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"A sufficiently powerful figure — even one completely dead — still has their obsession infusing the fragments of their power. It drives those fragments to reshape every body that drinks them, futilely attempting resurrection. But because the fragments are incomplete, or because mortals can't withstand it, the process only ends in collapse — becoming a monster."
Ryan thought his theory made more sense than anything Old Schneider had actually said. At the very least, it explained why the potion kept trying to alter whoever consumed it, and why stronger potions had a stronger effect on the person.
Of course, knowing almost nothing about the upper limits of supernatural power in this world, he wasn't about to treat his own speculation as fact.
What he could confirm from the moment of his transmigration was this: the key to avoiding loss of control and becoming a monster was maintaining a stable mental state. And knowing that much already put him ahead of most.
Having shared that experience himself, he could genuinely understand why an Extraordinary might break down — and it wasn't necessarily just the potion's influence.
The potion's behavior — suddenly hitting you with a wall of pressure, then leaving no trace in between — would naturally produce a sense of helplessness and lost control. And with something like "losing control" hanging over you like an invisible blade, you never knew when it might fall. Even if your rational mind reminded you a thousand times to keep a good mental state, all it took was one bad episode for the doubt to creep in: is this actually working? Once the doubt set in and the resolve wavered, the worry, the fear, the regret, and the pressure could snowball — until the weight of it crushed you.
By that measure, Ryan considered himself fortunate. His transmigration experience had given him at least some concrete understanding of what losing control looked like. There were alternative explanations, yes — maybe the process had simply been interrupted because whoever pulled him here didn't want to waste their effort. But didn't that mean he had even less reason to worry about losing control?
So even if he couldn't be completely certain, it didn't stop Ryan from feeling like he'd swallowed a reassurance pill. He felt his resolve in resisting the potion's influence was now ironclad.
After finishing his one-sou "luxury" lunch, he was down to six sous total — but that didn't stop him from nodding a casual farewell to the bartender and walking, under the entire bar's unblinking gaze, into an unremarkable-looking room.
He pushed the door open. The two men inside, playing cards, recognized him and paid him no further attention. Ryan, familiar with the routine, found the concealed door without trouble and squeezed through.
"Underground market" was technically accurate, but after navigating a passageway that was a bit of a tight fit for someone his size, the market that opened up before him was… smaller than a produce market back home.
Having already memorized the surrounding terrain, Ryan could confirm that his current position was just beneath a patch of building ruins in the slum district, not far from the Kevin bar. Someone had quietly cleared out a modest space to use for these technically-prohibited transactions.
There was genuine merchandise here, but fakes and hard-to-verify oddities made up the majority. Most of the people doing business were ordinary citizens with an interest in the occult. In a world with actual gods, concepts like divination, astrology, meditation, and ritual magic were never unfamiliar — given enough money and patience, even ordinary people could access them. They just wouldn't do anything.
So what changed hands here wasn't necessarily tied to real supernatural power. Tarot cards, pendulums, incense, crystal balls, and other standard occult accessories were all on display, alongside plants and stones that were considered especially pleasing to the gods — useful in rituals of supplication — which also made regular appearances on the stalls.
This, in fact, was a big part of why materials related to genuine supernatural power hadn't been completely stamped out despite the church's strict crackdowns. The occult trappings provided ideal cover — and it wasn't entirely pretense, either. Potions and their ilk were unambiguously part of the occult world; most enthusiasts simply had no idea.
Ryan drifted past the stalls without paying them much mind. His funds were down to six sous, and the big idiot hadn't understood any of this well enough to distinguish real from fake anyway. Having supernatural abilities didn't make him an occult expert — calling himself an enthusiast would be an overstatement.
His main purpose in visiting was to see if anyone was selling Rosselle the Great's notebooks. He was genuinely curious about what his compatriot from two hundred years ago had written in a language no one here could read.
It was still just past noon, and people continued to trickle in through various entrances — buying, selling, browsing. A market this discreet naturally had more than one way in. The Kevin bar was simply one provider of space, taking a cut; access didn't require its approval.
He browsed through the growing activity, looping around a few times, until he finally spotted what he was looking for.
With his enhanced vision, Ryan recognized it before he was anywhere close. The simplified Chinese characters — slightly garbled, but legible. And the content gave him pause:
"March 6th. Damn, the food here is making me constipated…"
So Your Imperial Majesty's sole use of Chinese in writing was to keep a diary. Ryan had not expected that. Given that this man's romantic exploits had reached foreign ears nearly two hundred years after his death, he couldn't exactly have been described as a model of restraint — and yet here was his private writing: the culinary complaints of a constipated conqueror.
