Part 3 Volume 3

This is the tenth volume of Ascendance of a Bookworm light novel.

Synopsis
In the midst of an approaching winter, Rozemyne the High Bishop is traveling between the temple and castle more than ever, participating in noble society, the baptism ceremony, and the Dedication Ritual. With her hands full teaching kids too young for the Royal Academy and even tutoring guard knights with bad grades, she's incomparably busier than last year.

Her influence in both noble society and the temple is increasing steadily, and her squad of Gutenbergs work on improving the printing press while she sells picture books in the castle. Her love for books keeps growing, and the mana within her is likewise becoming progressively stronger! She faces new threats in the winter with the Knight's Order, then gathers ingredients for her jureve potion during Spring Prayer.

This is another action-packed volume of this biblio-fantasy, where the Saint of Ehrenfest overcomes a winter of mysticism and battle! Including two lengthy short stories and a four-panel manga drawn by You Shiina!

Characters
Characters are listed in order of appearance.

Contents

 * Prologue (Fran POV)
 * Chapter 1: Ingo and Improving the Printing Press
 * Chapter 2: The Gathering of the Gutenbergs
 * Chapter 3: The Start of Winter Socializing
 * Chapter 4: The Baptism Ceremony and Our Winter Debut
 * Chapter 5: A Class for Kids
 * Chapter 6: A Tea Party
 * Chapter 7: The Dedication Ritual (Take Two)
 * Chapter 8: Gathering the Winter Ingredients
 * Chapter 9: Fighting the Schnesturm
 * Chapter 10: The the End of Winter
 * Chapter 11: Selling the Materials
 * Chapter 12: Angelica and the Coming of Spring
 * Chapter 13: Upcoming Spring Prayer
 * Chapter 14: Hasse's Punishment
 * Chapter 15: The Door of Judgement
 * Chapter 16: The Execution
 * Chapter 17: The Spring Ingredient and Discussing Spring Prayer
 * Chapter 18: The Goddesses' Bath
 * Chapter 19: The Night of Flutrane
 * Chapter 20: The End of Spring Prayer
 * Epilogue (Eckhart POV)
 * Winter Debut and the Playroom (Lamprecht POV)
 * The High Bishop's Exclusive Business (Ingo POV)
 * Afterword

Summary
Rozemyne, noting the increased strain on her attendants, asks Fran to help her chose two new ones. Fritz and Zahm are chosen.

Improvements on the printing press continue to be wanted, but as Rozemyne already has a vision in her head of what she wants Ingo requests to meet with her. Rozemyne meets with Ingo in the hidden room to discuss plans, and they end up wanting a meeting with Johann and Zack. During the meeting of the Gutenbergs, Rozemyne offers to buy Zack's schematics. After discussing plans for a printing press, they depart planning to meet again once Zack has finished his schematics. A printing press is chosen and they begin production.

With the approach of winter, Rozemyne gets ready to travel to the castle for the winter baptism ceremony and the winter debut. Upon her arrival, she motivates Wilfried once again to work on his schoolwork and handles Sylvester's repeated desire for Ferdinand's assistance.

The winter debut progresses with the new children playing harspiel. Rozemyne is shocked at the lower laynobles' bad playing, realizing yet again the importance that status has in her society. Rozemyne takes the stage last, and blessing pour out of her as she plays, shocking everyone, including herself. Ferdinand uses this as an opportunity to promote the saint propaganda. Afterwards, the gifting ceremony for the new students of the Royal Academy begins. At its end, when chatter breaks out, Rozemyne hears them speak about her.

Rozemyne's next trial is the playroom, the socialization training ground for the baptized children. Rozemyne gets introduced to the other children, then learns a bit about the Royal Academy and its courses. When she learns that she, as an archduke's child, has to take the Archduke Candidate course, she faints, realizing that she can't become a scholar that way. Once the Royal Academy student leave for classes, Rozemyne takes control of the playroom, turning it into an educational training course through the power of sweets. She also uses it as an opportunity to advertise her products, such as karuta and her picture books.

Rozemyne also takes part in tea parties, meeting with Lord Henrik, Damuel's brother, Elvira, her mother, to give a financial report on the Harspiel Concert, Giebe Illgner, Brigitte's brother, to discuss printing, and finally considering she is meeting all her knight's families but one, she decided to meet with Angelica's family too.

Rozemyne writes down stories told in noble households, then heads to the temple for the Dedication Ritual. She received a magical letter from somewhere, asking about Bezewanst and sends the usual reply. It turns into a bird and flies away, startling Rozemyne and she resolves to tell Ferdinand later. When she does, Ferdinand is stressed and ignores it.

It becomes time to gather the winter ingredient, with the appearance of the Lord of Winter, a schnesturm. Using Leidenschaft's spear, a temple relic, and the assistance of the entire Knight's Order, she defeats the Lord of Winter, gaining her winter ingredient.

Rozemyne gets permission from Sylvester to sell her teaching materials and Hasse's punishment is discussed. Rozemyne also opens up a loan option for poorer students, where parents pay for damages in exchange for stories.

Angelica failed her classes and has to stay back a season. To help her, Rozemyne organizes her guard knights to teach her, rewarding them with prizes that they want. Damuel gets a monetary bonus, Cornelius, a sweet that does not exist yet, and Brigitte “something of equal importance.” Angelica herself becomes motivated at the chance to have Rozemyne gift her mana for a manablade.

Rozemyne begins preparation for the spring prayer and spring ingredient gathering. In addition, she reveals her gift for Brigitte, a dress that suits her body type. Corinna and Tuuli begin the measuring.

Rozemyne travels to Hasse to reveal their punishment: 10 years of increased taxes, no spring prayer, and the execution of the traitors. Ferdinand delivers execution through mana onto the traitors -- namely the Mayor, his wife, and his cronies -- in front of all of Hasse and Rozemyne.

Spring Gathering preparations are made and they head off to Spring Prayer and the Goddess's Bath. They hunt down the talfrosch that infested the area. The night of Flutrane arrives with Rozemyne and her attendants mysteriously arriving at the Goddess's Bath alone inside Lessy. The air is thick in mana and they lose all sense of danger and sense of time, having a musical tea party for most of the night. Near morning, Rozemyne asks for access to a rairein to get its nectar. She climbs up a plant to access it, but as morning comes, the spell fades, and Ferdinand appears from out beyond the bath, to catch her on his highbeast.

Ferdinand explains to them what happened. The trees had taken Lessy to the spring by themselves and to the surprise of Ferdinand and the attendants. They followed Lessy to the spring, only to be blocked by a thick wall of mana. All they could do was watch Rozemyne and her attendants play music and sing, completely defenseless and unwary to any dangers.

Ferdinand experiments a little with the leftover rairein nectar, discovering a few new properties with which he would like to experiment. He asks Rozemyne to use mana to grow feyplants, but she tells them there isn't enough mana to spare to do it right now. Ferdinand however, is willing to do it in ten years, when the mana crisis will have passed, so Rozemyne tells Ferdinand that the price for her mana is a library.

Ferdinand and Eckhart have a discussion about the events at the gathering, noting Rozemyne's chefs and Ferdinand's apparent comfort around Rozemyne to the degree where he doesn't check the food she prepares for poison, as he does for everyone else. When Karstedt arrives, the discussion continues with more detail. As the discussion flows from the events to the new discovery of the properties of the rairein nectar, Eckhart and Karstedt grow bored and change the topic to using Leidenschaft's spear as a weapon and Rozemyne's abnormalities in addition to planning for the Summer Gathering.

Adaptation Notes
Differences from the original web novels: