After my previously unsuccessful hunt for information, I found that my new approach was not only far more interesting, it also proved far more productive. And it also provided me with an opportunity to experiment with my shadow clones and my magick a little more.
Having arrived at the library after my walk through town, I had decided to be a bit more systematic with my approach. Not only to the library itself, but also my day to day routine, as much as you could call it that. It really went to show just how much of my routine had evolved around the human necessities of sleep and food. Without those two constants, I had to actively pay attention to the time piece, otherwise I could easily spend hours, if not days in one place, doing the exact same thing.
Of course, that would change over time, once the initial novelty had worn off and I decided to leave these ruins. I had no doubts that the mundanity of the day to day routine would properly settle in once I rejoined whatever civilisation might be out there.
A stray thought momentarily brought up a moment of contemplation, given that I wouldn’t be able to procure any ADHD meds here, which had then led into a sudden and panicked attempt to remember more about that particular detail of my previous life, only to come up blank.
As disappointing as it had been, it had only been one of the many moments such as these I had experienced over the last couple of days, and something I had disturbingly quickly come to just accept and move on from.
Five days after my walk through town I had settled relatively comfortably into my new routine. I still had to occasionally remember to check the time, but those instances were slowly becoming more rare.
Unlike the first time I had visited the library, this time I made sure I wasn’t stuck there for the majority of the time. Instead I had opted for a schedule made up of seven and a half hour intervals, with thirty minute breaks in between. It was probably a bit tighter than it should’ve been, considering that I hadn’t had any other downtime such as for sleep or for meals, but it worked for me and I quickly grew bored if I had nothing to do.
Of course, I had taken to reading more than just the history books. My taste in novels was quite specific, but I had to admit that there were some rather unique and interesting ones to be found in the fiction section of the library. Some of which I was almost certain were based off of accounts of Earth, limited as they may have been. And while I couldn’t find any mention of Amnellium being present, another thing I’d definitely want to keep an eye on in the future, some of the novels reminded me a bit of that, too.
When I had first found such a book I had been perplexed to say the least. Satien had magitech, but not proper technology. And while the imagination of people would always be far more vast than the realm in which they existed, it was somewhat startling to see science fiction-esque novels in the library of a fantasy world. Of course, different, but similar enough that someone on earth would probably recognise them as such.
Then there were the magickal books. And by that I don’t mean books about magick. I mean magically enchanted books.
They held text, but each page was enchanted to form a minor illusion of the contents of said page, if the reader channelled a small bit of mana into it. Absolutely fascinating, basically turning books into holographic comics, but that hadn’t been the biggest shock.
No, the biggest shock had been the contents of said books. And the fact that I had only realised after I had opened one, that I had stumbled into the adult section. Which had me blushing fiercely for some reason.
Of course, I wasn’t surprised that porn transcended the realms. If anything, while humans and Thelvadore had a rather sorted history, they were still the most prominent species on the continent. Not the planet as a whole, but this continent at least. And humans would do as humans did, no matter if they were part of a technologically advanced capitalistic society, or part of a magickal feudal society. If I remembered correctly, over 50% of the bandwidth of the internet back home was used for porn. If that wasn’t a good indication for humans perverted nature, I didn’t know what was.
So I really wasn’t surprised at the fact that I found porn at all. I was more surprised and shocked at what the contents of said porn was.
There was a lot more… I wasn’t quite sure how to describe it. Visceral intensity? To anyone on earth basically any of these books would probably qualify as quite intensive fetish works. From the little I had seen, here it basically qualified as vanilla.
Of course, I had to keep in mind that this was a city primarily built and inhabited by dragons, who had quite different standards. So that might also have been an influence. That said, I couldn’t see it being that likely. Or even if it had been, the influence had been more subtle. Because most of what I found was definitely more in line with human, or maybe humanoid, sensibilities.
Elves in particular, which really didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me, though, was the widespread presence of dwarves in said books. I wasn’t exactly an expert of the subject matter, but I couldn’t recall dwarves being widely seen as sexually attractive or interesting back on earth. Then again, this was an entirely different world, and perhaps that was just my personal preference and confirmation bias. I didn’t like it, so I never looked into it, hence I couldn't find anything, which just reaffirmed my belief that it didn’t exist.
Really, I would be more surprised if there wasn’t some community for that as well somewhere on the net. What was it with the rules of the internet again? If it exists, there’s porn of it?
