groups infiltrated just to drive down a price.
If outskirt dwellers were involved, an auction would be over quickly; but such people got noticed only if the spirit was special. Usually it was a tense, nerve-draining game.
Amy fidgeted with her fingers. Bargaining was her specialty, but she couldn't bring herself to say anything now.
If this world used gold coins, she'd have emptied her savings. But this place was Purgatory—here, only things tied to survival truly had value.
She didn't want to show possessiveness and put Shirone in an awkward spot.
Shirone already understood: for a mage, increasing magical power could mean everything, and he wanted to get it for her if he could.
Sensing the moment of decision, he asked again.
"So how many elixirs to buy the spirit?"
The merchant snorted as if amused. But when he saw Shirone staring so intently, he adopted a serious look and thought it over.
"Hmm, if you're buying it here, at the very least…"
Shirone's heart hammered. Whatever the price, he prayed they could pay with the elixirs they had.
The merchant, clearly cautious about naming a high sum, chose his words slowly.
"A White Elixir…"
Disappointment clouded both Shirone and Amy's faces. The unit being a White Elixir made the target far more daunting.
After a pause, the merchant finally said the price.
"I'd have to take at least one."
"One? Really?"
Shirone doubted his hearing for a moment—his ears had never failed him before.
One—then they could buy it.
Amy realized the same and her knees trembled with impatience, as if someone might snatch it away.
Shirone ran through the odds. At first he thought merely being able to pay would be enough, but mages were the sort to let past doubts go without regret.
When he glanced at Amy, he couldn't help smiling. She bit her lower lip and murmured, barely audible, "I want it."
Amy, the only daughter of the Karmis family, had been raised so comfortably she hardly knew want. But in magic she was still a mage like anyone else.
The merchant took her "I want it" as resigned acceptance. White Elixirs were items even mainland merchants rarely handled; newcomers to Purgatory despairing at such things was to be expected.
The thought of his own daughter must have come to him, because he tried to soothe Amy.
"White Elixirs are hard to come by. Truth be told, I already cut the price a lot. Going back to the mainland brings trouble—danger, too. I figured I could sell it at Nor's Shelter and then go home. You seemed serious, so I calculated it precisely. Don't be too discouraged. Maybe, if luck is kind, you'll find a fire spirit someday."
"I'll buy it."
"Huh?"
"I'll buy it. Me."
Shirone reached into his inner pocket. The merchant blinked like a fool, unsure whether Shirone was playing games and whether to be angry or laugh.
But when three elixirs rolled out into Shirone's hand, the merchant nearly fell out of his chair in shock.
Even from the rainbow sheen, they were unmistakably White Elixirs.
"Here. Can we take it now?"
The merchant could only nod. Shirone placed the White Elixirs in the man's palm.
At the same time Amy pulled the spirit cage to her chest.
Warmth radiated from it.
The warmth of fire.
This, truly, was Amy's life.
"Hey, you okay? Isn't it hot?"
Having confirmed the elixirs were real, the merchant recovered and asked.
Fire spirits, being active, differ from inanimate goods, but until a contract is made they're still just fire in a sense. Grabbing a heated iron cage would normally cause burns.
"Huh? No. It's only warm."
"That's odd. Mind if I check again? It's my merchandise and my conscience bothers me—could be defective."
"No, it's fine. This is definitely a fire spirit."
Amy watched the little fire spirit bouncing in the air with fondness. Using mental channeling, she spoke to Shirone.
- Shirone, it's a Spirit Zone.
- Spirit Zone?
- Yeah. This is amazing. It's real fire, but it's connected mentally. I'm still feeling it.
Mages don't get burned by fire they create—though it's real fire, the creator is a mage.
From Amy's words it seemed spirits weren't simply beings with a fixed Spirit Zone; they'd become a kind of mental sublimation.
"By the way, how did you get the White Elixirs?"
"From the Vortex Serpent."
"Vortex Serpent? You didn't happen to break the Valley's Law, did you?"
"Somehow it turned out that way."
A mage strong enough to fell a Vortex Serpent would not be surprising to have White Elixirs.
