Marilou's smile froze on her face. Viya at that moment was more serious than at any other time.
The corner of Viya's mouth lifted slightly as she took Marilou's chin between her fingers. "I don't like being remembered only when I'm needed."
"I'm... I'm sorry."
Marilou's body trembled. She could feel Viya's attitude was the exact opposite of what it had been, and she only lowered her head and began apologizing.
"Out with it. What did you come to me for?"
Marilou sniffed. "I'd like some defensive items that ward off mental attacks!"
"What do you want something like that for?"
Viya frowned faintly, rather puzzled as to why Marilou wanted such an item.
"Because I... I want to learn some powerful magic, and having protection like that might be safer."
Marilou had made up a passable excuse, though inwardly she was still fairly uneasy.
"Oh?"
Viya narrowed her eyes. "Why the sudden interest in mental magic? I don't believe I've ever seen you cast anything of the kind."
"That's... that's exactly why I want to learn it. During training today I found my mental strength was very weak, so I wanted to shore up my abilities."
Viya stared at Marilou, and seeing the way her eyes dodged away, she'd guessed most of it.
Stammering...
Doesn't sound like the truth.
Fortunately, Viya didn't much mind. Let Marilou mess about. If she stirred up some trouble, that was a fine opportunity to knock her into line and make her more obedient, and it was hardly likely to cause a real accident.
With Viya herself watching over it, it would in all likelihood be a small-scale accident at most.
Having made a few decisions, Viya kept her face stern, patted the chair beside her and said, one word at a time:
"Sit down first."
"All right."
Marilou lifted her skirt and sat down on the chair with great care.
"There's no need to be so stiff about it. I'm not some villain. Though what you're asking for does put me in a difficult position."
Viya took Marilou's chin between her fingers and scratched once at the ticklish white flesh there, her expression softening a good deal along with it.
"So what are you planning to offer as security? Mental-type items are very strictly controlled."
"What... what do you want?"
Marilou's eyes dodged somewhat, presumably at the thought of how precious such a thing must be, though she didn't behave too abnormally on account of it.
What she didn't know was that for Viya as she now stood, an item like this was no great difficulty. Procuring a national treasure might be hard.
But of simpler items, the Temple had plenty.
The reason for making it awkward was still that the afternoon's business had left Viya thoroughly displeased. The girl had eaten and left, without the slightest reluctance to go.
If she didn't do something to bind her, this house would be hollowed out by her sooner or later.
"I've no interest in anything else. You, you promise me you'll get the novice mage examination done quickly, and I'll want to see the results. Since you say you want to study magic, then I want to see the outcome."
Viya had chosen a fairly reasonable solution.
It wouldn't make Marilou back off at the first difficulty, and it would knock her into line a little at the same time.
"That's... what if I don't pass?"
Marilou began stammering. She'd assumed Viya would come up with something like making an item, or some other little activity, and now it turned out to be an examination?
"If you don't pass, then produce a reason for not passing. What I need is the attitude, not some little wretch who eats and drinks and sleeps all day and has it all~"
Viya bit down on the final syllable, and the look she gave Marilou's expression had a good deal more spark in it.
"Then... I can try. I'll do my best to pass."
Marilou chose to agree in the end. She still very much wanted to see this Witches' Assembly for herself, which made the protective item important.
Have the item ready, so she wouldn't barge in headfirst and get mentally controlled or something. As for her body, Marilou wasn't especially afraid for now; it was only a meeting, and however impressive the other side's methods, there ought to be some limit on them. For the moment the danger level still wasn't as high as mental control.
"Good. Since you've paid the corresponding price, come with me."
Viya set down her fine porcelain afternoon-tea cup and took Marilou to a small room set fairly far inside.
Marilou had never been to this room before, so she took everything around her in with curiosity.
She looked exactly like a baby who genuinely wanted to study hard, and the distance between the two of them narrowed bit by bit in the process, until Marilou blanked out for a moment and walked into Viya's back.
"Ow..."
Before Marilou could finish exclaiming, a pale blue room appeared a short way ahead.
Blue light fell across items of every kind, and Marilou stared open-mouthed. Almost everything in here was A rank or above, and in the cabinet at the far end there were even S+ rank items.
"These are some of the more ordinary items in my display cases. As a beginner, you aren't suited to handling anything too difficult for now. Let's do this. Pick whichever one in that southwest corner you think looks nice, and tell me."
Having given her instructions, Viya found herself a chair, crossed her legs and settled in to rest, paying no attention whatsoever to what Marilou might take.
Marilou, meanwhile, was still steeped in the shock of seeing such treasures, and it was a long time before she came back to herself.
Because... because there were simply far too many treasures in here, even though Viya had just called them a collection fit for public display.
It already went well beyond the range of what Marilou could comprehend.
Marilou felt her way around the left-hand area, and her eye caught a red dagger with a sign set beside it reading DANGER, DO NOT TOUCH.
"This one doesn't look all that dangerous."
"That is the Scythe of Fate. Without that glass cover, it only has to drink blood and it loses control; before long it goes charging about, and essentially every living thing along its path takes a cut.
"It counts as a curse-type item. Bring it out, and it's Candy Crush for everybody."
"That... that dangerous, and it's still only A rank?"
Marilou's eye fell on the rating standard fixed beside the case.
It showed A rank, which was to say its lethality still fell within a controllable range.
"The reason it's rated A isn't that the weapon is weak, but that its attack pattern is too stupid. A weapon that might wound even its own wielder counts as something you keep at the bottom of the chest; in an ordinary fight there's no use holding on to it.
"At best it's an item contaminated by a higher power, with the strength of table scraps clinging to it. Highly threatening to small monsters, but against an opponent of your own level, using it is purely a gamble on which side the item attacks first."
"I see."
Marilou nodded, having roughly grasped how it worked, and simply shifted her gaze to the defensive section.
The items laid out in here were comparatively much simpler: a large tortoise shell, with several armor-like items beside it.
Marilou passed over them one by one, and finally her gaze came to rest on a sun-shaped pendant.
The description read:
【Sorrow of the Sun. Classification: S rank. Described effect: the bearer feels heat; resistance to mental-type skills is raised; but the bearer becomes more susceptible to the curse of the blazing sun.】