There enhancing of the plant paper seems have a bit of a blind spot. The paper they are starting with is already a quasi magical tool (of admittadly low quality). Wouldn't it make sense to try improving the quality at the production stage instead of after the fact?
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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PrePub - Ascendance of a Bookworm
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- Ascendance of a Bookworm
- Honzuki no Gekokujou
- 『本好きの下剋上』
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Hmm.... that idea does have potential. There are of course many unknowns that would need to be found out via experiment.
- Can you mix fibres of different feyplants together without them rejecting each other in some way?
- Can you even get a properly even mix of the fibres, to ensure the whole sheet is uniform in it's characteristics?
- Will mixing them together like that, result in the combined properties, like the fusing?
- Can it be done without mana by commoners, or does it need actual brewing? -> key question for whether it can be mass produced?
- Can this combined paper be upgraded to the same level as the outcome of upgrading seperate types of paper and fusing them?
- If so, does it take more or less resources to upgrade the base-combined paper, than upgrading the pure ones and fusing them afterwrads?
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- For that matter... what will happen if they first fuse the three types and only go through the gold dust enhancement afterwards?
If they are in a rush, I wonder if they would have time to do that. Making paper takes longer than a few days and they would have to try multiple different ways to make it, then wait for days for the results and see which changes made the best changes, improve based on that, and repeat this process multiple times. Going with Clarissa's idea and hunting for feybeast skin might be quicker.
Though I do agree that improving the process for making the initial paper is something Rozemyne should do in the future.
The wording of apprentice blues seemed a little weird.
The maximum quality paper seems like it will make highly sophisticated magic tool in the armament of lord of evil.
We have new priests and shrine maidens going through the same steps as Myne went through couple of years ago. New rivalries burn inside people at the temple and fuel the engine of self improvement.
The tea party with siblings was very cute, as is tradition something must interrupt quality time between Rozmyne and Charlotte. The banter about who does more for the other seems like married couple.
I kinda like the name apprentice blues (kinda has cute ring to it).
The first three pre-pub parts were all such bangers that this one now seems comparatively a little calmer in comparison, but it is a good part nonetheless.
It is nice seeing Rozemyne finally doing actual magic research herself. Before she just brewed what Raimund designed or retold what she was taught at the temple, so it is nice seeing her getting into researching brewing methods. She does not seem to like it though.
The apprentices are going to take part in rituals moving forward, which is nice. It would be nice to get names for them. Roz is sus that Ralph is sus on her. Clarissa is "normal".
It is nice that Rozemyne's siblings are so appreciative of her. Charlotte is running for Aub! But it might be only temporary before Melchior or their youngest sibling would take helm (?).
Rozemyne's siblings having headaches over her socialising is great and them bonding over being overshadowed by her is a nice moment, even if she feels left out.
Roz leaving Ehrenfest seems to be out of the bag. Leisegang elders are up to no good.
It's almost too dramatic of a change seeing Wilfried being supportive of Rozemyne and the other siblings. The change was very abrupt and tensions between all four just evaporated overnight. I would have expected a bit more festering resentment or something, but instead he's super supportive and was given multiple opportunities to come across as competent and on top of things this set of chapters. I guess we'll see how handling the hecklers goes.
I think that's primarily because of the point of view nature of these books. It might have seemed momentarily to us, but remember that it's been quite some time between the return from the archduke conference and this tea party.
The archduke conference is held in early spring and the funeral for Aub Ahrensbach was said to be in summer, meaning it's been at least two months at the minimum between the return from the archduke conference and this tea party, probably more like three in my estimation. Plenty of time for Wilfried to go through extensive self-reflection.
Yeah I suppose, it just feels like we skipped over a lot of his character arc, which makes it all feel a little cheap. If Rozemyne hasn't been around him recently it'd have been nice if she at least commented on how well he was getting along with Charlotte or something.
Maybe we'll get a side chapter at the end of the volume to fill that in.
Tbf here, when put into the context of active Sabotage Wilfrieds actions so far make a whole lot of sense. The tensions being gone so quickly is a bit meh, would have liked a bit more conflict but overall not a problem imo. I am very interested to see where Wilfrieds character will go now though, so far he has always been somewhat of a puppet being tossed around by people no matter his own opinion on things. Now that he is faced with pretty much complete freedom for likely the first time in his life I am intrigued to see where he will go.
First he'll get revenge on the Leisegangs by unleashing Rozemyne on them. What he'll do next depends on how Rozemyne throws the situation into chaos next.
I completely forgot about the mana compression magic contract... Now that's a bullet dodged for Wilfried. He came quite close to actually seeing Rozemyne as his enemy at times, and with the contract in place, that could have had some nasty consequences. Hmm... can we conclude from that, that Oswald never learned the Rozemyne mana compression? He surely treated her as an outright enemy, so that should have triggered the anti-enemy clause, right?
"you and uncle are weird together" ^^
I guess Wilfried scored quite a few more points with the fandom. He certainly did for me.
Kinda weird Barthold (I think he is name sworn to Wilfred), tries to completely turn Wilfred against Roz under these circumstances.
If the contract fried Wilfred then would Barthold be toasted as well (not sure if the death of master auto kills name sworn retainers).
Yes, the master dying instantly kills everyone sworn to them. But does Barthold know the terms of the contract?
If I remember correctly, with Ferdinand out of Ehrenfest, they are missing one signatory, which means they can't set up any new magic contracts for the same method (since it would breach the original contract). With there being no way for Barthold to sign the contract and learn the Rozemyne compression method, I doubt anyone would bother to go over the exact terms with him, making it very likely he isn't even aware of them.
It's also a bit nebulous whether any kind of contract breach is fatal. Back when Benno told Rozemyne about it he said something like "it can even be fatal," but didn't elaborate any futher. The wording would suggest that it's possible to be punished in a non-lethal way too, probably depending on the severity of the breach. So even if Barthold knows the terms, maybe he's betting on causing Wilfried to only commit a minor enough breach for the consequences to be non-lethal. Though I lean far more toward Barthold simply not knowing the terms of the contract... or failing to consider it.
Good point
Glad to see we're returning to our roots--inventing new paper!
And it sounds like with this new paper, she could have an instant Schutzaria's Shield--no cast time like they had to plan around in their game against Dunklefelger.
And maybe instant Darkness weapons as well? The time to cast for those was a problem in the OG trombe hunt.
As I understand it, the paper chants the spell, meaning it won't be any quicker, just less effort... at the cost of more mana.
The main advantage is, that you can't mess up the chant and that in theory it would enable people to use even spells they don't know how to cast themselves.
All they need, is a person who knows the spell, to draw the magic circle on the paper for them, or for better mana efficiency, it's probably better to have that person in question draw out the magic circle on an inert piece of paper, and for the user to copy the circle precisely onto the fey paper. As long as you copy it correctly without mistakes, you don't even need to understand the circle.
I suppose it also means you aren't stuck concentrating on the chant, meaning you can do something else (like dodging attacks), while the paper chants the spell on it's own.
Slap a time saving circle over it and it'll talk faster, maybe! 😂
I wonder if the gold dust papers can take just regular ink. Or if the traces of mana in those are still enough to reject the ink, if it's possible to make fully purified ink, devoid of all mana, so it can still stay on the paper.
Heidi would be beyond herself, if she could join those experiments to see what different kinds of ink might produce when put on such paper. A shame that won't be happening. ^^
Maybe, only thing I could think that can drain mana is black feystones (like the one Bezewaz had). However unfortunately those seem to have a minimum activation threshold else Bez would probably be sucked dry (or maybe the cloth was preventing that from happening).
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