Although we had unexpectedly ran into both Frea-san and Eingana-san, this time’s Lilia-san didn’t seem to be upset, and looked rather pleased instead.

  I guess I should have expected this as she’s a fan of the Four Great Demon Dragons, and rather, it seemed like she welcomed this encounter.

  Well, leaving Lilia-san’s greetings later, we should finish shopping at this store first. Eingana-san was especially interested in Alice’s store.

  [……These are wonderful. Shopkeeper, do you have a lute?]

  [Yes, we do. It’s over here.]

  [This is one of the Jupiter series…… I never expected to see the real one here. How much is this?]

  [480 white gold coins.]

  Expensive! In Japanese yen, isn’t that already 4.8 billion yen!? No, I’ve certainly heard of musical instruments that cost several hundred million yen…… but the cost of that thing is just off the charts.

  However, the fact that Eingana-san, who obviously seems to know a lot about musical instruments, said “I never expected to see the real one here” must mean that it’s extraordinarily rare.

  [I’ll buy it.]

  And she immediately bought it!? It’s just a guess, but that lute is also probably made by Alice. For Alice, the profit for that seems to be tremendous.

  Well, I did hear how scarcity gives something value, so I suppose there weren’t that much of things in circulation……


  [I’ll also have that violin.]

  [Yes, that would be 120 white gold coins.]

  [Well then, here you go.]

  That’s a total of 600 white gold coins…… I’ve never done that kind of shopping before, but Eingana-san is a wealthy person, as one would expect from an executive of the Six Kings.

  It was an expensive purchase, but Eingana-san looked very satisfied with her purchase.

  [I’ve made a great purchase…… However, shopkeeper…… Who in the world are you? For you to acquire items like this, I can’t think of you as normal at all.]

  [……Fuuu, indeed, I’m not just a Transcendental Beauty Shopkeeper in a beautiful swan costume———]

  [Ahh, that guy’s the Phantasmal King.]

  [————Kaito-saaaaaaaaaan!? Why are you revealing that!? I was just about to reveal my identity after I made the coolest introductory remarks!!!]

  [It was gonna take long and feels like you’ll be annoying so……]

  [Aren’t you too harsh!?]

  That aside, that creepy chicken costume of hers was a swan huh…… To be honest, with it being white, at worst, I thought it would be some kind of duck.

  [Oh, it was actually Phantasmal King-sama…… I’m sorry for my rudeness.]

  [For my comrade to realize that though, that was splendid. Easily recognizing Phantasmal King-sama’s identity, whose quality of magic power is completely different from ours……]

  [No, well, rather than her magic power…… the fact that there are no other people who wear such a creepy stuffed costume makes it easy for me to tell.]

  [Kaito-san, Kaito-san, do you know what creepily cute is?]

  [Yeah, I know that, but in my mind, your stuffed costumes don’t fall under that category.]

  Hearing Frea-san’s words, I thought for a moment that it was quite obvious, but after thinking about it again, I realized that if I didn’t know that Alice was wearing costumes like that, I probably wouldn’t know either.

  Besides, if someone had only met Alice as the Phantasmal King, it’s possible that they’d mistake her for some charismatic king.

  [……Even though she’s originally smart, she’s an idiot.]

  [I wonder why? I feel like I’m being treated like a big idiot here. I mean, didn’t you just say that out loud……]

  Well, putting that aside, I couldn’t just chat with Alice for too long here, so I decided to say goodbye to her at an appropriate moment and joined the others.

  [Speaking of which, where are Frea-san and Eingana-san heading now?]

  [We were going to see the Sky Flower Princess Ariel’s performance…… but Eingana wanted to see the instruments for sale, so we ended up moving the time of watching to the next play on schedule.]

  [What a coincidence. We were actually just about to see Ariel-san’s presentation too.]

  It really may have just been a coincidence, but it seems that we’re going to the same place as the two of them. While talking like this, we arrived at the place Lilia-san and the others are waiting for us.

  **********