”Well… It’s indeed strange. But what are you trying to suggest?” Slightly startled by Layn’s words, Irea leaned her head to the side while sitting on the edge of the bed. Judging how she had trouble moving from the bed to the chair and back, it was simply reasonable for her to give her body some time to recover.

“It’s pretty simple. You said yourself that there are low chances that some random group of inner academy disciples could afford to make such an offer. That’s why, rather than bringing it to the prince who would be able to punish them for faking an offer, they brought it to us. The question is, what would happen if the prince caught the wind of us trying to make a deal behind his back?” Once again, Layn’s lips formed a satisfied smile. It wasn’t the first time for the archmage to deal with this kind of stupid scheme, yet the fun of turning said schemes around was still quite nice.

“Ah, so they want us to accept the offer…” Irea started only to stop when Layn shook his head. “Then I don’t know. Don’t they want to take the treasure for themselves?”

“Listen, why…” Before the archmage could finish his explanation,  a shout passed through the barrier of their closed window. Nodding to the girl to indicate a short pause in their discussion, Layn approached the shuts before opening them up and leaning outside.

“Sir! I brought a friend of mine. He can stand watch just as you requested!” Standing roughly six meters below the bottom frame of the window, the same stranger as before was pointing his hands at an averagely-looking female standing beside him.

“Great. As the job is pretty simple and given how I can’t split a grade one stone into two, she will be paid once you bring an envoy here.” Nodding his head, Layn was about to retract his body back to the room when a sudden idea shook him, twisting the look on his face into a vile grimace. “There is one more thing. I’m not sure if that already happened, but there is a huge chance someone will try to pay you more than I offered so that you could bring someone else in place of the prince’s envoy.”

Layn had many ways to terrify the other party. He could use his killing aura he obtained over the long years of fighting in the hero party to scare them, he could threaten them with formations he still held as his last-ditch effort in case of a real danger… But there was no need to uncover his cards yet, especially given how his current rivals were bound to watch him even now.

“I need you to remember one thing. Whatever price they offer you to lie, will mean nothing if you dare to go against the third price’s wishes. And that’s who we are cooperating with right now, and that’s also who that other mysterious party might be interested in scamming.” Putting a wide smile on his face, Layn looked with pity at the man below. “Whatever they offered you, ask yourself if it’s worth to make the third prince your enemy.”

Pulling himself back into the room and closing the shuts on the window, Layn looked at the confused face of Irea before laughing out loud. “I guess you should now understand what I’m aiming for.”

“Roughly… But tell me, if you just wanted proof that we didn’t leave this place, why not use a recording stone?” Standing up from the bed and reaching for the pile where all of her clothes were thrown, Irea pulled out a storage ring before pulling a small, reddish crystal from in. “I even have one on me!”

In a single moment, Layn froze in place. As little of importance as this stone was to him, the meaning behind its appearance right now was insane. ‘Weren’t they discovered like fifty years before I was born? What is the meaning of this?!’ Finally managing to make a few, slow steps forward, Layn took the stone from the girl’s hand before closely inspecting it.

At first, he was so shocked that he inhaled a lungful of air, refusing to believe what he was seeing. ‘It’s impossible for two different people, at least several tens of thousand years apart, to come up with exactly the same, damned design!’ Back in his times, a recording stone was no longer in use. Thanks to the discovery of its simpler designs, video stone, audio stone, and even temperature stone were created, all far more sophisticated than the original item that started the film-making revolution. But what was even worse, was that soon after other types of stone appeared, many designs of recording stone appeared all over the world, many of which were even simpler and more intuitive than the original one!

“Layn? What happened? Are you okay?” Noticing the distraught on her partner’s face, Irea forced herself to stand up and rush to him, ignoring the fact that she almost fell to her knees while attempting to reach him. Only when noticing Irea’s wobbly step Layn managed to pull himself out of his daze, instantly reaching out to catch the girl before she could fall.

“I’m sorry… I just didn’t expect to see it here… To see it now.” At this moment, Layn was simply too shocked by what he saw. Because there were only two ways, outside of luck on a damned cosmical scale, for such a thing to appear in ancient times. ‘Aren’t I the only time-traveler in the history of this world? Or is there someone watching over this world and giving the ideas to random people?’ Moving his chin up, Layn took an illusory glance at what was above him. In reality, there was a roof. In his eyes though, Layn was already traversing the vast distances between planets and stars, attempting to logically uncover the presence of someone who could be hiding in the vast expanses of the universe above.

“Won’t it work for us right now though?” Unable to understand the source of Layn’s worries, Irea did the only rational thing she could think of. She attempted to bring the man’s attention back to the topic they were discussing a moment before.

“It will. It will work pretty well.” Guiding a small strand of his mana towards the stone, Layn could see how it shone a bit more bright than it did before. With its aura changing a bit, the recording was now started.

“Test, test, I hope everyone can see us. Right now,” speaking up towards the stone as if he was playing in some kind of recorded prank, Layn approached the window before pushing the shuts open and explaining, “the girl waiting below, was my original way of proving that we didn’t leave this place. Sadly, we couldn’t record what was happening earlier, as neither I nor my beloved girlfriend has the quirk of showing others how we make love to each other.”

As Layn started to utter those pretty embarrassing words, the faces of both Irea herself and the girl waiting below turned bright red.

“Yet, at least for now, we can prove that ever since this recording started, we are not leaving this place at all.” As soon as he said his piece, Layn brought both sides of the shuts together, before putting the stone between them, with its sharp, recording end directed outside. After making sure that the shuts were holding the recording stone properly in place, he then quickly escaped the area where the stone could record his voice.

“Now that we have to wait for the envoy, let’s prepare for the fight.” Not bothering to explain what kind of fight he had in mind, Layn moved a few paces forward before sitting beside the pile of the leftover grade-one stones. After moving five of them away for any and all possible costs, he then divided the pile into two batches. Looking around, he then pointed at a rope that made up a primitive hammock in the outer corner of the room.

“Can you pass this rope to me? I already have mine for myself, but we still need to equip you with the same treasure that we put to use earlier.” Pointing at the rope he usually wore tightened around his waist, Layn couldn’t smile any longer. Even though it would give both him and his woman a great edge over everyone else in the world, creating the mana-sucking treasure was still a pretty taxing job.

“What are you going to do with it?” As her inability to walk properly was slowly fading away, Irea quickly dismantled the simple hammock before passing it to her partner.

“Heh…” Unable to stop this simple expression of joy and pride from surfacing, Layn smiled at the girl before looking up. “You know, you gave me your first time and your whole self.” Lowering his head and looking at the girl with affection, Layn leaned his head slightly to the side.. “Don’t treat it as a payment by any means, but I think you should receive some kind of gift from me as well. How about a treasure…” pausing once again to let the anticipation build up in the girl a bit, Layn’s smile widened “Several times greater than the one we installed in the shrine?”