“Those clothes…” Camila looked down at her new, extremely simplistic outfit.

It was all in the color of a bleak gray and consisted of wide pants and a loose shirt. Both of those pieces looked like something a peasant in the field would wear while toiling the soil for the next sowing season. It looked like a peasant’s wear… and yet, those two pieces were infinitely more comfortable than even the best of Camila’s original clothing!

‘But as great as those clothes are…’ Camila thought, raising her eyes to sneak a glance at Leo.

By now, this strange, young man was showcasing an unhealthy amount of interest in the clothes she and her retainers wore just a moment ago. Ever since changing, as per Leo’s request, into the clothes he provided, he spent quite some time laying their old clothes down, straightening them, and then displaying them on the ground one set beside another.

“Now, things will get a little strange. But it won’t be dangerous, so just don’t interfere,” Leo requested once he was done playing the fashionists for the patch of ground and dressing it up in three sets of clothes at once.

“I mean… fine?”

Taking a step to the back just in case, Camila tried to hold back the smile that crept upon his lips when the material of her new clothes brushed gently against her skin.

This feeling was incomparable to anything, almost as if she was taking one of those extremely expensive baths in the hot springs at the duchy’s outskirts.

The material didn’t irritate her skin at all. In fact, it was quite the opposite, with how it filled her brain with a sense of comfort while perfectly keeping up her bodily warmth from dissipating into the cold of an early day.

‘Those clothes… if only they were a bit more fancy, they wouldn’t be a bad choice for the gift for the king himself…’ Camila thought, gritting her teeth as she struggled to push aside the biggest question those clothes provoked.

The question of where the hell did Leo get them from?

‘Or rather, where did that crate full of supplies come from in the first place?’ Camila thought, trying not to let her wonder showcase on her face. ‘I saw him appear with nothing more but a backpack and the clothes he had on his back, so where did all of this stuff come from?!’

No matter how much Camila wanted to figure this puzzle out, she now had to reorient her attention again for Leo started to conjure yet another of his impossible tricks.

This time, he pulled out a simple orb from his bag of wonders that he wore strapped to his back. And then, without the slightest care in the world, he appeared to press something on the surface of this perfectly even orb before sending it rolling toward the clothes.

As if possessing a mind on its own, the orb rolled all the way toward the three sets of clothes on the ground, stopping right upon reaching the very center of the display. Then, the orb suddenly split into four even halves, only for each of those halves to then split into two again.

‘Woah,’ Camila silently breathed a sigh of awe, watching how the process developed.

The eight pieces that initially constituted the orb started to produce a small shine. As their shine intensified further and further, some sort of invisible force started to push each of the eight pieces away from each other and then to the corners of an imaginary rectangle confining Camila’s former clothes within.

As if to make the entire thing even stranger, while each of the four pieces making the corner flew away to its new spot as if pushed by some sort of a great force, the other set of four parts of the former orb appeared to freely levitate right above its twin, adding another dimension to the shape those eight pieces constructed.

In the end, the extremely thin box created by eight pieces of the orb appearing within eight of its respective corners suddenly started to light up more and more, all the point where the elongated cube of light seemed to force its way into the physical world.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“That’s pretty much it, so you can relax now,” Leo threw with a slightly amused smirk on his face as he walked over to the box and leaned over it, pinning his eyes to a set of strange characters that appeared on the surface of the light-made box.

“Okay…?” Still not sure how to react to this weird magic, Camila dedicated herself to just observing, gaining more information before trying to pass any sort of judgment or verdict.

Casting a short, sideway glance, Leo gave Camila a small smirk before turning his eyes back to the characters displayed at the top of the box of light.

‘I wonder what’s going to happen now…’

Giving up on the attempt at figuring out what was going on, Camila suddenly found herself in a mental space where it no longer mattered what sort of ridiculous thing this anomaly-born man would do.

Rather than shocking her with every development, he simply fed her more information that would bring her closer and closer to understanding the truth sometime in the future. As for why Camila wanted to learn the truth…

Even Camila herself would struggle to answer.

“Welp, I guess that’s it,” Leo muttered under his nose before snapping his fingers and causing all eight pieces of the orb to suddenly drop down to the ground.

Then, the force that pushed them away from each other suddenly reversed, now attracting all pieces towards the other. At first, the pieces slowly dragged themselves over the ground, only accelerating further and further as they got close.

Pac!

A single, metallic sound filled the air when all eight pieces of the orb came together, assembling themselves back into their original form of a simple, perfect orb without a single mark or hint that would indicate it could fall apart into several pieces.

“If I may ask…”

“I judged the value of those clothes,” Leo answered Camila’s question before she could actually even voice it out.

“…”

‘Judged the value of those clothes?’ Camila repeated the man’s words in the privacy of her mind before blinking her eyes a few times as if to wake herself up from the dream she was in. “And what did you find out?”

Leo turned his head over and smiled before bringing his hand to the outfit on his right.

“This set, I cannot see a difference between it and the other two,” he announced before raising his eyes to the duchess. “I cannot see the difference, but I can tell that those two are infinitely more expensive. That means, there’s a difference that I cannot see, a difference that might help me understand what in this world has any worth and what lacks it.”

‘And why are you telling me all of this?’ Camila gulped her head, struggling to chase away her fear of the man given how she still struggled to catch his vibe.

Leo held his cards close to his chest, revealing only as much as he absolutely needed to show his own sincerity and wish to cooperate.

‘But if I were to take his words at face value…’ Camila hesitated for a second before looking down on the clothes in question.

It wasn’t even her own outfit that caught Leo’s attention. And what was even worse, save for recognizing who wore the clothes Leo was pointing at, she actually had no first clue about what made them any different from the rest!

“Urk?” Camila turned over, calling out for the servant who used to wear the clothes in question up to just before.

“My set lacks the mana weave,” Urk revealed without even a second of hesitation.

“Oh right…” Camila nearly jumped when she realized just how obvious was the thing that she missed.

Urk, being the veteran of many conflicts and battles, has long since gained the ability to control his own power and move it throughout his body. Camila, as the duchy’s heir she was, has perfected this ability as well but still opted to infuse manastone weave into her clothes for the sheer convenience it offered.

But the weave, as easy as it was to detect by anyone with even a sliver of authority, wasn’t something one could spot with just their eyes!

“Mana weave?” Leo hurriedly picked up and repeated the words Urk used before looking over at the duchess with a puzzled expression on his face.

“It’s a type of precious metal that can be smelted out of mana ore. Pretty much every armor and weapon used by the nobility is infused with it,” Camila happily explained what she considered to be pretty much obvious.

‘Out in the sticks, with no one around, I could pretend it was some sort of important and hidden information to get him to reveal more of his cards in exchange for it, but…’ Camila thought, only for her already fake smile to tremble when she imagined the consequences that would come after a hypothetical move like that.

A future where Leo would realize she scammed him for information just by walking the streets of the city and seeing the raw pieces of mana ore or refined manastone displayed on every third stall of the trade district.

“Is this weave valuable to you?” Instead of trying to fake the reality, Camila decided to stick with her honest approach. For it was an approach in which it was perfectly fine for her to ask a question like that.

“It seems like it,” Leo smiled while confirming Camila’s guess, only to get down on his knees and start to pack the outfits into the tight insides of his wondrous bag.

“If it’s manastone…” Strangely pressured by his action of simply packing up, Camila hurriedly spoke out, “then, I know where you can buy a lot of it!”