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The figure appeared to be around sixteen or seventeen and was dressed in a strange red-white outfit. I didn't know what shrine maidens wore, but I suspected the detached sleeves were not regulation.

As she saw me approach, she seemed to brighten up a bit before slumping down as she took in my strange garb and parasol. Giving a polite wave, I stopped a little bit inside the shrine gates and spoke.

"Hello, nice to meet you. I'm new to Gensokyo and heard that you're one of the big wigs, so I thought I might as well say hi and show I don't mean any trouble."

Setting the cup down, she stood up, and after looking me up and down, she gestured for me to approach and started to speak. "Well, that is good; thank you for letting me know, and please don't cause trouble."

Walking closer, I smiled at her and twisted my hand around the handle of my parasol, opening a portal to my home. As she started, I reached inside, grabbed the sake bottle, and handed it to her.

"Thought I should also get a gift. It's only polite to give a gift when meeting new people, right?"

Her polite smile grew into a proper happy smile as she looked over the chilled bottle of sake and she untensed. "Thank you, do you have any other question you would like answered."

"A few," I replied. "Mainly, do you know of a place I can borrow or purchase magic books and a location I might be able to scavenge for matriels? I also suppose a general overview or map of Gensokyo would be nice as well."

Nodding, she held up a hand for me to wait and walked inside the shrine. I had to wait for a few minutes before she came back with a scroll that she had unrolled and handed to me.

"While Outsiders aren't terribly common, we do have a map for those who get lost as well as general record keeping." She said as an explanation for why a shrine would have a map.

Looking over the map, I hummed while looking it over. I kept an ear out as she gave me a quick rundown of what I asked.

"I know of two places where you could find magical books. There is a bookstore in the Human Village, but I don't know where it is. The other is the Scarlet Devil Mansion; however, Patchouli is protective of her books, so you might have to make a deal with her."

Rolling the map up, I handed it back to her as she continued to speak. "As for materials, I would recommend either Kourondou or Muedzuka. The first is a shop that could have what you're looking for, while the second is where most things fall into Gensokyo."

Grinning, I reached out to shake her hand and thanked her. "Well, thank you for the assistance and if you need help of some kind let me know; I apologize for not asking earlier, but what is your name?"

Giving me a soft smile, now completely relaxed, she shook my hand. "Reimu Hakurei, and no thank you, it is refreshing to have a newcomer not start an Incident right off the bat."

Releasing her hand, I gave her a polite wave and took off, with Komainu copying me shyly. Flying past the gate, I mused that the talk had gone well; there was no fighting, and Reimu even seemed happy that I had stopped by first.

I did not doubt that if strange events started cropping up, I would be the first suspect, but even a little kindness could go a long way.

My first stop would be Kourondou, which was not very far from here. Then I would travel over the forest of magic and towards Muedzuka. Depending on how long that would take, I would either head to the Scarlet Devil Mansion or head to the Human Village.

I wanted to avoid approaching the village at night as that could give the wrong impression, and I wanted to present the best front possible. I also knew that all the mansion's residents were either active at night or needed little to no sleep.

My flight speed was fairly slow unless I was in active combat and willing to expend energy, so it took around thirty minutes to reach the small shop I had seen on the map.

Landing outside the door, I turned to Komainu and asked her a question. "I'm going to be doing quite a bit of boring work. If you want, feel free to meet your friends, I'll stop by at some point to meet them."

Grinning, she gave me a tight hug and darted off. Smiling, I opened the door and stepped inside. The inside was less a shop and more of a hoarder's wet dream. The walls were stacked high with everything from computers to cigarettes.

"One moment!" I heard a male voice shout from the back. Shrugging, I walked over to the computers and started looking them over. While all of them were not working, they were relatively new and only damaged. I surmised that their battery ran out, which is why most of them don't work.

As I looked over the computers, I heard a person walking towards me, so I turned to face him. He was a man who looked to be in his mid thirty. He also had silver hair and gold eyes, strangely. Shrugging that off, I reached out to shake his hand.

"Nice to meet you; I see that you are interested in those computers." He said while shaking my hand. "From what I know, they are complex devices that allow one to calculate things without needing an abacus." Frowning, he continued. "However, they seemed to be missing something that would allow them to work properly, and I can't find a place for batteries."

Chuckling slightly, I replied. "I know what computers are, and what you are missing is electricity. While the laptops have an internal battery, the desktops need a constant source."

I felt the Grimoire grow before I was slammed with what felt like dozen textbooks worth of information. Wincing, I rubbed my temple and raised a finger asking for a moment.

The man waited for me to drop the finger before talking. "Are you ok?" He asked. Pushing the new knowledge to the side, I nodded and gestured for me to continue speaking.

"I see. I didn't think that electricity would be the solution. Are you from the Outside world, or are you simply experienced with devices like this?" He asked. As he finished, I realized that I hadn't asked his name and decided to do so.

"Sorry, but I realized I haven't asked your name," I said while sticking out my hand for a shake. "The name's Aidan; nice to meet you."

Chuckling, he took my hand and gave it a firm shake before replying. "It's fine, and the name is Rinnosuke."

"Nice to meet you, Rinnosuke, and to answer your question, yes, I am from the Outside World," I replied to his earlier question. He then broke into a broad smile and started peppering me with questions about the vast majority of the items in his shop.

A little while later, we stopped, and I managed to ask about what I had come for. "Sorry to cut you off, but I did come here for a reason."

Rubbing the back of his neck Rinnosuke chuckled a bit before replying. "Sorry about that; while I can tell what some of this does, I often don't know the proper use, so an Outsider telling me what they do helps a ton."

"It's fine. I'm happy to help; however, I came to see if you were willing to sell magical materials. I don't have specific things in mind, but it would be great if I could see what you offer."

