Chapter 34: The Scroll Printer’s Trial

“Can’t I just not go?”

Aurora tried one last time to salvage her plan.

She raised her right hand, striking a pose like she was about to fall and fake an injury.

“Hunting is such a rough activity. I’d die if I went out. I’ll just stay home obediently, promise I won’t cause trouble, eat and sleep on time every day, more regular than a monastery nun.”

Marquis Ed wasn’t buying any of it. He didn’t even lift an eyelid.

“No.”

“Why? I’m old enough to watch the house, aren’t I? If really needed, let Balian stay and watch me…”

“Besides me, Balian will also be accompanying.”

Ed cut off her fantasy, pointing casually at the attendant standing nearby.

“He will serve as my proxy knight, competing in the tournament for me. With both of us away from the capital, leaving you alone? I’m afraid when I come back, I won’t find my Marquis mansion on this street.”

Aurora pouted, clearly protesting her father’s distrust.

“Then can he not go?”

Aurora’s nature always sought compromise. Being watched by Balian was annoying, but compared to going on a long trip with Ed, she could accept acting together with Balian.

“No,” said Ed.

He thought for a moment and explained to his daughter:

“I plan to insert Balian into the Church Knights. This time he needs to make a name for himself.”

“What? You want him to be Knight Commander so it’s convenient to purge the king’s side?”

“What purge? Get serious!”

Ed glared at Aurora.

“Eat your meal. Get yourself ready tomorrow. Don’t worry about other things.”

Aurora sighed:

“Can’t we not hold the tournament? I don’t want to go out. Besides, the Crownlands are in disaster, so many refugees out there, and they still want to hold a tournament?”

“I tried to persuade, but it was useless. The king got annoyed with me and specifically borrowed money from the queen’s family to hold the tournament.”

Wine and meat rot behind vermilion gates; frozen bones lie on the road. Aurora rolled her eyes inwardly and pressed on:

“Then what if we find him a new distraction? Like making him obsessed with another game, maybe we could skip this?”

“You can try, but I don’t think you can change his mind,” Ed replied.

“I’ve known him for decades. He only likes war; he gets uncomfortable if he doesn’t see weapons waving.”

In the end, Aurora couldn’t change Ed’s mind.

Ed left with the excuse of heavy official duties, specifically telling Balian to watch Aurora eat before leaving.

Aurora watched her cheap father’s carefree retreating figure and knew that going to the hunting grounds to feed mosquitoes was set in stone.

Since she couldn’t change the environment, she had to change the plan. The trip would be two to three weeks. If she didn’t want the guild she had just intimidated to think she had disappeared and run off, she had to maintain remote contact.

“I’m done eating. How much longer are you going to stand?”

Aurora set the empty cup down on the table with a thud, driving people away without any noble lady’s grace.

Balian showed no emotional fluctuation at her harsh words, gave a standard knight’s salute, and withdrew from the dining room.

Confirming the obstacle was gone, Aurora immediately leaned over to Vapgis, who was still struggling with the bacon.

“My great mage, is there any spell that lets me chat with someone from hundreds of miles away? Preferably real-time communication.”

“You never listen in class.”

Vapgis swallowed a bite and complained:

“There’s a similar spell, Sending. It lets you send a telepathic message to someone you know from afar, but only up to twenty-five words per casting.”

“Twenty-five words at a time? Doesn’t seem enough.”

“And I must remind you, this is a 3rd-circle spell. I can only cast a few per day.”

“What about making scrolls? Make a dozen or so, then we can communicate in real time, right?”

“We leave the day after tomorrow. You’d have to kill me to make that many!”

Vapgis replied with a wry smile.

Ultimately, it came down to improving scroll-making efficiency.

Aurora summoned the magic scroll printer she had previously cobbled together and examined it repeatedly.

Scroll-making efficiency was bottlenecked by Vapgis’s spell preparation time. One spell model could only imprint one scroll; even a slight deviation in the model would cause failure, so it couldn’t be reused.

Oh? She suddenly slapped her thigh.

