Chapter 11: Trespassing Troubles

A month. A month had passed since Crimson joined the Adventurer's Guild and gained the [Brass] rank. During that month, he'd been excused from the basic instruction class since he'd studied all the material on his own time, and had passed the test needed to graduate from the class. It only took to the third day of being a part of the class, and the instructor had been happy to see him go. It hadn't been hard to accomplish, despite the shock of the other [Brass] ranks. What had shocked Crimson was that the class had grown by a few more people beyond the harem squad, but none of them were really worth note to him.

They ignored him, he ignored them, and they all called it good.

Regardless, he'd used that time wisely. He had made 1350 Royals from delivery requests alone, not to mention what had happened when he'd started taking scribing requests last week...they paid. For his training, he camped out every Saturday evening to Monday morning in the hidden library: reading, studying, and practicing - which had been a huge pay off.

He had cleared a space on the ground floor by shoving a bunch of tables out of the way and split his time between working on the [Twin Steps] style, which had been a major boost to his fighting ability, and reading what the library had on offer.

He had also mastered [Magic Light], to his chagrin Chapter 10 was much easier for him than Chapter 9, and he'd even done Chapter 9 wrong. Apparently, he was supposed to weave long ropes of mana and stick partially woven bits of spell on the ends and partially entangled the spell together, then shoot the mess out in a single bundle to the range he wanted, then pull the ropes which would cause the whole mess to tangle together and activate the spell.

He'd seen someone cast the Chapter 9 version of [Magic Light] and that what was corrected his incorrect assumption, but even that knowledge didn't stop him from pushing himself till his own method of doing it allowed him to reach fifteen feet, he was even getting close to sixteen, but progress was slow.

Regardless, using the "proper" method for [Magic Light] he'd been able to use it, not twenty feet away like promised, but thirty feet away. He'd just needed to adjust the integrity of the weave to support the added distance and had no issues.

As far as Chapter 10...well, it was creating two [Magic Lights] at the same time. He hadn't even needed to read the chapter and just did it on his own, first try! Regardless of the fact that his first try did take him half an hour as he alternated between which light he was weaving and holding the other in place, back and forth, back and forth, till he pulled both into place at the same time and made them appear on the fingers of both hands simultaneously. From there, it was practicing till he could do all of the previous chapters at the same time with both lights. He was back to being stuck at Chapter 9, but such was his life.

He had also devoured other books: books about [Affinities], [Classes], [Skills], [Spells], [Stats], [Races], [Alignments], and more. Most of it acted as supplementary knowledge to what he knew already from his Q&A with Raften, some was new, and some directly contradicted what he knew from the Q&A. That last group were all found in the guild library, so he reached the conclusion that people didn't really check for accuracy, or there was no way to - Raften’s information was right 100% of the time whenever that clash occurred.

There were still relevant books in the guild library, and plenty of untouched fighting styles, so he took his time to study them to see what would be useful. Especially [Dancing Autumn Leaf], he spent a lot of time working on that one. He usually trained it along side [Twin Steps] and they worked fantastically together. There were already some [Bronze] rank adventurers in their first few levels that he could beat despite their higher stats, but he still hadn't landed a blow on Mars, despite the fact that his instructor was even using a limiter on his [STR] and [AGI].

Crimson had quickly learned that he hated losing, just as much as he liked when things went his way, but that was probably normal. What wasn't normal was him analyzing each and every one of their fights like a soccer goal replay to try and figure out how he could have won with an obsession that no sports fan could rival. Unfortunately, he had a lot of material to review.

It wasn't helped by the fact that he added Verity to his list of sparring partners. He still hadn't figured out why she'd latched on to him, but it was quite a different experience going up against a [Martial Artist] instead of a spearman, a valuable experience, but it still resulted in his getting soundly beaten. He just tried not to count the amount of times, and just focused on the day when he would finally figure out a way to win. But for the moment, he'd settle with being able to land a single blow.

