"Sorry to have troubled you, Sir Harold."
"Not at all — I couldn't refuse your request."
After dealing with that worthless son of Marquis Garum, I'd asked Sir Harold to apply pressure, figuring the Absolute Marquis household would try to scheme something.
There was a chance they might go after Randy and Elise again, after all.
Sir Harold, despite being in a foreign land, had won over a great number of nobles as allies and was even on close terms with one of the Elector-Counts.
Nobles were inherently susceptible to pressure from higher-ranking peers and those around them.
But thanks to that good-for-nothing son of theirs, my favor with the invaluable Lord Guyce had been significantly reduced.
He might have turned out to be quite a formidable opponent.
◇◇◇
Some time later, Randy — fully healed by my magic — came to thank me together with his Elise.
They went out of their way to visit me at that run-down little café on the front street of Scharl.
That was all well and good, but they'd heard from their doctor about the regeneration magic and said they wanted to pay for the treatment.
"It's not like I did it because I wanted money."
For that matter, the cost of regenerating a lost right arm and fully restoring a body covered in wounds would probably produce a jaw-dropping sum — enough that I certainly couldn't tell him to "spend the rest of your life paying it off."
I was no patchwork doctor, after all.
"But!"
Randy pressed on, refusing to let it go.
The one who answered, surprisingly, was Scharl, who had been relatively quiet up until then.
"Then hurry up and propose to your girl over there. Because of you, Alan was scared witless back then. Oh, and your family runs a bakery, right? Give Alan an unlimited free-eating pass or something. The kid's got a serious sweet tooth."
How did he even find out.
"...Fine, I got it!"
"Thanks, Uncle!"
"Oh, and keep it a secret that I used healing magic, okay?"
◇◇◇
So anyway, I immediately used the tickets to grab two cakes from Randy's bakery and headed back to Scharl's café.
"Scharl, you want some too? I picked up two."
"Are you really that big of a sweets person? Ah, whatever, wait a sec. I'll brew you some coffee."
"Hang on — you didn't already know I had a massive sweet tooth?"
"No, I didn't. But if I hadn't said that, they never would've backed off, right? Besides, I'd rather die than deal with that sickeningly sweet, enough-to-make-you-spit-out-sugar atmosphere."
"I see."
The whole time we were chatting, Randy and Elise stayed glued to each other, as usual.
Anyway, Scharl and I munched away at our cakes and sipped our coffee.
Scharl turned out to be a real perfectionist. He'd started this front café — a money-losing vanity project disguised as cover for the Dark Guild operating out back — but he'd apparently studied coffee quite thoroughly.
Even the magic tool he used to brew wasn't some latest-model fully automatic machine. It was the hand-cranked kind.
I knew he'd bought that supposedly expensive tool with money extorted from Grandal and money squeezed out of Marquis Hannibal.
"Man, this coffee is really good."
It was hot as hell, black as a demon, yet pure as an angel and sweet as love.
It sure would've been even better if the person serving it were a receptionist at the Commerce Guild rather than the middle-aged pretty-boy master of a small fry Dark Intelligence Guild, but oh well.
"Hmph. Thanks."
"I hope nothing goes wrong from here on out."
◇◇◇◇◇◇
Skills: [Reverse], [Divine Eye], [Sword God], [Fist God], [Spear God], [Blazing Magic], [Freezing Ice Magic], [Clear Storm Magic], [Rock Iron Magic], [Holy Magic], [Dark Magic], [Space-Time Magic], [Thunder God Sword], [Gentleman Thief], [Ninja Master], [Seeker of Truth], [Supernatural Power], [Idaten], [Pain Mitigation], [Complete Status Ailment Resistance], [Dark Spirit's Protection], [Super Intuition], [Heaven's Gate], [Abyssal Contractor], [Magic Hand], [Treasure Search], [Seduction], [Incitement], [Telemesmerism], [Eloquence], [Great Luck], [10× Growth Speed], [Growth Limit Breakthrough]
Rank: Orichalcum
Thank you for reading!