Chapter 14: 6

“If you’re moving what will you do with your stock?”

Old-man Gil’s bookshop was lined up with quite a few books.
But I’ve never seen any customers in his bookshop other than me.

There are no customers who would buy books living this close to the front-lines.
The old-man even once said that rather than by selling books, he made a profit from managing accounts of nearby stores.

“Aah, I’ve told the Commerce Guild that I’m vacating the store in 10 days so if it doesn’t sell within 2-3 days, I will burn it. Well, other than you I only get a handful of customers every year anyways so all of this will most likely burn.”

Old-man Gil says so in an unfortunate tone.

He’s selling books in a place where they’ll never sell.
I’m sure he loves books a lot.

But going to another country with all these books is impossible.
There’s the problem of tariffs, and the contents will all have to be checked at the border.
Worst case, he’d reach the neighboring country’s royal capital only after a few years.

…As expected he won’t go that far.

“Fine, I’ll buy all the remaining books.”

I take out a few dozen silver coins from my breast pocket.
This is more than what I’ve spent at old-man Gil’s store till now.

I didn’t spend exactly 10 silver coins every time, so by now I had a sizable sum saved.

Old-man Gil looks amazed at the money I have taken out.

“Are you sure?”
“It’s fine really, I don’t have any plans of moving out. It should be fine if I move out all the books within 10 days right?”

There are about a 1000 books here, but normal ones don’t cost that much so it should be enough.
Also, it feels like a bit of a loss if they were all to be thrown away in any case.

“I owe you one. But honestly you, do you always move around with your entire fortune?”
“…There’s no one at home now. It’s safer for me to hold on to it.”
“…I see.”

Old-man Gil made a face showing he wasn’t completely satisfied, but he didn’t question me further.
Truthfully, I’m moving around with all my property.

That because I became able to use spatial magic some while ago, and could store all my property in a sub-space.

If I put these books in my current residence, they’ll begin to rot in no time.
Same for food ingredients.

However, if I put them in an empty sub-space, there’s no risk of them rotting.
Without feeling their weight, and without rotting, I would easily prefer this over putting them in a deteriorating house.

Well, if I make this public it would be used for all sorts of things so I keep it to myself.

“Then, I’ll carry all these out in 10 days. What will you do old man?”
“Let’s see, since all my inventory’s sold, I could even leave today. It’s dangerous carrying all that money anyways.”

It’s true that if I carry all these books out at once, then there will be those that figure out I paid for it all.
If they figure out old man Gil’s holding on to all that money, of course there will be someone who’d want to take it.

“Then, I’ll help you with packing up. It won’t be all that different from when you go to the Royal Capital, right?”

Whenever I buy something from him, old man Gil always leaves with that money to buy more books, so I always help him pack things up.

He won’t be leaving with anything other than money in any case, and the preparations will be the same.

Moreover he’ll deposit that money with the Commerce Guild, so basically he only takes travel luggage.

“Sorry for always making you do this.”
“We promised not to say that, dada.”
“…Hm? What does that mean?”
“…Anyways, time to clean your shoes and clothes with cleaning magic~”

I helped old man Gil prepare for his travels as always.

***

“See you, Lain. Live strong.”
“You too, old man.”

Old man Gil left in a caravan which departed after noon.
It took a long time, since he had gone to the Commerce Guild to deposit his money and surrender the store.

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Usually I accompanied him till the town gate, but since I had the job of carrying all the books out, we said our goodbyes inside the town.

“Well, I really just had to store it in a sub-space, so I could have gone with him.”

I return to his bookshop and start storing more and more books.
This magic is truly convenient.
I only have to touch something before it’s stored.
It is written about in every space magic book, so I’m sure people of ancient magician civilizations used it a lot.
You can customize it depending on what you want to store. I’m currently using the easiest one to use.

You can also see a list of what you have stored in the sub-space so taking out is a piece of cake as well.

That’s why I can store it from one end like this.

Even if I don’t look at what I’m storing, the list will let me know.

After some tens of minutes, I have stored all the books using spatial magic.

“Now then, time to go home.”

***

“Huh?”

As I reach my house, I see a number of horse carriages standing in front it.

My house is on the opposite side of the Demon Forest and town.
In the old days, the location where my house was built was right at the edge of the Demon Forest, but after slowly clearing it the border has been pushed away by quite a lot.

This country is cutting down the Demon Forest to create a breadbasket.
That’s because the closer you get to the forest, the better the crops will grow.

Since the Demon Forest was gradually getting further away, I was thinking of moving out of this house and settling right at its new border.

“That’s unusual, there weren’t any visitors scheduled to arrive today…”

The horse carriage seemed extravagant, so I guess it’s an aristocrat.
There was a family crest painted on the side of the carriage, but truthfully I have no interest in aristocracy so I didn’t know whom it belonged to.

Sometimes there are aristocrats who visit my residence to buy magic stones off of me, but I already do that with the army and as such don’t possess a single stone myself.
Probably the same reason today.

As I stand in front of my house, a man in full-body armor standing at the side of the door stares at me.
Isn’t that armor too heavy?

“Who are you?”
“Lain Wallfeed. Do you have any business with my house?”
“The aristocrat?”

Full-Body-Armor looks at me as if licking my whole body.
If a man looks at me like that, I’ll only get grossed out.

“Could you move? I’m trying to get inside my house.”
“Wait for a bit.”

Full-Body-Armor enters my house on his own.

Oi oi.
Don’t shut out the owner and enter his house by yourself.

(By the way what happened to the lock? I’m sure I had locked the door)

It’s a popular quality in Japan, so I always lock the door.
Frankly there’s no one who’d come all the way to the frontier to steal, but still.

The house doesn’t have anything but furniture anyways.

When I look at the door, it had signs of being pried open.

(Oi oi, give me a break)

It seems that today’s guest is quite a rough one.
As I’m waiting hoping that nothing bad happens, a well-dressed man steps out of my house.

Who the heck is he?

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