To that end, he pushed himself to the breaking point every day. Emma was practically on constant stand by and switched her mentality from "stop doing this to yourself" to "don't you dare do this to yourself when I'm not around" which had been a great help for him.

The fact that she'd also pushed her [Healing: Purity] [Spell] to Lv. 8 with his help also helped things and sped up the process of getting him back on his feet. It was weird that using his [Treatment: Purity] spell along side her [Healing: Purity] had helped her figure out what she needed to do to finish Lv. 8, maybe it was actually the shock of seeing that he knew the spell despite the fact that he definitely didn't have a magic teacher or a way to get the [Treatment] spell?

That was the other thing, he'd been able to learn three of the Temple's spells in that time, the first being [Treatment: Purity], the second being [Treatment: Life], and the third being [Lesser Barrier]. He'd mastered the first only after figuring out how to make a [Magic Light] using [Purity] - plus a few headaches and four evenings of intense practice. [Treatment: Life] took five days, despite being the same spell, and he'd been forced to learn the [Life] version of [Magic Light]. He just couldn’t get it to work otherwise.

In exasperation, he'd taken a break before learning the second chapter of [Treatment: Life] to learn every single variation of [Magic Light] - it had been a long evening. Worth it in the end, he was surprised to learn that certain mana weaves couldn't support specific [Affinities]. It would be like trying to place water in a net - it would never hold it. That information was the result when he tried to make a [Lesser Barrier] with other [Affinities] while tearing his hear out in frustration when the barrier spell just refused to work with anything other than [Purity]. To that end, he planned on requesting the [Basic Holy Shield] as his next spell, but that would just be to see the difference.

Well, that and some other stuff all led to the moment he was currently at: ascending the staircase once more to the castle's hidden library. He really wanted to get some “real” practice in with [Twin Steps] and to that end he'd bought a bokken for 300 Royals to practice. The price had made him wince, but looking at the price for a basic katana had practically made him spasm.

He slid his little finger into the lock and used his mana blob trick to rotate all of the pins in it, activated the bookshelf switch, then stepped into his second home.

The shelves and shelves of books across three floors were always a comforting sight to him, at least books would never change.

His month away from his previous world had also brought some interesting emotional challenges. Once some of the novelty of having a functioning body had worn off -took a few weeks- he'd started to really notice how much he missed basic things. Even something that was simply familiar would have been good enough, but nope! He was in a fantasy world. It suddenly made sense why those anime protagonists would always bring the food from their old world to their new one, something familiar really helped as the cloying sense of desperation crowded closer and closer around his heart.

After quite a while looking for that "familiarity" he'd found it in libraries. Books didn't change too much even if the contents were vastly different, they still had the same smell, the same feel, and the same weight. It was where he'd found his comfort - even if he didn't like his emotions getting in the way.

Crimson headed down to the first floor to his cleared space and scooped [Twin Steps] off a table at the edge of it. He checked the forms and the exercises listed, then got to work.

Much like spells, [Twin Steps] was arranged into ten chapters, the first five were focused on pure footwork, the second five were focused on using that footwork to counter. [Twin Steps] was all about positioning to gain an advantage against an opponent, sliding in when they opened their guard, and wrecking them with un-dodgeable blows. It didn't focus too much on actual sword forms, but it didn't really seem to need to.

That was the other thing, [Twin Steps] was actually a sword style, not a katana style like he'd originally thought. He'd been forced to refine it and make minor adjustments to the style to use it with a katana, but it hadn't been as difficult as it probably would have been with any other style, the lack of focus on the actual blade was what made it easy. The real trick was changing the style to seamlessly blend with the footwork needed for a katana.

Well, he'd broken enough bones facing Mars and Verity to figure out how to optimize the style, and it made further optimization much easier as he knew what to look for.

