(3rd Person POV)
Kaiser and Keanu exchanged a glance. Looking at the two siblings — bright-eyed, questions already tumbling out — it was clear they had underestimated just how far the Wizard of Oz had traveled beyond Eisen City.
The corridor wasn't the place for it. Agustin, catching himself, stepped back and gestured them inside.
"What brings you here? Are you here to show us this film?" Alina asked, barely keeping the excitement out of her voice. "I heard it doesn't use a troupe on stage at all — that the story just shows visuals, like it's actually happening right in front of you?"
"It's called a projector," Keanu said, chuckling. "It casts images onto a screen. So no — no troupe, no props, no repeat performances. The same thing plays every time, exactly as it was shot."
Alina and Agustin stared at him, then at each other.
Kaiser drew their attention back. "Actually, the reason we came is to ask whether you'd be willing to sell this theatre — so that Hellfire can screen the Wizard of Oz here, and future films after it. Would you consider it?"
"You want to buy our theatre just to show your films here?" Agustin looked interested for a moment, then shook his head. "Unfortunately, we can't afford to lose it. This place is our livelihood."
"That's right." Alina nodded. "And without this theatre, I wouldn't be able to achieve my dream of becoming popular and really rich."
"Hmm." Agustin looked at her, his expression softening.
Kaiser's smile deepened. "He-he. Lady Müller, if becoming popular and rich is all you want, Hellfire can certainly deliver on both."
Alina's eyes sharpened with curiosity. "Really?"
Agustin wasn't convinced. "I know Hellfire has been making a lot of noise recently, but a promise like that isn't something you can just make."
"He's right." Alina's tone was measured but honest. "I've owned the Brennach Theatre for two years now. Two years of doing everything I could think of — and in terms of popularity, I'm only known in this city. As for wealth, I'm more comfortable than most, but nowhere near what a merchant or noble would call rich. On that basis alone, becoming popular and rich is easier said than done."
"I understand," Kaiser said. "But that promise is absolutely possible with Hellfire." He leaned forward slightly. "Let me explain exactly how — especially for someone like you, Lady Müller. You'll be wealthy before you know it."
"Can you elaborate?" Alina asked.
Keanu leaned back and watched, content to let Kaiser work.
"You're a genuinely talented woman," Kaiser said. "I watched your performance earlier. It's good — but it's confined to that stage. Can you multiply yourself and appear in many theatres to give the same performance every single night?"
Alina shook her head. "Definitely not possible."
"Exactly." Kaiser smiled. "And since it isn't possible, it's also not possible for you to become as popular and rich as you dream to be." He let that land for a moment. "But with film, it is."
Alina frowned — but she couldn't argue with it.
"We shoot a dance performance of yours — all your charm, all of it captured — and distribute it to theatres across the kingdom. The film plays without you needing to be there. You don't travel, you don't perform twice, you don't spend a single coin. Hellfire shoulders every cost. You receive a fee and a percentage of the earnings. And any tips that come in along the way go directly to you."
Alina and Agustin went still.
It was obviously true. The Wizard of Oz had been running at the Eastern Theatre every day without pause — no troupe worn down, no performance repeated by exhausted hands. The same record, shown endlessly. If that was possible for a story, it was possible for anything.
Why hadn't she thought of that?
"Are you interested?" Kaiser smiled. Then, sensing the hook already set, he pressed just a little further. "And that's only the start. Film isn't limited to dancing. You can be bolder if you want, tell a story, be something more than what a stage allows. He-he — I think you already understand what I'm getting at."
"Furthermore," Keanu added, "if it's the film playing and not you standing on that stage — the priests can't do what they did earlier. They can't walk in and disrupt anything."
"Indeed." Kaiser nodded.
Agustin's expression shifted. That detail had reached him somewhere deeper. If this setup meant his sister never had to stand there swallowing shame in front of a full house again — that changed things.
Alina's eyes closed for a moment. Then a slow smile spread across her face.
"Alright," she said. "You've got me. How about we discuss this further?"
Kaiser's smile settled into quiet victory.
Beside him, Keanu shook his head faintly, genuinely impressed despite himself.
---
Back in Eisen City, the days had settled into a comfortable rhythm.
Leonard and Elira had grown close enough that it showed without effort. They went to the market together, wandered the stalls, bickered over small things, laughed at smaller ones.
Anyone watching them from the outside would have taken them for siblings without a second thought.
With that ease between them established, Arthur moved forward with filming Leon: The Professional.
