After Darius and Gunner were done with their meal, they left the cafe with the looks of horror still in the eyes of the staff and other customers, especially when they gazed at Gunner.
It was likely that they would never forget the scene of the large lad devouring everything placed before him with ease while even asking for more. Darius had ended up paying 300 bronze in total for Gunner's meal, which was roughly equivalent to spending $3,000 at once.
(Author's Note: This is a comparison, not a fact. Do not take these numbers as a direct representation of value.)
Darius continued browsing the stores on the street, stopping when he found a bookstore. He entered it while telling Gunner to wait outside since the fellow had no interest in such things.
Darius walked past the aisles of books and reached the counter, where a young girl with heavy acne and slightly spotty skin sat, boredly reading a book before her.
When she saw there was a customer, she perked up and rose to meet Darius. However, her expression became slightly silly when she saw Darius, and her blush was evident.
Used to this kind of response, Darius smiled gently and greeted her. "Hello, I would like to know what kind of books you sell here and if you do only rentals."
Still shell-shocked by Darius' charisma, it took the lass a little while to respond, and when she did so, it was mostly flustered.
"Y-Yes! Well, we have a wide selection of titles to tickle your fancy, Sir…?"
"Darius. Darius Stone." The Old Soul replied with a teasing smile.
The young lady felt embarrassed by Darius' smile since it showed that he knew of her fluster, but she decided to bull through and try to acquire some level of professionalism.
"Well, Sir Darius, we have many books ranging from fiction to non-fiction, to materials required by pupils or students of the various schools and academies here in Listo!"
Darius rubbed his chin. "Do you have any spellbooks? Combat manuals? Or guide books of any sort?"
The young girl was stunned by his request, then she realized that as a noble scion, Darius might have awakened as a mage! As such, her demeanor became even more respectful as she nodded.
"Yes, we do. However, I must warn you Sir Darius, these books mostly have problems in them. Some spells are faulty or have flaws as they were written by inadequate mages and sold here."
Darius understood what she was trying to say. It seemed as if the complete or correct spells were likely hoarded by the mages and only distributed among their Official Disciples.
These spells were likely similar to the ones Foldo had or even worse. They were made by hedgemages or Unofficial Apprentices at different stages through the Magical Method, and were not entirely useful.
However, they still have value in terms of learning. Others could use them to learn how the Magical Method worked as well as gain more knowledge on various elemental magics in preparation for creating their own spells.
To Darius, they had a different kind of value, the type that would make his stores a hot cake among all the others if he were to play his cards right. He followed the lass into the aisle for the spell manuals and inspected many of them one by one.
They were even worse than Foldo's bunch, with some even having utter rubbish written within that was almost unsalvageable. Darius lip's twitched as he saw this and decided to ask the prices.
He was left speechless to find that even the cheapest skill book of the Basic spells cost 4 silvers. When he inspected them, he found that these basic spells were largely correct since it was hard to mess up with something that simple, but they had a poor rate of acquisition for those who read it, and even poorer utility.
Like how Darius's Transmuted book gave a person a 100% chance to learn the spell within and the spell itself was 500% stronger than its base, the highest among these basic spell manuals gave a 12% chance to learn and the skill was only 15% as strong as the basic cantrips.
Darius had once theorized that the base power for each basic spell should be 1% damage/healing/utility since his versions started off at 5%. Yet, even if someone learned from these store-bought books, the spell would have less than 1% power, dealing about 0.15% of their Intellect.
Darius deeply understood why mages were so rare and respected. To climb up through this difficulty was too hard. From left, right, and even center, Unofficial Apprentices and hedgemages were suppressed in every direction.
Only those who could become Official Apprentices would have it good. Even then, it depended on the quality and talent of their master that would decide their futures.
Now Darius understood why Foldo had directly jumped from Friendly to Worship after the little he did. If he had been in Foldo's shoes, he too would have worshiped himself if someone like him came around.
Darius also understood that once he opened his store and started auctioning spellbooks made with Transmutation, he would be making an enemy of every mage in the town, and possibly the entire kingdom depending on how far it got.
As such, Darius cooled his ambition a little. He could challenge the blacksmiths, alchemists, and whatnot with his transmuted items without fear, but challenging every mage out there would be the epitome of stupidity and madness.
With that in mind, even though Darius bought the majority of the spellbooks in the store, he kept them in his inventory and planned to use them as either bargaining chips, gifts, or start his own mage apprenticeship school.
The total came to 2 gold coins, which made the hands of the girl shake. Even though a few desperate mages came here to buy these books, it was very infrequent due to the price and the quality.
Heck, some of these books had survived in here from her grandmother's era! Yet Darius had bought them all cleanly, shocking the lass and making her confused.
What at all could that handsome noble scion do with those trashy books?
