The next day, Lila led me to a part of the city that felt unnervingly familiar. It wasn't the market, and it wasn't the noble quarter. This was the business district.
We stood on a street corner, surrounded by the morning bustle of a different kind of worker. They weren't adventurers in leather or guards in mail.
These were men and women in neat, well-tailored, but distinctly non-magical attire. They walked with a brisk, moving in and out of tall, imposing stone buildings.
"Well, here it is," Lila said, looking around with a bored expression. "This is what you wanted to see. The place where the rich people work."
I just looked around, a strange sense of displacement washing over me. They were all corporate people. They moved in small groups, talking, some holding steaming mugs in a ritual I recognized all too well.
It was a coffee break. An entire ecosystem, completely separate from the adventurers and mages, running in parallel. It was my old world, just painted over with a thin veneer of fantasy.
Lila looked at me, a flicker of her old street-smart self-returning to her eyes. "This satisfies you?" she asked, gesturing to the corporate drones around us.
I just nodded, my gaze fixed on the tallest building in the district, a monolithic structure of polished black stone that seemed to absorb the light.
"What is that building? What company is it? Do you know?" I asked.
Lila followed Hayato's gaze up the imposing black stone tower. "That? That's the Titan's Hand. It's the headquarters for the Merchant's Consortium."
She scoffed. "It's not just a company. It's the biggest, most powerful market in the entire kingdom. They control almost all the trade that comes in and out of the capital. If you want to sell anything legally and on a large scale, you have to go through them."
Hayato's gaze remained fixed on the imposing black tower. "What do they actually do? Do they sell goods? Manage warehouses?"
Lila shook her head, a hint of her old street-smart knowledge returning. "No, not like a normal merchant, From what I've heard on the street, they don't really sell stuff."
She looked up at the tower, a place so far removed from her own world. "They sell services. They sponsor adventurers for high-risk, high-reward quests, taking a massive cut of the reward. They fund expeditions, provide logistical support, and broker deals between nobles and monster-slaying parties. They don't get their hands dirty; they just move the money around and take a piece of everyone's pie."
Hayato listened to Lila's description, a slow, predatory smile forming in his mind, though his outward expression remained a mask of detached curiosity.
So that's their model, he thought, the pieces clicking together with a familiar, corporate coldness. They don't sell goods; they sell risk. They're not a merchant guild; they're a venture capital firm and an insurance company rolled into one. They take a cut for sponsoring adventurers against high-risk monsters.
His mind, trained in a world of complex algorithms and ruthless market analysis, immediately saw the fatal flaw.
Which means their entire business is built on their ability to accurately calculate the probability of success. But in a world with dragons, demons, and rogue heroes, there are too many unknown variables. If just there's an stuff in future like more adventurer demands for insurance and all staff because of war… That will be their downfall.
He pushed the thought away for now, filing it under 'Future Opportunities'. He turned to Lila, who was watching him with a confused expression.
"Alright, let's keep walking," he said, his voice pulling him back to the present.
Hayato kept walking, his gaze already scanning the architecture and the flow of people, his mind processing the new data. Lila hurried to keep up with his long, purposeful strides.
"Hey," she said, her voice a little breathless. "Where are we going now? We've seen the rich guys. What's next on your weird tour?"
Hayato's gaze left the imposing black tower of the Merchant's Consortium, a silent promise of future conflict filed away in his mind.
"I just want to check some of the markets nearby," he said to Lila, his voice pulling him back to the role of a simple adventurer. "I want to see what they sell. It might help us prepare for the expedition."
They walked side-by-side through the bustling market, a strange and mismatched pair. Lila, clutching her pouch of gold, kept glancing over at Hayato, who was ignoring the festive atmosphere and instead analyzing the flow of commerce with a cold, focused intensity.
"You're really interested in all this, huh?" she finally asked, her voice a mix of curiosity and confusion. "Making money, I mean."
"Money is everything," Hayato stated simply, his eyes scanning a vendor's price list.
Lila frowned. "I don't agree, money isn't everything."
Hayato stopped and looked at her, his expression not argumentative, but that of a teacher explaining a fundamental concept. "Not everything," he corrected. "But it can buy everything. It's the one thing that can be exchanged for any other thing. Food, shelter, safety, loyalty... it's all just a transaction. The coin is the universal language."
Hayato then added, his voice completely devoid of judgment, a simple statement of fact. "Look at yourself. You're a thief who steals money, and you're trying to tell me it isn't everything."
His words hit her with the force of a physical blow. Lila's face went pale. She snapped her mouth shut, her lips pressed into a tight, thin line. She said nothing. She couldn't. What was there to say? He was right.
She just kept walking beside him, her head bowed, her silence a heavy, wounded thing.
As they walked deeper into the market, the festive energy of the tournament celebration seemed to grow. Music played from a distant stage, and the smells of fried food and sweet wine filled the air. Hayato's words still hung heavily between them, a cold, hard truth that Lila couldn't refute.
He seemed to move on from the topic instantly, his attention already elsewhere. "We need supplies," he said, his voice all business again as he scanned the stalls. "Water skins, rations that won't spoil, whetstones, rope. Basic adventuring gear."
He stopped at a stall run by a gruff-looking man selling leather goods. Hayato picked up a sturdy, well-made waterskin, examining the stitching with a critical eye. "How much for this?" he asked the vendor.
"Eight copper," the man grunted.
Without haggling, Hayato tossed the coins on the counter and handed the waterskin to Lila. "Here. You'll need one."
Lila just stared at him, confused. He wasn't just buying things for himself; he was equipping her. After everything he'd said about money, his first act was to spend it on her. The simple, practical act of kindness was more confusing than any of his cold, logical pronouncements.
She just took the waterskin, her fingers brushing his for a second, and mumbled a quiet, "Thanks."
The gruff vendor watched Hayato hand the waterskin to Lila, his expression softening slightly. "Good on you, lad. Equipping your companion properly. You two heading up to the mountains? The pass can be treacherous."
"No," Hayato replied simply, his gaze already scanning the man's other wares. "We're going north. To the ice lands."
The vendor's eyes widened, and he whistled low. "The ice lands? At this time of year? You'll freeze before you even see the Northern Reach." He suddenly seemed to remember something. "Wait here."
He ducked under his counter and rummaged around for a moment before coming back up with a simple leather cord necklace.
Hanging from it was a single, teardrop-shaped gem that seemed to glow with a faint, inner warmth.
"If you're really going north, you'll want this. It's a Emberstone Amulet. The gem gives off a constant, powerful heat." He pushed it across the counter. "But be careful. All the heat is focused to a single point at the gem's center. If you press it directly against your skin, it will burn you."
Hayato looked at the strange, glowing gem, his analytical mind immediately assessing its value. A portable, constant heat source for a mission to the frozen north... its tactical value was immense.
"How much?" he asked the vendor, his voice flat.
The vendor, seeing the genuine interest in the adventurer's eyes, became all business. "For a standard adventurer, three gold coins. But for you... two gold, and I'll throw in a reinforced cord for it."
Lila's eyes widened. Two gold! That was more money than she had ever held in her life before yesterday.
Probably the price was 1 gold coin, usual tactic…
He reached into his satchel, pulled out two heavy gold coins, and placed them on the counter. "Done," he said.
To Be Continued.