In his life before last, he had died young from overwork. When he woke up after transmigrating, he found himself in a crossover anime world.

Though given his current situation, he was starting to wonder whether the word "everyday" still applied.

Still, during that period, Banxia had spent no small amount of time searching and scouting, hoping to make use of his foreknowledge of the plot.

Things like getting acquainted early with some pretty girl destined to be absolutely rolling in wealth, laying down an emotional investment before she hit it big.

Or more directly: seeing whether any young lady from a wealthy family might be willing to let him live off her.

After all, it was an anime world. Sponging off a rich, pretty girl wasn't going to involve anything crazy like being scrubbed down with steel wool.

Latching onto a wealthy beauty was pure profit with zero downside. So back then, he had gone ahead and marked down every anime girl he could possibly cross paths with around Tokyo.

It did earn him a solid stretch of his little sister thinking he was a pervert, and she had even stepped in to stop his "criminal activities" more than once.

But looking back now, those efforts hadn't been wasted.

At the very least, the person sitting in front of him right now...

"I remember now!"

"Eh?" The black-haired girl blinked, caught off guard.

"We really haven't met before. The security around you, Miss Shinomiya, was something else — back then I only ever saw a handful of photos of you online."

Kaguya Shinomiya didn't reply. Her red eyes, however, said it plainly enough: vigilance.

"Ahem, please don't look at me like that." Banxia waved his hands hurriedly. "I'm not some kidnapper, and I'm not a suspicious criminal. It was just that while I was wandering through Minato Ward one day, I happened to pass by..."

He paused.

The panic and alarm were quietly spreading through those crimson eyes.

For the first time in his life, Banxia had the distinct sense that the social skills he was so proud of might have developed a fault somewhere.

He went quiet for a moment, then decided to try a different angle.

"Don't worry. At this point in my life, I have absolutely zero interest in women built like little kids."

Kaguya Shinomiya: "..."

Even someone born into the Shinomiya family, someone who prided herself on her social graces, had no idea what expression to put on her face right now.

These words, delivered with the calm confidence of a lion, left her genuinely uncertain: was she supposed to feel insulted, or relieved?

She took a moment to collect herself. Thinking back over the young man's behavior from the moment they first met until now, he really didn't carry the air of a pervert.

Maybe it was exactly as he said: with nothing better to do, he had wandered over to Minato Ward one afternoon and happened to notice, in passing, that the Shinomiya family's security was actually pretty good.

"..."

Well. Rather than thinking of it that way, it was more like,

"Mr. Banxia, I understand completely. People change. What's in the past should stay in the past."

"I have a feeling you're misunderstanding something..." Banxia sighed. "Never mind. That's not the important part. There's actually something else I wanted to ask you about."

"Please go ahead."

It might have been his imagination, but Banxia could have sworn the girl was quietly inching her chair away from him.

He didn't dwell on it. He gave a brief rundown of the situation with the village.

"So that sort of thing has been happening to Milky Aroma Village... I see."

Kaguya Shinomiya drank a glass of fresh milk every morning, and she had already noticed something shifting in the milk market lately. She just hadn't expected the source to trace back there.

"Is there any way to fix it?"

"There are quite a few options. Upgrading the local industry, for instance — processing the milk into dairy products like cheese. Or implementing centralized management and moving to a pre-order supply model. The thing is..." She glanced over at Banxia.

"Don't worry about me. I'm just asking on their behalf."

"These plans are easy enough to describe, but actually putting them into practice is another matter. You'd either need serious capital, or someone all the villagers trust to step up and lead." Kaguya Shinomiya considered for a moment.

"I did hear that the Star Moon Chamber of Commerce once looked into getting a foothold in the fresh milk market, but negotiations broke down and they let it go.

So right now, most of the fresh milk and dairy products coming into the city are still sourced by small peddlers, or shop owners sending their own people out to buy directly from villages."

"That market really is a mess," Banxia said.

"Chaotic, yes, but the margins are genuinely substantial. Are you thinking of getting involved, Mr. Banxia?" The girl's eyes lit up.

"Like I said, I'm just asking on someone else's behalf."

"I see..."

Knock, knock, knock,

Two sets of footsteps came from down the hall, growing closer. The door swung open.

"Mr. Banxia, sorry to keep you waiting."

Hashaka stepped in at a brisk pace, leading an old man who looked like he might keel over at any moment.

"No trouble. This would be the appraiser from the Star Moon Chamber of Commerce?"

The old man nodded.

