"Creak—thump."
The carriage door, painted in reddish-brown lacquer, was gently shut from the outside by the convoy captain, whose face was full of fawning smiles.
The soundproofing was fairly good.
The hawking, shouting, and even cursing that had filled his ears suddenly dropped in volume as the door closed.
For a moment, all that echoed inside the carriage was the long, slow sound of breathing, and the faint scrape and clink of a coin rubbing against flesh and palm.
As if it had been specially selected, the Silver Coin had a rich luster. There was little grime in the lines on its surface, and almost no sign of wear.
Tossed up and down in his palm, it did not seem to be anything special.
But if you stared at that seemingly ordinary coin without blinking, you would notice—
The speed and trajectory of its rise and fall seemed somewhat different from what they ought to be.
At the tip of a long, well-defined index finger, the silvery-white coin swayed slightly. The thumb braced beneath it suddenly exerted force.
Whoosh—
The Silver Coin flipped as it was lightly flicked upward.
Under normal circumstances, once that coin had left his hand, its speed should have gradually slowed under the combined effects of air resistance and gravity, approaching zero at its highest point.
But right now, as the Silver Coin spun and rose, it strangely maintained a constant speed.
As though, for that brief fraction of a second, it had broken free from the control of the earth's gravity.
Then came the pause.
The coin rising at a constant speed seemed to strike an invisible wall, stopping once more at the highest point where, under the influence of multiple forces, its speed should originally have been reduced to zero.
Only, compared to the