The departure of the silent assessor, Silas, did not bring relief. It brought a new, colder kind of fear. The eye of the Argent Hand had seen them, evaluated them, and now, somewhere in a distant city, a verdict was being decided. Ray knew he couldn’t wait for that verdict to be delivered. He had to change the equation entirely. He had to give them a new story to read, a new target to assess. He had to give them a ghost. His phantom patron, the last scion of the lost House Lumina, needed to feel real. And in the world of men like Silas, reality was measured in two things: power and gold. Power was an illusion he could create with his performance, but gold… gold required evidence. The thought consumed him for days. How could a penniless nine-year-old, confined to a crumbling keep, create evidence of a vast, hidden treasure?

He sat in his room, a piece of charcoal in hand, sketching on a slab of slate. The war room in his mind was in full session, the Cognitive Aegis making the Concurrent Immersion of three personas a manageable, if still draining, task.

Courtier: “We cannot produce a literal treasure chest, It is a logistical impossibility. Therefore, the evidence must be subtle, yet powerful. A single, perfect breadcrumb that hints at the existence of the entire loaf.”

Conman: “Subtlety is for suckers, You don’t want a breadcrumb; you want a baffler. Something so weird, so unique, they can’t just dismiss it. You don’t need a chest of gold. You just need one impossible coin.”

The idea was brilliant in its simplicity. A single coin, if its properties were strange enough, would be far more intriguing to a group like the Argent Hand than a simple bag of sovereigns. It would create a mystery, and mysteries demand investigation.

Scholar: “The composition and design are paramount! A standard gold sovereign would be meaningless. But a coin from a lost house of illusionist mages? It must be unique. The texts on metallurgy I reviewed suggest that ancient Eldorian houses sometimes used unique alloys. Not pure gold, but a blend, gold for value, silver for luminescence, and a trace of copper for durability. They called it ‘electrum.’”

The plan solidified. Ray wouldn’t create a gold coin. He would create an electrum coin of House Lumina.

The first problem was acquiring the raw materials. Silver and copper were manageable. He had, with a pang of guilt, used his Sleight of Hand to procure a small, forgotten silver button from one of his mother’s sewing kits and a few bits of copper wire from a broken sconce. But gold… gold was impossible. Or was it? He thought of the library, of the dusty, cracking books. Many of the most ornate volumes had gilded lettering on their spines. It wasn’t much, but it was real gold leaf, painstakingly applied. It would have to be enough.

For the next two days, Ray became a book vandal. Under the guise of his usual quiet reading, he would find a secluded corner of the library and, with a small, sharp stone, carefully, painstakingly scrape the minuscule flakes of gold from the spines of a dozen ancient tomes. It was a desecration that made the Scholar persona ache, but the Grizzled Veteran’s grim pragmatism won out. By the end of the second day, he had a tiny pile of shimmering dust, barely enough to fill his littlest fingernail.

The second problem was the forge. He needed intense, focused heat. The keep’s forge was out of the question, and the kitchen fires were too public. The only place he had privacy and a hearth was his own bedroom. It was incredibly dangerous. That night, he began the alchemical stage of his plan. He laid a thick, flat stone on the floor of his fireplace to serve as his workbench. His crucible was a hollowed-out, fist-sized rock he’d found. He activated the Stoic Assassin persona, needing its absolute focus and steady hands for the perilous work ahead.

He built a small, intense fire in the hearth, feeding it with splinters of dry wood. He placed the stone crucible in the heart of the flames, waiting for it to glow with heat. Then, he added the silver button and copper wires. He watched them begin to soften, to lose their shape, the metals slowly weeping into a single, shimmering pool.

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The final ingredient was the gold. He tipped his precious pile of gold dust into the molten mixture. A part of him, the old actor Alex Chen, couldn’t help but marvel at the absurdity of it all: a nine-year-old boy, in a drafty castle bedroom in another world, attempting to create a magical alloy with stolen materials and a makeshift forge.