From the instant he crossed the threshold, his eyes locked onto the pile of copperware and handicrafts spread carelessly across the floor, and they didn't move.

In all his years, this was the first time he had ever seen someone stuff treasures like these into rough cloth sacks and dump them on the floor like firewood.

He crouched down, trembling hands lifting a small copper figurine. He turned it over and over for a long while. Then he fished a monocle from somewhere, perched it on his nose, and worked through every piece methodically, one by one.

After quite some time, the old man finally straightened up and let out a long breath.

"All works by named craftsmen. Rough estimate — ninety-one gold coins."

"Ninety-one gold coins?" Hashaka drew a sharp breath.

That was far beyond what Hashaka had anticipated.

A family of three living in the inner city wouldn't earn that in a lifetime.

On the commercial strip, it was enough to buy a decent storefront outright, full price.

Even Kaguya Shinomiya looked up, taking another look at the young man.

She knew he was an adventurer, and that sheer presence of his made it obvious he was no lightweight, but she had never imagined anything at this level.

When he had come to pick up the clothes earlier and said, "Give me a day, I'll run a quest and come back for them," the two of them had figured it was some simple errand out near the city outskirts.

One day's work. And he walked away with this?

"Ninety-one gold coins." Banxia nodded, expression barely moving.

Just as Roxy had said, notably higher than what the guild appraiser had offered.

Still, that number...

The old appraiser watched him for a moment longer. The man hadn't even twitched an eyebrow.

In his experience, when a figure like this was named, even a reasonably well-known adventurer would be grinning for the next half-hour.

This young man looked like he'd just been quoted nine silver coins.

Was it not enough?

He thought it over, then spoke again.

"If you'd be willing to let our Star Moon Chamber of Commerce handle all of this, sir, this old man can authorize ninety-five."

"Ninety-five?" Banxia's brow furrowed slightly. If anything, he looked more serious than before.

Still not enough?

The appraiser's stomach did a small, uneasy turn.

He had dealt with adventurers all his life. Most were the easygoing type, take the money, walk out the door. Someone who picked at numbers like this was a genuine rarity.

He set his jaw. "One hundred gold coins. That is the absolute ceiling for the chamber. Not one coin more is within this old man's authority. And I will say this plainly: there is no other establishment in this city that will offer you a higher price."

"Oh, one hundred is clean." Banxia's brow smoothed out. He nodded, satisfied. "No need to make change when we split it."

"..."

The room went quiet.

The old appraiser slowly removed his monocle.

Chapter 32

"With this, we're square."

The antiques had already been carefully carried away by the chamber of commerce staff. The appraiser pressed a heavy cloth pouch into Banxia's hands.

"Yeah." Banxia took it. The gold coins inside had already been counted, a clean hundred.

It was the kind of money he never would have dared dream about before. And yet, holding it now, he felt none of the rush he'd expected. No sudden windfall high. No sense of the world shifting beneath his feet.

Happy, sure. But only so-so.

He stared at his own palm, genuinely puzzled by that.

A shift in mindset?

Probably. Ever since he'd reinforced his body for the first time, something had quietly settled in him, an understanding that money was never the real prize.

Time was.

His own time. Monster time. Getting more of those set his blood moving in a way a hundred gold coins simply couldn't.

"Then this old man will take his leave." The appraiser gave a small bow. He still had a batch of goods to process.

"I hope we'll have the chance to work together again, sir."

"We will." Banxia came back to himself and smiled.

Fair prices, no games. If he turned up another windfall down the road, he'd know where to bring it.

After the appraiser left, Banxia picked up the pouch and headed for the door.

"Mr. Banxia." Kaguya Shinomiya spoke up suddenly.

"What?" He turned, then seemed to remember something and added, "Relax. I'm genuinely not going to kidnap you. I promise."

"...That isn't what I wanted to bring up."

"Hm?" Hashaka glanced between Banxia and their nominal 'wife.'

What exactly had happened between the young lady and him while Hashaka was away?

"..."

Kaguya Shinomiya drew a slow breath.

"Mr. Banxia. Don't you think there's a considerable opportunity in the milk market right now?"

"There is. But I don't have the bandwidth to chase it."

He glanced at her. "You're proposing—"

"A partnership." She laid it out simply. "You put in the capital. We do the work. You take the majority cut. We keep a small portion as our fee."

Anyone willing to take the risk of traveling as a merchant could tell they weren't the type to spend their lives working for someone else.

This tailoring job was a stopgap, nothing more.

