Salt then spent about 4 hours just to find the damned library as it did not yet have a main road to itself. Standing in the foyer of the front hall Salt admired the view and the shear audacity to build such wonders from mundane materials. The front hall went up a level then stacks then up a level then stacks as far as his unaltered eye could see, leaving a massive area open in the middle so one could look at the inverted screw formed structure. Frowning at the weird atmosphere Salt could see the normal amount of concepts about, but very little magic. Noting the abnormality Salt headed towards the front desk where a sharply dressed first circle mage stood. “Hello welcome to the Mundane arts of the worlds can I help you with anything sir?” Readying himself for a long run of bureaucracy Salt began “hello I am Salt the keeper of the light of yesterday and I would like to have a chat with an elder librarian of your fine library. This is in regarding you most likely becoming the main library next week. Thank you I will just sit down at these stacks over here, take your time.” Sideling over to the nearest table Salt took out his two tomes and started studying their interacting with each other.
Fascinating things the bindings of control were, but most of the authority the tome of tome mastery had over the tome of scrolls were the fact that Salt as their maker willed it so. Could he flood a tome with his mana aspect and change the makers mark, could someone else do that to him. Salt decided to change the markings on both tomes at his earliest when he had a safe workbench. Diving into the mysterious tomes and their connections Salt almost did not notice a powerful aura approaching.
Rising when Salt figured out the auras approach, he stowed his tomes and scrolls away and a small tempus cantrip told him they had kept him waiting 2 hours. Seeing the powerful wizard approach Salt inspected and found little to see in the blocky man dressed as a workman, with an apron covered in dust approaching him. Reaching out a hand the man said “hello keeper Salt I have just heard of you; I am division head of the library Mundane arts of the worlds, Yegrek. I was told you wanted to speak with me?” Nodding Salt replied, “I did is it ok to talk here or shall we go somewhere else so you can test my power to see if this is something you should care about?” Frowning Yegrek said “that, was not my intention, nor in my mind sir. We can talk here if you want.” Smiling Salt replied “excellent, the numerous attempts at my life lately have become tedious. It will be good to talk without the smell of blood and ash everywhere.” Gesturing towards the desks he had just got up from Salt said “sit, sit. I have things to ask and propose.”
“So let me get this straight.” Said Yegrek after some time “you wish to have a room in this library before it becomes the Main Library, so that the magic of the transformation of the Main library have something to lock in on. And for this boon you offer books?” Nodding Salt again said “yes, yes special books, maps, genealogies, histories, alliances you know mundane or brown coloured stuff. I am sure it's not easy to go outside and get real certified stuff, when any fool with an autopen can write fictious accountings of anything.” At Yegrek did start nodding and stroking his beard so Salt continued. “And think I offer to get you most of the mundane writings of a small non wizard kingdom, you can test the authenticity of the maps using documents from the king and vice versa, just point and I shall go get it for you. On the proviso that its small and mostly urban of course I need to be back here in a week for when this becomes the Main library.”
Sitting back and watching as his lawyer Aracaroges the devil barrister of the court of absolute justice. And the Brown executive of the law portion of Mundane arts of the worlds argued, badgered and outright blasphemed at each other. In the end they said with scary grins on both their faces, “then its settled, Salt the keeper of the light of yesterday shall within 4 hours get within the library Mundane arts of the worlds, a large apartment with a small personal library, a large book workshop, a small alchemy lab, a large ritual circle room without warding, a large greenhouse, and a large war room directly behind of the front door, traps not included. Salt is allowed to have as many spell forms up inside of his own rooms but no spells, or castings above 7 circles. Salt is allowed to use unseen servant in the library to gather knowledge on the proviso he does not use more than 3 at the time and loans no more than 100 books at the time.”
Clearing his throat, the brown executive began “Salt the keeper of the light of yesterday shall supply the library Mundane arts of the worlds with 79% of the written public knowledge and 07% of the Secret knowledge of the current mundane empire Cartisia which spans the kingdoms Denkasir, Altraiel and Urd. He shall bring at least half this knowledge back to the library Mundane arts of the worlds, Within the time that it takes to become the Main library. The rest must be given to the library within half a year from signing the contract or the room and all his possessions on him or in other places are forfeit to the library Mundane arts of the worlds. So, we sign this contract before Nersina and wish swift disintegration on whosoever breaks the SPIRIT of the contract.” Smiling and handing his copy of the contract to Salt the brown executive shook Aracaroges hand and said, “it was a genuine pleasure, I had not had so much fun in years.” Walking of Salt asked, “So do you wish to go back to the court until I summon you again or Stay here and watch with me?” Turning Aracaroges asked “watch with me?” quizzically. Salt stated “yes, the building of the apartment of course. The best construction wizards this library has is going to build it, we could probably learn something.” Salt locked over at his companion and saw something in his eyes as Aracaroges said “you don’t ever switch off do you.” Starting to walk towards the construction crews assembling Salt replied “ah, my immortal friend you really do not understand what Nersinia means at all do you. To Switch off for us mortals in this place, well it means Death.”
