The tomes did not wish to work together, once he had hooked them up to the mana net running through his room. In the end being weak from having half a soul he had to shut down the Growth specialist, Alchemical provider, Herbologist, Scribe, Book mancer and Conjurer Tomes leaving only Tome mastery active. Part of it was the sheer toll the Tomes took on his mana surplus, syphoning about 70% of his mana into themselves. Thankfully he could use his Tome mastery tome to control the other tomes to a point otherwise he would be a pile of ash now. Luck saved him, and luck was not something to count on.

A point he would never ha guessed was that a tome could be used as a casting medium, as a channelling medium and as a training medium. When he took in external mana for his saturation training, the tome would help him separate the aspects from the mana. As an added boon his thoughts and understanding of the aspects present in the mana would be written down, tallied and questioned by an excerpt of the last time he filtered this or these aspects. This seemed to be the case in all his mana endeavours, whenever he used mana, the tome would filter 10% of it. Thus, the tome made him weaker, but it also added tons to his mental aspect and concept library. Now the tomes working this way had thrown most of his plans into doubt, they still had tons of knowledge he had put in. But was it more important to get more knowledge down or to refine what he had with the books.

In the end it was Soils idea they went with, Soil would with his weaker mana nodes use the tomes Conjuration and Growth specialist. It would take up 60% of his mana but the tomes would grow in power and knowledge as he tended to the Eldering tree. Salt mission was much worse, he would focus the on tome-mastery and the time tree. When they sacrificed their sapling of the Eldering tree, they did not sacrifice it all. Having started book-mancy and only book-mancy the previous soil had a proposition; They would rewrite the student introduction books and go for proctor of a coterie. They could use N-points to exchange for aspect pages with a half off discount because they would use it to teach the new students. Strip some bark and leaves from the time tree and imbue the aspect pages with the incredible concept of time. If they also drained some of their ability of comprehension as well, with but a modicum of work with the students, the resources they will have instilled into their job to teach the new students would be enough to get full marks from Nersinia and spare them more work with the newbies.

With the small print they had already collected 4 guidebooks from the dead students and though he probably could make a dedicated book for the concept of time, that was not the plan. One of the reasons that Eldering trees was so priceless where their roots. Since the roots existed in time then anywhere time was the roots existed as well, at least within the same plane. If you harvest a single root from an Eldering tree, it will stop growing, but you can harvest the roots of a sapling and then sacrifice it for a boon of 7 years. Now if you then use the roots together with time-aspected pages to bind say a hundred books together with just a massive amount of magic reagents you get a book. An ever so slightly magic book that learns just the tiniest amount of whatever its possessor learns. And since its bound by time together with the other 99 books it shares this tiny bit with the others. And knowledge spreads.

Now say you are in possession of 4 of these books and would like to incorporate this feature into your own tome, how would one go about it. This was Salts mission, desire and problem. First, he unbound a book, a mere 61 pages and most of that was what Salt HAD to put in on pain of soul disintegration. Meny pages of official school songs, prayers, jokes and curses. There was a massive amount of bile thrown at its sister school Narsinia and the feebleminded doings of their doddering old MASTERS. All sorts of stuff that would not really help but had to be in it or death to proctore. Now not all the pages were aspect time pages, but the last 11 were. In the book the last 11 pages said notes for students, and these Salt wanted to excise and reuse within his own tome.

The first try went poorly. The pages would not take and instead tried to flood the tome with the concept of time, this led to many priceless pages lost but the concept did settle on the tome. With the remaining pages Salt came up with an ugly solution but a solution non the less, he would build an internal book inside of the tome letting the concept stream trough the other pages much slower and gentler. It also helped that his comprehension ability had saturated a small part of the books.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Alternating between tome mastery, scribing scrolls and fishing progressively stronger void creatures. The years passed and instead of an adolescence there stood Salt the young adult. Larger stronger and blockier Salt would not win any beauty awards, nor be entered into one without getting laughed out of the room but at least he was now solidly a man. Testing himself against the void born was fun, pushing the limits and finding out that they went farther than he imagined was more than pleasant. But the fishing was not just for fun, the tree might have given 7 years of time, but it did not give 7 years of mana. To stop the tree from cannibalizing itself and everything else in the room it needed copious amount of void blood and carcasses.