The Shinomiya family's upbringing had made one thing clear: ordinary employment never built real wealth. It certainly wouldn't fund recruiting a great mage to research a way back home.

What they needed now was seed money, a real first pot to set things in motion.

Banxia considered that for a moment, then exhaled. "The wealthy beauty keeping me in comfort thing I had in mind... definitely didn't look like this."

"...Your answer?"

"Fine." He nodded. "But this hundred gold is shared property between me and my companion. I can't hand all of it over. Fifty, no, I need something left to live on. Forty coins, tops."

"That's more than enough."

"Of course, I can't just hand it over for nothing either..." He trailed off, still working out what collateral to ask for.

"On the honor of the Shinomiya family, if this fails, both Hayasaka and I will be entirely at your disposal."

"Wait, I get disposed of too?"

Hashaka, or rather, Ai Hayasaka in men's clothing, looked at the young lady in confusion, then looked back at the young man.

"..."

...

"Can I really keep all of this?"

The split had been agreed on long before they even sat down, but when a full fifty gold coins were laid out in front of her, Roxy couldn't stop herself from asking anyway.

To her, it was an incomprehensible sum.

The staff she'd gritted her teeth to take out a loan for could be paid off right now, today, with most of the fifty still left over.

"Rules exist to be followed. We said fifty-fifty before we set out, so fifty-fifty it is." Banxia dropped onto a tavern bench and slid the pouch toward her side of the table.

"Anyway — where did you disappear to earlier?"

"...Moving." A small sigh. "I've been dealing with that."

The news of a Platinum-rank adventurer being wounded by a monster had been spreading through the city all week. People outside the walls were selling off everything they owned just to squeeze into the inner city, and the rental market had spiked along with the crowd. Her old place had never been much to begin with, and at the new prices it wasn't worth half what they were asking. She'd wanted out of that lease for a while.

Now that she had money, she was going to find something better.

"Moving?" Banxia asked.

Roxy explained the whole situation.

He nodded when she finished. "Housing really is its own problem."

"Where are you staying, Mr. Banxia?" As a party member, Roxy felt like she ought to ask.

"I'm... actually, I just checked out recently myself. Still looking." He thought it over; it genuinely was something he needed to sort out.

He was sitting on six hundred and twelve years of monster time he hadn't processed yet. He couldn't exactly work through that on a street corner or in a brothel.

And if he had his own space, the sword he carried and the old clothes stuffed in that bag would finally have somewhere stable to sit.

"Then let's go look together! There might be something suitable nearby."

"...What exactly are you after?"

"Please don't read into it. I only meant it would be more convenient for quests going forward."

"I'm not reading into it. But Miss Roxy — your face is a little red."

"...It's just warm today." The blue-haired girl turned away quickly, her fingers drifting to the loose strand of hair near her temple, winding it around and around without thinking.

Banxia watched her, the careful explanation, the fair skin that barely saw sunlight, the tidy twin tails. Her lips were pressed together in total seriousness while her hand kept spinning that strand of hair in small, absentminded circles.

Petite. Cute. Practically walking into it.

All three boxes checked. He looked at her a beat longer than he needed to.

If he'd run into a girl like this back in the modern world, the kind who looked this easy to win over at a glance, he probably would have given it serious thought.

Unfortunately, the world under his feet right now was one stocked with demi-human companions of every conceivable species.

He wasn't about to settle down before he'd sampled all of them.

And besides, he had six years left. Six. That wasn't a lot of time for romance, it was barely enough to travel the whole continent and find a way to keep himself alive longer.

Before long, the two of them stopped outside a shopfront.

"Mr. Banxia. We're here."

"Right." He looked the place over.

It was a rental agency operating under the Continental Adventurers Guild, short-term and long-term leases, listings across both the inner and outer city, catering specifically to adventurers.

They wanted somewhere in the inner city, obviously.

The outer city had too many complications. Things went missing out there. Banxia's bag of old clothes could not survive another incident.

As for why not just buy, the reason was simple.

Too expensive.

A halfway decent property in the inner city started at thirty gold coins. That was thirty years of a working family's combined savings. Even seasoned professionals thought hard before committing to that kind of purchase.

For Roxy, the calculation was different.

There was an unwritten rule among adventurers: before you'd settled down in life, you didn't stake yourself to a single place.

Buying property was no small thing. It had a way of becoming the prelude to something permanent.

So most adventurers rented. Come and go as they pleased, no attachments to weigh them down.

➤ Next: The Other Two Magic Books