Chapter 8 – The Grimoire Bestowal Ceremony Begins, and Yuuki's Speculation!
After a simple dinner,
Yuuki smiled lightly, spending the evening with a few of the younger church children, telling them fairy tales from his previous life. Whenever the story reached an exciting moment, the children would gasp in awe.
All of them were orphans taken in by the church.
Nearby, Yuno quietly helped Sister Lily wash the dishes.
As for Asta, the moment he finished eating, he ran off again—no one knew which corner he was training in this time.
The three of them were doing what they always did, nothing out of the ordinary.
Only Sister Lily and the priest occasionally exchanged glances and smiled faintly.
"These two kids…"
The priest murmured softly.
Had Yuuki really not noticed that his storytelling kept repeating parts tonight? That had never happened before.
And Yuno—his dishwashing rhythm was off, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. He clearly had something on his mind.
Asta wasn't in the church, but the priest didn't need to ask. He could already guess: the boy was surely just as restless as the other two—if not more.
"They must be nervous about tomorrow…"
The priest leaned back comfortably in his chair, thinking quietly to himself.
It was a feeling every fifteen-year-old had to experience sooner or later.
He wasn't too worried about Yuuki or Yuno. What truly worried him was Asta. The thought alone made him sigh.
"996!"
"997!"
"998!"
"999!"
"1000!!"
Out on the grassy field outside the village—
"Huff… huff…"
Asta was upside down, hands planted on the ground, finishing his last handstand push-up before collapsing onto the grass with a thud, gasping heavily for air.
"I'll become the Wizard King! That's one thing I'll never give up on—Yuuki! Yuno!"
After several deep breaths, his eyes blazed with determination as he pushed himself back up and continued training.
It was March—
The season when fireflies and dandelion fluff danced through the air.
And the time of year when the Clover Kingdom gathered all fifteen-year-olds from across its lands for the annual Grimoire Bestowal Ceremony, a ritual that granted each worthy youth a grimoire to enhance their magic.
One after another, faces full of excitement and anticipation climbed the worn stone steps, flanked by bushes and trees, toward the Grimoire Tower.
The weather was beautiful that day—clear skies, bright sun—perfectly mirroring the crowd's spirits.
Among them stood Yuuki, Yuno, and Asta, moving forward with the crowd.
"So many people!"
Asta exclaimed, eyes wide.
"This is the only Grimoire Tower in this region. All the fifteen-year-olds from nearby villages come here. Of course it's crowded," Yuuki replied, a bit surprised himself.
A quick glance around told him there must have been at least fifty or sixty youths.
"Let's hurry. We shouldn't be late."
Yuno's tone was calm, showing no interest in the people around them.
Yuuki found his aloofness amusing but nodded in agreement.
The ceremony would start at the same time for everyone anyway; being early or late didn't matter much. Yuno looked calm on the outside, but deep down, he too was nervous.
Before long—
A tall, towering structure came into view.
Rather than a building, it looked like an enormous chimney—no windows, just a straight stone cylinder.
The walls were cracked and dusty, plaster flaking off, and moss creeping through the brick seams.
It was nothing like the majestic mage towers Yuuki had once imagined.
He couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. Still, he knew that the magic knights of this world were very different from the wizards of fantasy stories.
Inside the Grimoire Tower—
Bookshelves covered every inch of the walls, packed full of grimoires of varying sizes and colors.
At the very top hung the Clover Kingdom's three-leaf emblem, a clover-shaped crest cut into the ceiling. Sunlight poured through it, illuminating the room. Combined with the towering walls of books, it created a breathtaking sight—despite the absence of any magic at all.
"Waaah!!"
Asta's eyes sparkled as he shouted in awe, staring at the endless rows of grimoires.
He wasn't the only one. Nearly everyone else looked just as stunned, so no one paid much mind to his outburst.
Yuuki gazed around, feeling a sudden rush of nerves himself.
Sister Lily and the priest believed he would certainly receive a grimoire—but Yuuki wasn't so sure.
Magic in this world came in two forms: inherited through noble bloodlines, or linked to one's very soul.
And Yuuki—being a transmigrator—didn't truly belong to this world.
Even if he possessed magic, it didn't necessarily mean a grimoire would accept him.
In fact—
Back when he watched the anime, Yuuki had always wondered how all these grimoires came to exist in the first place.
Even this single tower held thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of grimoires. And this was only one tower. The Clover Kingdom had many more across its territory. So where did they all come from?
Not only that—
The other three kingdoms had their own towers as well.
Yet the anime and manga never explained it. It was treated as mere background lore.
As fiction, it didn't matter much.
But standing here in the real world, Yuuki couldn't ignore such a mystery.
That was what truly troubled him.
He had his theories.
First of all, it couldn't possibly be man-made.
Neither in the anime nor in the manga had any magic knight shown the power to create grimoires. Each grimoire represented a mage's unique magical essence.
If someone could create grimoires at will, that person would essentially be a god.
And if such a god existed, the people of the Clover Kingdom wouldn't worship the Wizard King—they would worship that god.
The same would hold true for every nation.
Each year, countless youths received new grimoires. Old ones were lost or destroyed, meaning they had to be replenished constantly. So this supposed god would have to appear regularly to deliver them.
In that case, the church wouldn't be living in poverty.
The so-called church in this world was more like a charitable shelter than a true religious institution.
Yuuki's own theory was that the grimoire system was part of the world's natural order—just like mana itself.
Perhaps placing ordinary books into a Grimoire Tower allowed them to transform.
As for the exact mechanism, Yuuki couldn't be sure.
He suspected it might be linked to the "Bestowal Ceremony," but there were contradictions.
For example, when those two reincarnated elves from the Eye of the Midnight Sun were resurrected, they immediately obtained grimoires upon entering a tower—no ceremony involved.
It was hard to say for certain.
(End of Chapter)
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