But all good things come to an end, and so hours before the spell of time ended Salt had put down the ritual circle for the last moments of Soil. The ceremony was quick and almost mundane and Soil final words where as always: “Become the wizard who walks through planes as trough grass, ye fekking kid.” And then he was whole again. One being alone, and with his soul, feelings came back. Not too long ago he had fed parts of his students to a Demiurge, why did he do that? It was not necessary or wise to be.... sadistic? He made enemies of formidable students; he even took a finger and toe from the straggler who had no part and wanted no part in the little ambush not hours ago. “The perception of a halved soul is very limited” Salt whispered to himself.

Standing outside his room in the corridor of his coterie having filled it with shelfs and boxes of scrolls, reagents and live magical animals in stasis, Salt broke the seal on contract 133 summoning Aracaroges devil barrister(lawyer) of the court of true justice. “Salutations wizerdling, it is good to see you alive and in a stronger shell.” squinting and peering about himself Aracaroges continued “So, we are doing this?” “I hope you brought more muscle.” Said Salt striding to his door opening it and lighting the ritual candle. Aracaroges laughed at his back “these are not muscle, they are henchmen” he declared. As Salt felt the ritual take hold of the mana in his room and vibrate as he intoned “As I was given in mercy and contempt, so I shall return to fell Nersinina this boon and poison chalice. For the small tranquil garden, I have made as payment for my tuition hold much for even one with discerning eyes. Nersinina I offer thee my room.”

“So” Aracaroges rolling his eyes as he summoned infernal doors “a bit melodramatic for my tastes but execution wise very good.” Salt seeing the devils summoned start gathering his things and taking them through the portal, sighed heavily and said to Aracaroges. “It is good to have trustworthy devils to look after my stuff.” Taking out a scroll from his shawl Salt handed it to Aracaroges and said, “with all the fighting I will undoubtedly have to do now I took the liberty of changing my will.” Smiling as the devil unfurled the scroll, Salt continued. “As you can see the main beneficiary was changed to the Angelic court of real justice, in the event of my untimely demise I am sure as my lawyer you can do the bequeathments.” As Aracaroges red face became bluer and bluer as he read, Salt found that maybe he was feeling a slight bit peckish, so he promptly ran away.

As quite a bit of magic was flowing through the corridor warning spells went off like sprinklers in a room on fire. Door after door slammed open as students decked out in war gear cast investigation spells, salt must have admitted where he not the cause, he probably would have done the same himself. It was one thing to be told their room was inviolable, but quite another to believe it. Running fast Salt cleared the corridor before any offensive spells was used. Slowing as Nersinia entered fifth silence 0500, Salt picked a Rute to the Cafeteria.

Walking into the Cafeteria Salt found a round table in the inner section of the place. Clinking as he sat down his oversized robes filled to the brim with scrolls and caskets of magical regents, he sat down his latest creation. A paper staff of scrolls bound tightly and sat on its top his tome of scrolls open and channelling his mana into the unwieldy and showy thing. To keep the staff in one piece Salt needed to give the staff 20% of his mana pool, but as an upside he was learning much more than he thought he was going to. Every scroll in the staff was a blank or a powerful circle 2 conjuring scroll of arcane servant. Controlling the tome of scrolls on the staff with his tome of Tome mastery held within his cloak. Salt could feel the finished scrolls trying to copy themselves onto the blank scrolls imperfectly, but still trying.

Sighing once more Salt felt there was just so much to learn, as the banal Miracle of the Cafeteria read the time stream figured out which meal he would inevitably stop and consume and conjured it for him at the perfect temperature.