Chapter 46: A Visitor

Chapter 46: A Visitor

I remembered there was a section of the game with a black market. However, the only problem was that I had literally no idea where that black market was. After all, the game was a visual novel dating game, not some sort of open world.

As such, while I knew about its existence, I had literally no idea how to get to it.

I bit my nail, wondering about it for a few moments. From what I recall, there were a decent amount of good items there, but the main protagonist would never have enough money to buy anything.

But that didn't mean he wasn't able to get anything.

There were certain items that could only be obtained by trading other items with similar value. From what I understood, those items were considered relatively high-end, so it wasn't as though the protagonist was missing out on much.

But we didn't have any of those items to trade with yet as they weren't available. However, as a prince with a decent amount of gold saved up, I should be able to buy a decent amount of things.

That would cut into the funds I needed to keep up with providing meals to the commoners, but it shouldn't be too big of a deal if Nathan starts earning relatively decent money as well.

Hm... now would James let me go to a black market?

I imagined his face in my head, before shaking my head.

The guy was stingy when he was rather against it even when talking about things like elixirs, which was a reasonable thing to buy. There was no way he would let me get one of those.

Oh, and if you are wondering why I'm not buying the elixirs, I have no plans of getting any. Though difficult to get in the game, it was possible to get a decent amount of elixirs which would boost your growth in magic by quite a bit and even your physical strength by a little.

Unfortunately, one of the setbacks you would find later in the game was that it got harder to improve your magic after reaching certain thresholds. After playing for a while, Nathan and I determined that elixirs were just baits that the developers put in to troll people harder with their shit game.

But while we didn't like them, they were really popular products among nobles, and it seemed that none of them realized the side effects. Probably because they were a little stupid or maybe the people selling them covered that fact up.

While I had that train of thought, it ended up interrupted by a somewhat panicking maid that rushed up to me.

"L-Lord Bryson! T-The daughter of the Darcy family is here to visit. We haven't made any preparations for this visit, and she has requested your presence."

I let out a sigh.

"Now why is she here?"

I went down to the entrance and greeted Raisa. She came with quite a few servants and guards following close behind her, though she paid them little mind as she ran over to me.

"Hey! I got the thousand gold coins from the bet for you! I tried to make more bets after but nobody took me up on them."

She held out a black string-bound pouch to me, prompting me to blink a few times. Ah, right. That happened.

"I thought we were splitting it in half?"

Raisa tilted her head to the side before nodding.

"Yeah, I bet one thousand gold coins, and for winning I got two thousand gold coins from them!"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Wow. Thanks, I guess."

I took the pouch and immediately felt a hefty weight. It probably wouldn't fit in my pocket comfortably. Raisa then clasped her hands together and looked off to the side slightly before asking me a question.

"So... could I come inside the manor?"

I looked straight at her, but she didn't meet my gaze directly. Did this girl really just use the bet as an excuse to come over to my place?

I sucked in a long breath and put on the same expression I saw James have most of the time.

"Apologies, but the manor is currently not prepared to receive an esteemed guest such as you."

Raisa let out a small gasp.

"B-But you said that there's no need for preparations if it's just friends, right? So there's no need to be prepared!"

I waved my hand dismissively as I recalled the panicked maid.

"The servants would be too uncomfortable receiving someone of your status in the place. If you do visit the manor, the servants will all be incomparably stressed. You wouldn't be so cruel as to put them under such stress, would you?"

Raisa panicked after hearing that.

"Then... then what if you came with me?"

I shot her a blank look.

"To where?"

Raisa shifted around and stammered several times.

"Um, er, wherever you want to go!"

...Hm.

Well, I did want to go to the black market, but would she really be ok with that? After a bit of thought, I decided to try anyway.

After leaning in, I whispered to her.

"Then what about the black market?"

Raisa jumped up, looking quite flustered.

"Ah, t-there? Why would you want to go there?"

From the sounds of things, she was familiar with the place.

"Nothing much, I'm just a little curious about what's there."

Raisa promptly shook her head as a small smile formed on her face.

"No, we really shouldn't. That place is dangerous!"

Hm. It sounded like she also knew how to get there.

"I understand. Then can't you protect me?"

Usually, it was the man that was supposed to protect the woman, but frankly, I didn't care much for gender conventions.

Raisa seemed rather stunned by that question. From what I could tell, she almost immediately replied with yes but stopped herself. She hesitated for quite a while before raising a hand.

"Ah, yes! If I bring my personal bodyguard, then there shouldn't be any problems!"

