Bookbound Bunny

B2 - Chapter 64 - Ink and Intrigue

When Lily neared her room, she bumped into Lotte, who had been looking for her after growing concerned about her missing dinner. Lily quickly filled her in on what had happened while dropping off her stuff in her room before departing again.

Lotte had already eaten, but was more than willing to join Lily while she heard the full juicy details of the story. By the time Lily was more than halfway through her meal, she finally finished recounting everything that had happened.

"I say you should go for it, milk the professor for all he's worth!" Lotte said after hearing about Sylwel wanting her to create higher-quality glyph ink.

Lily nodded while chewing on a mouthful of food; the benefits were great even if she was being exploited for her labor. Other than that, both of them were pretty excited for the upcoming test, with Lotte admitting she was very eager to see the look on Alice's face when Lily brought out her secret weapons.

After Lily finished eating, they headed back, and outside her room, two things were waiting. One was a grumpy-looking dragon, and the other was a lidded bucket with a note attached.

Lily quickly ran to give her big sister a hug and was grateful that her body wasn't crushed in return. She hadn't seen Rose since the little incident over Professor Melinia, as the stubborn girl had spent all her free time down in the dungeon, apparently blowing off steam.

The two quickly reconciled before Lotte joined in, with the three entering her room for a chat. Finally, the topic of the strange bucket was brought up. When Lily looked at the note hastily scrawled and signed by Professor Sylwel, she realized it was the ink he had made for her.

I completely forgot about it!

Between the whole enhanced glyph ink contract, the two professors bickering, and everything else, it had completely slipped her mind. She was glad that someone had arranged for it to be delivered, as she was very curious whether transmuted ink would suit her needs.

If it does, I wonder if I should ask Arakil to design a glyph for me? Although if he doesn't want to start me on transmutation yet, I don't want to push him.

With that out of the way, the three girls discussed the upcoming test, with Rose wishing both of them good luck.

"I'm shocked that a proud member of Terravix is wishing two Maranix students good luck," Lotte immediately teased back.

Rose sighed. "If I had my way, both of you would be in Terravix, but unfortunately, rules are rules."

"I think the other factions would throw a fit," Lily replied.

"That's basically what it boils down to," Rose admitted. "While the process is supposed to be entirely random, it seems the other two conveniently got some good students this year to balance things out."

"From the way the Maranix seniors kept going on, it sounds like you really blew away the competition last year," Lily pointed out.

Rose snorted and puffed out her chest proudly. "We won everything except crafting."

"I think Maranix has crafting in the bag this year," Lotte said, gesturing to Lily.

"You're no slouch yourself, I'm sure you'll catch up to me in no time!" Lily encouraged.

"I'm not the one with a professor asking me to share patent rights with," Lotte quickly refuted.

"Really?" Rose asked, she sounded both surprised and yet proud.

"Professor Sylwel wants me to try to make stronger glyph ink," Lily answered.

"Well, in that case, you're definitely the bunny for the job," Rose said, nodding as if it all made perfect sense. "I'm just surprised you've managed to rope someone else into the ink stuff. I figured everyone else would just use blood."

"If it were in blood, then he couldn't get his assistants to activate it," Lily replied.

"I guess that makes sense..." Rose mumbled.

"Maybe his blood doesn't work?" Lotte suggested. "Either that or maybe it's hazardous like mine. Who knows what his experiments did to him?"

Rose looked at the two, puzzled. "What do you mean? How different can he be?"

"Well, he is blue," Lotte answered.

"And... stretchy?" Lily added.

"And drinks poison," Lotte concluded.

Rose rapidly blinked in astonishment. "Do we really have a professor like that in the school?"

"Yes, in the alchemy basement. I don't think he ever leaves it," Lily explained.

"We have an alchemy basement?" Rose asked.

"Where did you think the potions were being brewed?" Lily asked in return.

"Um..." Rose scratched her cheek sheepishly. "I honestly never asked, and I had other people handling the deliveries for me."

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"You have minions?" Lotte gasped.

Rose grumbled. "I wouldn't call them minions... more like fans?"

"You have a fan club?" Lotte gasped again.

Rose sighed. "The Terravix students kind of worship me, if I'm honest. They even want me to be their leader next year, although it sounds like way too much busy work for me. Them helping me out with other stuff is their way of showing that it won't be too much work because I'll have helpers."

"I just hope you don't get forced into it like Bradley," Lily said.

"Bradley is actually a terrifying guy," Rose confessed.

Lotte flinched in confusion. "Wait, what? Are we talking about the same guy?"

"Yeah..." Lily murmured. "No offense, Rose, but he seemed kinda meek during our meet-and-greet."

"And that coming from her should definitely say something," Lotte agreed, gesturing a thumb at Lily.

Rose sighed and shook her head. "I guess you will have to wait and see for yourself."

The two were very curious and tried to press Rose into revealing it, but she became tight-lipped, and they gave up.

I wonder if Rose is trying to prank us...

Lily didn't voice her thoughts and instead moved on to other topics. The three caught up, and eventually the two left, leaving Lily slightly exhausted.

