Aside from my education, the only other thing I could rely on was my own personal experiences - which were limited given my age. Not to mention I had spent most of my time cooped up in my room or at work, so I had very few new interactions here in Libraria.

  But an opportunity to change that was soon approaching.

  I should’ve known that there was something off with the decorations being put up around the city, but I didn’t really pay too much attention to it until Granny Qi mentioned something.

  “There was a favor I wanted to ask of you,” she said over dinner.

  “Eh? Of course, absolutely, what is it?”

  “Don’t agree without knowing what it is first,” she said. “The Spirit Festival is coming soon, and I intended to go back to visit my home village. I used to make the journey on my own… but with my age, it’s a bit harder to do so. I was wondering if you’d be able to accompany me for a few days…”

  I couldn’t say ‘no’ to a simple favor like that given all that Granny Qi had done for me. “I would have no issue… but the thing is my job…”

  She waved her hand as if this would not be an issue. “Tell them you want a few days off for the Spirit Festival - they’ll understand.” She paused while she took a sip of the broth I had helped make. “But you won’t get paid for the days you’ll be away.”

  My finances would take a slight hit then, but on the other hand, if I wasn’t working I could focus more on making my own grimoires. Granted, I had hit a bit of a mental wall there, but perhaps some fresh air and getting out of the city was what I needed to get some inspiration?

  I was used to how the translation system of this world worked somewhat by now, but it was still odd to see her say ‘Spirit Festival’ because it looked like the word in her own language was much longer - such that her mouth was moving for three times as long as what I ended up hearing.

  It was possible that the festival was called something completely different in her language, likely why the actual word was so long, but the magic for whatever reason chose to simplify and shorten it to ‘Spirit Festival.’ There were times when I didn’t fully understand why the translation system of this world translate things in the way that it did. It usually did not translate names, but had still chosen to simply translate this holiday’s name as ‘Spirit Festival.’

  “Alright, I’ll have a talk with my supervisor tomorrow,” I told Granny Qi. “How long will the trip take?”

  “We’ll be gone for six days,” she said. That didn’t seem to that long. She then gave me a strange look that seemed to be filled with… guilt, strangely enough of all things. “In that case, if you’re coming along with me, it’s okay if you don’t pay rent this month.”

  “Uh, you don’t need to go that far,” I said. As far as I knew, the rent was the only source of income Granny Qi had. I didn’t know if Hei Nan had a pension or whatever, given such a thing was unlikely to exist in this time period as per my understanding, but regardless, Granny Qi had already done so much for me. Demanding payment in exchange for something so small seemed extremely petty.

  “No, no, forget about it,” Granny Qi said. She still seemed to be looking askance for some reason.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked her. I could tell something was off.

  She sighed. I recognized that look on her face - it was the same one my parents had before they had told me my hamster died in third grade. In other words, it was a portent that uncomfortable news was about to follow. “I… have been overcharging you for rent…” she said so softly I barely caught on to it.

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  “Huh?”

  “You heard me right,” she said, slightly louder, guilt now evident on her face. “I expected you to haggle it down so I jacked the price up initially when we talked about rent… I didn’t expect you to agree immediately!”

  “Oh,” I said. Was that it? I mean, I had noticed that haggling for goods was quite common here. You wouldn’t see that back where I lived since everything was at a fixed price. I had heard of people jacking up the price before negotiations like that as well, which is why I had forced myself to learn to haggle over the past few weeks. I had to admit that my skills in that regard were incredibly weak though, I had seen other people on occasion drop the initial price by as much as forty percent!

  I just wasn’t used to haggling, so I was sure that I was paying at least ten or twenty percent extra for certain things, but, all I could really do on that front was to try to get better at it.

  I hadn’t thought about rent in that aspect, though I guess with hindsight it sort of made sense. I wasn’t angry or anything though, because it was Granny Qi after all, and I couldn’t be angry at her.

  “Yes,” she said. “And you’ve been overpaying for half of the stuff you bring in here,” she added this with exasperation. “So, it’s fine if you don’t pay rent this month, alright?”

  “Fine then,” I said. Had that really been bothering her that much?

  The next day, I told Mark that I wanted some time off from work for the Spirit Festival. It seemed that saying ‘Spirit Festival’ allowed him to understand it - I had been worried that something might get lost in translation even with this world’s magic as I was repeating something in one language translated to another one, while Mark would hear a third language. “Sure, just don’t expect to get paid for the days you have off.”

  The Spirit Festival seemed to be more of a human tradition as I saw that the lizardmen paid little attention to it - but nearly every human shop had hung out lanterns or banners and looked like they were getting ready for the festivities. I asked around about it and many of them said that they would be shuttering their shops during the time of the festival.

  Granny Qi was right, Mark hadn’t seemed all too surprised when I had asked for time off, so I guessed this was all just something expected from humans here in Arconia.

  I had my own preparations to make for the trip - first of all was which stationary to take with me. It would take a day to get there and a day to get back, so we’d only be there four days. However, if I had all that time to myself, unlike normal days when I had to go to work, I could still theoretically squeeze out two Rank Two grimoires if I was lucky.

  I got several sheets of paper from a shop - the paper that I bought was recycled and lacked the sheen that the one in Lauren’s shop had, however, the grimoires in the shop had to be sold to customers so it was important that it be on higher grade paper. As it was, the cost of the paper itself was minimal to the cost of the labor that went into making a grimoire, so it was no issue for bookstores to use higher quality paper.

  For me though, who was just making them for myself most of the time, recycled paper was more than good enough.

  As for ink, I had unfortunately been unable to find an exact substitute for the one used in my fountain pen, but there was one that ‘close enough’ - at least I hoped so. I had been using it and I didn’t notice any damage to it, and it was working fine for the time being. I would need to take an ink bottle with me though.

  Other than that, there were other things like food and the like to arrange, though Granny Qi had that part down.

  Granny Qi had rented out a horse and a cart for the journey. Neither the horse nor the cart were anything special, but we weren’t exactly carrying all that much with us either as this was not a business trip and we weren’t going there with the intention to buy or sell anything.

  We had to get up at the crack of dawn if we hoped to reach her village by sunset on the first day of the trip.

  “Before we head out of the gate,” Granny Qi told me. “Make sure you let them know about your legally acquired demonic grimoire - else they’ll throw you in the slammer the moment we get back.”

  Usually, when a country or organization developed a new kind of grimoire, they would keep it under wraps, especially if it was a high-ranking grimoire. Rank One and Rank Two ones might be put up for sale for a premium, however, sometimes even that kind of trade was initially forbidden for some very useful spells. I was sure that [Invisibility] would probably fall into that category.

  There were a few exceptions to this though - such as the [Inspection] and the [Demonic Detector] abilities. The first one let you know the ranking of a Liberomancer so long as they consented to it and allowed you to shake hands with them. This was often used at city gates and other toll places. You could refuse to consent to the search, but you would then be denied access to the city. It was kind of like the security clearance at an airport back on Earth.