While the metal melted, he worked on the mold. He had procured a piece of soft, damp clay from the edge of a stream. He flattened it out and, using the rusted nail from his earlier training, began to carve the design he and the Scholar had conceived. He didn’t carve a king’s head. The sigil of House Lumina, as he imagined it, was a stylized, open eye, with seven rays of light emanating from it. Around the edge, he carved flowing, rune-like symbols that looked ancient and esoteric, but were in fact meaningless patterns he invented on the spot. Once the alloy in the crucible was completely molten, a shimmering, pale-gold liquid, came the most dangerous moment. He had to pour it. Using two sticks as crude tongs, he carefully lifted the glowing hot crucible from the fire. His hands, even guided by the Assassin’s precision, trembled from the heat and the weight. Sweat poured down his face. A single slip would mean a serious burn and a disastrous fire.

He held his breath and poured. The molten electrum flowed into the clay mold with a soft hiss, steam rising from the damp clay. He set the crucible down and watched as the metal began to cool, its bright, liquid glow dulling as it hardened. After what felt like an eternity, it was cool enough to touch. He broke the brittle, baked clay of the mold. And lying in the center was his creation. It was imperfect. The edges were rough, the surface slightly pitted. It was clearly not the product of a royal mint. But it was also undeniably unique. It was heavier than a silver coin, but its color was a pale, silvery-gold, unlike anything else in the kingdom. The strange, runic symbols and the unblinking eye on its face gave it an aura of immense, forgotten age. It was a perfect lie.

[SKILLED APPLICATION DETECTED]

[OPERATION: ‘THE ALCHEMIST’S GAMBIT’]

[PERFORMANCE EVALUATION: INSPIRED]

[Host successfully executed a complex, multi-disciplinary task involving larceny, metallurgy, and sigil-crafting under extreme environmental and physical limitations. The creative synthesis of knowledge from multiple archetypes to produce a key strategic asset is a mark of exceptional ingenuity. Largest Mastery Gain.]

[MASTERY GAIN: Larceny +5%, Deception +8%]

[INSPIRED RESULT: You have successfully reverse-engineered a basic metallurgical process. New Sub-Skill Unlocked: ‘Basic Forgery (Metallurgy)’.]

He held the coin in his palm, a wave of triumphant exhaustion washing over him. He had done it. He had created the first piece of physical evidence of the existence of House Lumina. He had forged a single, gilded lie.

But the creation of the prop was only the first act. Now came the far more delicate matter of placing it on the stage. The coin couldn’t just be found by anyone. A common farmer finding a strange coin would be a village curiosity, nothing more. A guard finding it might turn it over to his father, which was a risk he couldn’t afford.

Detective:“The discovery must be controlled,”

Scholar: “The information needs to travel up the correct channels. It needs to be found by someone who will understand its strangeness and who has a direct line to the people we want to spook. An agent of the Hand,”

One of their local assets.

Ray’s mind immediately pulled up the list he had memorized from his father’s ledger. There were several names, but only a few were plausible targets. Loric, the stable master, had been “erased,” a grim reminder of the stakes. That left two primary candidates in the village.

Detective:“Target option one: Anya the Weaver, she supplies the keep with linens. Plausible, but her circle is small. The rumor would be slow to spread beyond the castle walls.”

Conman: “Target option two: Tiber the Fletcher, Now that’s a stage! A fletcher’s shop is a crossroads. Guards, hunters, traveling mercenaries… They all need arrows. It’s a natural hub for gossip and news. A story of a strange coin found there would spread like wildfire.”

Courtier: “A craftsman of martial goods reporting an unusual discovery would be taken seriously by his handlers. The Argent Hand values any information that deviates from the norm. Tiber is the optimal vector for disseminating this new narrative.”

The decision was unanimous. Tiber the Fletcher was the mark. Ray looked down at the unique, silvery-gold coin in his hand. He now had “the what,” the physical evidence. And he had “the who,” the perfect person to find it. All that remained was the most difficult piece of the puzzle: “the how.” How was he, a boy under constant, suspicious watch, going to get to the village and plant this coin without anyone noticing? He needed a plan, a performance so perfect that no one would ever suspect the truth. He needed a reason to see Tiber the Fletcher.

His eyes drifted to the small practice bow propped in the corner of his room, its string old and frayed. A slow, cunning smile touched his lips. He had his reason.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep