Knock, knock…
The crisp sound of knocking broke the morning calm. From inside the messy, rundown villa came a gruff, half-asleep voice.
"Oi! Quit pounding! I'm coming!"
A thick arm shoved the door open. The figure that appeared was massive and rough, his unkempt hair sticking up like a bird's nest—hideous by itself, but positively absurd here in the elegance of the Clock Tower. His stained pajama set, decorated with greasy teddy bears, made him look slovenly and ridiculous.
But this man wasn't a gentleman, nor even someone the Clock Tower nobles would deign to acknowledge as human. To them, he was just another "war hound."
Mercenary magi weren't rare, and families like the Edelfelt Family made names for themselves in the arts of war. But taking jobs purely for money, no matter how low, marked him as a different breed entirely.
"And you are? Name's Kairi Shishigou. What do you want?"
The rough-voiced middle-aged man growled, more like a dozing lion than a man, his irritation laced with the pressure of one who'd seen countless battlefields.
Standing before him was a boy in an immaculate tailored suit, with a fresh-faced smile. Behind him, like a maid attending her master, stood a young girl carrying a dark red gift box.
"Rhodes. I hail from the Yggdmillennia branch family." The boy smiled, then slipped inside through the crack of the door as if he owned the place, ignoring Shishigou's deepening scowl.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Shishigou roared like a lion defending its den—but to Rhodes, it sounded no different than the nagging of a shrill fishwife.
"Simple. I'm here to sell you something."
The boy plopped himself down on a dust-coated sofa. The moment he sat, an invisible wave of mana pulsed outward.
Mana condensed, shifted, wove itself into a spell requiring eight verses of chanting, resonating throughout the cluttered space.
And in an instant—like a team of obsessive cleaners had swept through—the room was spotless. Dust, trash, every trace of filth vanished without a hint left behind.
"This—" Shishigou blinked in shock. Then he realized the grime on his ridiculous pajamas was gone too. Even his greasy, clumped hair looked fresh and clean.
—Even the faint coppery stench of blood that clung to him had been scrubbed away.
"…What did you just do?" This time, his tone was dead serious. His fingers slid down to the pistol always holstered at his hip.
There was no mistaking it—someone with the power to strip away filth that easily could just as easily strip the blood from his veins… or crush his organs into pulp. That was death, plain and simple.
"Nothing complicated. Just something within my ability." Rhodes chuckled, mocking lilt in his voice. "Of course, if you think your dust, your trash, and that stench clinging to you count as antiques, I'll gladly compensate you."
He said it smoothly, with the calm poise of someone far older than a boy.
At that moment, the girl behind him stepped forward gracefully and offered the gift box to Shishigou.
"An SRM Arms 1216 semi-automatic shotgun. Modified by me to include three useful little spells: Guided Shot, Sniper's Strike, and Foeseeker. Test it, and you'll see—it'll let you crush any magus below the rank of Color." Rhodes explained patiently, watching the mercenary's expression.
"Hah? Just this?" Shishigou muttered, skeptical—until his hands closed around the weapon. His eyes widened instantly.
It wasn't some absurd headline—"Middle-aged man falls in love with gun"—but real, visceral shock.
Normally, engraving even one spell onto a Mystic Code was brutally difficult. Most Mystic Codes barely held a single one-use spell. But this shotgun? It carried three. And they interlocked, amplifying one another to lethal effect.
A weapon like this could serve as a magus family's heirloom—and this boy had tossed it at him like surplus stock.
"…How much do you want for it?" Shishigou asked at last, reluctant but unwilling to let such treasure slip away.
"I'm not interested in mundane wealth. What I need is distribution—and your mercenary friends." Rhodes' voice was steady, almost disarmingly sincere. "All I ask is that you help me push these weapons among magi who walk battlefields, so they might survive."
"Sounds like the same line every arms dealer uses." Shishigou snorted, pretending indifference—but the pleased grin tugging at his lips betrayed him. "Fine. I won't freeload. Next time you need me for a job, I'll give you a discount. Ninety-five percent of my usual rate."
"How refreshingly direct." Rhodes laughed. He ignored the man's bluster—like any seasoned politician, he'd learned to let provocations wash over him.
Rising smoothly, he cast Shishigou a look full of pity—the kind reserved for the "infertile."
"Until next time, Kairi Shishigou."
He strode toward the exit. But just as he reached the threshold, he turned sharply and added,
"Six years from now. In Romania. We'll meet again."
Shishigou froze, utterly baffled.
◇◇◇
A few days later, the shop known as Rhodes' Arcane Garden opened its doors in earnest. Battle-hardened mercenary magi flooded in, and the shop's explosive sales tore through the old aristocrats' stranglehold on the Mystic Code market.
After all, even in the world of magi… the laws of the market still reigned supreme.