"Of course." He said while striding towards the back of his shop while speaking over his shoulder. "Give me a few minutes, and I'll have a selection for you."

Nodding despite the fact he couldn't see it, I turned back to the other objects he had in his shop. Pursuing a second time did not alter my prior opinion of the shop.

However, I was willing to see what he had to offer in terms of magical goods as it was likely they were of higher quality due to him living in Gensokyo.

A few minutes later Rinnosuke walked out holding a small sack that was filled to the brim with various strange goods. Setting it down on the countertop, he gestured for me to join him as he set out the objects and started explaining them.

"I have three metals that I'm willing to part with. The amount I have the least of is called Hihi'irokane and is lighter than gold while being stronger than diamond; it also has other strange properties." He said while setting up a tiny pile of a strange shimmering metal that looked very similar to the one that framed my Mini-Hakkero.

"The second" He said while setting out a slightly larger pile of a green shimmering ore. "Is called Orichalcum and is extremely dense and absorbs an incedible amount of magic no matter the source."

Humming I peered at the Orichalcum with my Magesight and saw that it was actively pulling mana from the air and appeared to be compressing the mana already inside of it. My mind was already whirling with ideas for these two metals. I was snapped out of my thoughts when Rinnosuke continued.

"The last and one I have the most of is Mithril; it is less protective than Hihi'irokane; however, it is much lighter and easier to work for weapons and armor without any of the other properties."

Upening the sack he pured out a much larger tower than the rest of the metals and tucked the sack away. "As a thanks feel free to grab a bit of each but I'm afraid I can't give all that much away as this is one of the few things I actually sell." He said while chuckling under his breath

Humming, I let my hands trail over each of the metals. They all had upsides and downsides. Hihi'irokane would likely be the best for forging magical artifacts that weren't weapons and armor.

Orichalcum would be perfect for creating mana battries or sinks while Mithril was an all-around good metal. However, I still needed a method to retrieve weapons once fire from the Gate of Babylon, so I grabbed a few small rocks of Hihi'irokane and tucked it away.

"Thank you for your generosity; when I have more funds, I'll make sure to come back and buy more ore," I said while giving him a slight grin and turning to leave. "Make sure you do!" He shouted after me and peering over my shoulder I could see he was smiling as well.

Stepping outside I floated in the air and consulted my mental map of Gensokyo for where I would go next. Flying over the Forest of Magic, I mentally checked the time-1:34.

I had plenty of time to poke around Muendzuka for more materials to work with. I already had an idea for an item that could 'tag' other items and teleport them back to itself.

Unlike a proper Noble Phantams it would be heavily limited and require vast stores of mana to work. That meant I needed to head back to Kourindu to get Orichalcum.

I also needed to retool my contanment circles as my neewest power and gifted me unparalleled knowledge of Formalcraft and now rituals. Tucking my parasol under my arm, I flipped open the Grimorei and read over my newest power as I flew.

It was called Risen Legend and granted me almost True Magic levels of power and knowledge in a specific field. That knowledge also extended to any world I traveled to in the future, which meant that I currently was a once-in-centuries master in rituals and Fromalcraft.

It also granted me a method for immortality and not the unaging kind either. The first step was a ritual that would pull massive amounts of mana into the soul allowing it to expend that mana upon injury or death to recover.

The next step was taking a small chunk of your soul and pulling a fragment of a location's soul to mix them. That would allow you to live on so long as that area still existed. I could, for example, perform that ritual with a relatively small area such as a U.S. state, and so long as that area of the U.S. wasn't destroyed, I could survive.

The second to last step was cycling both your souls and the locations through each other. That would allow neither to be destroyed unless they both were. In the same case as earlier the U.S state couldn't be destroyed unless I was killed at the same time.

The final step was repeting the prior steps hundreds to thousands of times to bind yourself to the entire Earth. That would render you and the Earth immortal. It also meant that the Earth would consider you a part of it which granted many benefits in the Nasuverse.

Landing in front of the junkyard that was Muedzuka I put the Grimore away and headed inside ready to start searching for loot.

Powers Gained

Risen Legend(Formalcraft)

There is a poisonous fetishism at the heart of magus society, an obsession with the old and the mysterious. A toxic belief that all that we have now is just a pale imitation of what came before. Age is power, an old family serves a magus better, we must reach the origin of it all. That's just so much shit. Magecraft may lack the raw power and direct use of systems from earlier in history but the idea that it is useless is the thought of someone without the will to persevere. A true magus would not stop, not until they tear open a path beyond their limits.

You're living proof of the idea that magecraft being an inferior system is not necessarily as true as much of the Clocktower thinks. Whatever your own innate power, you have taken a chosen specialty of magecraft to obscene heights, the likes of which is only matched within magecraft by things like Aozaki Touko's doll making styles or the impossible Bounded Fields of Araya Souren. Whatever your chosen field of study is, you're certainly one of the greatest users in many generations, if not centuries outright. Your spells within that field are stronger, cheaper, faster and far more skillfully controlled than any hopeful peers. Your knowledge and skill is near total, at least in regards to existing knowledge on the field, and you have the sheer talent to continually push the limits and learn impossible spells and actions, like discovering how to make Bounded Fields mobile around a person. It's far easier than normal, almost springing into your mind, to discover ways to combine other magic and magecraft you know into your chosen field to expand and empower it even further. As a finishing touch, whatever path you choose has revealed to you a method of immortality, a way to make yourself not just unaging but outright harder to kill in general. Touko's famous immortality puppet network as a sterling example.

In future worlds, you'll find anything similar enough to your chosen specialty will receive all the same effects. A brilliant alchemist here will be one in the future too. You may also buy this perk multiple times.