The Mercenary Guild hall in Stan City was the second-finest building in the whole town, surpassed only by the City Lord's estate.
It was said that its original builder had modeled it on the magnificent domed hall of the Mercenary Guild's head headquarters in the Snow Ridge Empire. For countless years, Stan City had shown off the guild hall in the West District as a landmark to every passing peddler and minstrel—until a few years ago, when a widely traveled ascetic monk informed everyone that Stan City's Mercenary Guild hall had none of the head guild's grandeur at all, and in fact looked quite a lot like the brothel next door. The architect back then must have gotten the wrong building...
And so the Mercenary Guild hall was never again Stan City's pride.
Even so, the guild hall's standing remained lofty, for a very simple reason: it was a stronghold of the Mercenary Guild that spanned the whole Aigendas Continent. Every swordsman, acolyte, and mage who joined the guild reported here on a regular basis to take on missions or hand them in. The guild's operating taxes, too, made up a large share of Stan City's tax receipts.
Early morning.
Damon, a rank-four swordsman, walked out of the Mercenary Guild hall studying a mission dossier. He wasn't much for reading, and the information on the dossier gave him no end of trouble, but even so, the words "Duskwood Forest" stood out plainly enough, and twenty years of life as a mercenary had taught him exactly what they meant.
"Hunt a rank-two Bloodshadow Cat in the Duskwood Forest, and the whole beast's hide, flesh, and blood must be completely intact before the mission can be handed in..."
Damon's thick black brows drew together.
The Duskwood Forest was an enormous woodland stretching clear across the Aigendas Continent, and the chief habitat of monstrous beasts. The stretch of it near Stan City was only one small branch of that vast forest, but the dangers inside were still beyond anything an ordinary person could imagine. This mission was a little hard, very dangerous—and that was before you got to a rank-two monstrous beast like the Bloodshadow Cat, which had always been famous for its cunning...
"I'd sure like to know what secret elixir some mage is brewing up that needs a thing like a Bloodshadow Cat!"
Grumbling under his breath, Damon stroked the longsword at his waist and mulled it over. Looks like I'd better find a way to top up my gear. I should buy a few magic scrolls for self-defense too, and my armor needs a proper going-over first...
While he was turning all that over, a dust-covered little beggar suddenly crept up in front of him, cautious as could be.
Damon was already in a foul mood from taking such a dangerous mission, and was just about to snap at the boy, when the little beggar held a sheet of paper out to him, scared half to death.
"Hm?"
Curious in spite of himself, Damon took the sheet.
It was a flyer the likes of which this world had never seen before.
"Esteemed mercenary sir, when you adventure through jungles and ruins, danger lurks everywhere. So at a time like that, what's the best bargain around?
Magic scrolls! That's right—magic scrolls!
Let me share a piece of good news: Anthony's Magic Cottage is running a discount right now, and genuine, reliable low-level magic scrolls are going at the rock-bottom price of just forty-eight. You read that right—only forty-eight copper coins!
Flame scrolls, lightning scrolls, water-flow scrolls, dust scrolls, gale scrolls—all kinds of magic scrolls, forty-eight copper coins each, and you can carry them home as you please!
On top of that, our shop is offering a thoughtful buy-ten-get-one-free service: buy ten and one comes free. You read that right—free, not a single coin. We give you a magic scroll worth forty-eight copper coins for nothing! Wow, don't tell me you're not tempted. A deal this good, walking right past you—don't you dare miss it!"
The words were written on the paper in a flamboyant, faintly gaudy sort of script, so lively that you could almost see a grinning face with spittle flying from its lips hovering right there in front of you. Sure enough, Damon was tempted. He normally bought his magic scrolls at Morgan's Magic Shop, the biggest one in Stan City, but looking at those enthusiastic words on the page, Damon finally decided to try something different this time.
"Scrolls anywhere else cost fifty copper coins, and here they're only forty-eight, plus buy ten get one free. How could anyone pass up a deal this good?" As a mercenary, he ought never to have cared about a gap of two copper coins, but right now Damon still felt, without quite thinking about it, that he was getting an enormous bargain.
The other side of the flyer even thoughtfully gave the address of that Anthony's Magic Cottage. And so Damon, on what had started out as a rather sour morning, suddenly felt his mood lift; even the little beggar who had handed him the flyer looked a good deal more agreeable. Generously, he tossed the boy a copper coin and set off for Anthony's Magic Cottage.
The little beggar had been quaking with fear at first, but the moment he caught the copper coin Damon tossed him, his eyes lit right up. He rubbed it carefully in his hand for a long while before putting it away in his pocket. Just then another mercenary came out of the guild hall, and the boy immediately picked up a stack of flyers and hurried over.
And similar scenes were playing out all over Stan City at that very moment: at the Hunters' Guild, the Swordsmen's Guild, even the vegetable markets along the main streets, little beggars who once had nothing to do were clutching stacks of flyers and hunting down one target after another... and one after another, the people who took a flyer were fired up by the enthusiastic words on it and began heading for Anthony's Magic Cottage.
A few days earlier, on the road home from Kara's Magic Bookstore, Ye Chui had seen how glum Debbie was over wasting their money on two magic language books of no great use, and had wanted to think of some way to cheer her up.
Then he'd noticed the idle little beggars by the roadside, and a light had gone on in his head: he could drum up business for the magic shop with flyers—using, naturally, the advanced marketing concepts of his previous life... all right, fine, discount promotions were hardly advanced, but at least nobody in this world had ever done it before.
Magic scrolls were the most valuable goods in the Magic Cottage now, and the only thing Ye Chui could ramp up production of. If he wanted to boost business, building the whole thing around magic scrolls was obviously the fastest shortcut.
The flyers themselves were easy enough to arrange, too. All those enthusiastic phrases were naturally from Ye Chui's own pen; he had a specialist magic printing shop run off a few hundred copies and handed them out to the little beggars, one copper coin a day each, and they were only too happy to take care of the job properly for him.
And the results of Ye Chui's flyer campaign really were excellent.
"Hammerhead, Hammerhead! Someone else just came in to buy magic scrolls—ten of them at once! Life really doesn't get any better than this." At noon, Debbie's excited voice came into the room along with her footsteps.
Ye Chui, sitting on the bed leafing through Intermediate Magic Language, looked up with a smile. "See? Didn't I tell you both? Do things my way and business will pick up in no time."
"Heh heh." A goofy little smile spread over Debbie's small face, but when she noticed that what Ye Chui was holding was that copy of Intermediate Magic Language, her expression shifted slightly. "Hammerhead, Dad said you can't learn intermediate or advanced magic language at all without a teacher. And you're only a rank-two mage right now—what's the rush? Once we've made real money, we'll go find a good magic teacher."
"There's no harm in taking a look. I'm pretty interested," Ye Chui said offhandedly.
Debbie shook her head. Just then the copper bell above the shop door rang as a customer came in, and delight spread back over Debbie's face. She dashed out, her voice drifting back from far off: "Hammerhead, don't you just sit there reading—find a minute to inscribe a few more magic scrolls, our stock is running low!"
Ye Chui smiled and turned his eyes back to the Intermediate Magic Language in his hands. A few pages in, the weariness on his face grew more and more obvious.
"This thing... is actually kind of damn hard."