The lord narrowed his eyes.
"Heh, boldness is a fine trait, but being unable to properly judge value is another matter. Don't force me to re-evaluate you."
"No, no. I say this because I know its exact value. When else would such a precious commodity come onto the market if not for an opportunity like this?"
"You wouldn't be able to handle this item on your own anyway. I have friends who can help me in various ways, so it's fine for me, but you alone wouldn't get a fair price for it anywhere."
"We'll see. If all else fails, I could just go to the Magic State in the north. The descendant of an Imperial hero is as good as an enemy to them. Wouldn't they pay a handsome price?"
"Do you have any idea how far that is?"
"It would be a hassle, I'm sure, but well, my two legs are perfectly fine. I'll get there eventually."
After several more exchanges, the lord spat out.
"Fine. What do you want?"
The lord's gaze was cold and sunken. It was a look that hinted at his will to strike Colombo down and take the girl if the answer wasn't to his liking.
Colombo answered.
"I want a city like this, too."
"…"
"I'm not asking for yours, my good senior. I'm asking for permission to open a branch. This is a wonderful place. One can unleash their desires to their heart's content, untethered by bothersome things like laws. Shouldn't I spread this fine culture to my friends in other regions?"
The lord stroked his beard.
"The point is, you want to borrow my name, is that it?"
"That would be the same as becoming your subordinate. I don't need to go that far. It's enough if you just give a little 'word' to the nearby nobles when I set up my new place."
"You say it simply, but connections are, in fact, more expensive than any amount of money."
"Not as much as the product I brought here, but I've secured other suitable goods. I'll give you all of them. If it's not enough, I can procure more. As long as the sole heir is here, the chaos in Friedel won't die down easily. It's the perfect time to strike."
"Wait, you! Mmph, mmph-!"
The girl screamed at the talk of plundering Friedel again, but the rough hands of the henchmen forcibly gagged her.
In the forced silence, the lord, who had remained quiet for quite some time, finally spoke.
"…Fine. I'll permit it, on one condition."
"A condition?"
"I plan to put the young lady up for auction anyway. If her selling price is satisfactory, I'll accept your proposal. If it falls short of my expectations, the discussion ends there. Of course, even if it falls short, you won't be getting back the money in that box."
"You don't need the other slaves?"
"I don't need many. A few to liven up the atmosphere will be enough. I'll add their price to the total."
Hmm, Colombo crossed his arms. His deliberation wasn't long.
He was certain that if he demanded any more, the lord wouldn't stand for it. If his opponent threw away all pretense and came at him with brute force, Colombo would be the one in trouble.
"Well, that should be acceptable. However, let's decide on a specific amount."
"Kekeke. That goes without saying. I'll have a contract drawn up."
The transaction that followed went smoothly.
Colombo and his men left triumphantly, contract and box of gold coins in hand, while the girl was seized by the lord's vassals and taken away somewhere.
Only the lord and Dorothea remained in the drawing room.
The lord, with a benevolent smile that made it hard to believe he was the same man who had just conducted such a wicked transaction, apologized to Dorothea.
"My apologies. That took longer than I expected."
"It's fine. Thanks to that, I've had time to sort out my thoughts."
"Oh?" The lord raised the end of his sentence, intrigued.
"So, what do you say? Will you accept this old man's proposal?"
The proposal the lord had made to Dorothea. It was a request for her to place a 'witch's curse' on targets of his choosing. He had said that if she could incapacitate just three people, he would give her the treasure she sought.
"I'll say it again, if you really want to harm people, it'd be faster to just hire an assassin. Curses are fundamentally complicated and inconvenient."
"Heh heh, you're too modest. I've already heard the news of you teaching our gatekeeper a lesson. With your level of skill, it shouldn't be difficult at all."
Dorothea shook her head.
"No, thanks. I considered it at first, but after thinking about it calmly, I feel like my teacher would come to kill me if I used a witch's power for something like that."
It was a lie.
Dorothea's teacher was the type to grumble about the pettiness of cursing a mere three people and cause a regional-level disaster instead; she was by no means a person who would preach about the sanctity of human life.
"Hmm, is that so. What a shame."
The lord, however, didn't seem to doubt Dorothea's words much.
It was a well-known fact that among those in professions with 'ma' [magic] in their name, whether mage or witch, there were many eccentrics. A teacher personally hunting down and punishing a disciple who ignored their rules was a perfectly plausible event in the world of magical master-apprentice relationships.
"Then it can't be helped. The 'Key of Opium' will be put up for auction as planned."
The Key of Opium.
That was one of the eight treasures of the kingdom that Dorothea had to retrieve, and one of the lord's collectibles.
Dorothea nodded with an indifferent expression and rose to her feet.
A small teacup sat before her, its contents untouched, as if brand new.
"Leaving already?"
"It seems I'll have a lot to prepare before the auction."
"Tsk, tsk, you're going through a lot of trouble. If the curse is too difficult, how about just staying as my guest? Having a powerful witch around is a great asset in itself. Stay for about a year, and I'll give you the treasure."
"A waste of time."
Just before opening the door to the drawing room and leaving, Dorothea stopped as if she had suddenly remembered something.
"Why did you become a bandit?"
"Hmm?"
As if it were an unexpected question, the lord blinked for a moment. Then, he burst out laughing.
"Was there any special reason? I started because I would have starved to death if I didn't."
"And now?"
Dorothea's blue eyes stared straight at the lord.
"Are you still playing the part of a bandit because you think you'll starve if you don't steal?"
The lord replied.
"I am no bandit. I am, strictly speaking, the lord of this city."
"Is that so?"
Dorothea nodded obediently.
"-A lord or a bandit, it's all the same."
Click.
The door closed, and silence fell upon the room.
The good-natured smile that had been playing on the lord's lips slowly vanished.
The guard watching him asked cautiously,
"Is it all right to let her leave like that? She's already bared her fangs at our guards. If she won't be an ally, wouldn't it be better to eliminate her?"
"Leave her be."
The words were short but firm.
The guard said no more, neither asking for a reason nor making any further suggestions.
The lord, who had been staring into space with unfocused eyes for a long while, tilted his head.
"I really don't understand."
Looking back on his long life, the words Dorothea had left behind didn't even qualify as an insult.
He had received countless curses far more intense, filled with more resentment, curses that felt like washing blood with blood.
And yet, for some reason.
That single phrase—one he would normally laugh off as the childish remark of a young girl—made his heart stir strangely.
*
"Haaah."
After leaving the drawing room.
Dorothea let out a sigh.
The thought that she had done something foolish wouldn't leave her mind.
It had been a rare opportunity to meet with the lord.
The curse he demanded wasn't an easy task, but she didn't have to succeed in earnest; a little trickery would have been more than possible.
Then she could have received the treasure from the duped lord and just said bye-bye.
It was truly a simple task.
Truly the easy path.
And now, Dorothea had just kicked that easy and simple proposal to the curb. And not for some grand reason, but simply because of a momentary emotional impulse.
The bandits' trivial schemes had nothing to do with her.
The captured girl's dark future should have been of no concern to her.
Dorothea regretted it, blamed herself, and mocked herself.
And soon after, she threw all those emotions into the trash.
'Well, what's done is done.'
It was more productive to think about what to do next than to regret the past.
The easy path was certainly gone, but thinking about it calmly, it wasn't all bad.
Her promise with Ronnie.
The heir to a domain who, while precarious now, had decent potential.
'In the end, if my reputation improves and I have a noble indebted to me, well, that's good enough. Right, let's do that.'
Once she reached a conclusion, she acted quickly.
"I'm thirsty. Is it all right if I get something to drink before I go?"
"Pardon?"
The servant guiding Dorothea looked puzzled for a moment, but he didn't coldly reply, 'There's nothing to drink, so just get the hell out.'
From the servant's perspective, unaware that the negotiations had broken down, Dorothea was still the lord's precious guest.
She was a bit insolent for someone who looked so young, but that was hardly a major flaw compared to the vile nobles who frequented this place.
Those scoundrels, it wasn't just their tone; their condescending gazes alone made one want to stab them with a fork.
"Ah, yes. This way, please."
Should I just give her cold water? Or should I prepare something like iced tea? Is that too much?
Something small scurried across the floor near Dorothea's feet, but the servant, preoccupied with selecting a menu for the guest, didn't notice.
*
"Sob, hic..."
In a small room on the highest floor of the lord's castle, the golden-haired girl was crying silently.
Her father and her older brother were dead.
Her mother, who had always been frail, had collapsed from the shock and fallen into a coma, and the girl who was left behind had to devote herself to reviving her domain without even a moment to grieve properly.
And now, without even managing to achieve that revival, she had been captured by bandits and made a slave.
What would happen to her now?
Would the servants captured with her be safe?
What about the guards the bandits had mocked, saying they'd been soundly defeated when they tried to rescue her?
Was her mother, still lying in bed, all right? What if she regained consciousness only to hear news of her daughter and fall into even greater despair?
Fear, anxiety, and despair crushed the girl's heart. She was still too small and fragile to endure such a string of tragedies.
Until now, she had desperately pretended to be strong, not wanting to show weakness in front of her people or the bandits, but once she was locked away alone in a small room, she couldn't hold back the tears that burst forth like a floodgate.
As she cried and cried and cried, something strange appeared before her.
"Sob, hic, uh... huh?"
It was a 'strange thing' whose appearance, if described in a single sentence, would be, uh... well. Yes.
-It was a mouse, scurrying about with only its yellowish bones remaining.
"Eek!"
A strangled scream escaped the girl's lips.
Fortunately, her voice was hoarse from all the crying, so it wasn't very loud.
Ignoring the girl, who was frozen stiff and unable to move, the skeleton mouse busily moved its tail, writing something that looked like letters.
The role of ink, surprisingly, was filled by the skeleton mouse's own bone dust.
The sight of it faithfully carrying out its master's orders, literally turning its body to dust to do so, clearly showed why people thought of Necromancers as the epitome of 'evil mages.'
[Rescue requested by Ronnie Roxly. Execution on the day of the auction. Take the pill sent with the familiar before the auction begins. Clean up the dust yourself.]
Perhaps because the amount of ink (?) was limited, the message was short and concise.
The skeleton mouse, nearly half of its body gone in an instant, took out a red, orb-like object from its rib cage and offered it to the girl.
The girl, dumbfounded, took it almost unconsciously.
Its mission complete, the skeleton mouse made a small clatter of bone against bone, then collapsed.
All that remained was a bedsheet messy with yellowish bone dust and the red orb.
The girl stared blankly with her mouth agape for a long time before finally muttering,
"Seriously, why does everyone keep doing this to me?"