Published: February 1, 2026
Lizel’s pouch was stuffed full of countless books.
He bought whatever caught his eye regardless of genre, and never let go of them after reading. With that number alone, he could easily open a bookstore. In fact, he might even be able to open a library.
Spatial magic was convenient: you could just toss things in and be done with it. But if you forgot what was inside, the only way to find something was to dump everything out once, and if you stuffed materials and whatever else in there like Lizel and the others did, it would be a disaster.
Lizel never forgot any book he’d read, so even if the number passed a thousand and reached ten thousand he wouldn’t lose track of them, but still, just leaving everything in there forever didn’t feel right.
“I should at least sort out the duds.”
The function was kind to someone as bad at organizing as he was—but he couldn’t just lean on it forever. Lizel made up his mind.
He didn’t know if spatial magic would still work when he returned to his original world; if not, then this was the time to put his books in order.
The idea of lining up otherworld books in the Great Library (the ridiculously huge archive) of his own mansion back home was appealing. Precisely because of that, he needed to carefully, ruthlessly select which books to bring back in case there was a limit.
Lizel pulled out a few books at random and began scrutinizing them.
An hour later, his door was banged on roughly, and before an answer could come, Eleven opened it and walked in.
He had dragged Gill off earlier for a sparring match, but apparently still hadn’t managed to win, and made no effort to hide his foul mood. This time, his dissatisfaction seemed even deeper.
“Oi for real, Leader, listen to this! You said poison works on Big Brother, but it totally doesn’t. I gassed him with some super strong muscle relaxant and all he says is it feels weird, that’s it… What’re you doing?”
“Sorting my books…”
Having piled books all over the room like the return of a reading binge, Lizel looked down at the book he’d been absorbed in and gave a resigned smile.
“You remember all the content anyway, why not just sell ’em?”
“I don’t really like selling books. And even if I do remember the contents, I still want to line them up, you know? There are times you want to reread something.”
“Don’t get it.”
Collector’s spirit or whatever it was.
Gill didn’t empathize at all with Lizel’s words, but if that was how he felt, Gill had no reason to say more.
Leaving the room in a mess, however, was unacceptable, so Gill was helping with the massive cleanup. Incidentally, Eleven had bolted.
Even in the middle of tidying, Lizel kept getting drawn into whatever book was in his hands, but if Gill called out to him he would immediately close it. He would probably sacrifice sleep tonight to read those books he’d had to put away with lingering regret.
“Just shove everything into your spatial magic without thinking.”
“I worked so hard to sort them.”
“I just said don’t think.”
Gill knew all too well that things never got cleaned up precisely because Lizel tried to organize them.
Contrary to appearances, he was terrible at tidying. If the landlady didn’t regularly come in to clean, this room would be overflowing with books all the time.
Unable to argue back, Lizel only gave a wry smile and started putting books away. Watching him, Gill let out an unhidden sigh and remembered today’s plan. Lizel had said they were going to go check out requests.
It was almost noon, but they could just pick up a request now and act on it tomorrow. Basically, a reservation.
Aiming for a rank up, Lizel avoided any request that didn’t interest him, and there were plenty of days when he’d go to the guild first thing in the morning and still take nothing. On those days he would dive into whatever labyrinth caught his interest regardless of requests, defeating bosses and doing all kinds of things, so he was still functioning as an adventurer.