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Chapter 19.

"There is cheap and expensive information regarding the nobility. Which one do you want?

"Starting from nobles working for the imperial family, I want to also have information on nobles that live and frequent the capital. Oh, if nobles from rural areas hold high authority, I want to have their details as well."

Even if the noble was from a rural area, it would become hard to beat someone who obtained their recommendation if they were pretty influential.

"Okay, you’re basically asking for expensive information. Anything else?"

"Information related to magic in the capital."

"That’s too vast. What kind of specifics are you looking for?"

"I want information on everything."

No matter what, I was still one of the top-tier magicians back in my hometown. The only issue was that magic wasn’t really developed in my village. Still, as a magician, I was interested in learning new magic.

"Okay. But it’s going to take time due to the sheer amount. Do you have other requests?"

"I need someone good with their hands."

"Good with hands?"

"Yes. Someone good enough to forge identification cards."

"Identification forgery? We can forge identification cards of commoners or up to the rank of knight here. How about it?"

"Could it be higher than a baron at least?"

The woman answered my question without hesitation.

"No."

"Why not?"

"We can forge the identification card if we somehow get our hands on ogre or demon bones. However, we can’t go through with it because of the forgery prevention magic cast on those cards. To be honest, we’re not even sure about the number of spells that have been cast."

The woman raised her hands as if to say she was giving up.

"That’s not an issue. I’ll take care of the magic on my own."

It wasn’t that hard to engrave merely 15 kinds of magic.

While pretending to rummage through my pocket, I took out some ogre-bones.

"Oh, you have some ability if you can take out these expensive bones without batting an eye. Would you like to hand it over to us now? We can get it done in 10 minutes."

"Of course."

"We can carve out the name and information if you provide it to us."

"No thanks. I don’t know them either."

It wasn’t that I didn’t know, just that I hadn’t decided yet. Well, for the name and personal information, I could just use magic to make it seem like it had been carved onto the card.

"Okay. Just wait a moment then. Compiling the requested information is going to take a while anyway."

Creaakkk!

A man suddenly came out from behind the door, took the ogre-bones, and left.

"Do you have anything else you want? To be honest, I’m in a good mood right now because I’ve never seen someone buy this much information. If you have any items you need, just let me know. I’ll give them to you as a part of the service."

Since they were offering, I had no problem accepting.

"Then... do you have some money?"

"What?"

She looked dumbfounded at my words, then her expression turned ugly. It seemed to be because she thought I was either mocking her or I didn’t have any money.

After thinking about it, I wasn’t sure about the first option, but the second seemed to be correct.

"It’s because I don’t have any change. Why don’t they accept platinum coins at the inn?"

"Pfft?!"

The informant laughed. It seemed like she had taken my words as a joke.

But it was the truth.

"Mister, if you are trying to show off your wealth, you have a good sense of humor. Hehehehe."

She smiled and pulled out her abacus and put it on the table.

"Now, let’s start calculating the cost before the information arrives."

She was focused on the abacus for a few minutes.

"Nice, I finally finished the calculation. Whew~~, this is the first time I’ve calculated for so long. Hehehe."

"So how much is the total?"

"85 million pelks. Can you pay such a sum? It doesn’t look like you have that much silver or gold on you."

Her voice sounded light and cheerful, but her tone was heavy.

She looked like she would kill me on the spot if I couldn’t immediately pay the amount.

"Oh, split payments are also possible. But then you will also receive your information separately."

I don’t think that’s what a split payment is.

When I put my hand inside my pocket to take out my coins, the people behind the hidden space by the right wall started to openly emit pressure.

They looked as if they would come out the moment I took out a weapon. More than that, with this much pressure emitting from them, did they have no intention of hiding?

I took out four platinum coins from the pocket space and placed them on the table.

Thud!

Although it wasn’t that loud, it sounded heavier than any other sound.

"Do I have to give you time to bring out the change?”

"—Are these real platinum coins?"

"Of course, they’re real."

"They certainly look real. If they can deceive my eyes, you can just go ahead and use it without getting caught."

The woman was hidden under a veil, but I could still feel that she was looking dazedly at the coins.

"So how much longer before the information arrives?"

Wasn’t it basic manners to show the merchandise since I had shown her the money?

"Ah, come in."

Creaakkk!

Five people each holding a stack of documents walked through the door.

"Of these documents, 70% are related to magic. I told you it’s going to be a lot."

This was definitely more than I had expected. The maps and identification card I requested were on the very top of the pile.

"Wait a moment for the change to arrive. We’re scraping together all the coins we have at this branch."

The woman had been asking if I could pay for the information, but she was now in a situation where she had to salvage every coin she could find to pay for my change.