If she couldn’t save time on Vapgis’s side, what about increasing output on her side?

An idea soon came to her.

Aurora redesigned the original single-layer imprint structure, increasing it to five layers.

This way, when Vapgis imprinted once, the printer could simultaneously replicate five complete scrolls, instantly boosting efficiency by a full six times!

But Aurora quickly frowned.

“No, doing it this way will kill me.”

Imprinting a scroll was essentially casting a spell on the scroll. Imprinting five scrolls simultaneously meant casting a spell on five scrolls at once?

Taking Sending as an example, this was equivalent to casting five 3rd-circle spells at the same time?

She didn’t have that kind of power!

Too much, it would kill her!

So Aurora let her imagination run wild and made a slight modification to the magic scroll copier, adding a mana storage module to each layer.

When Vapgis made the scrolls, the mana would be drawn directly from the storage mechanism, perfectly solving the power supply risk.

Aurora slapped the revised blueprint on the table, took a deep breath, and then cast the spell:

“Come forth! Magic Scroll Printer!”

She placed this thing, which looked like a long-handled hammer, on the desk used for meals. After explaining how to use it to Vapgis, she signaled for her to get ready.

With the painful lesson from last time, when she almost had an accident in public, she made full preparations this time. Specifically, she folded a handkerchief, bit down on it with her teeth, and adjusted her sitting posture into a defensive formation with both legs pressed together.

Although Aurora had pre-charged the printer with energy at a slower, less side-effect-prone speed, considering mana would dissipate, she still had to be prepared.

Vapgis began chanting and casting. The spell model for Sending gradually took shape, slowly rotating in the air. Then, she used a quill pen to draw the model on the top parchment.

Mana was drawn from the storage modules, surging into the five-layer imprint structure below, imitating Vapgis’s technique to imprint into the parchment.

Six sheets of parchment simultaneously lit up with a faint blue light, and the complex patterns of the 3rd-circle Sending spell flowed out.

10%

20%

30%

Aurora’s fingers began to curl involuntarily.

As the mana in the storage modules was continuously consumed, she had to inject more energy into the printer to maintain the supply.

Side effects… damn it.

Aurora bit the handkerchief harder, her teeth nearly tearing through the cloth. Her legs twisted together, her kneecaps thudding dully, her thigh muscles taut like drawn bowstrings.

Don’t make a sound.

Absolutely don’t make a sound.

Vapgis was sitting right across from her.

At this moment, Vapgis was entirely focused on scroll-making and didn’t notice Aurora’s discomfort. But if Aurora let out a cry, then…

Finally, Vapgis lifted the quill pen. The imprint was complete.

Aurora’s entire body went rigid for a moment, then quickly slumped back into the chair. She closed her eyes, fine beads of sweat on her forehead, her cheeks flushed an unnatural red, her breathing rapid like she had just sprinted four hundred meters.

“…Done.”

Vapgis carefully pulled the five freshly made Sending scrolls out of the printer, checking the integrity of the patterns one by one.

Confirming all were satisfactory, she showed a look of surprise, then turned to Aurora and jumped.

“Aurora, your face is as red as a boiled shrimp. What happened?”

“…Hot.”

“It’s autumn.”

“I have a special constitution, prone to heatiness. Thanks for your concern.”

Aurora pulled the handkerchief out of her mouth, crumpled it into a ball, and stuffed it into her pocket. Two rows of clear teeth marks on the handkerchief testified to the ordeal its owner had endured.

Vapgis put down the scrolls, walked over, and crouched by Aurora’s chair. The half-elf’s blue eyes rarely showed such genuine worry.

“Isn’t this too exhausting? Look, your legs are shaking; you can’t even stand up.”

“Who says I can’t stand?”

Aurora grabbed the armrests, trying to get up, but her knees buckled and she sat back down.

“…The chair is too comfortable. I don’t want to get up.”

Vapgis rolled her eyes:

“Be careful. If something happens to you, I’ll definitely be torn apart by that springtime guard of yours.”

“None of your business. You test it first and see if it works.”

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