Five days had passed.
In that time, he'd harvested eighty-nine Death Herb roots.
He ground each one up into powder and secretly put them in Silvan's food. Thanks to having no smell or taste, Silvan never noticed at all.
And the results were as follows:
=====
[Mythical Grade Necromancy]: Unlock Conditions
*Achieve nether mana [1,000]
*Current mana: [744 / 1000]
=====
"...This is driving me crazy."
Ferda crumpled his face.
At first it was good. The more Death Herbs he fed him, the more mana went up like crazy.
But once the number passed 500, the absorption rate suddenly dropped by half. Then when it passed 600, it halved again.
Currently, he had to feed four Death Herb roots for there to be any effect at all.
"And now there aren't any decent graveyards left."
The area near the northern mansion had been torn up long ago.
He'd even dug up all the cemeteries outside the castle. Now to get Death Herbs, he'd have to leave for another city or buy them.
Huh? Wait. Buy them?
"Right. Come to think of it..."
Northern slums. If you go past the back alleys where thugs hang around and go deeper, you'll find streets full of abandoned houses.
It looks uninhabited from the outside, but the reality is a bit different.
"There was an underground market."
Smuggled goods, drugs, slaves.
A place where everything is bought and sold. The entrance to the underground market is there.
And there was also a special merchant there.
"The necromancer of 4th Street."
He wasn't a great person. At most an intermediate level necromancer.
In the original story, he was only mentioned in a few sentences.
What's notable here is that he was active as a merchant in the underground market.
Which means.
"He might deal in Death Herbs."
A smile bloomed on Ferda's lips.
***
That evening.
Silvan finished dinner with Ferda.
In the room lit by gentle moonlight, Silvan leaned back against the sofa and stared at Ferda blankly.
Sitting by the window, quietly looking up at the night sky.
Maybe because he looked deep in thought? Silvan couldn't bring himself to speak and just fidgeted with his fingers.
"Is there something you want to say?"
That's when Ferda spoke first.
Silvan was momentarily flustered but didn't show it. Instead, he clenched his fist and spoke.
"About tomorrow's class..."
"I know. It's the day with sword lessons, right?"
"Yeah, that's right."
Silvan nodded.
Ferda looked at him with curious eyes.
It had been just over ten days since he'd entered the mansion. His relationship with Silvan had progressed a lot during that time.
It made sense since they'd been stuck together all day.
"So, um..."
What was he trying to say?
Silvan couldn't easily get the words out. Meanwhile, Ferda roughly got the idea.
'He wants me to come with him to sword lessons.'
If he went alone, he'd just get picked on again.
But if Ferda went with him, it would be different. Just having the strong guy who beat Casher beside him would be reassuring.
Also, two is better than one.
At the obvious ploy, Ferda smiled lightly.
"It'll be physically demanding, so let's skip lessons tomorrow."
Silvan nodded silently.
He clenched his fist. A determined expression.
"If, if it's okay, tomorrow..."
"That's lucky."
That's when Ferda cut off Silvan's words.
"I have business tomorrow too."
"Business?"
"Yeah. Personal business."
When Ferda nodded, Silvan momentarily looked blank.
After a moment, Silvan fidgeted with his fingers and looked away.
"Oh, I see."
He looked calm on the surface, but it wasn't true.
His voice trembled slightly and his pointed ears drooped a little.
He was disappointed but trying not to show it, which was pretty cute. Ferda covered his mouth and smiled quietly.
Soon after, he cleared his throat briefly.
"Silvan."
Let's stop the teasing here.
It would be troublesome if his affection dropped for no reason.
"Two water pouches should be enough, right?"
"...What?"
"You're weak to heat, so I should prepare a fan too."
Silvan looked blank again.
Soon he came to his senses and asked in a bewildered voice.
"You said you had business tomorrow..."
"I do, but it's okay. I'm going out at dawn and planning to return by morning."
"Re-really?"
"I should be able to arrive before sword lessons start."
He absolutely planned to observe tomorrow's sword lesson.
It wasn't that any special event would happen, but there was something he wanted to test.
"I see. Then that's good..."
Silvan nodded and quickly turned around.
Then he buried himself in the blanket on the bed.
"Have a good trip with your business. See you tomorrow."
It looked like an indifferent reaction, but this was also fake.
After all, when he'd trailed off earlier, his voice had sounded excited.
His drooped ears had also perked back up.
Triumphantly, like a dog's tail.
At that cute reaction, Ferda unconsciously smiled.
"Yeah. Rest well."
He wanted to tease him more but held back.
He had things to do at dawn.
***
Count Arcdute's territory.
The huge underground market in the major city 'Mullen.'
There's only one way to get there.
You find an old man picking up scrap metal among the abandoned villages, tell him the password, and get a note with a map. You go there, give another password, and get another note. Repeat this process about five times and you can enter the underground market.
"What a stupid thing to do."
When you don't have much time anyway, why do such nonsense?
Ferda snorted.
"It was completely frustrating to watch."
"The Savior" consisted of a total of 8 cycles.
Among them, he'd learned about the underground market's existence from the 2nd cycle. And up until the 7th cycle, the characters who visited this place all followed that routine.
He couldn't count how much he'd cursed while reading the serialized chapters back then.
A method everyone knew, and repeating something that wasn't even fun—of course it would be infuriating. In fact, there were comments at the time telling him to stop messing around just to pad the word count.
"In that respect, the 8th cycle was fresh."
The latest cycle of "The Savior."
The very cycle that made reader Kenny Bark grab the back of his neck.
"...The author of the 8th cycle, Sword God John Mavin."
Just thinking of him made his teeth grind.
Because he was the very person who turned "The Savior's" reader 'Kenny Bark' into the character 'Ferda.'
As a reader who'd watched the novel for a long time, couldn't he at least give some advice? But telling him to write it himself and creating this mess.
The more he thought about it, the more he could only sigh.
"Well, he wasn't normal in the novel either."
John Mavin was originally Shane Arcdute's knight.
But John Mavin also seemed to know that if Silvan, the protagonist of "The Savior," died, the novel would end. From the beginning, he betrayed his original lord Shane and stuck to Silvan.
And his eccentric behavior didn't end there.
"That morning, the underground market had turned into a giant tomb. It was the carnage committed by an attacker who had visited the market the night before. They tried every means to stop him, but all failed.
Everyone was dead. The merchants, the guards, everyone!
Viper, the underground market's sole surviving power broker, trembled with a face full of terror.
'I knew there were elixirs here.'
The attacker soaked in blood from head to toe.
John Mavin spoke.
'...Hand them all over. If you don't want to die.'"
Ferda, recalling the 8th cycle's content, shook his head.
If something blocked his path, he broke it, and even if it didn't block him, he still broke it.
Truly a man who could appear in a martial arts novel. A guy who was pure catharsis itself.
That was the John Mavin that Ferda remembered.
"Well, thanks to him I learned how to get in."
John Mavin had carved out a new route to the underground market.
He'd broken through the empty space connected to the market's ceiling and infiltrated inside. Ferda planned to follow his exact method to infiltrate the underground market.
"I think it was somewhere around here..."
Ferda's current location was a small abandoned house.
He tapped the floor with his foot one by one. Dull sounds filled the abandoned house. Then he found a place that made a different sound from before.
Thud thud—
"Bingo."
Ferda grinned.
Just like when he beat Casher, he filled his fist with plenty of mana. Then without a moment's hesitation, he struck the floor.
Crash—!
With a roar, the abandoned house shook for a moment.
When the dusty clouds cleared, a gaping hole was revealed. It was dug quite deep, but it didn't matter.
"Now let's go in."
With that casual mutter.
Ferda threw himself into the hole.