WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: LilGuyBlastoise
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Made Magic Easier by Changing the Formula ◈
Chapter 25: Take the Treasure, Erase the Traces
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An exchange steeped in madness and excitement.
“The Silver Mine tunnel collapsed!”
“What? The entire southern fleet sank in a storm?”
“Damn it! Wheat prices have been cut in half! Stocks are crashing!”
Amid the uproar, there were also hushed, secretive whispers.
“I heard the Kingdom of Kran is gathering troops at the border...?”
“Stocks in border trade companies have already hit rock bottom. They’re not really going to start a war, are they?”
There was never a quiet day at the exchange.
Some lost money, while others made it.
At a glance, it resembled a gambling den.
Still, for investors who kept a cool head, it was a place of opportunity.
I checked the prices on the board.
[Blue Cart Transport: 7 silver 90 copper]
My eyes widened.
‘...I knew it would rise.’
But how many times had it increased?
‘I bought it for 10 copper per share...’
Good heavens!
Seventy-nine times!
It was nothing compared to Black Forest Timber, which had risen more than a hundredfold before, but seventy-nine times was still unbelievable.
‘My hunch back then was right after all.’
The southern sea route had been blocked for a long time, so all cargo had poured onto overland routes.
A small inland transport company that had nearly gone bankrupt had turned into a goose that laid golden eggs.
Next was Amos Magic Tower.
[Amos Magic Tower: 30 silver 20 copper]
I had bought it for 30 silver, so it had only risen by 20 copper.
It was crawling along.
‘They said this was that kind of stock.’
Its slow growth did not disappoint me much.
I had bought it back then for a reason other than profit.
It was not as if the Magic Tower would admit a commoner just because they held a few stock certificates.
Still, I had wanted to hold on to even a vague hope.
‘First, I’ll sell Blue Cart.’
I pushed through the chaos and descended to the vault area on the second basement level.
Inside a private room, I placed my hand on the crystal ball.
[Checking mana signature.]
[Match confirmed with registered user.]
I was disguised as Jeron, but my mana signature was unchanged, so authentication was not difficult.
[Please state the password.]
“I live my way.”
[Authenticated.]
The iron door slid aside, revealing the storage box.
I took out a thick bundle of stock certificates.
[Blue Cart: 15,000 shares]
[Amos Magic Tower: 150 shares]
I put the Amos Magic Tower certificates into my subspace.
I still had no intention of selling those.
“Blue Cart. Sell all of it.”
“All of it?”
The broker’s eyes widened.
“The market is doing poorly these days, but this is one of the few stocks still rising. Shouldn’t you consider this carefully?”
“I’ve thought enough already. Sell them at market price.”
“Understood.”
The broker clicked their tongue regretfully.
“15,000 shares, fully executed. That comes to 1,185 gold. After deducting 2 percent for transaction tax and fees, that leaves 1,161 gold.”
[Final Amount Received: 1,161 gold]
Fifteen gold had grown into 1,161 gold.
It was less than what I had made selling mana crystals yesterday, but it was still an enormous sum.
This was not merely enough to live without worrying about money for the rest of my life. I could live in comfort and still have plenty left over.
‘Are there any other stocks worth investing in?’
I returned to the counter and held out a gold coin.
“The information reading room. Get me an entry pass.”
“Yes, sir.”
I immediately entered the reading room.
Thick reports.
Documents filled with numbers.
I climbed a ladder and began reviewing the materials on the upper shelves.
‘......!’
Two full days passed.
‘......Nothing.’
I closed the documents.
‘There’s nothing that looks likely to rise.’
No, something else had been bothering me.
A subtle anxiety hanging over the entire market.
The whispers I had heard the other day kept echoing in my ears.
The rumor that the Kingdom of Kran was gathering troops at the border.
‘Could they really be planning to go to war with the Empire?’
I could not be certain.
But betting all my assets on a market that smelled of war was not investing. It was gambling.
‘War stocks? That would be reckless too.’
I could make money with mana crystals. I did not want to throw my wealth at uncertain odds.