He was particularly excited for when he'd actually get to the "counter" part of the style, but he was unfortunately only on Chapter 4, which made him exceedingly frustrated because he KNEW he could be further if only he could take the book out of the library! Well...no use crying over something that he couldn't do, not that he hadn't done extensive testing to try and figure out a way to get it out - all ending in failure of course.

Crimson puffed out a breath of air as the muscles in the arches of his feet started to scream out in agony. Chapter 4 focused a lot on using toes to control movement, which meant a lot of time standing like a failed ballerina as he slowly shifted from stance to stance for the exercise to prepare his muscles to complete the chapter.

With a force of will, he continued to work on Chapter 4 until his vision started to flicker and he was forced to stop by the fact that he literally couldn't force his legs to move.

He crumpled on the tiled floor and began using [Treatment: Purity] on his feet, which created a blue-silver wisp of light in the center of his palm. He was even able to double cast it, one on each palm, to heal each feet at the same time, but it was still slow going.

Emma had confided to him that [Treatment] only healed 1HP every few seconds, so it was truly the worst of the healing spells out there - barely able to double the regeneration rate of someone who was Lv. 1. Even finishing Chapter 10 hadn't done anything to help there, each chapter had just allowed him to use it for longer and longer without needing to recast the spell and slightly reduced the mana cost. At Lv. 10, he could maintain it until his mana was gone, which took about twenty minutes with a single casting, about five minutes with both as using the second one increased the cost and completely overwhelmed his mana regeneration. Once he had his [Blessing] things would get quite a bit better - it would allow him to monitor his mana precisely instead of roughly estimating it and allow him to actually manage it.

He emptied his mana once and was barely able to hobbled around, but it was better than nothing. He used that hobbling to get himself over to another table where he had set a book that was fascinating enough to pull him away from [Twin Steps].

It was written in an archaic form of the common tongue and boasted a completely different alphabet. Normally, that would have locked him out of any chance to gain the knowledge inside, but he'd discovered something else interesting about himself in the past month: his ability with languages.

It wasn't like he'd been a language whiz back home or anything and he'd only been gifted with knowledge of the common tongue, so it came as a surprise when he'd become barely fluent with the Elven tongue within two weeks. True, it was the most similar to the common tongue of all the other languages out there, but it was more similar than Spanish and French.

At his current point, the biggest issue that Crimson had with the Elven tongue was sheer vocabulary. He could remember any word he'd heard after only a single time hearing or reading it as well as its meaning if he was told what it meant. If he wasn't told, then he'd only need to hear the word a few times before he just "knew" what it meant. Grammatical rules weren't an issue in the slightest, everything just clicked for him.

It wasn't anything he could explain, but it still worked, and the ability even extended to reading. Just staring at unfamiliar characters long enough would let him know what they meant. There was a weird feeling when he knew what it meant on paper, but had no idea how to actually say the word out loud.

Well, he'd used that to his advantage to learn the archaic version of the common tongue, and set to work studying the book he'd found. It didn't have a title, but it discussed a [Movement Magic] spell.

Movement magic used movement to influence mana instead of the imagery associated with the kind of magic he'd been learning, so he considered it well worth his time to try casting it to see if it could help him manipulate his mana better.

Crimson absentmindedly began to use [Treatment] on his feet once more with his replenished mana and kept reading.

In addition to the words describing the forms, there were diagrams of the stances needed. The spell he was looking at appeared to be called [Resonance] which, after taking an in-depth look at it, Crimson would personally have named [Blood Ripple], but [Resonance] also worked fine.

It was a movement spell of the [Water] affinity, and it moved through the body of the person struck with it to mess up the blood in their system. It seemed like a perfect spell for a certain punch heavy elf, but Crimson definitely wouldn't give her a reason to hit him more, and he was more interested in learning it for reasons other than increasing his beatings.

The biggest reason was learning another type of magic, one he'd wanted to get his hands on for a while. Movement magic wasn't exactly big in Falst, so that meant that finding any teachers or books for the art had been impossible for him -rather his wallet- up to the point he'd found [Resonance] in the library.

