Rather than heading for the section with grimoires, Granny Qi went to a place where there were many hawkers selling fruit in open stalls. She was clearly looking for something, though when I asked her what, she just waved me down and resumed searching.

  We wandered around this place for about ten minutes before she found what she was looking for - a bunch of round fruit which resembled peaches though they had dark violet skin and looked rougher in texture.

  “This is the Rikela fruit,” she explained. “Back when I was a young girl, I lived on a farm with six other siblings. We were dirt poor - we didn’t even own the roof above our houses and had to farm our village chief’s land to eke out a meager existence. One day, I saw the daughter of the village chief munching on one of those fruits while I was out helping my father transport carrots, and I pointed to it and asked him if I could have one. He laughed and told me that it was expensive, and that I wouldn’t be able to afford one in my entire life no matter how hard I tried, and to give up on ever trying to eat one.” She had a distant look in her eyes, as if she wasn’t standing here, in Arconia, but in a farm miles away and decades past. “I always knew we were poor deep down even back then, I mean, for heaven’s sake, we didn’t even have shoes… but it was when he said those words that I truly felt the weight of how little we had.” She went over to the stall and picked one up, examining it.

  “During our third - no, I think it was our fourth - wedding anniversary, it turns out that my husband had heard me mention that story sometime in passing,” she continued. “We weren’t as well-off as we are now back then, he was still just a Rank One during those days, but he still scrounged enough money to buy us a few to enjoy during our anniversary. I thought he was saving that money up for another grimoire - and I even chastised him at the time for buying them for me. The money would be better spent on something like a grimoire, or saving up for a house, I thought, even as I felt tears coursing down my face as he handed them to me.” She turned to me and had a sly smile on her face. “Do you know what the funniest part of that story is?”

  “What?” I asked her.

  “They did not taste good at all!” she said and then laughed for nearly a minute. “Ah, I pretended otherwise of course, how could I not after all he had done to buy them? Of course, as the years went on we could afford it more often, and I actually grew to somewhat like the taste.” She handed the stall owner a few coins as she handed me a Rikela and she took one herself. “Enjoy!”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I took a bite - it tasted a lot like a kiwi, though there was a hint of blueberry mixed in - that was the best way I could describe it.

  “Not bad,” Granny Qi said, munching on it. “Though quite honestly, not very good either.” The stall owner seemed slightly offended, but she waved her hand. “Nothing against your produce, good sir, only that I was never a fan of this in the first place.”

  She still bought some more as she began walking to another section of the city, seemingly lost in her own memories as she had a dream-like smile on her face.

  “Right, how could I forget? Let’s get you registered for the tournament,” she said as if she had suddenly remembered it out of nowhere.

  The tournament had an entry fee of fifty denarii, though as I was affiliated with Lauren’s shop, I got a discount and got in for twenty-five. The rounds would start tomorrow afternoon, so I had the rest of the afternoon free.

  It was then that we headed towards the section that we were really here for - the books!

  Just because magical grimoires existed in this world, didn’t mean that people had stopped writing actual books. There were many of these on display - poems, novels, textbooks - everything that you’d expect.

  I even saw something which I thought resembled an old-style printing press - at least, I thought so. I didn’t have the faintest clue as to how an old-style printing press actually worked, but it looked like pictures I had seen in some history books.

  If only it was possible to somehow mechanize the process of making grimoires - I thought this for the hundredth time since coming to this world.

  But asking why you couldn’t do that was like asking why the sky is blue.

  “What are you looking for?” Granny Qi asked.

  “The cheapest Rank One grimoires I can find,” I told her. I was going to hold off on buying a translation device, in case I won one from the tournament, but I was so close to getting to Rank Two and starting to experiment with creating Rank Two grimoires that I was just looking for anything that could fill my remaining Rank One slots.

  The prices for most grimoires in Arconia had gone up since the Book Fair started, but that had only been in anticipation of selling them during the Book Fair.

  I, on the other hand, wanted to buy something from a distant land. Sure, many of the selections offered were expensive, but I was sure that I could find something on the cheaper side.

  Most people did not have the money to rent out a proper shop for the occasion, and so had set up stalls much like the fruit vendors had. There were people yelling out prices, and displaying what they had on sale.

  I saw over twelve different kinds of scripts as we walked - but none of them resembled any kind of script that I had known from Earth.