Saintess Summons Skeletons

Chapter 867 - Buried under a mountain of books

Sofia had spent the next two days collecting books on enchanting techniques. Said books were quite hard to find for the common folk, but Sofia had made the mistake asking for help from both Zerei, Erredis, TLDR’s Red Carpet, and some of the Arege Union merchants all at the same time. Just Erredis’ personal collection that she dumped on Sofia without a second thought was more than a thousand volumes, a good portion of it thousands of years old, written entirely in draconic, and using old magic runes that looked nothing like modern Avian-created enchantment magic.

For the others, she had spent the hefty sum of five stones to indiscriminately buy every bit of knowledge she could, and then, there was her own personal collection that she had amassed over time and just never took the time to thoroughly go through.

The planned enchantment wing in her newly built library was already so full that she had to extend it, and then Saria came back from a short round trip to Brighthall and Zephir’s sect, having somehow procured another two storage rings full of books on the subject.

Standing between the two full rows of bookshelves taller than herself that spanned from one end of the library to the other, Sofia was a bit overwhelmed.

“I might have gone slightly overboard this time.”

Excluding the ones not written in the common language, reading and memorizing those could be done in just a day or two with how fast Sofia could read. Really understanding them, however, would take a lot more time. Not to mention that a technical skill like enchanting wasn’t all about knowledge, but also needed to be practiced. Delicate could offer some help, but in the end the wielder matters as much as the tool.

Saria shrugged, picking up a random book and sitting on a bone chair, “We’ve got at least thirty thousand years of research to catch up to. This much is only a start,” she said, starting to slowly flip through the pages.

“Sometimes I forget you’re even more of a knowledge hog than I am.”

“Ah! So at least there’s one thing I’m still better at than you! Get to reading, your arm isn’t gonna enchant itself!”

The melody of spring echoing softly in the background, the two sisters secluded themselves in the palace library.

Sofia had grabbed all the ‘enchantment basics’ type books for a start, anything that looked like it was targeted at novices, and was going through them one by one. There were almost a hundred of just those, and it was very insightful to see just how much understanding and technique varied from one craftsman to the next. As could be expected, many of the most interesting ones were written directly by the master, and Sofia recognized a few names, like those of the three craftsmen who made the charms she was contemplating buying a few days earlier.

A great number of the books were also written by TLDR directly, who seemed to be quite open about contributing just about anything he discovered to the world aside from his quasi-monopoly on the crafting of spatial items.

Maybe that in itself is the reason why everyone is fine with his monopoly…

But bar none the author that showed up the most among the mountain of books was ‘Scholarly One’, who Sofia had to admit also had the best and easiest to understand writing style.

Making some decently fast progress through the novice-level books, as most of the concepts introduced there she was already familiar with, Sofia grabbed the last book of the pile she had prepared. Litany of circles, basics of an angular alternative. No author…

I think that’s one of the books Saria brought.

Sofia started reading the book that looked quite average outside of the strange title, but she quickly paused after just a few pages. The book seemed to be the barely coherent ravings of a madman obsessed with triangles who swore off circular magic after some unspecified tragic event. If anything it read more like a fiction than a book on enchanting although enchantments was clearly the main theme.

What am I even reading?

Still, the book raised a few interesting questions, namely pointing out that everyone was obsessed with circles when even the divine did not fear angles. There was some truth in that, Sun and Moon’s divine runes were good examples, fully angular, made of squares or triangles. Yet the vast majority of magic, even Sofia’s own spells, was mostly circles, spirals, and generally rounded forms. Even the Avian runes that all modern enchanting used, resembling strange letters, had a tendency to be rounded, with few sharp angles. It was not like straight lines and sharp angles did not exist in spell and enchantment structures, but they were by far outnumbered by the flowy, curvy lines of circular shapes that let mana flow much more easily.

