Touko Aozaki silently surveyed everything before her. The room was still the same dim, cluttered room, yet against the glitter of those gems, she had the strange illusion that her humble abode had been graced with splendor.
She did not know which deserved her attention first: that astonishing wealth, or the bizarre power Roland had revealed.
This was her own workshop, yet she had never noticed where that ninja-like familiar had hidden, or how he had brought out that wealth.
But one thing was undeniable: she was tempted.
Although she was not a money-grubber in the broad sense, Touko Aozaki certainly had considerable financial needs. Any research that interested her demanded enormous energy and funding. Often, only after accumulating considerable debt would she belatedly pull herself out of her research and start earning money to repay it. That had been the original purpose behind establishing this office.
A moment later, Touko Aozaki was about to speak when Roland continued.
"If you really do complete the second commission perfectly, besides this deposit, I can give you a lost treasure worth tens of thousands of times as much."
Touko Aozaki remained seated upright on the sofa, but the coldness in her eyes had vanished entirely. Calmly weighing the advantages and disadvantages, she asked without betraying anything:
"Judging by your requirements, let me ask first: for this second commission, you aren't entertaining the unreasonable idea of adding my Magic Circuits to your bloodline, are you?"
"Your Magic Circuits, Miss Touko?-You mean descendants?"
Roland's eyelid twitched as realization dawned. Although he himself did not insist on obtaining offspring from this relationship, from a mage's perspective, this amounted to searching for a suitable mother.
After all, in the world of magecraft, impoverished mages selling their genetic material and families intermarrying or forming marriage alliances were