Well, whatever. My initial shock aside, I did read through a few of them. And as cliche and silly as it probably sounds–like some sort of embarrassed excuse–not for any sexual gratification. Not only was I still not quite comfortable to think about any of that, given that I was currently inhabiting a body technically not my own, the themes at hand weren’t quite my own preferences. It helped that I didn’t feel any sexual urges either. I wasn’t sure if that was because this body was technically draconic, which could potentially influence my preferences, or something else entirely. But I wasn’t complaining. Because it meant less distractions from what was actually important to me.
No, the reason I studied them had less to do with the contents, and more to do with the mechanisms behind the magical illusion. The holograms were fascinating, and if at all possible, I wanted to see if I couldn’t learn how to recreate them in the future.
When I wasn’t stuck in the library, I was outside on the plaza, training either with weapons or my magick. My weapons training was making amazing progress, and at this point I was comfortable that I could probably win most fights against the more common enemies with my skill with weapons alone, even if by some cataclysmic coincidence I lost all the strength and resilience granted to me by my draconic nature.
I hadn’t finished training with all weapons yet–far from it–but I had at least gone through what I considered the most common weapons. Which had been a bit of a surprise. Not due to the weapons in said list, but due to the fact that that was something Vuthe’s instincts could apparently help with.
It wasn’t like I had an encyclopedic memory of all the weapons and their distribution around the continent or the world, but whenever I picked up a weapon I had a vague sense of how likely it was to fight someone using said weapon. It was a dim sort of awareness, something that I could easily ignore if I so choose, and it wasn’t exactly the most useful knowledge in the world. But it was strange that it came through at all, since it had little to do with actually using the weapons themselves. I think. Or maybe I just didn’t know something Vuthe did.
Whatever, I wasn’t going to complain about more knowledge I could siphon off.
Of course, given the immense amount of knowledge and training Vuthe had with all the different types of weapons, their different forms, fighting styles, and whatever else, I had only stuck to the most basic styles for each of the more common weapons for now. Something that gave me a foundation, in case this learning system wouldn’t continue working in the future. The only exception to that were the kusarigama.
Not only was it Vuthe’s best weapon, it was an absolute favourite of mine–hence Vuthe’s talent with it. And I wanted to learn all there was to learn about at least this specific weapon before I potentially lost the ability to do so. If only because, while a wide breadth of capability made for a good foundation, specialisation triumphed above all else. And Vuthe had been very specialised with these.
The rest was more for situations I couldn’t use the kusarigama in, for one reason or another. But it would be my primary weapon going forward.
As productive as my weapon training had been, my magickal training was far less so. Not for a lack of trying mind you. At this point I was quite confident in my capabilities in aura manipulation, mana manipulation, and the basic concepts of magical and magickal spellcasting. My main hurdle was the complete lack of spells to draw from.
As a dragon Vuthe generally shaped magick on the go to whatever purpose she needed it, not bound by the rules of spellcasting a normal wizard, sorcerer, or whatever else would be limited to. Well, I say limited to. Technically every spellcaster could freely manipulate magick with enough training. It was just that said training took longer than most people would live.
In my case that turned out to be a problem. For two reasons primarily.
One, with me not knowing which spells Vuthe actually knew, I couldn’t intuitively draw on them. That was something that I had learned almost immediately about my capabilities. If I didn’t know that I was supposed to be able to do something in the first place, whatever magickal link I had to Vuthe’s experience wouldn’t help me at all. That meant that I could only rely on my own capabilities of shaping magick, making up spells on the fly.
Two, making up spells on the fly was vastly more complex than I initially thought. To the point that the knowledge I gained from Vuthe’s training wasn’t something I could immediately make use of. I knew how to do it, and I knew what she was capable of, but as each of those spells was a unique cast every time, there wasn’t one piece of knowledge I could glean to just make the spell happen. Instead I gained the knowledge of how each spell worked on a fundamental level.
To put it in simpler terms: I was given the parameters, and was told how to insert them properly into the equation, but not the equation itself. That was something I had to figure out for myself.
Which was why I had begun to read some of the magickal books in the library. This time meaning actual books about magick, instead of the holographic porn books.
Although, as a quick aside, there were other holographic books that didn’t entail porn. But they were very few and far between.
And that particular study had also led to my continued experimentation with the shadow clones. Which was why I was now sitting at the large wooden desk, hunkering over a text regarding the intricacies of dark and shadow magick, while two dozen shadow clones were all wandering around, collecting more and more material on the matter, and depositing it into a giant pile next to me.
If I wanted to learn the intricacies of magic and magick, then I had to start from something I did know how to do. Which was why I was hoping that studying up on the shadowstuff conjuration would help me in the future. I just needed to do my homework properly.
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