“Ah… fuck,” Anna hissed. She grabbed her head as soon as she woke up and felt a throbbing pain. In fact, it wasn’t just her head, it was her entire body that was aching! She looked down with squinted eyes, confused by the numerous bruises on wounds around her arms and legs when she finally remembered what happened.
Where am I?! she paused. She hastily looked around the room she was in, but when she saw the familiar, plain, undecorated interior of Noel’s personal research lab, a wave of relief and unease washed over her. For the most part, she was sure she wasn’t dreaming, and that she wasn’t dead, the only thing she wasn’t sure was if this was Noel’s actual lab.
“You’re finally up.”
She looked to the side, at the door just out of her view placed to the left of the entire room, and she saw Noel walk in carrying a cup of water and a vial of red liquid in the other.
“What… Why… How are we even here?” she asked, hissing and rubbing her aching head while pushing herself up into a sitting position.
“I don’t know,” Noel answered plainly and passed along the vial of red liquid to Anna. “But it seems that guy… Mammon wasn’t lying.”
“Lying?” Anna mumbled and drank the healing potion in one go. “Wait, you’re right. He really didn’t kill us.”
“But why?” mumbled Anna.
“That, I do not know,” groaned Noel. He seemed to have pondered this question a lot while she was asleep, evident by the deep frown on his frosty face. He sat down on a nearby chair and sipped on the glass of cold water before continuing, “I remembered it vaguely, back when we were unable to move.”
“He told us something, about being heroes that will stop him. And from the very start, it was like he was just fooling around as if he didn’t have any intention to kill us in the first place. He even let us go in the end, but there’s no way it’s that… simple,” Noel said. “Maybe he had placed a ticking time bomb on us that would detonate on us at any given moment, but even after hours of divination, there’s just… nothing.”
“Wow…,” Anna mumbled, rubbing her chin in deeper confusion than before. “What if he’s just… actually insane?”
“That’s just being too hopeful. Do you really think someone who had hidden the truth of the death of hundreds of villagers, someone who has pseudo-Archknight level strength, someone who commands a group of unknown size, is someone insane?” Noel laughed helplessly. “He’s not dumb, he’s… smart. He masks it behind a whimsical persona, seemingly without any goals or purpose, but he does.”
“He wanted us to be heroes, the people to stop him,” Noel sighed. “Whatever that means. If it were me, I’d do my best to kill me and you already, to deal with the unknown variables that may interrupt my plans later.”
“Unknown variables, huh?” Anna hummed, but her head ached just thinking about it. “Ugh, I can’t even think with this damn headache-“
“Wait, what day is it?! Did we skip classes?! I have like a very important test this Monday!” exclaimed Anna as her eyes widened in brief surprise.
“Relax, today’s Sunday,” said Noel.
“Phew!” she patted her chest. “I thought I was about to fail or something.”
…
Rob stood behind the counter of their family bakery, staring blankly into the distance with a blank gaze.
“Rob, hey Rob,” said Holly. She waved her arms in front of Rob’s face, waking him up from his dazed state.
“Oh, huh?” Rob rubbed the back of his head and looked down, only to see Holly standing in front of him, looking up at his face due to their height discrepancy. “Since when did you get here?”
“Just now,” she giggled. “You didn’t even notice that I was here.”
“My bad, my bad,” Rob yawned, leaned forward, and wore a teasing smile. “So, what can I get for my dearest customer, Miss Holly.”
“The usual,” Holly said, dismissing Rob’s playful grin. “Anyways, what were you even thinking about? It’s pretty rare to see my dearest mentor be in such a contemplative trance.”
“Nothing, I was just thinking about my plans for fooling the entire world with a grand heist,” Rob mumbled. He crouched down, pulled open the compartment beneath the counter, and pulled out some of the bread placed on display behind a glass wall for Holly’s order. “Here.”
“Oh wow, how ambitious,” Holly chuckled and grabbed her paper bag. “And how would you do that, Mister Thief?”
“Fufufu, it’s pretty simple,” Rob hummed. “A great thief must always act in secret. Only by remaining in the unknown would their actions remain in the shadows, hidden to the eyes of the ignorant.”
…
Out in the open streets of the royal capital of Vizwel, noble lads and noble lasses walked in groups and merry friends as they visited various shops and stalls. It wasn’t just the noble kids though, various rich kids of common blood also roamed around, either with friends or their lovers, and enjoyed their time on this pleasant weekend.
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One such rich commoner was a young man with fluffy brown hair tucked inside a beanie, with a pair of emerald green eyes hidden behind circular-framed glasses, and wearing a simple black shirt and tight black pants. He looked around the streets with wary eyes, with a hint of anxiety to each of his steps.
“No one should notice, right?” he mumbled while secretly tightening his grip around his pockets, pockets that held fat stacks of money. “Sigh, it’s not so easy being the son of the richest man in the entire world.”
The young man continued to wander around the royal capital, all the while keeping his head down on the ground and avoiding making eye contact with anyone else in the street. Fucking calm down, Simon. This disguise worked before, so just keep your head down, don’t act like some flamboyant rich kid, and you’re gonna be fine.
