“We don’t have heartbeats, you know, but if you ever want to listen, you can do it anytime.”
The pink-haired girl sat up straight, generously patting her completely flat chest.
Lulumiya pressed her ear against it, then widened her eyes.
Indeed, whether in touch or sound, there was a clear difference from humans.
It was like putting your ear against a wardrobe’s wooden panel—the chest cavity was eerily quiet.
Even though she could feel the warmth of the pink-haired girl’s body through the delicate, soft fabric, this warmth wasn’t natural.
Whether intentional or due to technical limitations, her body temperature was set higher than a human’s—similar to the heat of a fever.
“Is it different?”
The pink-haired girl asked with great energy.
“It really is… Even the texture of the skin is different.”
“Hahaha, that’s made with a blend of monster hide and slime extract—it’s already a high-end product on the market.”
The pink-haired girl giggled, crossing her arms over her chest in response to Lulumiya’s touch, which made her skin itchy.
“I’m so jealous, being able to have a human body. As expected from a magical workshop directly under the Mage Association, you must’ve used secret techniques. I heard that Master Xion disappeared after making you—must have been summoned by the Mage Association for some secret research.”
The girl carrying a long spear propped her chin up with both hands and let out a long sigh.
The girl with a whip at her waist, who hadn’t spoken until now, interrupted.
“Stop sighing. Instead of wasting time, why not help Lulumiya improve her abilities? She’s only at Level One. She’ll be looked down on for everything. Lulumiya, have you learned ‘Elemental Perception’ and ‘Mana Perception’ yet?”
“No…”
She remembered these were both things the academy teachers had covered.
Unlike chant magic, both ‘Elemental Perception’ and ‘Mana Perception’ were more like passive magic skills.
According to the academy teachers, you just needed to gather mana in your body and cover your eyes with it, and you’d be able to see all kinds of elements floating through the air like colorful ribbons.
As for ‘Mana Perception’, it was even more mysterious.
All living beings naturally sensed mana—one feels uncomfortable in a Magic Exhaustion Dead Zone, and energized in a Magic Source.
Becoming skilled in this perception is what ‘Mana Perception’ is all about.
Because the original owner was so hopeless, she hadn’t mastered either skill.
“If you haven’t learned either, that might be a bit troublesome.”
“Should we lend Lulumiya the magic book?”
The pink-haired girl tilted her head in suggestion.
The spear-carrying girl thought it over.
“Hmm… Technically, magic dolls aren’t allowed to lend out their master’s property, but our master was cared for by Lady Ino during training, and it’s just a glance at the dinner table, so it should be fine. Feifei, give it to Lulumiya.”
“Okay~”
With a lively reply, the pink-haired girl reached toward her waist Storage Bag, and then a beautifully bound book, much larger than the bag, appeared in her hand.
This Storage Bag was a magical item for storing things, similar to a Space Ring. Lulumiya observed quietly.
The original owner had used storage items before, and at a rather high level, but it had been pawned off to pay debts and no longer belonged to her.
The book, about the size of a high school textbook, was placed on the table.
The pink-haired girl opened it to the page recording ‘Elemental Perception’ and ‘Mana Perception,’ then shifted closer, snuggling up to Lulumiya.
“Here, this page is for ‘Elemental Perception’ and ‘Mana Perception.’ As long as you inject mana into the book, you’ll be able to experience directly what it’s like to use these spells, and it’ll be easier to reproduce them on your own. By the way, do you know how to mobilize mana, Lulumiya? Want me to walk you through it?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary.”
Lulumiya shook her head lightly, eyes landing on the open page.
When she’d used ‘Fireworks’ before, she’d felt the rush of mana in her body—mobilizing mana was as easy as a thought.
What really caught her interest was the magic book.
In most novels, magic books were described as containing chanting incantations, but in this world, a magic book was more like a “memory infusion” device.
As long as you poured mana into the text, you could see and hear directly the feeling of using that spell.
While you might not master it instantly, learning was much faster than reading text alone—they weren’t even on the same level.
However, the more often a magic book was used, the blurrier the reproductions of the spell’s sensations would become, until it became useless—so each spell in a magic book had limited uses, making them extraordinarily expensive.
More importantly, the original owner had no interest in magic, so Lulumiya had no idea what using a magic book would feel like.
“Is it really okay to let me use something this valuable? Won’t your master blame you?”
“Our master has a magical workshop that makes magic books. ‘Elemental Perception’ and ‘Mana Perception’ are the cheapest spells, so don’t worry.”
