To Mark the Place

Ethan was definitely a dangerous man.

Ivy came to a conclusion.

He could tell a made-up story with a straight face, making it sound completely true. Just now, she had believed his tale about the Empire's First King and stinky tofu completely, getting swept up in its epic grandeur. She had even thought about visiting the village Ethan had mentioned to try some stinky tofu.

But it had all been lies. In other words, Ethan had spent just a few minutes fabricating an outlandish anecdote worthy of the Heresy War.

Marshall had believed him and paid a painful price.

He kept sticking out his blackened tongue, as if every joy in life had been drained from him.

No wonder Ethan thought he was every bit as good as the noble youths of the Imperial Capital, and only lacked an opportunity. Ivy felt that making him her assistant was a waste of his talents. Someone like him would be better suited to politics, perhaps as a spokesperson for some important institution.

After all, the greatest skill of those spokespeople was making things no one would believe sound completely true.

On the other hand, the inhibitor had worked perfectly. It turned out that Marshall's laughing fits really had been caused by some kind of mental influence from contact with a Cursed Object.

Judging by his furious expression and the way he swung a pillow like a flail—as if he were a Knight in the Kingdom Army during the Heresy War—he had recovered quite well.

The first thing Marshall did after recovering was express his sincere feelings to his attending physician.

"—Get the hell out of my house!"

That was probably the magic of Ethan's charisma. He could always make people who had received a proper noble upbringing since childhood revert to their true nature and start swearing.

"We'll split up. Miss Chloe and I will check out the cursed apartment first. You stay here and ask around."

Even as Miss Chloe carried him out of the mansion under a barrage of pillows, Ethan didn't forget to crane his neck and explain his plan to Ivy.

No matter how the situation changed, Ethan always had a plan.

Ivy watched him being carried off on Miss Chloe's back and became more and more convinced that the man ought to be a politician.

Ethan was also glad to be thrown out of the Great Banker's mansion. Tonight's overtime had come out of nowhere, leaving him no time to work on his business plan. Before leaving Fireplace Bay last night, he had stopped by a tavern. It was the merchant ships' intelligence hub, where all sorts of people gathered. You could hear about major events happening in any country in the world there.

He had paid the bartender one Gold Lion to advertise for him.

The bartender would spread the word that an Elemental Shaper had arrived in Fireplace Bay, offering bespoke Magic Scrolls exclusively for the upper class. He would tailor each service to what the client needed, making it more flexible and better suited to their actual requirements than the fixed spells sold in Magic Scroll shops.

Would you like to experience high-end customization? Would you like an Elemental Shaper to serve you alone?

For just 30 Gold Lions, you could enjoy VIP treatment!

Go find Heisenberg. He would appear on the beach at the southwest end of the docks every Wednesday night.

After all, Ethan had once lived in the twenty-first century and had seen plenty of advanced marketing tactics.

Were Fireball Spell and Ice Arrow outdated for this era?

Maybe they were. But clever merchants had long since found a solution: give outdated products elegant new packaging, slap on a name that sounded impressive, and sell them for dozens of times their original price.

Some called it a tax on stupidity, but enough people fell for it to make the merchants filthy rich.

Ice Arrow was no different.

Put the labels "bespoke" and "high-end service" on it, and you could sell it for 30 Gold Lions.

He had complete confidence in his product. The only question was how to attract his first customers.

As Ethan thought through his business plan, he directed Miss Chloe toward the public apartments in Brookwood Town. He knew the area very well. When he had first arrived in Brookwood Town, he had seriously considered buying a house of just over fifty square meters and having a place of his own.

Later, Ethan discovered that he could stay at the guild for free, so he abandoned the plan to buy a house.

As soon as they approached the apartment building, they saw a prominent sign: "Want a new home of your own? Imperial Union Bank offers all kinds of loans!"

When it came to loans, Imperial Union Bank was always far ahead of the competition. Ethan had heard that the Lofik Consortium had amassed its first fortune by setting up banks across the Empire.

Ethan stood below and looked up. Not a single light shone in the building. It looked utterly lifeless.

And he was here to investigate a haunted house.

The apartment's owner had hanged himself in the bedroom, leaving behind a huge loan from Imperial Union Bank. Under the terms of the contract, the bank had repossessed the apartment and put it up for auction. Marshall had been affected by the Cursed Object while inspecting it and developed a laughing fit.

The name in the documents sent by the Containment Bureau left Ethan sighing. The man had been one of the few people in town who had made a deep impression on him.

Mr. Roxanne, Brookwood Town's clown. After every event, he would hand out balloons to the children. They weren't worth much, but they always brought laughter to the town's kids, who adored him for it.

Ethan had spoken with Roxanne a few times at guild events. At least on the surface, he had seemed like a cheerful optimist who loved his job. He was always saying that bringing joy to others was his calling.

If the Containment Bureau's report hadn't mentioned Roxanne's name, Ethan wouldn't even have known he was dead. Everyone in town had been on edge over the Witch lately, and no one had noticed that a few familiar faces had vanished from their daily lives. Still, it was hard for Ethan to imagine that a man like him would choose to end his life with a rope in his own bedroom.

Ethan used the spare key to open the door and stepped into the clown's apartment for the first time.

But it was hard to find any trace of Roxanne's life there now. The old furniture had been sorted, packed, and stacked in the living room. Imperial Union Bank was already preparing to sell the apartment again. If it hadn't become entangled with a Cursed Object, someone new might have moved in within days.

He switched on the detector and set it on the empty bedroom floor, where Mr. Roxanne had hanged himself.

A beam hung overhead. The marks left by his desperate struggles as he died had cut a clear groove into it.

The tracks in the dust showed that Marshall had also entered this room and stood beneath the beam for a long time. Perhaps he had looked up and seen the groove. He might have reprimanded the staff responsible for handling the aftermath. After all, no one wanted to see the marks left by the previous tenant's suicide while trying to sleep.

The detector made no shrill sound, and its needle stayed in the blue safe zone.

Ethan lifted the gas lamp above his head.

Besides the groove on the beam, he saw something else.

A few small words.

The handwriting was very messy, just a few centimeters from the groove. It was Roxanne's hand. Before ending his life, he had left the world one last message.

"Roxanne was here."

Thanks to Ruizhixiang for the 500 Qidian Coins!

Thanks, everyone, for the monthly tickets and for following the story!