The moonlight bleeding into the downward district of the Arcane City was different from the moonlight that graced the Academy. Up there, the silver light felt clean, almost holy, reflecting off polished marble and stained glass. Down here in the slums, the moon just looked like a spotlight exposing things that desperately wanted to stay hidden in the dark.
The road was completely secluded, eerily empty. Even the stray dogs and mangy alley cats had the good sense to make themselves scarce. The air here was heavy, carrying the distinct, stomach-churning stench of rotting food, raw sewage, and damp, unwashed stone. The houses lining the narrow street were mostly abandoned, their windows boarded up like eyes shut against a nightmare.
I walked with my collar pulled up, my boots making soft, deliberate sounds against the cracked cobblestones.
'Ah, the ambiance,' I thought, wrinkling my nose under my hood. 'Nothing quite like the smell of fantasy-era poverty to clear the sinuses.'
I kept a steady pace until I spotted it: a faded, weather-beaten poster of a black cat, slapped carelessly onto the side of a crumbling brick wall. I stopped. I looked left, then right. The alley directly opposite the poster was impossibly thin, a dark crack between two leaning buildings that looked like it could barely fit a single person turning sideways.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out a plain, featureless black mask, and strapped it over my face.
Taking a deep breath of the foul air, I squeezed into the alley. The darkness swallowed me instantly. The ambient light from the street vanished as if I had crossed an invisible threshold.
As I pushed my way deeper, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could feel them. Shadows moving within the shadows. Above me, clinging to the brickwork, and behind me, trailing my footsteps. The guards. I ignored them, keeping my mana completely dormant. Reacting to them was the fastest way to get a dagger in the kidney.
Finally, the claustrophobic brick walls opened up into a tiny, dead-end courtyard. At the far end sat a heavy wooden door that looked like it had survived a siege.
I stepped up to the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock. I waited a beat, then tapped the heavy iron handle twice.
A tiny slit in the wood slid open, revealing a pair of dark, calculating eyes.
"Today the night had swallowed the Sun and crowns the moon," I said.
'God, that is so edgy,' I mentally groaned. 'Why did I write such a ridiculously dramatic password? I was definitely going through a phase.'
The eyes stared for a few agonizing seconds. Then, the slit snapped shut. Heavy iron bolts clacked and groaned on the other side, and the door swung inward.
A female attendant wearing a sharp, tailored suit and a masquerade mask bowed deeply, gesturing for me to enter. I stepped into a dimly lit antechamber. From behind a solid mahogany counter, an elderly man with scars crisscrossing his jawline stepped forward. He didn't say a word. He just raised his hands, and a pale blue scanning magic washed over my body, checking for recording artifacts, tracking spells, or explosive runes.
Finding nothing but my compressed mana and a slightly accelerated heart rate, he gave a curt nod. He turned to the massive bookshelf lining the back wall, pulled a thick, leather-bound tome halfway out, and placed it on a small, empty pedestal beside the shelf.
Click. Whirrrrr.
The bookshelf split down the middle, grinding heavily as it slid apart to reveal a dark, descending stone staircase. The air blowing up from the tunnel was surprisingly dry and smelled of expensive incense and old coins.
The old man nodded toward the stairs. I didn't need a second invitation. I walked past him, and the moment I cleared the threshold, the bookshelf ground shut behind me, sealing me in the dark.
Only the faint, flickering light of mana torches spaced every twenty feet guided my way. The only sound was the echo of my boots. Step. Step. Step. A few minutes of descent later, the staircase widened, ending at a massive set of double doors forged from black iron. Two men who looked less like humans and more like shaved bears stood on either side, their arms crossed. They didn't even blink as I approached. One of them just reached out with a meaty hand and pushed the heavy door open.
I stepped through.
The noise hit me first—a low, buzzing roar of a thousand hushed conversations, clinking metal, and bartering.
What laid out before me was a vast underground hall, an excavated cavern so massive it could have housed a small city. This was the Arcane City's true underbelly. The Black Market.
Only a handful of people in the upper world knew about this place. Corrupt nobles, high-end criminals, desperate mercenaries, and a few very, very well-connected merchants. Up in the academy, rules dictated your breathing. Down here? The only law was the weight of your coin purse and the sharpness of your blade.
I had come here for a specific reason. The Student Council election was approaching, and my gambit to put Serene in the president's seat required… off-the-books preparation.
How did I know the exact password, the location of the cat poster, and the specific mechanism of the bookshelf?
'Because I am the author,' I thought, a smug little smile forming beneath my black mask. 'I know every dirty secret, every hidden switch, and every secret passage in this world. Well, mostly.'
I had snuck out of the academy using a maintenance tunnel that the security grid entirely ignored. I actually knew a way to bypass the bouncers and sneak directly into the market through an old sewage grate, but I wasn't about to crawl through fantasy-excrement on my first real visit here. Plus, sneaking in illegally drew unwanted attention if you were caught. Paying the entry toll of acting like a normal, edgy customer was safer.
I walked into the fray.