The pink-haired girl vowed confidently.
Since it was already said, Lulumiya didn’t hesitate.
She placed her right hand on the page, recalled the feeling of using ‘Fireworks’ in the dorm, closed her eyes, sank her mind into her chest, and imagined mobilizing her mana.
The next moment, she “saw” a faint white mist wandering in the world of her mind.
Instinctively, she knew it was her mana.
Calming herself, she tried to guide it slowly with her mind, drawing it from her chest to her arm and finally into her palm.
Ding—
A crisp sound like a tuning fork vibrated in her Soul World, then a surge of information poured into her brain, and countless connected images appeared in her mind.
She didn’t mobilize the mana herself—the mana moved on its own throughout her body until the cool white mist surged to her eyes.
Immediately, the surrounding environment changed dramatically.
She felt as if she had become someone else—not in the cafeteria anymore, but in a magic research room filled with bookshelves.
The path the mana took through her body was clearly etched into her mind.
The air became a swirl of dazzling colors—red for fire, blue for water, green for wind, all tangled together, forming the strange hallucinations you might see after eating poisonous mushrooms.
Then, as she sat in the research room, she let out a long sigh, and the colors in the air suddenly vanished, replaced by faint, scattered particles of light.
These nearly blue, translucent particles sometimes gathered and sometimes scattered, but generally followed certain rules.
They hovered closer to the magic books on the shelves and avoided things with little mana.
The information in her mind told Lulumiya these particles were mana floating in the air.
She reached out to grab them, but in the next second, the scene shattered with a crash, like a car window breaking.
It was like waking from a vivid dream—the drifting particles, dim research room, and radiant elements receded like the tide, replaced by the scent of milk, the sweet smell of baked bread, and the greasy aroma of the cafeteria—she returned to reality.
What she had just seen must have been the memory of the person who compiled the magic book, she thought.
[Magic learned: ‘Elemental Perception’, ‘Mana Perception’]
[‘Elemental Perception’: 1/100, Beginner]
[‘Mana Perception’: 1/100, Beginner]
The info popping up on her status panel distracted Lulumiya, making her eyes widen.
Normally, ‘Elemental Perception’ and ‘Mana Perception’ should display as “Unranked,” but she had skipped that phase and was already at Beginner level—she had mastered them.
Was it because these weren’t chant magic?
Or because she learned it through a magic book instead of a teacher, so she learned it all at once?
Either way, if she could learn magic directly from a magic book, then as long as she had enough money, she could buy and learn any magic she wanted.
Lulumiya finally understood just how much truth there was in Lijie’s words: “Learning magic is expensive.” It really was.
“How do you feel?”
Seeing Lulumiya open her eyes in thought, the pink-haired girl hurriedly asked, “‘Elemental Perception’ and ‘Mana Perception’ are among the easiest spells, but most people need three or four tries to get the hang of it. You can look at it a few more times.”
“Okay, I’ll give it a try.”
Lulumiya replied thoughtfully.
She tried to recall the sensations she experienced in the magic book, guiding her mana along the familiar path.
She met almost no resistance—the mana obediently flowed from her chest to her eyes, and the emerald pupils of her dragon form instantly gained a deep, cold green sheen.
The ribbons she saw in the book reappeared before her eyes.
Though the elements’ colors still mixed together, sky blue for water and gold for light clearly took up the most space, because both Ino, who specialized in water, and Lant, who specialized in light, were present.
When she switched from ‘Elemental Perception’ to ‘Mana Perception’, the dazzling colors faded, replaced by faint floating particles of light in the air.
But compared to the scenes in the book, Lulumiya realized she couldn’t see the concentration of mana—there was no white aura around the edge of the magic book, nor did the mana particles show obvious changes in brightness.
She guessed it was because her proficiency wasn’t high enough.
“Huh? For real, you learned it in one try? I had to look at it five times before I barely got it, and I still can’t use it every time.”
The pink-haired girl stared wide-eyed at her, the unique light covering Lulumiya’s eyes proving that she’d successfully cast the spell.
“Maybe I just got lucky.”
Lulumiya twirled her finger in her hair and pretended to be shy, though inwardly she was cursing, “You little brat, what are you saying,” because she clearly heard the pink-haired girl mutter, “Wasn’t she supposed to be a useless doll?”
“That’s not something luck can explain.”
The silent, calm magic doll shook her head.
“People without magical talent can’t reproduce a spell just by using a magic book for the first time. It seems the rumors from outsiders are all lies—probably slander from other magical workshops for business reasons.”