"It's a good thing I already prepared talismans, otherwise I'd need to pull an all-nighter to get them done," Lily said, noticing how late it was already.

Now that she was alone, she also finally had the chance to talk with Arakil. She was very curious about how he felt about everything that had transpired.

[I think the deal works out quite nicely for us, as we have no way of procuring the resources ourselves yet. Even better, if there are leftovers or waste, I should be able to absorb them, meaning that no matter what, we will benefit.]

"And then we can work on modifying the Familiar ritual and removing more restrictions?" Lily asked.

[I'd like to restore more book functions before attempting to remove restrictions, but yes, that should be doable. Having more freedom within my archives would speed up my research, for example.]

"I just thought if you could talk to others, it might give you some more quality of life."

[The gesture is appreciated; however, I believe a two-way telepathy between us would be far more beneficial.]

"Then I can actually respond when you suddenly start talking right in front of the teachers!"

[Indeed, but to properly start on that, we should restore more of my grimoire. The more it's revitalized, the more I can access it permanently without expending any resources. Eventually, when my full archive is recovered, then I can really get to work on advancements.]

Lily nodded, logically agreeing with him although her heart was still feeling conflicted. Lily believed short-term goals would help Arakil and make his life more enjoyable, even if it delayed their ultimate objective. Arakil himself, however, was always looking at the bigger picture and preferred the coldly logical approach.

Perhaps Arakil understood her turmoil from her silence, as he suddenly spoke again.

[I'm not saying we wait until we can restore the archive in full, but even having sections of it permanently recovered will benefit us in the long run.]

Arakil spent some time explaining it to Lily until she was finally happy. He explained that his typical research on a topic could involve hundreds of books, especially if it required extensive resources.

At present, they spent Mana for him to temporarily access a book or scroll in the archive, and while he had a method to somewhat search for the topics he wanted, it was still a bit of a gamble. This was why their original ritual to grant Lily her Mana Core had taken so long, and if he hadn't gotten lucky, it might have taken even longer.

Lily hadn't really understood how Arakil did his research, and now that she had a clearer picture, she could understand why he wanted to repair the grimoire first and foremost. Arakil truly believed that if he had all of his knowledge at his disposal, then there was no limit to what they could eventually accomplish.

[Not to mention, I want to add knowledge from this world into the grimoire as well. At the moment, it's temporary at best.]

After hearing that, Lily had basically no choice but to agree with Arakil. She knew gathering magical knowledge was what he loved, and she desperately wanted to add to the archive herself.

After that, it was getting late, but before she went to bed, she was very curious about the bucket of ink. She removed the lid and filled up an empty inkpot before sealing the bucket again.

"I still can't believe he gave me an entire bucket... I just hope it works, or it'll be a big waste," Lily sighed.

Holding the inkpot in her hand, Lily began her process of gathering Mana and slowly imbuing the ink. To her relief, there appeared to be no issue with her process, and when she finally finished, she was curious to see the results firsthand.

Lily popped open the lid, pulled out a sheet of paper, and grabbed a pen. She quickly drew up a simple glyph and was delighted during the drawing process. The transmuted ink was on par with some of the premium inks Lily had worked with before, much to her delight.

Those were wonderful to work with, but they cost far too much!

Premium inks flowed smoothly and evenly, with consistent line width and color, and less clogging or skipping. Cheap inks, on the other hand, could be watery or overly viscous, leading to blotting, inconsistent flow, or hard starts. That wasn't even getting into the damage they could potentially do to the paper, or worse, the pen!

Good ink feels effortless; bad ink feels like the pen is fighting you.

To avoid blowing through her budget, Lily found a middle-ground solution, but she always wished for the premium experience she had enjoyed while doing her part-time scribe work. Now it seemed Professor Sylwel could create it for her with the snap of his fingers.

Her glyph done, Lily activated it, causing a sphere of warm water to apparate and float above the page. Lily smiled happily at the result—a perfect success—and used the resulting water to clean up before bed.

Lily reported her findings to Arakil, and while he didn't quite share her ink-based enthusiasm, he was pleased they now had a readily available source.

Before hopping into bed, Lily did a final check of her supplies. She had numerous glyphs prepared in all the basic elements, ready for whatever the dungeon would throw at her tomorrow. She was excited, with not even a hint of nervousness, thanks to all of her prep work.

As for Arakil, she was naturally going to still bring him along, except downsized to a notepad and stuffed into her pocket. If anyone asked, she would just say he was unsummoned. If the monsters still tried to attack him, he would be on her person, so it wouldn't make a difference in the eyes of the test.

The reason she was going through all this was twofold: she wanted Arakil to witness her progress, and more importantly, she wanted him to be present for the treasure room at the end.

While Lily assumed she would pick one of the storage bags, she didn't want to accidentally overlook some hidden gem that might be inside. Even if there wasn't some hidden treasure amongst the trash, at the very least, Arakil could help her pick the best storage bag, as she had found out that they came with different amounts of internal storage.

Excited, eager, and ready, Lily eventually fell asleep while dreaming of the big day that awaited her tomorrow.