W-Wait, Don’t Tell Me They Found Out About My Alchemy Magic!?
“Hah! To think you’d use alchemy to combine worthless quartz like this. Regular alchemy can’t do something like that.”
“Maybe that’s the difference between magic and alchemy techniques.”
Half a month had passed since the tea party, and today I was working at the sorting site again.
By “techniques,” I didn’t mean Skills. Alchemy wasn’t a Skill, but one type of work performed through knowledge and technique.
I did that same thing with magic.
Because it was magic, mana got involved, and that made things possible that ordinary alchemy couldn’t do.
The pink quartz I gave Tiffany as a present.
The ore mined from the mountain would occasionally contain pink quartz. Most of the pieces were tiny, too small to make anything worthwhile from individually.
So I combined them together into one larger crystal.
“Well, I wasn’t even sure it’d work. I just tried it and it did.”
“The fact you even thought to try it is somethin’ we’d never come up with.”
“That’s probably because regular alchemy can’t do it, so you never thought it was possible in the first place, Boss.”
Alchemy couldn’t do it. It was natural that it couldn’t. If you thought alchemy magic and alchemy were the same thing, then it made sense that the idea of combining gemstones would never occur to you.
“So anyway, Boss. I want you to take a look at this.”
“Hm? What’s this supposed to be?”
I lined up five pieces of amethyst, purple quartz, that had been mixed in with the ore. All of them were pale in color and low in purity. As gemstones, they weren’t worth much.
Then I combined them with alchemy magic. But this wasn’t ordinary combining.
When I was combining pink quartz for Tiffany’s present, a new alchemy option had appeared.
“I think it’s probably something I unlocked because my alchemy magic proficiency went up. Purity Synthesis.”
“P-purity synthesis? D-don’t tell me…”
As the boss stared, the magic circle began to glow.
The five amethysts merged together, becoming one within the seven-colored light. When the glow faded, a single amethyst lay there, its color much deeper than before.
“Wha… what the hell… The stones fused together. And instead of just gettin’ bigger, it actually raised the gem’s value?”
“The purity went up, right? Is it valuable enough to sell on the market now?”
The boss immediately pulled out a loupe and inspected the amethyst.
My heart was pounding.
“Yeah. This thing’s first-rate. If it were just a bit bigger, it’d easily fetch over two thousand pere.”
“To make it bigger, I’d need a few more amethysts to use as materials.”
Two thousand, huh.
Based on the prices from both my previous life and this one, one pere was roughly equivalent to a hundred yen.
An amethyst worth two hundred thousand yen… Maybe amethysts were especially valuable in this world. Well, if the supply was low, that’d naturally drive up the price.
“Young master. There are guests waiting for you at the mansion.”
“Thanks, Margaret. Guests?”
“Marquis Hohenberg-sama and his son, Felix-sama.”
Someone from the marquis house? Could this be about Landfas? We did send apology gifts to the viscount house affected by his behavior, though. Did they not arrive?
“Boss, let’s continue this another time.”
“Yeah. Your face looks tired. Seems like that thing from earlier eats up a lotta mana. Don’t come back here today. Get some proper rest.”
“So you saw through me, huh? You’re right. Purity Synthesis uses a ton of mana… I’ll come back tomorrow.”
My mana still wasn’t enough. I needed to work harder.
I returned to the mansion with Margaret and had her help me quickly get changed.
I was led to the reception room. The only one there was Felix-sama.
“Welcome, Felix-sama… Did something happen?”
Felix-sama wore a grave expression.
Since the marquis himself wasn’t here, he was probably speaking with Father in another room.
“… We may have been hit, Der.”
“Hit? By who? And what happened?”
Felix-sama raised his face and answered:
t
“Landfas.”
Landfas… did something… don’t tell me!?
“T-that idiot stole something from the marquis house!?”
“There’s no proof. But there’s enough evidence to make us suspect him.”
“What was stolen? The things he stole from other houses before were mostly feather pens, toys, books, things like that.”
Maybe he at least understood that stealing expensive valuables from other people’s homes was bad, because he’d never touched high-value items before.
Well, whether cheap or expensive, theft was still theft. Wrong was wrong.
“It was… my great-grandmother’s keepsake necklace. Something Mother treasured dearly.”
“A necklace!?”
Y-you’ve got to be kidding me. He’d never touched jewelry before.
Well, aside from the stuff he stole from our house without hesitation.
“S-so what makes you think Landfas is the culprit?”
“At the tea party the other day, several people saw Landfas and Gustav wandering around the main estate.”
“The main estate? The guest waiting rooms were in the separate wing, so there shouldn’t have been any reason for them to enter the main building…”
Since he didn’t have an invitation, maybe he didn’t know that.
Though he should’ve been told beforehand. Well, there was a high chance he just hadn’t listened to anyone.
“They were also seen near Mother’s dressing room, where the necklace had been kept.”
“Yep, that’s confirmed. He’s the culprit.”
What kind of idiotic stunt had that moron pulled now!?
And so, the marquis had come to Father hoping to resolve the matter quietly.
“If we can just recover it discreetly, that’s enough. But if by some chance Landfas isn’t the culprit… well, it’s that Count we’re dealing with. There’s no telling what kind of absurd accusations he’d throw at us.”
“You’re absolutely right. The Marquis himself should refrain from going there directly.”
How dare you accuse my son of being the culprit! Pay compensation for emotional distress!
Yeah. Uncle was absolutely the kind of man who’d seriously try something like that.
After the marquis and Father finished speaking, Felix-sama returned home with him.
Then came our own family meeting.
In the end…
“We should consult my father.”
“You mean Ojiisama? …Yes, I suppose that’s our only option.”
Grandfather had passed on his title and retired to the countryside.
Up until now, whenever Landfas stole from other houses, Grandfather had personally retrieved the items and returned them himself. Naturally, with apology gifts included.
From what I heard, the necklace had belonged to Felix-sama’s maternal great-grandmother. It was probably incredibly valuable.
How expensive of an apology gift would we even need to prepare for that?
We had to do something before word spread that an item had been stolen from the marquis house during the tea party.
That was what I’d been thinking when…
“Boss, about that twelfth tunnel from before, I think we really should seal it off after all…”
“Y-young master, this is terrible!”
“Dammit, again, Boyes!?”
“Y-yes, Boss. Again. Young master, that man… the damn Count… is here again.”
W-what!?
We only sent a letter to Grandfather yesterday. There was no way it had already reached him.
Why had that bastard uncle come here!?
I hurriedly brushed the dust off myself, got changed, and headed for the mansion. If I didn’t clean myself up, people might realize I regularly visited the sorting site. And if that happened, they might start suspecting things about my alchemy magic. That was why I always cleaned myself up before returning whenever he came.
“Welcome back, Young Master.”
“I’m back. Jii, where’s Ojiue?”
“W-well…”
The head butler lowered his brows and looked upstairs.
Following his gaze, I saw…
“My room!?”
“Y-yes. We tried to stop him, but he forced his way in…”
Up until now, that bastard uncle had never entered my room before.
D-don’t tell me they found out about my alchemy magic!?
What do you think about this chapter?