“Ahaha…”
Lulumiya could only give an awkward laugh, because it really wasn’t slander.
She quickly changed the subject.
“You mentioned that Lord Lant’s family business sells magic books—so does that mean there are bookstores in the capital? Are there many bookstores?”
“By bookstores, do you mean libraries? Those are only owned by the Royal Family, the church, and the academy. Most people buy magic books at magical workshops or the Mage Association. If that’s what you mean by bookstore… let me think.”
The calm girl fell into thought.
“The capital is huge—even excluding slaves, it has about six hundred thousand people. The nobles and their families number at least ten thousand, and adding about twenty percent more for merchants, Guild masters, and clergy, the demand for magic is much higher than in other cities. There must be close to a hundred magical workshops, big and small. But only about five are capable of producing and selling large numbers of magic books—the rest are small, unranked vendors. The master’s family business is one of those five.”
“I see…”
She remembered that Lian’s Magical Workshop was the largest of the five, because it was directly under the Mage Association—a massive organization spanning the entire continent, far more powerful than any local power.
“Are there any places that only sell regular books, not magic books? Like shops for the Plant Encyclopedia or Continental Curiosities?”
“I have no idea. We don’t like reading books—only cultured nobles care about that sort of thing, and hardly anyone buys them.”
The calm girl gave a wry smile.
“Hardly anyone buys them… No, I should look at it differently.”
Lulumiya frowned, then her eyes lit up.
The printing press couldn’t make magic books, so she could only target regular books.
But in practice, regular books were vastly inferior to magic books—there was no way to shake up the dominance of magic books in this world.
So to make money with a printing press, she had to first figure out the user base and market size.
If she measured the culture level by medieval standards, literacy here probably didn’t exceed 10%, and most of that 10% were nobles, clergy, or magic chanters.
In the original owner’s memory, Lulumiya had seen the world’s books.
Because nobles were the main buyers, hand-copied books were made extremely ornate—not just scribbling words on pages.
Making a hand-copied book was a complex, precise process.
First, the pages were made of precious parchment; the scribe’s handwriting had to be neat and beautiful, with careful typesetting and paragraph spacing.
On top of that, the first letter on a page was decorated—turned into an intricate, ornate design, gilded, painted, and sometimes illustrated by artists.
Then there was proofreading, trimming, and exquisite binding.
Only when all these steps were done would nobles pay high prices.
Although printed books were cheap, and low price usually attracted buyers, nobles cared more about face than value.
She couldn’t naively think that nobles would care about her books just because they were cheaper.
And just relying on nobles, the market would always be tiny.
Even if nobles bought her books, how many could she sell?
After all, people only buy one copy, which they pass down for generations—it’d take forever to make a net profit of five thousand gold coins from books.
So since last night, Lulumiya had been thinking about how to use the printing press to make money fast.
Now, the magic dolls’ conversation gave her inspiration.
Even someone like Ino, at that level, didn’t know the city well when she first arrived—let alone how hard it was for ordinary people to get information.
If she didn’t have these magic dolls to explain things, it might take ages to find out there were nearly a hundred magical workshops.
But what if she invented something that lowered the threshold for getting news—wouldn’t that create a whole new market?
She thought of a new path.
Newspapers.
Printing presses and newspapers were a match made in heaven.
With a city of six hundred thousand, there was bound to be big news.
And then she’d make money, buy magic books and potions, and become a hard-working, big-spending isekai OL gamer.
“Lulumiya, what’s wrong?”
Seeing Lulumiya suddenly giggling for no reason, the pink-haired girl asked hesitantly, worried she might have lost her mind.
“It’s nothing, I just thought of something! Thank you, Miss What’s-Your-Name! You’re so beautiful!”
Lulumiya’s eyes sparkled with excitement as she thanked the cold, elegant girl who had inspired her, then leapt to her feet.
“Sis Ino, I want to go out for a bit!”
“Hm? Where to? I’ll go with you.”
Ino, still talking with Lant, braced her hands on the table to stand up.
Lulumiya shook her head like a rattle.
“No need, I’ll go by myself. I want to make money soon so I can support you, Sis Ino!”
“Do I really look that down and out?”
Seeing Lulumiya’s sincere, adorable face, Ino couldn’t help but laugh.
She waved her hand.
“Alright, but don’t stay out too late—I need to teach you magic.”
“Okay~”
Ah, the body of a cute little girl is just too useful!
So happy it felt like a little deer was leaping in her heart, Lulumiya cheered and dashed out of the temple as soon as she got permission.