I guess this was why they said you could never know what would happen in the future.

The door opened again after a few minutes and piles of money bags were laid out on the table.

Since the change was 15 million pelks and a gold coin was worth 250 thousand pelks, 60 gold coins should have been sufficient to pay for my change. However, there were way too many sacks laid out in front of me.

"Isn’t this too much change?"

"—Sorry. There were only 30 gold coins available so we converted the rest into other coins."

Thirty gold coins were equivalent to 300 refined silver coins. There were still way too many sacks in front of me. So many that the table was trembling from the weight.

"From refined silver to refined bronze?"

The woman avoided my eyes at my question.

"No... from refined silver to iron."

She was basically saying they had scraped together all the coins they had.

"Do you happen to have any checks?"

"Checks? Oh, you mean something like bonds? The motto of our intelligence organization is ‘cash is the best.’”

It seemed unlikely that an organization of this size wouldn’t issue something like bonds, so I wondered if it was because they didn’t have the authority to hand over bonds as change.

"It looks like we will have to skip over checking the change."

"Well, actually, we’re missing around 1.2 million pelks... Could we pay it with items?"

The woman suddenly started flirting a little and also used honorifics.

Did organizations like these make deals using items? I didn’t think that was the case.

"Didn’t you say your motto is ’cash is the best’?"

"Well, tha-that’s—"

Based on the stammering, it looked like my assumption was right. Since they were honest about the missing amount, I decided to let it go.

"I’ll take it depending on the item."

"Yay! Mister’s the best! Bring the items!"

Upon the woman’s order, people started moving around and laying down items in front of me.

"Starting from the right, this is a sword worth 20,000 pelks... the magic book is 30,000... space expansion bag 10,000... wand 50,000... dagger 13,000... spear 40,000... crystal ball 3,000... a jewel 5,000... fairy power 10,000...”

Items continued to flow into the tiny room and the valuation followed. Three million pelks worth of goods were flowing in and out making it hard to keep track of things.

On the surface, I acted as if I wasn’t interested, but in fact, I looking at each item carefully.

Compared to the weapons made by the craftsmen back in the village, these were basically scrap metal. I had weapons of the said craftsmen piled up like a mountain inside my pocket space, so I had no interest in these weapons.

The only items that attracted my attention were magic items unavailable in the village and magic books.

"Oh, I’ll give you a space-expansion bag for free. It bothers me that we couldn’t even handle the change properly for a customer who bought a lot of information. I’ll store away the documents and the change for now."

I honestly didn’t need the space expansion bag since my pocket space was more convenient, but I didn’t refuse since they were giving it away for free.

"Then, this, this, this, this... and that, that, that... oh, that, that, and this, this and that. That’s enough."

"These are all magic books and ingredients. Are you a magician?"

That’s correct.

"No, they’re gifts for someone."

The tiny space looked a lot more spacious after I placed all the items I’d chosen into the expansion bag and the rest were cleared out.

"This bag increases the volume but doesn’t change the weight of the items. Will you be okay?"

I tried holding the bag. It seemed to be a little under 500kg, which was around half the weight of the demon corpse I had brought back to my room before I left home. So this weight was nothing.

Watching me pick up the bag so casually, the woman was visibly surprised.

“Are you from the battle tribes? No, the Crow Tribe has black hair, the Butterfly has white hair, and the Dragon Tribe has golden hair.”

It was said that there were seven battle tribes and ten forbidden lands in this world. Of them, three battle tribes and three forbidden lands were located inside the empire.

"Even if you’re not from the battle tribes, you can pick up this much after training."

It was probably true since according to the letter sent by Uncle, his disciples were able to perform acrobatics while wearing a 100kg armor.

"Since we’re done with our business, I’ll be going."

"Wait a minute."

"What?"

"Other than the maps you bought, we also left maps with locations of our branches inside your bag, so don’t lose it."

"Got it."

As I climbed up the narrow staircase, the shabby old bar came into my view. Gazes locked on to me as I appeared again, but I ignored them all.

It turned out that most of the people present here were part of the people moving items into the underground basement. It seemed as if everyone here was part of the intelligence organization. It made me wonder if the gangster that brought me here was also a member of this organization.

Hmm, maybe not? Perhaps he was just a pawn used to gather information... It didn’t matter. It had nothing to do with me anyway.

I grabbed one of the alcohol bottles lined up on the table. "I’ll take this bottle instead of the black beer."

I picked up the bottle because I wanted to drink some alcohol, but even as I left the pub, nobody tried to catch me.

I wasn’t sure if it was because I was a special customer or because I was carrying a 500kg bag, but since I now had change and alcohol, I wanted to book a room in the inn tonight and get drunk.