“So, does anyone think they can accomplish something more in this forest?” I asked once everyone had sat down for our evening meal. It was something akin to breakfast for Lia, though she primarily ate for the taste, taking her nourishment from my blood, dinner for Luna and something in between for me. It was also the one meal we all shared as a family, and thus the best time to discuss things as a group. In this case, the discussion was whether to remain in the forest or move on, as the past few days had shown me that there was little I could gain here. I had been trying to make sense of the area around the Waldhof, I had tried to investigate how the forest had expanded and why the world around it didn’t seem to be affected but I hadn’t made any progress with either problem.
There were no more avenues for me to explore and for the last two days, I had done nothing but bang my head against the brick walls of ignorance, trying to brute force my way to an answer. The result was nothing but a severe headache and the conviction that I’d need to change something to make progress. But given that I had no idea what I could change, I was willing to give up, to continue our travels in the hope that I’d find some answers further afield. Maybe travelling towards the ocean, hoping that the coastline would give me an idea of how the terrain here had expanded and whether the change had propagated throughout the land. Another option would be to look for a nearby road, there had to be a traceable change somewhere, and the expansion of this area couldn’t be limited to just this. Well, at least not if the usual rules of physics and maths still applied, but given that magic shenanigans were always a possible, if incredibly unsatisfying, explanation, I wasn’t about to hold my breath.
“I don’t think I’ll manage to get better results with the plants, at least not for a fairly long time. What I can do with them at the moment is about the limit,” Luna admitted, while I noticed Lia shrug in indifference, making me think that she enjoyed this forest but wasn’t really interested in this specific area, that she’d be able to have just as much fun elsewhere.
“But there’s something we should do before moving on,” Luna continued, drawing my focus back to her. “We need to write down our findings, the Lady asked me to leave them here in the sanctuary so that future seekers of knowledge can build upon what we’ve learned,” she explained, making me frown. We had worked hard to gather the knowledge we had learned here, simply giving it away to anyone walking into our shelter didn’t quite sit right with me. But then I noticed Luna’s phrasing, that the Lady had asked her to, making me think that there might be a quest involved, a quest from her Deity. Those weren’t something a devout should ignore, ever, and even for those not directly bound to a Deity, ignoring their quests was a bad idea.
“Did she give you a quest to do so?” I asked, just making sure that my conclusions were correct. When Luna nodded, the idea of leaving the area was tabled for now, with the task of writing down our findings taking priority.
Now we only had to figure out the best way to do so. Given that we had no ready supply of paper, and keeping in mind that paper wouldn’t last very long in the somewhat moist environment in the burrow under the blessed tree, we needed something different. The classic possibilities would be to either use vellum, animal hide, leather or something along those lines or to go positively stone-aged and carve the words into stone.
Amusingly, the usually least convenient method, namely carving the words into stone, was the easiest for us. If we wanted to use some processed animal product, we’d have to hunt down the appropriate animals and process their hides, something I theoretically knew how to do, thanks to the education given to me by Sigmir, Adra and Rai on Mundus, but practically, I lacked some key components to do so. On Mundus, we had used a combination of lime and a mixture of various minerals to tan the hides, and while I thought finding lime wasn’t impossible, the rest of the mixture wasn’t something I knew how to make, I didn’t even know what exactly was in it. All in all, trying to invent the entire process would be exhausting and messy, while, most likely, failing to produce anything satisfactory. Maybe I’d put Lia and Alex on the idea for the future, having the ability to produce our own leather was useful even when we didn’t want to have something to write on, and it would give them a worthwhile project to work on.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
No, stone was a better writing material for a simple reason: Magic. I could use my Earth Magic, or Crystal Magic depending on the exact type of stone, to carve the words into the surface with nothing but a bit of concentration, no need for a chisel, hammer or any sort of muscle power. Just my mind, a bit of focus and Astral Power, all of which I had in large supply.
Finding the right sort of rock was a little difficult. While I could conjure rock, just like I could conjure Ice, neither would stick around indefinitely. Rock faded slower than Ice did, but it would eventually fade, making conjured rock the wrong substance to preserve something within. And so, while Luna was putting a bit of extra work into her skills and putting an outline together with some help from Lia, I was roaming the forest looking for some nice, grey rock.
It didn’t take too long to find some, just a few rocks roughly the size of my torso, and while getting them back to the shelter wasn’t easy it also didn’t pose a significant problem. Just tedious work, something that had to be endured but could be accomplished with a bit of time.
Once we had the rocks, it was time to turn them from roughly round chunks into something that could be handled without it being seriously exhausting, without cutting the rock thin enough that a single, stupid mistake would shatter the work Luna and I would put into preparing them.
It was quite fascinating, when I focused my magic, both Earth and Crystal, into the rock, I could easily find a structured pattern, one that was quite similar to the one within Ice, only that the one in rock was broken up in distinct groups. In one group, the pattern was subtly different from the pattern in another, and these groups were generally distinct to a specific part of the rock. It didn’t take me long to realise that the rock, even if I thought of it as a uniform entity I called rock, wasn’t truly that. There were minute differences in the formation process that caused different parts of the rock to be structured slightly differently, quite similar to the differences I found in some metal objects.
Following the differences in structure to separate the larger rock into smaller bits made sense to me and it was relatively easy to accomplish with magic. It still took a decent bit of time and effort but it also served as excellent training for my Earth and Crystal Magic, giving me a few points in both and bringing them to nineteen for Earth and fifteen for Crystal. It was fairly amusing just how high those two were, especially considering how relatively low my affinity for them was. The sheer amount of work both types of magic accomplished, either to create shelter or to prepare and enchant magical objects, was significant and so were my gains. And now, I was even using them to prepare a library of sorts of Lady Hecate.
And that was exactly what Luna and I did next. Once we had the larger rocks I had found cut into something relatively easy to work with, the actual work began. Sometimes, it was Luna, dictating to me what she had found out about the different plants in the area, or what Lady Hecate had communicated to her during her prayers, other times I was on my own, carving my findings and observations regarding the strange expansion of this area or our experiences in the Waldhof Dungeon into the rock.
It was quite an interesting experience, to write down my thoughts in such a permanent fashion, knowing that future visitors to this place would hopefully find them and be able to use and even expand on our work here. A part of me was reminded of writing guides and such during the time I was playing Craft of War, all these years ago. This felt similar, a sharing of information for the good of all, or something along those lines.
Ultimately, it took Luna and me almost a week to prepare the different tablets of stone, to carve our findings into the rock and set up the area around the Idol of Hecate to hold the tablets. Once we were done, and just about ready to leave, Luna stood at the entrance to that room, the sanctum if you will, and spoke a prayer to Hecate, dedicating the room and the knowledge within to the Goddess.
The result was quite interesting, the power of Hecate was almost palpable in the area and I had no doubt that anyone trying to cause mischief here would be dealt with harshly. Our work was, quite obviously, protected by the Goddess and I could feel that Luna had gained at least a level for her work, while I had gained some EXP as thanks. Not enough to fill up another level but it was a nice gesture.
And now, we could continue on our journey and leave this shelter behind. Leave it, leave the knowledge and eventually, the sharing of knowledge under Hecate’s name would spread throughout the land.