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Intriguing as it was, however, Sofia had to put down the book halfway through. The more she was reading the less sense the words made until she could barely read a third of the words on each page, the others being too slurred, too hastily penned down to be legible.

“Saria,” Sofia called out, holding up the book, “this was from the books you brought over, right?”

“Can I see?”

Sofia bent over to hand her the book, watching her sister read the title and check the first few pages.

“Hmm… Oh, yeah, I’ve had this one for a while, actually, though I never got around to reading it.”

“Where did you find it? It’s… Quite the strange piece of work.”

“I’m pretty sure I got it from one of the book stalls that show up every so often at the sect’s market. Their books are always so cheap I often buy them in bulk. Got a few hundred just sitting at home in a storage room. Could bring them if you like, though it’s mostly random novels.”

This made Sofia suddenly remember and realise something, standing up and grabbing the book from Saria’s hands.

“Wait here a minute! I’ll be right back!”

Not giving Saria any explanation, Sofia entered the Margin, giving the sleeping Rem a quick glance before rushing into the Zangdar castle.

Where is it…

Sofia quickly looked through the shelves in the main dining room, where Bookie liked to rest and Pareth usually left his art-related and picture books.

“Found it!”

Hand-carved on the book’s leather cover were a few words, the only words said book contained, “Faces of the divine”. Pareth had randomly bought it from a market stall in the Obsidian Mountain sect, and they had found it quite intriguing, as it depicted the preferred physical form of Sun, Moon, and quite a few other gods. Holding the two books next to one another immediately confirmed Sofia’s hunch.

“It’s the same hand-writing!”

Leaving the margin as fast as she had entered it, Sofia reappeared in her library. “Look!” she told Saria, handing her the other book, “Same handwriting. Can you guess where I got this?”

“Same place?” Saria guessed before even glancing at the book in her hands.

“Same place.”

“Oh, hey, yeah, I’ve seen that one before at your place, never made the connection. Does look like it’s written by the same person… Doubt we’ll find more, though, I feel like I would have noticed earlier if other books I got from there had the same hand writing. Is there even anything interesting in there?” Saria asked, starting to flip through the pages of the Litany of circles.

“It asks interesting questions but there isn’t any real resolution, as you can see.”

“Hmm… Studying the triangular divine runes… And the same person drew the picture book of gods… So… Either they were very well connected, a regular spectator of the Ark with a lot of money to spare, or a god themselves. It’s quite surprising their books ended up for sale in the sect’s market, even if the actual knowledge inside isn’t worth all that much.”

“Can the sect trace back the origin of the books?” Sofia asked.

“Probably not… The sect itself operates that stall whenever enough books have been donated to the sect hall for tokens by the members. It's mostly internal commerce, so I don’t think we have extensive records. It’d take up an entire second mountain just to stock it all.”

“It was donated by a member of the sect then?”

“Yeah, almost for sure, but if you count the external members who live spread out in the surrounding region, that’s like… North of a hundred thousand people.”

“Wait, really?!”

“Of course, did you think everyone is always at the headquarters or something? Zephir is basically the king of the region. Even Cin’s hometown is quite far away but it’s still within the sect territory.”

“I see… Then we would have to use divination to trace back the origin of the books, probably? I’m intrigued but not that much. I guess we’ll never know who wrote these.”

Saria shrugged. “Neat find nonetheless,” she said, handing the books back to Sofia.

“Hmmhmm…”

Sitting back down, Sofia reopened the Litany of circles, quite annoyed that she couldn’t read the later half. It wasn’t as if the author had stopped writing when their penmanship had become unintelligible either. There were more than fifty pages of incoherent scribbles and splashes of ink with only a few distinguishable words here and there, growing rarer and rarer as one went through the pages.

Why would they even keep writing when it’s like this…

She looked back at the first page, where the author’s writing was perfectly clean and tidy, staring at it for a bit with a frustrated sigh.

Circles and triangles…

Triangles… TRIANGLES?!

This- The words!