‘They say waiting is also investing.’
When the time came, I would enter the market then.
* * *
I left the exchange and headed straight for my hideout.
[Invisibility] [Seam Connection]
Beyond the collapsed entrance was my own space.
I checked the depleted mana crystals resting on the charging magic circle first.
‘...They’re still barely charged?’
It was probably because I had placed the most expensive high-grade depleted crystals there first.
‘High-grade ones take a long time.’
But the moment I placed my hand on the magic circle, something felt strange.
‘Wait... the mana has decreased.’
It felt as though the water level in an enormous reservoir had dropped by the width of a fingernail.
It was such a minute difference that I would have ignored it if I were not so sensitive after trembling over every handful of mana.
I wondered if it was just my imagination and checked several more times.
The more I checked, the more certain I became.
‘Was this place not infinite?’
For some reason, I had thought this place was like a spring that endlessly poured forth mana.
But it was not.
‘Now that it has shown its limits, the mana here might disappear before long.’
I could not even guess how long that would take.
What if I went to the Magic Tower and returned to train, only to find this place gone in the meantime?
“That won’t do.”
I had expected to spend my life barely getting beyond the first tier, yet I had reached the third tier because of this place’s mana.
A place where I could pour out mana like water without ever running dry.
A training ground bestowed by the gods!
Once its mana dried up, I would never again enjoy such a luxury.
Then there was only one answer.
‘Before it dries up. I’ll drain every last drop.’
I immediately disguised myself as Jeron and made a round of the market.
First, I bought a huge amount of food.
It would not spoil in my subspace.
I could stockpile enough to lock myself away for months without any burden.
Next, I visited the fabric wholesaler I had become a regular at.
Silver thread, silk, cotton, hemp...
I swept up every kind of thread and fabric.
After stuffing mountains of materials into my subspace, I returned to the hideout.
‘Whew...’
From now on, it was a race against time.
My training differed from that of other mages.
Instead of sitting down and steadily accumulating mana, I had to endlessly pour it out and empty myself.
‘Something I can only do here.’
I sat at the worktable and picked up a strand of silk thread.
I called it training, but in truth, it was the work of engraving a magic formula into a single strand of thread.
Mana naturally resisted mixing with matter.
If I forcibly pushed it in, it would bounce back, or the thread would fail to withstand it and burn away.
‘Tune mana’s wavelength to every individual fiber.’
Then pour the formula through those tiny gaps.
Tssst! Crack!
The thread blackened, burned, and turned to ash.
A failure.
“Again.”
It snapped, unraveled.
It looked fine, then broke apart.
Tangles of thread turned to ash piled up at my feet.
Outside, I would have long since run out of mana and collapsed.
But this was a space of infinite mana.
When I was exhausted, I replenished it. Once replenished, I poured it out again.
That endless cycle itself was training.
My fingertips became raw, and my vision blurred.
By the time I had lost track of how many days had passed...
Shrrrk.
A transparent strand of thread slipped between my fingers.
‘...It worked. I did it!’
The thread glowed faintly.
When I flicked it with my fingertip, it rang with a clear metallic sound.
[Reinforced Mana Thread]
It was on an entirely different level from the [Invisible Thread] I had made before.
‘I could weave cloth with this.’
Once I got the hang of it, the second and third attempts went much faster.
I threw myself into mana weaving like a madman.
I spun thread, wove fabric, and stitched mana into it one stitch at a time.
* * *
Time passed in a blur.
I ate when I was hungry and slept when I was tired, repeating the cycle.
I had no idea exactly how much time had passed.
Only when the food I had stocked in my subspace was nearly gone did I guess that at least several months must have gone by.
‘Should I go out and buy more food?’
But that no longer seemed necessary.
The mana in this cave was beginning to run dry as well.
The refreshing air once filled with dense mana was gone, replaced by a musty smell.
Even the mana stored in the Mana Reflux Magic Circle had just been completely used up when I recovered my mana.
‘It’s completely dry. Now this place is hardly different from outside.’
It was truly regrettable.
‘Still, thanks to this, my mana core has reached third-tier proficiency.’
And my subspace was filled with the fruits of my obsession.
[Reinforced Mana Thread]
[Magic Armor Fabric]
Things woven through thousands of cycles of exhaustion and recovery.
‘Having those makes me feel oddly secure.’
That was not all.
The mana crystals had finished charging.
Unfortunately, not all of the thousands of depleted crystals had been charged.
Only some of them had.
‘But I charged all the high-grade mana crystals.’
There were also quite a few intermediate-grade and lower-grade ones.
12 high-grade.
141 intermediate-grade.
889 lower-grade.
The rest remained depleted crystals.
‘It can’t be helped. Still, this is better than nothing.’
I no longer intended to sell them.
I needed to use them myself.
‘From now on, I’ll need mana crystals for training. There won’t be another place like this.’
I would not need to worry about running short on mana crystals for a while.
Just looking at them made me feel full.
‘Anyway, now I can leave without any burdens.’
This precious underground space that had raised me from the first tier.
‘It was my own fortress and kingdom.’
Now that its mana had dried up, it was no longer a fortress or a kingdom.
It was merely the remains of a damp, dark cave.
‘I’ll leave without regret.’
There was one thing that bothered me.
‘But where did all that mana come from?’
It was a question I had ignored because I had been too busy training.
Strangely, now that the mana was depleted, traces of its source became clear.
‘Beneath the floor.’
A thin remnant of mana stretched far underground.
‘...There’s something down there.’
[Third-Tier Transformation Formula: Resonance Mirror]
Thanks to the mana I had gained through third-tier proficiency, I could see deeper than before.
Beneath the bedrock floor.
I found a sealed space.
‘!’
A secret room with no entrance, completely enclosed on all sides.
There was no sign of danger.
[Seam Connection]
Space folded, and my body was pulled inside.
“...What is this?”
It was a space the size of a small room.
A silent place that seemed untouched by anyone for centuries.
At its very center was something.
A massive sphere at least one meter in diameter.
‘A bead?’
Its surface was faded gray, rough like stone yet metallic at the same time.
When I touched it, I felt only a cold chill. There was no special energy.
Bzzz!
At that moment, something traveled through my fingertips.
An extremely faint vibration.
“...!”
A familiar energy.
It was incredibly minute, but I did not miss it.
‘It feels like a remnant of mana... Then could it be?’
At last, I understood.
The source of the enormous mana that had poured forth here.
There was no room for doubt.
‘This is it. This bead was holding it.’
I could hardly believe it.
What in the world was this bead?
But when I inspected it again, the trace I had just barely felt had vanished without a sign.
‘Is it completely finished?’
Like a dead tree or a weapon reduced to scrap metal, it had become useless junk.
‘Still, just in case.’
I did not hesitate.
I could not stand wasting even a handful of mana. The thought of leaving an object like this behind made my heart ache.
It was not as though it would weigh anything in my subspace.
‘There’s no harm in taking it.’
What if mana filled it again someday?
Then it might become a portable mana spring.
Whoosh.
The bead was silently sucked into the gap in my subspace.
Only dust remained in the empty secret room.
‘Let’s not leave any trace that I came here.’
I did not know why the bead had been here.
I could not even begin to guess.
Still, it would be troublesome if someone traced this place and pursued the bead’s whereabouts.
‘No one can know I took this bead.’
Back at the hideout, I erased every magic circle I had drawn on the walls and floor.
The Mana Reflux Magic Circle, the charging magic circle, every trace of my use of this place vanished completely.
Now, this place was merely an empty, collapsed cave.
The space that had raised me from the first tier to the third.
‘Goodbye. Thank you.’
I had no regrets.
I had drained every last drop of what it had to offer and taken every treasure worth taking.
I pulled my coat made from Magic Armor Fabric close around me and stood before the passage leading to the surface.
‘Let’s head out into the wide world.’
Whatever lay beyond that door.
The me of today had nothing to fear.
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