Chapter – 29
After finishing the meal, we left the restaurant.
Rama Ren, who had been walking ahead through the city lined with white marble, turned around and spoke.
“How was it? The meal.”
“It was delicious.”
“Ah. I’m glad it was to your taste. The sun will be setting soon; have you perhaps found a place to stay?”
Just as he said, the sky was already painting a sunset.
He didn’t seem to have any intention of letting me go easily.
For someone who received help and wants to repay it, he’s being quite persistent.
Excessive kindness tends to be burdensome for the receiver as well.
Ren couldn’t possibly not know that.
He must know that he’s forcing it to keep me, and that I wouldn’t react favorably to it.
At least, if he’s the Rama Ren I know.
He simply has to find out why I, the Sword Saint’s disciple, have come to Vachenia.
The name ‘Fūrinkazan of Ethyl Heda’ was famous even in port cities across the sea.
If Fūrinkazan and the Sword Saint were visiting Vachenia with a purpose, that alone could cause a upheaval in the merchant circles.
It was a situation significant enough to potentially change the very structure of the city, currently led by three major merchant groups with no clear superiority.
As someone who was summoned to Vachenia as an immigrant and built his merchant group’s growth through his own hard work, he couldn’t help but be concerned.
In reality, I just ended up drifting here to Vachenia somehow, but he had no way of knowing my circumstances.
He noticed my appearance through the eyes he had hidden throughout the city and approached me under the guise of coincidence.
I could read it in his actions of hiding himself and trying to dig into me.
From the moment I first encountered him in the alley, he was pretending to be nonchalant and slick, but it was like being in the palm of Buddha’s hand; I could easily notice it.
I once introduced him as the continent’s luckiest man.
He is a possessor of such strong luck that if he trips, gold falls before his eyes, and just by breathing, his money increases like a rolling snowball.
But doesn’t that seem inconsistent?
Those who are quick on the uptake might have noticed what I’m saying.
Why on earth would someone with such ridiculously good luck be getting harassed by mere street thugs?
They were called thugs, but they were the kind who carried several knives in their clothes.
The public security in this world isn’t perfect; it’s a place where losing one’s life in trivial squabbles with such petty underlings is a common occurrence.
As someone who directly wrote down just how immense his luck is, when I recognized him, my first thought was suspicion.
The suspicion that this guy might be using some scheme to create a connection with me.
And that was the correct answer.
I slowly called his name.
“Rama Ren.”
His brown eyebrows twitched at my suddenly changed demeanor.
“Sir?”
“I came here looking for you.”
“……”
He is a man of many thoughts.
In most cases, being thoughtful is taken in a positive light, but at least for now, the opposite was true.
His many thoughts would chase each other’s tails and eventually lead to a conclusion far from the truth.
‘Did this man really come looking for me?’
‘Is he saying that I induced him to approach me?’
‘Just how much does he see through?’
I said it was like the palm of Buddha’s hand.
It was obvious he was having such thoughts.
I had just yanked the rug out from under the guy who was hiding behind a mask trying to figure me out.
For some reason, I felt quite satisfied.
“Haha. What are you talking about? I’m not such a great figure, I’m just…”
“‘Lama Ren, head of the merchant group ‘Yoke of Silver’. I came looking for you.”
I uttered the name I had heard while coming and going at Fūrinkazan.
It was another title for Lama Ren: the head of the merchant group ‘Yoke of Silver’, one of only three great merchant groups in the free trade city of Vachenia.
At that point, Ren stopped feigning ignorance and started observing me.
His rolling amber eyes scanned various parts of my body.
I was in a waiting mood.
Until he fully understood this situation.
Finally, he let out a sigh, and the unique frivolity he had been displaying until now completely disappeared.
I took that as a sign that he, as a merchant head, had decided to talk to me properly.
“Well, I’ll be. You got me. Who are you?”
“As you thought, I am the Sword Saint’s disciple, but…”
The man brushed the hair from his forehead upwards with his palm.
It was a habit of his when faced with an unexpected situation.
After tilting his head back to look at the sky once, he met my eyes again.
His face was now slick and sly, as if asking what ‘flustered’ even meant.
Yeah. You should have come out like this from the beginning.
“Well, seeing such a ridiculously unfamiliar face wandering around the free city, I wondered what kind of young punk he was and tried to find out… but it turns out you’re not a punk, you’re a sly old fox.”
“A fox?”
“Hoo. So then…”
This is a genuine question, you see.
Ren said with a playful smile.
“Did you anticipate that I would hire thugs to approach you? And that things would turn out like this afterwards?”
He is a man like the wind.
Especially in how his moods change like boiling porridge.
His specialty was using his ever-changing attitude to induce fluster and seize an advantageous position.
If I lied, his assessment of me would rise.