Every single person here wore a mask. Porcelain masks, wooden demon faces, simple cloth wraps. Anonymity was the currency of survival. Even nobles who sat on the high council likely rubbed shoulders with assassins here, both hiding their faces carefully to protect their reputations.
As I navigated the crowded, winding aisles of stalls and tents, merchants hissed at me from the shadows.
"Hey, kid. Want a cursed blade? Only drank the blood of three virgins."
"Dragon scales! Freshly smuggled from the western peaks!"
"Elixirs of stamina! Keep you awake for a week!"
I ignored them, keeping my posture relaxed but my senses sharp. I walked for about ten minutes, weaving through the organized chaos, until I spotted a specific stall.
It was run by an old man with a face that looked like crumpled parchment. He had the deceptive, overly sweet smile of a predator who had just spotted a particularly fat, slow rabbit.
"Welcome, welcome, esteemed customer!" he cooed, rubbing his hands together. "How may this humble merchant assist you tonight?"
I stopped in front of his velvet-draped table. "I need an artifact," I said, keeping my voice low and modulated. "Something for disguise. To make me look like someone else."
The merchant's eyes practically turned into gold coins. "Ah! You have come to the perfect place, my friend. The absolute best place. I have just the thing."
He reached under his counter and produced a small, silver brooch.
"Behold," he whispered conspiratorially. "This beauty can alter your facial features to perfectly mimic anyone you desire. The illusion holds solid for three hours, usable once a day. And because you have the aura of a lucky first customer, I will offer you a staggering fifty percent discount! A mere ninety thousand gold coins!"
I stared at him through the eyeholes of my mask.
'Ninety thousand for a three-hour face-swap?' I thought. 'I could buy a small village for that.'
"I want a high-grade artifact," I said flatly, pushing the brooch back toward him. "Don't insult me with this low-key garbage."
The merchant's sweet smile faltered for a fraction of a second, replaced by a shrewd, calculating gleam. "Oh? It seems the young master has quite a refined eye. My apologies. Please, step into the back."
He gestured to a curtained-off section behind his stall. I followed him inside. It was a cramped space, smelling of old velvet and polishing oil. He opened a heavily warded lockbox and carefully extracted a silver bracelet embedded with a deep, pulsing crimson stone.
"Now this," he said, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper, "is a high-grade artifact. Pulled from the rotting corpse of a boss monster in an S-rank dungeon. It borders on Rare-grade."
He held it up to the dim light. "By placing a single drop of a person's blood onto the stone, it alters not just your face, but your entire physical structure to match theirs. Height, weight, hair. The effect lasts for six hours, with a twenty-four-hour cooldown. But its true value? It alters your vocal cords to perfectly mimic their voice. Flawless infiltration."
I took the bracelet from his hand. It was heavy, humming with complex, layered mana circuitry. It was exactly what I needed. I nodded.
The merchant's predatory smile returned in full force. "A truly magnificent, rare piece. It will cost you a mere six hundred thousand gold."
I let out a soft, amused breath. I looked at him, tilting my head. "Do you honestly believe I don't know the market index for this era? This is barely crossing the threshold into high-grade. The mana efficiency is sloppy. Its real market value is nowhere near what you're asking."
The merchant's smile turned a little colder. The 'friendly grandfather' act was dropping. "Oh! I think you have a severe misunderstanding of supply and demand, young—"
"I will give you one hundred and fifty thousand," I interrupted, cutting him off completely. "Give me the artifact, or I'll walk fifty feet down the aisle and buy something better from your competitor."
I was channeling my mother from my previous life. The woman could haggle down a television set at a premium electronics store. I had inherited her absolute lack of shame when it came to money.
The merchant's expression flatlined. He sighed, the sound heavy with the realization that he wasn't dealing with a gullible noble kid.
"You drive a brutal bargain," he grumbled. "Let's end this dance. Two hundred thousand. My final offer."
"One hundred and twenty-five thousand," I shot back instantly.
His eyes widened. "Wait, no, that's going backward—"
"One hundred thousand," I said, my voice deadpan.
"Now you're just insulting me! The materials alone—"
"Eighty thousand."
"One hundred thousand! Fixed!" he blurted out, his hands slamming down on the table. He looked like he wanted to strangle me.
I smiled beneath my mask and extended my hand. "A pleasure doing business."
I pulled out a small, heavy pouch of compressed mana-gold from my storage ring and dropped it into his waiting hands.
Even though I was the "pathetic, weakest" illegitimate son of the Duke, I was still a Leonhart. The Leonhart name terrified the kingdom not just because my father was a Sword Master who could split a mountain, but because he was obscenely, disgustingly rich. The Duke owned mana crystal mines, steel foundries, and held shares in practically every major guild in the empire.
As his son, even the bastard one, my monthly allowance was essentially an open vault. I didn't want to waste it, but I wasn't going to penny-pinch when my survival was on the line.
I slipped the bracelet into my storage ring and walked back out into the bustling market, leaving the grumbling merchant behind.