Satou here. When something big happens, people assume life will go back to normal afterward. But in my experience, major events tend to have ripple effects that prevent that.
“I did not expect you to become the next Great Sorceress, Roro!”
The girls had made it out of the Otherworld and come back to the tower to check in on Tia.
“Even the eyes of the great Arisa-chan could not see that coming!”
Arisa was doing an imitation of a character from a famous post-apocalyptic manga.
Naturally, only I got the reference, so the others just looked confused.
“Keep this secret for the time being, okay?”
“But of course.”
Tia had made that sound like a joke, but the look in her eyes said otherwise.
She was keeping my hero identity a secret, so…
“That’s amazing, Roro!” Lulu gushed.
“Oh, I’ve got a lot to learn!”
Roro was blushing. She was holding puppy Fen in her arms; he’d fought solo by the Purple Moon Core itself and had looked dead tired before passing out.
“Nana, suffering!”
“Nana, gentle!”
“Nana, I’m hungry.”
The hamsters were trapped in Nana’s embrace again.
“Pochi is also starving, sir!”
“Tama could eeeeat…”
“Let’s get you fed, then,” Rimi said. “This way to the cafeteria!”
“Liza, mind taking them?”
“At once.”
The beast girls, Nana, and the hamsters all headed off.
“Roro, will you be leaving the Hero’s Rest to focus on sorcery training?”
“Well—”
“You can do both for now,” Tia said, stepping in. “Sorceress training won’t happen overnight, so you can learn a piece at a time while running your shop.”
They had a long road ahead of them.
She was probably thinking in decades.
“Okay! I’ll do both, then!”
“I’m sure you can, Roro!”
“Thanks, Lulu.”
They smiled at each other.
They’d grown so close.
“You must be hungry, Roro. Go get some food.”
“All right, Tia. Come with me, Lulu?”
They left the room together.
Tia watched them go, and the moment they were out of sight, she collapsed on the bed.
“You okay there?” Arisa asked.
“I’m fiiiine. Just a little dizzy. You can’t stop age’s advance,” Tia said, waving a hand.
“Life,” Mia muttered.
Tia looked at her.
“Overuse.”
“Can’t fool an elf, huh?”
“Fending off the Chaos Soul?”
“That, and the curse took a lot. If you’d arrived a day later, I’d have been in big trouble.”
My AR showed her condition as Weakened.
“No cure?”
“Not right away. Poured the power of my soul in that, squeezing out the magic.”
She must mean the Purple Moon Core.
“If I had an elixir, maybe, but you don’t find one of those every day.”
“Here, take this.”
I’d resupplied, so could easily spare one.
“Thanks. Wow, that’s tasty.”
Tia took it and chugged it without looking at the label.
Multiple magic circles appeared around her, moving up and down like a CT scan.
“Er, huh?” she stammered, rattled.
Eventually the circles were absorbed into her, and she was completely healed.
“…Wow, that deep, heavy fatigue inside me is totally gone.”
She checked herself out.
That was fine, but I’d rather she not unexpectedly peer down her shirtfront.
Arisa and Mia snapped into their iron wall routine, so I didn’t see anything critical.
“Ah-ha-ha-ha!”
Laughing heartily, Tia slapped my back. It kinda hurt, so I wished she wouldn’t.
“You really are ridiculous,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Now I can work with Roro for as long as it takes to get her up to speed.”
Well, good.
It was safe for me to leave her side.
“Stick around a couple more days,” Tia said, just as I was about to leave.
“Tia, I just want to check on the shop…”
“Sorry, Roro. The contract’s only just been formed, so better not leave the tower yet.”
“…Okay.”
Roro hung her head, looking worried.
“Don’t worry, Roro. You’ve got Tovan, and the girls you trained can handle things a while without you.”
“Satou’s right! And I can send someone to look if you’re that worried. Will that do?”
“Yes, thank you.”
With Roro convinced, Tia had her servants take a carefully worded message.
We’d stayed in the tower as well, helping Roro get used to things. Arisa and Mia holed up in the Great Sorceress’s stacks, but I was officially working with Lulu, taking care of Roro—so only got to hit the books once she was asleep.
That meant I was running on fumes, but safe to say the reading was worth it.
The Ancient Language grimoires confiscated from Zomamurgormi were mostly related to demon summoning and curses, so for those I just used my Storage’s OCR function to make copies, while Space Magic books like Generate Another World and Dimension Home I translated into modern languages and handed off to Arisa.
Pretty sure that first one was made with Ritual Magic and created the Otherworld Zomamurgormi had been hiding out in. It was a single spell that filled a thick tome, and I heard Arisa mutter she’d likely lose her mind mid-cast. There were supporter spells included, so the main caster’s incantation would likely be a bit shorter, but still.
Didn’t want to just reap the benefits and leave, so I loaned Tia several books I deemed safe to make public and that I figured she’d be interested in.