Well, that sounded reliable enough.

"Ah, so we're going then?"

Raisa jumped like she was startled.

"Eh? Oh, ok, sure!"

She wanted to hurry off and go right then, but I stopped her. I put away roughly half the gold I had on me into my room and kept the other half on me. From there, I got the servants to bring over some black cloth we weren't using along with a bucket of animal blood.

Apparently it wasn't too hard to get because there were a decent amount of farms that operated under the Arden family's jurisdiction.

Raisa looked at me strangely when all of the items got here.

"What is all this for?"

I smirked and gave a casual wave.

"This will be for our outfits."

While she was still confused, I barbarically tore the cloth in two, messing it up pretty badly. From there, I wrapped it around my body before tearing parts away until it worked as a cloak.

Afterward, I dipped my sword into the bucket of blood and flicked the blood onto the clothes themselves. Soon afterward, I rolled onto the ground for a bit before repeating the process a few times after.

To finish things off, I brushed off the dirt and roughly cleaned it by dipping it into some water.

Once it dried, I was left with a dirty cloak that had faint blood stains covering it.

It wasn't perfect, but I imagined these clothes would be good enough to get most people to avoid bothering us.

As I held it up, Raisa looked at it with visible surprise.

"Eh? Why would you need something like this for the black market?"

I looked back at her strangely.

"It's basically a bluff against people that may want to attack us."

Raisa continued to look at me with confusion.

"Um... but most people just show up without even bothering to hide what they look like."

What the fuck?

Wait, but I distinctly remember that the main character wore a full-on disguise to visit the black market. Is it possible the main character was just secretly really edgy or something? noVe/lb-In

I thought about it for a bit, but decided to put the dirty cloak on anyway.

"Ah, whatever. It helps set the mood."

Raisa looked at me for a good few moments before similarly getting on a similar cloak. I let out a cough as I turned to her.

"Do you know where we can get masks?"

Raisa tilted her head to the side.

"You want to get masks as well?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"It fits the whole getup, alright? Plus it makes you feel like you're being really secretive, which can also be cool."

Raisa scratched her cheek, clearly not understanding where I was coming from but smiled anyway.

"O-Ok!"

She led me into the carriage, and we went off to a store that sold masks. After leaving the dirty cloak in the carriage, I went off to browse the options.

All of the masks end up looking overly decorated, with jewels over them. In fact, many of them didn't fully cover the face, with some that looked like glorified glasses.

However, I did see that the store owner, a middle-aged woman, was carving away at a piece of wood, and right now it had the shape of a mask with only the eye holes finished. I walked up and pointed at it.

"Can I have that one?"

The store owner almost jumped up in fright.

"Ah! Oh, sorry this mask isn't finished yet."

I waved my hand dismissively.

"That's fine, could I have it anyway?"

She looked at me hesitatingly.

"I'm not too sure. Right now I'm taking the place of the actual store owner... so I can't make those decisions."

Oh, so she's not the store owner. I let out a chuckle and put an elbow down on the table.

"Oh come on, don't be like that. I'm sure that the owner wouldn't mind getting a little extra change with him, now would he? It's not like it will take that much work to carve another mask to be like that."

The woman visibly hesitated but seemed to be convinced.

"Then will you buy it for fifty silver?"

So half of a gold coin, huh?

"Do you have change for gold?"

The woman looked back at me, a bit taken aback.

"I don't think we have enough silvers to work out the change right now."

Huh.

Raisa happily came over and put fifty silvers down.

"Don't worry, I got it!"

I flashed her a smile.

"Thanks."

After receiving my mask, Raisa also got her own which almost covered her whole face and was white in color. When we got back on the carriage, I began thinking of a few things that could go wrong.

"Is it really ok for the carriage to go along with us there?"

Raisa looked at me confused once more.

"Um, I think it's fine."

Huh? Really?

"Oh."

A moment of silence lingered. To break it, I pointed at her.

"Alright, we will have code names when we refer to each other."

Raisa tilted her head to the side.

"Ah, that sounds fun, sure!"

I ignored how lightly she was taking things and decided to come up with names.

"I will call you... Daughter of Chaos, and you can call me the Prince of Despair."

By the way, that was Bryson's nickname after he had turned full-on evil.

Raisa hummed in displeasure.

"Eh? Why is mine daughter? What if... we did Princess of Chaos?"

I waved my hand.

"Sure, whatever. Just refer to me as Despair and I will refer to you as Chaos."

With that, we were on our way to said black market.