He crouched in front of the stall with a carefully puzzled expression.
"Sir, are these Rosselle the Great's notebooks?" He picked up the two pages for a look.
"These are probably copies someone made, not the originals — too many errors and omissions. Someone of his stature wouldn't have originals turning up at a place like this." He kept the observation to himself.
The stall owner, seeing that Ryan had recognized what he was selling, lit up with excitement.
"They are! And I personally went to Beklund four or five years ago and copied these by hand at the Steam Church's Rosselle Memorial Exhibition, which ran several times. After the war, the exhibition was discontinued — what you're holding is essentially the only copy of this content in all of Ruen. How about it, brother? Take it home. You won't regret it."
The Church of the God of Steam and Machinery had previously held missionary rights in the Ruen Kingdom, though its followers had been concentrated in major cities. After the war, the Steam Church was forced to withdraw back to Intis and lost those rights in Ruen.
"Your memory's impressive — the errors and omissions just make it a bit of a guessing game for someone who can actually read it." He kept that thought private too.
Ryan shook his head and stood.
"No, thank you. Buying something I can't read would just be a waste."
The stall owner scrambled to his feet.
"Hold on, brother — doesn't matter if you can't read it. You could pick two symbols and write them on yourself. They really work. I've tried it myself!"
Ryan knew it was nonsense, but he couldn't resist.
"What kind of effect?"
"I feel like women find me more attractive!" The owner immediately rolled up his sleeve, revealing two unsteadily-drawn characters tattooed on his arm — 信 and 机 — "trust" and "mechanism."
"I genuinely thank you for not tattooing 'damn it' on yourself. If you had, I don't know how I'd have kept a straight face." He bit back the laugh and kept it to himself.
Then turned around and walked away without a second glance.
There hadn't been much of substance in the legible portions anyway. One entry recorded the Great Emperor's bewilderment at Intis's social openness — specifically regarding a series of encounters that left him uncertain who had pursued whom. Another noted that he had ultimately converted to the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery on account of someone or something called "Omnissiah."
Beyond confirming that the Great Emperor was also a committed adherent of a certain gaming franchise, the two diary pages mainly demonstrated how genuinely open Intisian society had been — the number of Intisian ladies who had been involved with the Emperor, or with whom the Emperor had been involved, had grown large enough that he'd taken to referring to them collectively as "the ladies."
"Looks like I'll need to find the actual diary through a real Extraordinary after all. Ordinary people are too unreliable. Here's hoping the Emperor wrote something useful in there."
That settled, Ryan extinguished any remaining hope of striking it lucky here and left the market.
As he walked back toward the slum district, his mind turned to more practical matters: money.
The big idiot might have been able to tolerate that decrepit room, but he absolutely could not — no private washroom, shared bathing facilities, hot water not guaranteed, and a queue for all of it. He genuinely could not bear it.
As for how to make money, that was hardly a puzzle for someone who could vanish into shadows and scale walls without a sound. He wouldn't stoop to stealing from honest working people — many of them barely scraped by on a full day's labor, and taking that felt unconscionable.
But the slums weren't just poverty — they were chaos. Law enforcement was essentially nonexistent. He didn't believe for a second that no one there was running some kind of crooked operation. Money from that kind of source he could take without losing a moment's sleep.
As for finding it — with vision and hearing well beyond any ordinary person, the only requirements were patience and time. The sort of business that could only operate under cover of darkness would be even more visible to someone with night vision.
Just watch out for accidentally targeting the same people the Church of the Evernight Goddess's Nighthawks are already watching. He made a quiet mental note.
If something was too egregious and the situation allowed, he could tip off the police directly; if not, he could find a way to draw them over. Punish criminal activity and pocket the proceeds in the chaos — was there a more elegantly balanced income strategy?
Failing all that, his build and the physical conditioning the Assassin potion had given him made him a perfectly viable bodyguard. And the potion had come with combat technique built in — even without his supernatural abilities, he could hold his own.
"Having a marketable skill is a wonderful thing. Easier than job hunting back in my old world, that's for sure."
Author's Note (this chapter):"I genuinely thank you for not tattooing 'damn it' on yourself. If you had, I don't know how I'd have kept a straight face."
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