There were plenty of little trinkets. Roa solemnly took one of the boxes out.
Of course, it wasn't like the holy relics Rudeus collected. When he opened the box, there was a remarkably lifelike Roxy figurine inside.
Mm.
He'd made it himself. As an aside, Rudeus also had a matching statue of Zenith.
Unlike Roa's, however, Rudeus's had been modified.
According to Rudeus, it was what he imagined Zenith would look like in the future.
In short, he'd secretly added a lot to Zenith's chest.
As it turned out, neither future Zenith nor present-day Zenith could possibly be that well-endowed.
Roa had told Rudeus as much, but he simply wouldn't believe him.
He set the figurine on the upper-right corner of the desk, then took out two magic books. Neither was particularly valuable; they were basic, low-level primers on magic, mainly intended to guide newcomers through the basics.
They were the textbooks Roa planned to use to teach Eris.
He set the two somewhat hefty books aside, then rummaged through his bundle for a while and found another equally hefty book. This one wasn't a magic book, but a manual for magical research.
He recorded every spell he developed in it.
The first page covered the formation and principles of the magic sword. It was covered in scribbles, with different annotations throughout.
The next dozen or so pages were devoted to developing and studying that spell. Naturally, the second spell was the Magic Seed.
After the incident with Roxy, he had studied and refined the Magic Seed once more, successfully reducing its side effects to a minimum.
But the key problem was that he couldn't avoid the necessary physical contact.
Without Roa's guidance, the process would be more than ten times as painful. In the end, whether it succeeded depended