Ascendance of a Bookworm

Volume 7, Chapter 4: Talks with the Ink Guild and Its Successor (Part 2)

“Miss, would you like to come to my workshop? I’ve already laid out all the materials I wanted to show you. Dad wasn’t happy about that though.”

“Yes, please! I would love to come!”

I knew that Heidi and I already shared a special connection. We both got up from our chairs at the same time, but our own mentors pulled us back down.

“We are still talking!”

“Hold on, you blockhead!”

Our guardians yelled out simultaneously. Benno was still gripping me and left out a deep sigh.

“…Fine, I will take charge of selling the ink. We will only resume monopoly over the ink for Myne Workshop’s plant paper, as well as the coloured ink. We will let others take whatever else is left. That should keep the guildmaster distracted.”

“Sounds fine. I appreciate it, thanks for everything.”

That marked the end of Benno and Bierce’s endless discussion, we had finally decided on the new seller.

“I can go to the workshop now, right?”

“We need to start making that ink.”

Heidi and I exclaimed, and Benno beckoned Lutz over and patted him on the back.

“Watch over them, Lutz. Looks like we have two Mynes now.”

“Mister Benno, you’re asking too much. One Myne is already enough for me.”

Benno’s expression turned into that of worry, but I just brushed it off with a wave goodbye and made my way down to the ink shop. Of course, Heidi got impatient at the speed I was walking and ran off first so that she could set up the materials first.

Bierce was worried that her actions offended me and apologised in her stead. But I didn’t mind it at all.

“Hey, Lutz. What’s your thoughts on Heidi? I find her funny and talented, but she’s also kind of odd too.”

“…The pot’s calling the kettle black.”

Bierce led us into the workshop which looked more like a science lab you would find it schools, it didn’t look like a place to make ink. The place was packed with lots of tools and the craftsmen were using scales to measure out the amount of ingredients they would need to make ink. The ink for plant paper was made in another corner of the place.

I noticed there were already a couple of containers filled with ink, and behind all that was Heidi getting reprimanded by a man who seemed to be in his twenties. He was pretty much telling her to ‘work first, play later.”

“Bierce, does Heidi need to work on something else?”

“…No, you don’t have to worry about that. Hey, Joseph! Stop scolding Heidi, she’s receiving a customer today,” Bierce yelled at him across the room.

Heidi whipped her head around with a cheerful grin, but the guy who was supposedly Joseph was stumped.

“Boss, are you right in the mind?! You’re letting Heidi receive a customer?”

“This lady is an important customer who wishes to develop coloured ink and would like to pay for a quarter of the research’s cost. There’s no need to force Heidi to stop her research. We can let her do as she pleases as long as she doesn’t cause trouble.”

The words they exchanged told me how the others saw Heidi.

“Lady Myne, please meet Joseph. He’s Heidi’s husband and the future head of this workshop. It will be great to have the both of you working together.”

“Hi, I’m Myne, the head of the Myne Workshop. I would like to buy the plant paper ink and help out with making coloured ink,” I Introduced myself.

Joseph sighed in relief at my presence, he seemed to be worried about the poor sales for the plant paper ink.

“This is everything we have made for now.”

“Please deliver them to our store by tomorrow,” Lutz said.

He was here to buy the ink on behalf of the Gilberta Company, after which it would be sold to the Myne Workshop. This seemed like a troublesome process, but it was a necessary one.

I left Lutz to his own devices and went to look around the workshop. Samuel and Gil had tagged along to and seemed intrigued by the place too, they wanted to know more about life in the lower city.

“Lady Myne, please come here.”

I made my way over to Heidi and noticed that the table was lined with an array of materials. They have been crushed into a powder form, so I didn’t know what they were. I also noticed that there were different types of oil too.

“Heidi, what oils are these?”

“I tried to gather as much as I could find. Linseed oil might not be the best one after all, right?”

“Yeah, I had the same idea too.”

One crucial factor for making ink was the drying oil, but the closest thing to that available here was only linseed oil. I came to know of its existence when I saw the clothes in this world. Clothes were made from the same plant, in this case the oil was extracted from its seeds. However, linseed oil was expensive because of its limited supply. I wanted to find alternatives to it, so it would be good for me to know the various types of oils that existed in this world first.

“There are some oils that become solid when left out, while others don’t. The former are great for making ink. They are called drying oil,” I explained.

“Hm, only a few oils are like linseed oil. Misse, bedgam, ise and term oil,” Heidi grabbed the respective oils as she listed them out.

I quickly took out my diptych to scribble down all the oils she mentioned.

“I usually make ink by crushing the ingredients first, after that I’ll add in the oils. Here we go… this yellow powder should make an ink close to yellow and brown.”

“Alright, we’ll try it out. Joseph, help us a little.”

Heidi gestured towards Joseph and he came over to mix the oil and powder on top of the stone workbench.

“…Huh? The colour is different!”

“W-why though?”

This yellow clay should have made a yellow-brown ink when mixed with the oil. But it had turned into a completely different colour, that was a light sky blue. I was completely bamboozled by this.

“W-we can try another oil first.”

Joseph and Heidi continued to mix the powder with the different types of oil. First was misse, then bedgam, and ise, finishing off with term. Only ise had made the yellow ink I was expecting, the others had made ink of red and a green-blue one. My mind froze at this. We just stared at the different colours on the table in silence.

“What’s going on?”

“I wasn’t expecting the oil to drastically change the ink’s colour. It was definitely a shock, but I guess there’s nothing wrong with being able to make this many colours with the same ingredient, huh.”

Joseph was rubbing his sore shoulders and looked back at me with exhaustion on his face.

“Didn’t expect you to be this optimistic.”

“Well, we are trying to make coloured ink, I’ll be happy with everything we get as long as it isn’t transparent.”

I recorded our observations on my diptych, hoping to figure out a clue to this absurdity. On the other hand, Lutz was looking at the ink with a hand to his face.

“What’s going on? How did you even get these results?”

“Are you interested? It’s such a strange thing, right? Don’t you want to know why too?!” Heidi cheered and gathered Lutz’s hands into hers. She had the smile of a mad scientist. She was someone who was interested in uncovering anything that interested her.

I slammed my diptych close.

“Heidi, we don’t need to know what’s going on with these ink right now. We should focus on figuring out what colours we can make from mixing them around.”

“What?! Such an interesting thing is unfolding before your eyes, and you’re not even a tiny-winy bit interested in finding out why?”

Heidi turned her gray eyes towards me, her gaze was mixed with shock and betrayal. Then Joseph reached out to grab her head.

“Stop it! Lady Myne isn’t crazy like you!”

“Crazy? That’s rude, man. Here I was thinking we would make great comrades.”

I could understand where Heid was coming from, but I didn’t have the time to get sidetracked right now. My priority was to get coloured picture books for my younger brother, Kamil. Even though I didn’t have the time, I wasn’t going to disregard anyone who wanted to conduct research on this though.

“I prioritise the result over the process right now. What’s important is that ise made the colour I wanted. We’ll try using the blue powder with isse now. We might figure out some patterns to develop the colours we are looking for.”

I gestured towards the blue powder. Heidi nodded back to me.

“You’re right. Let’s continue.”

Ise had made the yellow colour I was intending for, but this time it made a bright yellow mixture when mixed with the blue powder that resembled lapis lazuli. This colour was great for painting sunflowers, but it wasn’t the colour I wanted. After mixing around, only linseed oil kept it’s lapis blue.

“…We’re going to struggle a bit,” I commented while reviewing our results on my diptych.

Everything I knew seemed irrelevant in this world now. With the number of ingredients and oils we have here, we might end up with a never-ending selection of colours.

We have a long road ahead of us.