They're rare, but such people did exist in Purgatory. Merchants called them outliers, or people from the community outskirts.
"So how do you make the contract?"
"Oh, I don't know well, but I saw an outskirt dweller do it. They held the spirit in their hands and muttered something, and it just disappeared."
Spirits lack reason, so it probably wasn't a keyword trigger. That left spoken-word magic.
You utter it and repeat it—resonating with the fire is what matters.
Amy used the key the merchant had given to open the iron grate. Cradling the spirit in both hands, she improvised a spoken charm and chanted,
"Fire spirit, dwell within me."
As the spirit seeped into her, a hot energy swelled in her belly.
Contracting with a spirit felt like discovering a new knack. Separate from Ignite, she could now attune to a different kind of flame.
When Amy summoned the spirit, a globe of flame rose and circled her. She watched, satisfied, and remembered the name of an old mythical flame.
Jack-o'-Lantern.
Also called will-o'-the-wisp, this phenomenon had faded into myth despite many scholars' theories.
But no longer. Jack-o'-Lantern existed here as an ancient magic in the land called Heaven.
A fire spirit was strategically useful.
It activated independently of Ignite, could follow chosen trajectories, and could even split into multiple forms like an illusion.
Guidance, deception, multi-shot—endless tactics came to mind.
Amy noticed Shirone's gaze and dispelled the spirit.
She should have said thank you, but the words wouldn't come. Saying them now would only make things awkward.
It wasn't like receiving an expensive trinket. What she'd received was probably Shirone's intent.
Shirone smiled. Then, as if he'd expected her silence, he turned and walked away.
Only then did Amy begin to regret it. Why hadn't she said anything? Did he know how she felt? Or had the gift meant nothing special from the start?
Shirone wasn't insincere, but sometimes it was hard to read him.
He inspected the other goods carefully.
Watching Amy contract with the fire spirit made him realize how naive the idea of just finding things to take back to their original world had been.
Heaven was a place that brushed against life and death; if you enhanced something, it had to be worth deploying immediately. If such items existed, buying them—no matter the cost—could be the way to raise your survival odds.
Nor's Shelter focused on selling daily necessities because heretics attached to communities tended to stay there.
That didn't mean no merchant had special items; they were simply so valuable they weren't displayed openly.
When the man noticed Shirone holding White Elixirs, another vendor subtly set an item on his stall.
Tess dashed over and pointed.
"Oh my! Is that...?"
A beetle-shaped mechanical device.
A drone made with Mecha people's technology.
Clove hurried over to explain, more forward now that she'd realized Shirone was a big spender.
Besides the reconnaissance and language-decoding functions Shirone already knew about, it also had radio communication and map display.
"How about it? Will you trade a White Elixir for it? You know a drone isn't something you can buy just because you have elixirs—it's equipment issued only to citizens."
Shirone was interested. He'd seen a drone's scouting ability via Kanya. If Tess could use it, it would be a superb support device.
Arin then said he might be able to shave the price a bit—he sensed the merchant's initial figure was inflated.
But the relatively low asking price was suspicious.
If the fire spirit was a commodity, the drone was a limited item. If a citizen's gear had leaked out, the market price could be through the roof.
- Arin, could there be some defect? Otherwise…
- I thought so too, but I'm not sure. Either way, the asking price is steep. You'll have to check the rest yourself.
Tess didn't take her eyes off the drone. She was obsessed with ancient relics; defect or not, if someone bought it for her, she'd take it.
Shirone asked the merchant directly.
"How did you get this? I thought Mecha equipment was only issued to the Mecha people."
"Of course it is. But even among the Mecha there are outliers. They probably stole it before fleeing to Purgatory. Selling just one would be enough to live on. Look—see the band connecting the drone's frame? That proves it was never used. Pulled straight from the factory. The original owner was likely someone who worked at a Mecha tech facility."
"Where's that person now?"
"No clue. They might've run away, or they're dead. Probably dead. That's almost always how things from Heaven end up on the market. Someone steals heavenly goods to earn elixirs, dies in Purgatory, and only the items remain."