[3rd POV]
Hephaestus and her familia had stayed in the bookstore for quite some time. But thankfully, Hephaestus had not pushed her luck and stayed nearly as long as Loki had. Probably because she did not want to get the most powerful being she had ever met, on her bad side.
That would not end well for her.
But she did end up leaving with quite a lot.
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[Short Flashback]
"This is everything" Hephaestus said, as she stood in front of Wanda. The woman looked over the large stacks of books on the counter, and floating around the room. There had to be hundreds of books floating, of a massive range of genre's, price, and rarity.
There was books on forging, of course. There were books on enchanting, which seemed to be the second most popular, which made a lot of sense given what enchanting did, and what it could do when combined with forging.
There were books on runes, which were actually different from enchanting, and were pretty advanced due to the sheer variety of things that they could do. Literally thousands of ways to use a single rune, and there were hundreds of runes, if not thousands.
There were books on histories of other worlds, martial arts books, books on synthetic materials that they could make, and more. All of them being useful for forging or the familia at large in some form.
But of course, there wasn't just that.
She noticed more than a few female familia members blushing in embarrassment and looking away upon her noticing the romance books they had picked out. Which to be fair to them, they were actually pretty good picks in terms of romance.
Not the super cliche dogshit that she had in the corner and opted to completely ignore as if they did not exist. But actually decent stuff, a lot of it being from other worlds, so it was also super unique.
Wanda liked some of them, which was high praise.
The men had picked out their own books that were similar, and a hell of a lot more smutty. They at least, had shown their own embarrassment as she had given them another look, this time being closer to a deadpan.
At least they had picked out good smutty romance books.
Then there was the other major book that they had bought tons and tons of.
Manga.
The sheer amount that they had gotten was genuinely impressive. There had to have been well over one hundred volumes of different series, and many of them were great series. Like Death Note, Code Geass, Berserk, and several others that Wanda was surprised with.
"Fair warning with the Berserk manga, it is incredibly graphic and dark. Far more than any of the others that you all have chosen. If you aren't comfortable with some really horrific shit, then don't read that" Wanda warned, as there was a LOT of really terrible stuff in there.
Terrible as in evil.
It was still one of the greatest manga of all time. If not the single best of all time. But it was also an acquired taste of sorts, being incredibly graphic and full of horrors of different varieties.
There was a reason why it wasn't so much more popular, and why it never got a proper anime for it. With the first one having sucked absolute ass. And they never really tried after it, probably because it was genuinely so terrible. Being in 3d the entire time probably did not help, since when it comes to anime, nobody likes that shit.
It always looked ugly. Being janky as all hell, not at all detailed, and just plain wrong looking in comparison to the rest of the series. Wanda was not a fan, that much was something she made very clear.
"How graphic?" Hephaestus asked.
"Incredibly. Enough that you need to make sure that none of your familia members with past trauma involving sexual assault reads that" Wanda replied, as Hephaestus's eyes widened.
"People write stories about that?"
"Oh no, God no. The story itself is not entirely based around that, there's just some...scenes that are involving that. It is one of the greatest manga ever created, but it is incredibly tragic, and dark. As long as you're able to get past that, then you will almost certainly enjoy it on some level" Wanda replied, getting Hephaestus to slowly nod.
She still didn't understand why someone would enjoy reading about a story that had something that graphic inside, but she supposed it was not up to her. And the familia members that had grabbed that particular manga did not look too bothered by it, although they did nod in understanding.
Mentally those members made sure to not let anyone who had ever dealt with that sort of thing, read any of that manga.
"There's warnings about the material in the beginning, so don't worry about anyone reading it without knowing what's coming" Wanda added, which got a grateful look from those same people.
It would make things a bit easier, not to mention safer for those that would be uncomfortable with whatever was inside. Nobody wanted a panic attack to come onto whoever read whatever traumatic event was happening inside a volume.
"Why is it all so cheap?" Hephaestus asked, noticing that the total price of the books was really cheap compared to what it realistically would have been back in Orario.
"Because I price it at what I believe it is worth, and not at what other people believe they are worth. I do not have any real care for currency, I just put prices on them for the fun of it, and it makes my store far more real. In simplest terms, it's cheap because I said so" Wanda said, before continuing.
"Unless you wish for me to price it at what it should be worth back in your world?" Wanda asked with a small knowing glint in her eyes, and her amusement thinly veiled in this side of the world.
"No no, that's fine" Hephaestus instantly said in response, knowing that her familia couldn't cover even a tenth of what it would be worth had she priced it according to their worlds values on such products.
Not one single familia could come even close to it. The wealth that would be required for some of the books would overturn entire familia's with ease. Hell, she could sell all of these books and literally afford to buy entire cities.
That was how monumentally expensive these books would be.
And Wanda was casually selling them for a little amount, not even remotely as much as they were truly worth in her world.
Hephaestus decided that the more she interacted with Wanda, the more she began to like her.
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[Flashback End]
Hephaestus had stayed in the shop for a while longer, talking with Wanda about the things she was selling, and whether or not she could let her and her familia know whenever she got new forging books in.
Wanda had agreed. Since they did buy one of every single forging book she had, which was a bit surprising. But she supposed when you're that dedicated to a craft, you'd want to learn as much as you possibly could about it.
Wanda decided on her own that she liked Hephaestus well enough, and didn't find her as annoying as Loki seemed to be from what little they had talked.
The next few hours had been relatively relaxed, she had decided. There was not much in terms of new customers or anything, making it kind of boring. There was some other adventurers that had come in, of course, and they had all heavily praised the shop, but nothing more than that.
Wanda dubbed them as a bunch of faceless nobodies. So she opted to ignore most of them instead.
There was a few new Loki familia members that had come in after she had finished some of her other things, and they had bought quite a number books which she was fine with since they were not nearly as annoying as Loki herself.
Eventually however, the door to the place opened, and in walked a very recognizable character from that very same universe. The primary love interest of the protagonist of the show. As well as his Goddess. The one and only...
Hestia
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That's the end of the chapter!
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