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Taking copious notes and showing the architect and foreman his previous blueprint for the anti-magic machine he used to use as well as other things. Salts knowledge grew, and by the end of the building prosses had been able to cajole them into layering some of his soul crystals and anchors within walls, floor and ceiling. This would help immensely with Salts personal warding and trapping of his apartment, all in all a fantastic boon. Helping Aracaroges trough with the little stuff he had asked him to keep was on the other hand a quite gruelling prosses, Nersinia did not like spatial spells inside of it, and some quite valuable things got destroyed in a particular shake of the spatial currents.
“Thank you for your work Aracaroges I hereby ask that with this contract we settle in to the 127 contract between us.” Salt intoned as he gave Aracaroges a slip of paper symbolising the continued work ongoing between them. “Farewell Salt, I don’t know. Maybe try to get laid outside these walls, might be good for your soul.” And with that Salt finally had a room again, starting the warding process and pumping mana into layers of overlapping spells as was his usual way Salt could finally get power from external mana instead of plunging into the void for scraps. Still Salt set up a mana gathering ritual in his ritual room and set his biggest soul stone as an extra charge for the ward in case someone cut of the external mana. Finally set up reasonably well Salt went to the greenhouse room to sleep.
After spending a day getting his sleep, room and his stuff up and running Salt started checking on the 7 strange artifacts he was given by Morn. It was actually more correct to call it 8 as the spatial ring his things were in was small but surprisingly well made. Salt had the ring on for some days now and not a single crack had opened in its spell or physical structure, good thing are hard to keep in Nersinia. Taking out the artifacts one at the time he ran investigative spells over them all the while keeping them within an antimagic bubble while giving them small doses of mana. Now 5 of the items where right out being fifth or sixth circle artifacts, Salt hurriedly sealed the artefacts within a stasis casket each. Now just because something was powerful enough to be a 5-circle artifact, did not mean it was useful. It could be spelled to course its attempted wielder if he did not have the right, blood, energy, ancestry, sex, attitude, hair shade or literally anything. It could also have hidden clauses like; I will let you wield me, but you must vanquish/serve/kill/ridicule/have sex with the such and such within this time or forfeit your body to this item. It's always best to keep the power of an unknown item below you in power and never more than one at the time.
After some time, Salt was quite sure of the remaining 3 artifacts purpose, two was an accumulation of mana power they could be used to power something, as a tracking device or as passive mana generator. The first was an Oriestes flask, something Salt would take with him away from his room because of the tracking quality and rarity. His plan was to use it on the mission and then promptly sell it, the second a common sapphire this usually held curses, but this time held nature aspected mana, Salt would hold on to this. The third artifact was a cloth covered in martyrs' blood, not terribly useful but Salt would bring it with him and see if he got some time to further his studies in the sacred arts. Checking the time Salt felt he had room for one more experiment before he had to begin work on his task for the library.
Salt had cast fifth circle spells before but only in desperation and at great cost, now with a newly made scroll and a tome to help steady the lines of spellcraft he almost did not cough up blood when he cast it, progress! Having used a downgraded spell of greater unseen servant and locking it into a body of void blood, demonic brass, investigative and examinate scrolls with the whole thing covered in fungus wrapped around a core of the nature aspected sapphire and the tomes for Herbologist and Alchemical provider his two least important tomes. The fungus servant did not have arms as such but rather tentacles of plant matter that gave it a sort of locomotion. Helping the fungus servant in the greenhouse Salt started building enclosures and summoning rich dirt from boxes. Having written a small tasks booklet and placing it on a plinth by the door Salt undid the stasis on some common and uncommon seeds and let the fungus servant figure things out. Setting warning wards in case of the destabilisation of the spell form, Salt went into his new large book workshop and luxuriated in the space and smell for a bit.
Having learned quite a bit about Tome craft and mastery from his extensive use of them, if Salt was being honest, he did not think he would have survived until now without his tomes. And his two primary tomes, well they were not what one would call elegant. Salt had stuffed these poor tomes with more magical reagents and mana aspects than could feasibly be put in new tomes, Salt now knew if he did not always have his tomes on him and constantly use them as casting foci then they would be ash by now. So, when Salt sat down to create two new tomes that would hold mostly mundane knowledge, he was ready to specialise the tomes. Using creative copying methods Salt created two tomes that could split into many books, The public knowledge one could split into 33 books and then be combined into one tome again. But the secret knowledge one could only be split into 3 books before combing into one tome. The reason for this was that Salt had carefully layered time aspected pages into the back and front of the secret knowledge tome hoping a trick he had read about worked.
Prepared and suited up Salt went into the greenhouse to check his fungus servant; it wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't good. Salt had hoped to have the automata help with both herbology and animal husbandry, but seeing it struggle so much with just one he decided to just leave his animals in their stasis caskets. Setting a rule upon the fungus servant that it must reread the instruction booklet every 12 hours, or the sapphire core will shut down leaving it motionless salt opened up some of his rare seeds in a fit of positivity. Layering a final self-destruct spell over his new room Salt set out for the portals.