“Are we really doing this?” Urk asked in a low voice, not wanting to attract excessive attention.

Here, at the mouth of a smaller alley merging into the main road leading to the ducal household, people moved all over the place. And with so many of them coming and going from every direction, it was hardly a place to question the already established plans.

It’s been three days since they have all arrived in the town. Three days Leo spent doing nothing but going to the marketplace. Three days that he kept refusing to elaborate on his plans or the meaning of the massive statement he made on the very first day.

And it all led to yesterday’s evening, when this anomaly-born guy finally broke the habit and gathered everyone, the Gray Edgehounds included, within a single room of some cheaper inn picked by Zion himself.

“I’ve kept you all on edge. For the last three days, we’ve kept going to the market so that I could figure everything out. And I’ve kept silent about my grand claim because it is infinitely easier for me to show it than it would be to explain it.”

Without any needless fanfare, Leo gathered the haul of his very first shopping.

It was today, on the fourth day of their stay in the town, that Leo requested some money. And right now, all of which he obtained lay displayed on the room’s floor.

‘Should I even bother trying at this point?’ Camila looked down at the displayed wares, struggling to decide whether to spare the extra effort to try to understand the rule that governed Leo’s picks.

The items he bought were of all kinds, types, and sizes.

There was a whole bag filled to the brim with various grains and fruits. Just to its side, a stack of all sorts of coins rose up in a small pyramid structure. Slightly higher up the floor, a set of three pendants shone with the reflected light caught through the room’s window while a carefully arranged array of rocks and chunks of ore littered an otherwise piece of excellent clothing.

Finally, besides some other trinkets that Camila couldn’t recognize at a glance, several sticks and logs decorated the whole pile, sticks and logs Leo went out of his way to collect directly from the nearby forest-front.

‘What is he…’

Just like several days ago, on the day he found some perverse interest in their used clothes, Leo pulled out that perfect orb of his before casually tossing it at the wares.

As if with a mind of its own, the orb fell down only to roll perfectly into the middle of the pile, before it split into quarts that then further rolled away into the four corners of a huge rectangle that then turned into a three-dimensional box of strange, dim light.

Only the perfectly thin, delicate lines of perfectly refined light shot from every eight of the orb into its direct neighbors, creating a scaffolding of sorts that kept the whole structure together.

‘He used it to…’ Camila went back with her thoughts to the moment in a relatively recent past, ‘judge the value?’

The duchess raised her eyes, only to catch Leo’s curious and weirdly excited look. Upon seeing his face, though, Camila blushed a little, recalling the uncomfortably perverse request of his, one that ultimately ended up going greatly in the girl’s favor, given the mythic-like qualities of the clothes he offered in exchange.

Leo, with his eyes already on the girl, had to notice the slight change in her eyes.

“Oh right!” the young man exclaimed with his eyes widening a bit. Then, without any hesitation, he reached out to his bag and pulled out three, nicely stacked sets of the clothes she was just thinking about.

Then, sparing no mind for the ceremony, he tossed it right into the box, straight through its top created with nothing but this see-through, blueish light.

A moment later, a string of strange, perfectly uniform characters appeared right on top of the cage of light, characters that Leo proceeded to diligently study.

“Not bad,” he muttered under his nose while a small smirk grew in from the corners of his mouth towards its center.

And as he raised his eyes to Camila’s face only for his smile to reach its maturity right as he brought his hand up and simply… snapped.

The whole cage of light collapsed, with all of the orb’s original parts that made up its corner collapsing back into their shared, perfectly round shape.

The orb then fell to the ground and rolled around for a bit before stopping, with no random items to obscure its path.

“Wha…”

Camila saw Leo perform several miracles thus far. And her understanding of what should be common sense or not reached such a critical level, she simply decided to put it aside and stop questioning this damned man’s means in the first place.

But what happened now, or rather the implications of what it could possibly mean reached a whole, new level.

‘It’s one thing for him to have better weapons, tools, clothes…’ Camila bit down on her lip to the point it started to ooze blood. ‘But if what just happened is what I think it was…’

The smile on Leo’s face mellowed down as if he was now content with her reaction and ready to talk strict details.

“You’ve now earned…” Leo hesitated for a second… Only to bring his hand up his chin and start giving it a slow, thoughtful look. “Let’s say five thousand bucks.”

With those words, a strange look of reluctance came to Leo’s face. As if… he wasn’t mentally ready for something.

“Bucks?” Camila’s eyes turned slightly wider as an image of a freshly hunted, or maybe reared, male deer appeared in her mind.

“Coins, you could say?”

Leo was quick to correct.

“A box filled with those food batons goes for fifty bucks. A set of clothes could go for as low as ten and as high as several hundred…” Suddenly, Leo grew stumped, as if only now realizing some sort of an issue.

But that didn’t bring the weight behind his words down.

‘That was worth five thousand coins, where fifty of them is worth of like what,’ Camila recalled the image of the box filled with those tasty sticks of concentrated food.

And right at this point, she found herself similarly stumped.

For how was she supposed to judge the worth of food that would bring one no shame to serve it for a fancy dinner, while having the practical qualities anyone who ever took a trip would greatly appreciate?

‘Wait, doesn’t that mean that those like, fifteen gold coins worth of stuff could translate to ten… No, a hundred boxes worth of those food sticks? Which further translated to four thousand of those sticks…’

Camila gulped her saliva down.

She didn’t need to complete the ceremony of submitting her oath to the king to understand the immense, overwhelmingly oppressive nature of the power that hid behind this single, potential transaction.

Even assuming a generous dosage of two sticks per soldier, that fifteen gold coins worth of random stuff would turn into two thousand daily rations… Rations that apparently wouldn’t spoil, would prevent various diseases, could be the only element of a soldier’s diet, or become a staple to be eaten with whatever cheap sides the army could procure locally…

And all of that, in deviously perfect packaging that only made the process of moving them around easier.

‘Oh god…’

Far drops of cold sweat appeared on Camila’s forehead as she understood the magnitude of what Leo just revealed. And assuming he could procure the goods the same way he sold local produce off…

“Wait, what’s your share of those five thousand?” Camila hurriedly raised her eyes, only now realizing that she fell so deep into her thought, that she actually started to bite the nail of her thumb.

‘Still, that’s the only possible explanation. If it’s any other way, then…’

“Huh?” Leo jumped a little, taken aback by the question. “Five thousand is your share already,” he mentioned as his face contorted, his expression showcasing how weirded out she made him, while the focus in his eyes indicated he was rapidly recalculating something. “Oh, if that’s the case, you might want to hold on…”

Leo’s face changed once again, showcasing both distant embarrassment, a hint of worry, and honest curiosity if not anticipation.

“What’s the problem?”

‘I’ve got you!’

Camila finally calmed down.

For Leo to be so generous, there had to be a catch. And judging from what he said just now, he was finally ready to reveal it.

“Those four logs of wood were worth five bucks each…”

The logs that Camila saw Leo obtain from the first, perfectly random tree he found to be suitable for his purposes. As in, easy to cut, section out, and then sneak into the town.

‘That would make a box of forty sticks of food worth what, ten logs?’

Ten wooden logs, or rather, ten pieces of freshly cut log, amounting to maybe half of the tree Leo cut.

“A… Are you for real?” Camila raised her eyes.

“As real as it gets,” Leo laughed out a little before leaning back and sending his hands to rest them against the further part of the bed. “And don’t get me wrong, I took the lion's share for myself already. Plus, the reason I hesitated before was because I don’t really know what kind of insane stuff you would like to have me buy for you.”

By now, Leo’s smirk transformed first into a proper smile only to now fully evolve into an outright grin.

“Still, now that you know what’s my business here, there are pretty much only two things I need you to do for me to bring my big claim from three days ago to fruition.”

As if he didn’t torment Camila and her two retainers enough, Leo hurriedly switched the topic only to drop yet another bomb.

“Great, because I really want to know what’s the prize of trading with you,” Camila coldly replied, trying her absolutely hardest to maintain cold blood.

‘Is this where his catch comes?’

Even knowing this young man for several days by now wasn’t enough for Camila to lower her guard.

He was a spawn of an anomaly, which by definition made him an enemy of humanity. And while she was willing to consider him to be just a normal guy with some weird circumstances…

It was all too weird. All too convenient.

So, there had to be something to counterbalance it!

“I need you to appear publicly, return to your place, and call in all the nobles while claiming you wish to resolve the succession crisis once and for all,” Leo announced with a perfectly straight face before casually shaking his shoulders, “or something like that,” he then added, as if to imply the exact details didn’t matter.

Still, he mentioned two things. And only brought up one!

‘And the catch comes now!’

Rejoicing in the victory of her oversight over the young man’s plans, Camila raised her chin as her eyes flashed with pride.

“And then, once I gather all of them in one place, putting me in a spot where I will lose all the cards I have left to play?”

Camila tightened her fists, as excited as she was to figure the young man’s intentions out as she was scared of actually following through with what he was actually requesting.

“You will just act as announced, while giving me the free rein to solve this problem, just like announced, once and for all,” Leo replied with a chuckle before taking a glance to the side, where he put some sort of a religious cult object given how passionately he refused to part with it at any time.

Camila closed her eyes, pulling her mind out of the memory of what happened just a few hours ago. And as she opened her eyes again, she raised her face and looked up right at Urk’s worried, doubtful expression.

“Yes, we are going through with it,” Camila stated before heading out of the alley’s mouth and into the main street.

Refusing to let their lady walk on her own, Urk and Zion quickly followed while Leo took a moment to stretch his arms out before finally catching up and matching their pace.

And a mere moment later, as the group arrived at the doorstep of the ducal estate, Camila took to the front before taking off the hood of the cloak Leo gifted her.

“My name is Camila Highduke,” the girl introduced herself out loud while registering with just the corner of her eyes a slight twitch on Leo’s face. “And I’m here to put this sorry succession dispute to its definitive end!”