The mage nodded. âOh yes, I was quite serious,â she said. âI collect knowledge. This means collecting books. I seek to control access to the knowledge Iâve obtained, but that doesnât mean they vanish into the Voileâs maw, never to be seen again.
âIt simply means that the books in the library are mine, and if someone wishes to gain the knowledge they contain, they need to go through proper channels first. Like you have done just now.
âYou have your goals, Marisa, and I mine. Your goal of becoming a youkai magician does not harm mine in any way, so I have no reason to try to stop you. All I want is that my library and my rules be respected while you use the knowledge Iâve collected to further your goals.â
âSince youâve agreed to do that, our accounts will be balanced, and we can move forward.
âA word of warning, though; depending on what books you ask me to copy, I may have to take longer to do the work. The more magical power a book contains, the more it takes out of me to duplicate it, so youâll need patience, but whatever work I agree to do will be done.â
This was a profitable day. Patchouli would be getting her books back, and ending all of Marisaâs raids on the library. All it would cost her was letting Marisa in to do her research and making copies of books the other magician requested as she wanted them. Which, as long as Patchouli didnât actually lose any books, was no burden at all. When she wasnât blasting through walls and slinging magic at her, the blonde witch was hardly the worst company.
As for the other half of the priceâŠ
âI suspected that was the case; you might have been able to do better business if your shop wasnât in the depths of the Forest of Magic, where only the strongest or most foolish would dare to enter, but thatâs not for me to judge. Calling it store credit sounds better than âlet me come into your house, rifle through your stuff, and take what some random things I want when I want toâ, donât you think? Maybe I can drum up some more business for you this way.
âBesides, if what I want isnât in your possession, finding it gives us something to do, doesnât it?â
Marisa, of course, recognized that Patchouli was probably getting the better end of the deal, but that didnât really matter to her. Transcending her humanity was everything, and if this helped speed that along past, you know, âan indeterminate amount of years after my death,â then it was all worthwhile.
And so, she stood and listened, to all that Patchy had to say. And in the end, Marisa had a smile of her own.
âHeh, the shop location was tâkeep dumbasses from fuckinâ up half the countryside. Now, I will say, there are three things in mâhouse that yâdonât get. My tsuchinoko, my ICBM, anâ... the Hakkero. Kourin made it for me, anâ me alone. As for the adventurinâ part... mm. Yeah. I like the soundâa that.â