Chapter 5 : Chapter 5
Volume 1
Chapter 5 : A Mysterious Little Shop Might Always Have Something Good
After leaving the ducal manor, Muen rode in the family carriage to one of the luxury shops he often frequented.
After ordering the guards accompanying him to remain at the front entrance, he quietly slipped away through the shop’s back door.
Lightly disguised, Muen followed the route in his memory through the tangled streets until he reached the riverside at the boundary between the Upper City and the Lower City.
After making sure no one was around, he leaped down into a pipe by the riverbank.
A faint stench of decay lingered at the tip of his nose.
Muen frowned, put on a mask, drew a black robe over himself so loose that it completely concealed his figure, and hurried through the pipe.
“Stop.”
At the end of the pipe, a tall figure stood guard.
“Who are you?”
Muen thought for a moment. “A rat from the sewers.”
“What are you here for?”
“To look for rotten flesh.”
“And your token?”
Muen raised a hand and showed the tall figure the black token in his palm.
Carved upon it was a lifelike rat.
“Mm. You may enter.”
The tall figure stepped aside, revealing an even narrower passage behind him.
Muen nodded, put away the token, and quickly passed by.
At the instant their silhouettes crossed, a faint glimmer of light spilling down from above illuminated one corner of the tall figure’s body.
It was flesh like rotting meat, with countless maggots writhing over it.
Even brushing past him for a single moment was enough to catch that suffocating stench of decay.
“Urgh. As expected of a fantasy world.”
Suppressing his nausea, Muen did not dare linger for even a second.
He quickened his pace and rapidly left the place behind.
Once he passed through the narrow corridor, his view suddenly opened up.
A vast underground space appeared before his eyes.
The four walls of the cavern were set with stones that gave off a soft glow, illuminating the place.
People moved back and forth everywhere, each of them cloaked in a mysterious black robe.
This was the underground black market hidden beneath Belland’s Lower City.
It was said that so long as one had enough money, one could buy anything here—
even “anyone.”
“Thank goodness I still remember how to get here.”
Muen could not help feeling a little relieved.
In the original novel, the protagonist had been a regular here.
He came every few days, and every single time, with that absurdly universal protagonist halo of his, he managed to pick up some incredible treasure for almost nothing.
Of the heaven-defying artifacts the protagonist possessed later on, at least half of them were probably still lying quietly on roadside stalls right now, being treated as worthless junk.
But Muen had no intention of coming early to snatch them away.
With only the descriptions from the book and his thoroughly unreliable memory, he had no way of identifying which items were hidden treasures buried in dust.
And besides, he was not even sure whether taking away things that belonged to the protagonist would have some harmful effect on the worldline.
“Hah. Since I have already decided to live quietly as an ordinary commoner, I should stop thinking about such things.”
Muen reined in those inappropriate thoughts and began sweeping his gaze across the black market.
Ordinarily, there was no need to come all the way to the black market to buy something like a knockout drug.
But the person he intended to knock unconscious was no ordinary person.
It was Selicia, the Empire’s Third Princess, the one known as the Ice Witch.
Blessed by the Goddess of Ice and Snow from the moment of her birth, she had been born with the power to command absolute frost.
Coupled with the royal family’s careful training from childhood, her strength was terrifying.
At this stage, even the protagonist was nowhere near being her match, much less Muen, who had received no divine favor and had barely trained at all.
“I do not want the drug to fail and end up getting slapped to death on the bed by Selicia before the protagonist even arrives.”
Muen laughed at himself mockingly.
Fortunately, he soon found his target.
At the end of this street stood a gloomy little shop.
Hanging above its signboard was an enormous ram skull, impossible to miss.
Thanks to that gigantic ram skull, Muen recognized the shop at once.
The protagonist had visited it many times in the original novel.
The proprietor was a very mysterious person who always sold all sorts of bizarre things.
Surely a knockout drug was something this place would have as well.
Muen pushed open the shop door, making the bell above it chime.
“Oh my, a customer has finally come in today. Please, come in.”
The shopkeeper was also hidden within a voluminous black robe, and the voice was so hoarse that it was impossible to tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman.
But the moment the shopkeeper saw Muen, two gleams of light clearly flashed from beneath the hood, like a wolf spotting a little lamb.
“What would this young master like to have a look at? My shop may be small, but it lacks nothing.”
“I want…”
Muen had originally intended to say that he was just browsing, but after considering how limited his time was while out alone, he decided it would be better to speak plainly.
“I want a knockout drug. That sort of knockout drug.”
“Oh?”
Though he could not see the shopkeeper’s face, Muen could distinctly feel the smile turn instantly sly.
“A knockout drug, ah, I understand, I understand. Sigh, you rich people really do enjoy playing that way, do you not? Haha, as it happens, I know several places that sell very fine slaves. Would you like a recommendation? Just a small referral fee is enough. If you mention my name, you can even get a discount…”
“…You do not have it? If not, I am leaving.”
“Yes, yes, yes! Of course I do! I have the finest knockout drugs here!”
The shopkeeper grabbed the hem of Muen’s black robe to stop him, then hurriedly turned around and bent over a heap of bottles and jars, rummaging through them.
Because of that posture, from Muen’s angle, the black robe happened to outline an astonishingly full curve.
“The shopkeeper’s rear… is rather ample.”
Muen stroked his chin and thought with faintly wicked curiosity, “With curves like those, could the shopkeeper actually be a beauty?”
Unfortunately, there was no way to verify that.
Muen had never finished the original novel.
Perhaps the shopkeeper revealed their faces later on, but by now, that had nothing to do with him.
Jingle, jingle.
Just as Muen was sinking into thought, the bell on the shop door rang again with a clear sound.
A figure wrapped, in rather unoriginal fashion, in a black robe entered from outside.
This time, however, the figure within the robe seemed somewhat petite, and there was also the faint trace of a floral fragrance about her.
Probably another woman.
“Hello, do you happen to sell knockout drugs here?”
“Welcome, welcome. A knockout drug, you say? I naturally—eh? What did you say?”
“I said, do you sell knockout drugs here?”
“You want to buy one too?”
“Yes. Is there some problem with that?”
“No, none at all.”
The shopkeeper cast Muen a strange glance from the corner of the eye, muttering something about how the day was truly turning out to be a strange one, then went back to rummaging through boxes and cabinets.
“She wants to buy a knockout drug too?”
Muen’s gaze swept over the black-robed woman at his side without drawing attention.
“So women have needs in that regard as well?”
“She is probably planning to ruin some poor soul.”
“A pity I cannot stop her.”
“I can only hope her wicked scheme fails.”
“Hah.”
Muen sighed inwardly.
“What nonsense am I thinking? Is what I am preparing to do any different from hers?”
He had no right whatsoever to criticize anyone else.
“Oh, found them.”
Not long after, the shopkeeper excitedly fished out two delicate little bottles and placed one before Muen and the other before the black-robed woman.
Curious, Muen picked up the little bottle and discovered that it contained a clear dark red liquid.
“This color…”
Muen was dumbfounded.
What kind of absurdity was a red liquid?
Was that not practically asking to be caught in the act of drugging someone?