"The Evernight Goddess's charm... You're a Nighthawk from the Goddess Church?"
The girl clearly knew her stuff. The moment she saw Luther's charm, she guessed his identity. "But I don't think I've seen you around here before. Did you come from another city?"
"That's right. I was passing through on business."
Luther nodded. "Were you sent by the Church of Steam to oversee the market?"
"Mm."
The girl casually scratched her messy hair, her clothes stained with machine oil. She was quite cute, but it was obvious she put no thought into dressing up. "I'm a member of the Machinery Hivemind. Just call me Grela."
"Alright, Grela. So why are you looking for someone skilled in rituals?"
Luther did not give his name. Instead, he changed the subject and asked about her needs.
"Oh, that?"
At that, the girl immediately became animated. "It's like this—I suddenly got an idea. I want to try solidifying ritual magic into items! Look, using ritual magic usually requires preparing an altar and reciting incantations. It's troublesome and slow. If rituals could be directly solidified into items, wouldn't they be much easier to use? Then they could even work in battle!"
Solidifying rituals?
It was a very bold idea. Many rituals had extremely powerful effects, but the preparations were cumbersome and inconvenient, making them difficult to use in actual combat.
A series of ritual names flashed rapidly through Luther's mind.
"It's a very interesting idea, but how do you plan to achieve it?"
Luther asked.
Ritual magic required drawing upon the power of deities or high-level existences. Would they agree to having the ritual simplified?
At his words, Grela's smile abruptly froze. She sat back down somewhat awkwardly and said, "Well, I'm still researching that. So I wanted to first observe the process of ritual