No, it wouldn’t even need to go that far.
I know that just shrugging my shoulders would be enough.
But I said that it wasn’t, implying that our meeting happened entirely by your own design.
It wasn’t an action born of long thought, but upon reflection, it wasn’t so bad either.
He stared at me as if trying to dig into my mind, but eventually gave up with a sigh and spoke.
“…I see. So?”
“So, what?”
“You said you came looking for me.”
“……?”
“Come on, isn’t it because you have some request or something for me?”
“No.”
“…Then why did you say you came looking for me?”
Hearing that, I closed my mouth for a moment and organized my thoughts.
Ren looked at me with slightly dazed eyes, as if he had a headache, but he didn’t particularly interrupt or disturb me while I was lost in thought.
Clearly, Rama Ren is an indispensable character in the scenario of the Istalnesia Chronicles.
By my standards, he doesn’t have any useful subordinates, his own combat power is negligible for now, and all he really has is his personal luck and the merchant group built from it.
But he was a character who grew to become a representative of a planet, like Hyacinth, the Great Mage of Scarlet Lotus.
That alone was sufficient to explain that he is a character absolutely necessary for the narrative.
Therefore, he was someone I absolutely had to meet.
But that wasn’t as urgent a matter as, say, the election of the Sylvan Archon.
The timing wasn’t right yet.
I just happened to arrive in Vachenia and thought I’d show my face, and then we coincidentally met, so I thought it was good to mingle like this. That’s the current situation.
The Aquaforest where the elves are disappearing.
Nisesform, where a civil war is expected to break out.
The Papacy summoning the Dawn Knight Order.
The Talandy Mountains where adventurers are going missing.
In the midst of all that, I had gained a lot of information ‘I hadn’t known before,’ so I could say that unexpectedly obtaining the freedom of speech and action regarding these events without having to worry about their implications was an unexpected harvest.
Other than that, well…
In conclusion, I had no further business with him.
Moreover, since coming to the free city wasn’t entirely my own will, strictly speaking, I didn’t even come here looking for him.
But I didn’t bother to state or correct the lie I had so glibly told.
It didn’t seem like he would simply believe the story that a complete stranger came to see you just to get a look at your face.
So I spoke evasively.
“I said I came looking for you. I didn’t say I had a separate request.”
“Aren’t those usually the same thing?”
Again, the hand brushing his forehead.
I intended to kindly clear up his misunderstanding.
“No, ‘coming to look for you’ means I came to see you, while ‘having a request’ means I want you to do something for…”
Wait, wait, he waved his hands dismissively.
“Who doesn’t know the dictionary meaning?”
‘Does such a person even exist?’ – his face seemed to say.
“You really have nothing? Okay. As you said. You came looking for me, right? You must have a purpose, no? Am I the only one feeling like the focus of the conversation is off?”
If it’s a purpose, it’s already achieved.
Making Rama Ren aware of me, the human named Lee Woo-hyun.
Because that would make it easier to cooperate or use him for later matters.
I hoped he would think of me as someone not to be taken lightly, so I deliberately mentioned the Yoke of Silver and pretended to have hidden motives.
When in reality, I had nothing.
So I had nothing more to say.
It was natural that the conversation wasn’t connecting.
“Whether it’s money or people, or you need the influence of the Yoke of Silver, or something like that? Wasn’t Ethyl Heda planning to do something using Fūrinkazan as a backing? As the Sword Saint’s disciple, you must have had a reason to come all this way, right?”
“Huh? What kind of misunderstanding is that?”
“…….”
He had an absurd expression, but I found it equally absurd.
When a person thinks too much, they tend to make wild leaps.
Besides, I’m not even a member of Fūrinkazan now.
On one hand, I also thought that the name ‘Sword Saint’ held this much influence on the continent.
I spoke lightly.
“Well then, I’ll be on my way now.”
“Wait, wait a moment.”
“I’m a busy person. I’ll take my leave.”
“Y-you… Even if you’re busy, could you be busier than me? I’m the head of a great merchant group, you know? A person for whom every minute and second is precious, wrestling with hundreds of documents every day?”
“Yes. Since we’re both busy, isn’t that all the more reason to part ways here?”
“…….”
He seemed to have a somewhat desperate look about him.
I wondered why he was acting like this.
He was behaving as if I absolutely must need Rama Ren himself.
But the truth is, I don’t need him yet.
“You really have nothing? Then why did you show up?”
“I told you, it wasn’t intentional, it was a coincidence.”
“But you said you came looking for me?”
Just as he said, the focus of the conversation really wasn’t matching.
I unintentionally blurted out.
“Why are you being so bothersome?”
“Keuk.”
“Ah. That was a slip of the tongue. I was only thinking it, but it just…”
“…….”