The shoot was based in the Magicless District — which worked in their favor. Elira knew every corner of it, and that familiarity came through in her performance naturally, without having to be coaxed out. The streets weren't a set to her. They were home.
The same could be said for Leonard. He'd moved through places like this his whole career as part of an S-Rank adventurer party — rough districts, shady corners, the kind of streets where people minded their own business because the alternative was worse.
He didn't need to act comfortable. He already was.
The Axe Warriors kept things orderly. No disruptions, no trouble. There were plenty of curious onlookers — people stopping to watch the strange business of a film crew setting up on their block — but nobody interfered.
This was the Magicless District, and the presence of Arthur and the others, magic users moving through their streets with purpose, was enough to keep most people at a careful distance.
They even shot in the narrow, shadow-heavy streets near the Underground Guild. Nobody bothered them there either.
The story followed the original closely, with adjustments made for a world where magic existed and the divide between those who had it and those who didn't cut through everything.
Leonard played a magicless hired sword — a cleaner, in the quiet professional sense of the word — a man who took contracts and left no loose ends, living alone in the Magicless District by choice, asking no questions and expecting none in return.
Elira played a young girl from the same district whose family was killed by a corrupt mage official who had been skimming confiscated mana cores and eliminating anyone who could connect him to it. With nowhere to go and no one left, she ended up at Leonard's door.
The tension of the story lived in that gap — a magicless girl in a world that had already decided she was worth less, taken in by a magicless man who had built his entire survival around being invisible, now being pulled into something neither of them could walk away from cleanly.
The corrupt official's power came not just from his position but from his magic, and every scene between him and the two of them carried that weight — the feeling that the odds were simply not equal, and that they both knew it.
...
Alongside the filming, Arthur had been quietly working on something else entirely.
As the God of Invention, he had designed a device capable of distributing electricity wirelessly — drawing power from the magic cores harvested from magic beasts, which this world had in abundance.
He had also woven the essence of Ancient Tree leaves into its construction, giving it the ability to broadcast signals for TV. That same essence would do wonders for the Hellphones already sold in the city too.
Each Hellphone carried a trace of Ancient Tree leaf on its own, but the range and speed were poor — inefficient in a way that had bothered Arthur since the moment he first tested them here. A dedicated tower changed all of that.
He called everyone into his office and set the device on the table.
"Have a look," he said. "This is the Electricity Tower."
It didn't look like much. A small, short structure — closer to a miniature tree than anything that suggested raw infrastructure. But for those with sharp enough eyes, there was something there: a faint, hair-thin luminescence running along its surface. Firfel noticed it. Sylwen noticed it too.
Electricity. Completely harmless, and capable of linking to other towers and to any compatible device within range.
Arthur placed a small receiver unit on the table alongside the tower. The receiver itself was simple — it needed to be registered to a tower first, authenticated by a unique signature before any connection could be established between them. Once approved, the tower recognized it and the receiver began drawing electricity from the broadcast, passing it through to whatever device was wired into it.
He ran a short wire from the receiver to the TV. The screen came to life.
"Amazing!" Apollonia leaned forward. "With this, we can actually start selling TVs now!"
"That's the idea." Arthur smiled. "I'll need to run it by Saza and Profellie first — but if we get the permit, I'll have these towers installed across the city for free."
"For free?" Lykan's brow went up.
It didn't fit. Arthur and free didn't belong in the same sentence. The man probably counted coins in his sleep.
"For free," Arthur confirmed.
Lykan blinked. For a brief moment, something almost saintly flickered across his impression of his boss.
Then Arthur said, "Without the towers in place, how does anyone install electricity in their home? And if nobody has electricity, who's buying the TV? The computer? The electric fan, the lights, every other thing they're going to need once they've had a taste of it?" He let that sit. "I install the towers for free. They buy the electronics. And then every month, without fail, they pay the bill."
Lykan went quiet.
"So you're giving away the hook," Firfel said, her smile thin and knowing, "to sell the line, the rod, and every refill of bait for the rest of their lives."
"Ha-ha. Exactly." Arthur chuckled. "This world is going to learn the unique joy of paying an electricity bill."
Firfel, Sylwen, and Apollonia laughed — the tired, wry laugh of people who had lived through exactly that particular joy themselves.
Lykan, for whom electricity was still a completely foreign concept, looked around at all of them and understood only that something had been decided, and that it probably wasn't going to be cheap.