You just need to go to the theater, watch the final part of that trilogy, and life is good, Simon thought, but just as he was about to continue his walk, he suddenly felt his stomach rumble in displeasure over his apparent hunger. Ah, yikes. I knew I should have eaten breakfast before this.
He looked around the general area around him, hoping to find some unpopulated place where he could eat at without that many people. When he saw the relatively empty bakery in the distance with a pretty large interior, he knew he had found the one.
Okay, quick meal, in and out, then back to the theater. Ugh, I must get a seat near the front, or else the experience wouldn’t be as amazing! Simon silently clenched his fist as his resolve burned brightly like the sun.
So, without much time to waste, he hurried over to the distant bakery and read the sign over its front door, “Fortune Bakery. Oh, it’s that bakery that the Doltons had invested in. So this must be one of their branches.”
He pushed open the door without much thought, and he heard a jingling sound in his ears. He was then greeted by a clean and simple interior, with glossy wooden floors, light brown chairs, and light brown tables made out of high-quality wood, along with fancy glowing stones that illuminated the entire bakery from the ceiling above.
Simon already did expect that there would be customers here, and just silently looked away from the two customers sitting at the far corner of the room to lower the chances of them accidentally realizing who he was under his disguise. As simple as it may be, it still works. Perhaps it was because the public normally sees him at his best, wearing fancy clothes and having a slight amount of makeup, but he didn’t care all that much about how it worked.
If it does the job, it does the job.
“What can I get for you, sir?” the cute girl behind the counter asked. She had her long black hair tied to a bun behind her head, while she wore the bakery’s uniform consisting of a white shirt, black pants, and a light brown apron with the words Fortune Bakery written around the chest.
“Hmm,” Simon hummed. He looked down at the list of items he could order and found a nifty feature that highlighted the bakery’s best sellers with a gold touch. He decided to simply order what the others found best, and said, “I’ll get a Cheese Sandwich with creamy tomato soup, along with two small meat buns, uh… I think I’ll have chicken for the meat buns, then I’d also like a cold glass of milk tea.”
“Would that be all, sir?” the girl asked with a cheery smile.
“Hmm, yeah, that’s it,” Simon nodded his head.
“Please wait for your order sir,” the girl walked into the door behind her, and left Simon alone to wait.
Simon stood there, alone. He crossed his arms and tapped his finger against his forearm, like there was a sort of invisible pressure with this weighty silence around him. Unknowingly, his gaze started to gravitate to the nearby duo in the corner of the room who seemed like they were having a really intense talk-
Huh, wait… isn’t that Leo Regulus? Simon stared at the guy to the right of the duo, his eyes almost bulging out in surprise at this sudden realization. He rubbed his eyes, but it was still the same person.
He then looked at the guy to the left. While less shocking and less significant than Leo Regulus, Simon still couldn’t believe who he saw. Melvin Dolton?
Those two… why are they even here? Simon wondered. Is it for school? They’re in the same class, so it wouldn’t be that far-fetched of an idea. But my senses are tingling, and I’m sensing business.
The sense Simon referred to was his innate instinct as a merchant. It’s like some sort of innate gift, a premonition that something valuable was close by and within his reach. But when looked at them again, he silently shrugged his shoulders and looked away.
Oh well, it isn’t my right to interfere with their little thing, so I’ll respect their privacy. Simon thought, but as he looked at all of the empty seats around the two, another thought started to bubble in his mind. Or maybe not.
He squinted his eyes and waited for a short while before his order finally arrived. Simon subconsciously hastened his movements and swiftly paid for his order. He then took a deep breath and tried to lower his presence to the bare minimum. All of those classes his father made him do in controlling his charisma and stuff was finally paying off now that he has to lower his presence to the maximum and have those two ignore him at all cost.
Simon silently walked to the table beside those two and pulled back his seat. He sat down, with his shoulder slouched and eyes staring down at the ground. He placed his order on the table, his back staring against them, while his ears perked up to enhance his hearing to its limits without having to rely on mana or magic.
“Are you sure we can even sell this to the public? What if there’s an accident? We’ll be the ones held responsible for this,” Leo asked, his brows furrowed into a frown.
“Don’t worry, we had done rigorous testing for this thing. Tens of human test trials over the course of a month and no problems had been seen. Even its more extreme version, the one they had been using, didn’t pose any problems,” said Melvin.
“I’m telling you, this would change the entire world! Steroids would be the thing that would push knights into a new golden age! Plateaus can be broken, limits can be destroyed, and our physical bodies can reach what was once an inhumane level without even having to use mana to train our bodies!”
“Talent is practically solved in regards to one’s potential at being a knight. Just take a dose of this bad boy consistently… and knights would take the world by storm. We can remake Tyr as we know it, where even the weakest of babies are as jacked and buffed as an athletic man!”
“Not only that…” Melvin paused. “We’ll be known as legends, our company will become a legend! Fame, glory, riches, it would all be ours for the taking!”
At this point, Simon was already more than interested in their conversation. If he didn’t know just how big of an opportunity this is already, then he’d be nothing but a failure of a businessman.
So, he steeled up his balls, stood up, sat down at their table without consent, took off his beanie and glasses, and said, “Well, well, well… gentlemen, I’m rather interested in this business deal of yours. Would you mind adding me to that little idea of yours?”