Published: February 1, 2026
This is a story about what happened in Parteda after Lizel left.
You can skip it without missing anything important in the main story.
It happened when Lizel first visited the Commerce Nation (Malcaid).
Perhaps because rumors had started spreading among adventurers about “an adventurer who looks like a noble,” Lizel ran into someone impersonating him. “Impersonating” in the sense that the other party didn’t actually know Lizel himself; he was just an adventurer using the rumor to pretend to be a noble and act as outrageously as he pleased.
As the rumor passed from mouth to mouth, it grew more and more exaggerated, until people ended up saying, “There’s a noble using his status as a shield while working as an adventurer.”
As baseless as it was, quite a few people had actually seen “that noble-like adventurer.” And when someone who had seen him in person said, “I’d be more shocked if he wasn’t a noble,” the rumor felt even more credible—credible enough that a fake could get away with pretty much whatever he wanted.
And what did Lizel, who saw this with his own eyes, do? He just watched that fake and laughed. As long as nothing harmed him personally, he let it be.
Incidentally, no one ever spots on first meeting that Lizel is the adventurer from the rumors. Only when he’s wearing his gear and standing inside the guild do the people around him start to think, half in doubt, “Oh, does that rumor mean this guy?”
The reason is simple: he doesn’t “seem like” a noble—he looks like the genuine article. So even those who know the rumor almost never connect Lizel with “adventurer.”
That was exactly why the impersonators had always succeeded so far. As long as they picked people who didn’t know anything, they could flash around that fake authority, be treated like nobles, and enjoy themselves.
What they didn’t realize was that they had simply been lucky; they had always been surrounded by people who knew Lizel, but didn’t know Lizel was an adventurer.
They had no idea that, in the Capital City (Parteda), they were about to discover that “ordinary people don’t know much about adventurers” was not the norm.
Judge was cleaning the shop in a bit of a daze.
How many days had it been since Lizel left the Capital? No, it wasn’t something he could possibly forget.
But the loneliness he felt was different from simply losing a valued customer. His back, which tended to slump a little even on normal days, drooped further, his shoulders sinking until he was even more hunched.
If only he could hear that calm, faintly sweet voice calling, “Judge-kun.” If only the door would quietly open, Lizel would look his way, narrow his eyes in that soft way and smile as he called his name.
Judge knew he had done the right thing by not saying “Don’t go,” but even so, he still thought he should have said it. Propping his chin on the broom he was squeezing, he let out one more sigh—just one of the countless sighs he’d breathed out since that person left.
“Excuse me.”
“Ah, yes.”
Startled by the sudden appearance of customers, Judge hurriedly propped the broom against the wall.
It was a group of three he’d never seen before. Judging by their clothes, they were probably adventurers—but the man standing at the front was dressed in a strangely odd manner.
Adventurer gear, usually made to order from monster materials, tended to be quite individual, reflecting the adventurer’s own design wishes. But lacking practicality meant death, so it was rare to see lightweight equipment made purely for looks. Yet this man wore gaudy gear, contrived to scream “high-born” at a glance.
As Judge tilted his head, thinking “What a strange person,” the broom, hidden from the visitors by a shelf, quietly slid into and merged with the wall as if sucked in. No one noticed.
“I heard you sell spatial-magic bags here that you can’t even find in the central district?”
“Yes, we currently have these three items…”
“They’re genuine, I assume. I find it hard to believe a young shopkeeper like you could get his hands on such rare goods.”