He'd also found a tome for the third kind of magic out there: vocal magic. He'd be working on that one later, but it was pretty much using the voice to manipulate mana, usually through singing. Was he a good singer? No, not at all, but for learning magic he'd suck it up and do his best.

Crimson paused in his study as a detail he'd heard earlier floated up into his mind, Prince Kaine's birthday was less than a week away... he'd probably need to avoid the hidden library until the festivities ended. Better to be safe than sorry, he still didn't know the limitations of [Classes] and [Skills] in the world, so there might be one that could sense him - he was already playing with fire, no need to dance with it.

With an annoyed sigh and a glance at the [Twin Steps] tome, he went back to [Resonance].

Not long after, he was forced to the bedroll he'd put under a table. He'd continue in the morning, Sunday was his best day for studying after all.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

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Rhinese walked in a demure manner while barely concealing her excitement. Her brother -Kaine- was about to turn sixteen in two weeks, which meant that he'd be crowned the Regent Prince, and she wanted to talk to him as much as possible before he became too busy for her to see on a regular basis.

In her mother country -Alda- there existed a tradition dating back hundreds of years to the first king: the Regent Royal. A test, lasting one to two years, where the eldest child would be allowed to rule the kingdom with the current ruling king's oversight. After the set time expired ended, the king and his counselors looked at the performance of the Regent Royal and decided whether they'd passed or failed. If they passed, then they became the Crown Prince/Princess as the case may be, which made them next in line for the throne. IF they failed, then the next child would take the test, and so on down the line of succession until someone passed.

Since it was Kaine's turn, Rhinese felt excited and happy for him, he would be a great king, and this was his chance to prove it! Unfortunately, her father was extremely strict, so he'd almost definitely make Kaine take the test for a full two years, which meant two years of him being completely surrounded by attendants, never getting a moment alone, constantly working to best show himself to be the next ruler of Alda, which meant no time for Rhinese.

The thought was enough to make her want to cry, her older brother had doted on her for as long as she could remember - loving her in a way that her parents were far too busy to. He, along with a swarm of nurses and attendants, was more of a parent to her than her actual parents, they'd always had a strong bond because of it, despite the fact that there was less than a year's difference between them.

She quietly knocked on the door to his room then folded her hands together tightly and impatiently as she waited.

After a long moment, the door cracked open and a orange eye stared at her for a moment, before the door was thrown wide open.

A fox-kin with a wide stunning smile that showed off her sharp canines all framed by her orange colored hair stood there in a maid uniform.

She happily greeted Rhinese, "Your Highness, your exalted brother would be happy to see you, please come on in!"

Rhinese smiled warmly at her, "Thank you Sariya."

The maid curtsied politely as she stepped to the side, then stuck a tongue out at Rhinese's attendant and closed the door in his face after she stepped into the room.

"Sariya," a gentle male voice echoed from a desk in the corner of the room, "There is no need to antagonize Bernard so."

Sitting by the desk was Rhinese's older brother: Kaine. He was dressed neatly in a suit with a high collar that covered everything below the neck, with black gloves fit snugly on his hands. He was wearing square framed glasses and a gentle smile on his face as he fondly took in Rhinese and Sariya. He stood, brushing his chestnut brown hair to the side of his head and looked into Rhinese's eyes with his icy blue ones as he towered over her.

"How are you doing dear sister?"

She bowed politely, "I am doing well dear brother, I was merely just coming to check on you."

They made eye contact for a long moment, then the formal atmosphere burst apart as they both started laughing.

"I'm glad you came in to check in on the future prisoner sister!"

"Prisoner? Try Regent Prince!"

He responded with a wry smile, "True, prisoners are treated more humanely and have more freedom."

Rhinese frowned at him, "Oh, stop worrying! You'll do great!"

He shrugged, "I won't do anything less than my best, who knows if that will be enough for Father."

Rhinese folded her arms with a serious expression, "True, he is a little strict."

Both Sariya and Kaine responded at the same time, "A little?"

Sariya continued, "Remember that time you fell asleep during a tutoring session when you were six? The King didn't let you stop writing the line "I won't fall asleep in a tutoring session ever again" until you'd written it a thousand times!"

Kaine cut in, "Or the time you ate one sweet more than etiquette allows during a formal dinner, Father didn't let you have sweets for two months after that!"

Sariya interjected, "Or that time-"

Rhinese covered Sariya's mouth with a hand, "You've made your point! Father is more than a little strict."

Sariya solemnly nodded with her tail swishing behind her, and Kaine pushed his glasses up his nose with a satisfied expression.

He spoke, "It's good that you understand that, because I want to you to take the opportunity to inspect something for me since Father is distracted with all the preparations for my birthday."

Rhinese looked at him in confusion, "What do you want me to inspect? And why are you acting like you can't come? Your birthday isn't for another few weeks!"

He chuckled sadly, "I'm already being watched more closely than ever little Rhinese, there's no way I can move around with as much freedom as I want. That's why I want you to seek for the lock this goes to."

Kaine reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a long smooth cylinder with a handle on one end, like a key, that had a gold light flash through it every few seconds.

Rhinese stared at it in shock, "You still have that thing? We gave up on finding where it goes years ago!"

He nodded, "True, but do you notice something different about it?"

She looked at it again for a long moment, before a shocked expression covered her fact, "Why is it glowing?"

"Exactly, I want to find out what it goes to. I don't know when it started glowing, but it shouldn't be too long ago. Not only that, we now know where it leads."

Rhinese's eyes opened wide, "What? How?"

Kaine gestured at Sariya, "Would you care to explain it to her?"

Her ears twitched excitedly as she began speaking, "Well, you can't see it because neither of you have your [Blessings] yet, but when I hold the key there's a request that pops up asking if we'll allow someone to take a book from the "Astral Library," the name of the requester is garbled, but I'm not sure why."

Rhinese couldn't keep the greed off her face, "It leads to a library?"

Kaine started chuckling, "Yes little Rhinese, a library," he dangled the key in front of her, "You want to got looking for it once more?"

She snatched the key from his grip, "Of course I do!"

Kaine laughed, "Good, take Sariya with you, I'll use Bernard as my attendant for now, good luck little Rhinese. When you find it, don't tell anyone, I want it to be your little secret, come tell me when I'm the Crown Prince."

She accepted the request with determination and set out immediately to find it. After that day, Rhinese started searching high and low all over the castle to try and find where it went, she even tried to stick it in random holes she found of roughly the same size, which left her with a question: why do so many statues have open mouths?

The truly frustrating thing was that the key flashed faster when they got closer to the location, but no matter how they tried they couldn't get any close than a flash every other second.

After a full week she was ready to pull her hair out, but they'd hit on something: the castle library. The discovery gave her another reason to want to pull out her hair.

In the library, the key behaved differently. Usually, the key flashed the same length of time regardless of how the flashes were spaced, but in the castle library the flashes would last five seconds each. Rhinese really wanted to hit herself over that one, it took her third inspection of the castle library to notice, and Sariya didn't either, so they were both mutually annoyed at themselves.

Since it was late Fallday, they decided to come back on Highday to find where in the library the key would take them.

In the morning, Rhinese's exploration was interrupted by her religious duties. She was expected to spend three hours praying, which she did. She also had to meet with a certain foul high ranking [Priest] named Damus since he was the one assigned to her.

It was unfortunate, but because of her [Bloodline] it made the women of her family well suited to the [Holy] attribute which helped the royal family maintain an excellent relationship with the Temple, so she was being groomed to take a [Priestess] [Class], which was unfortunate because she was far more interested in the [Pure-Heart] Class.

Fortunately, her Father would certainly support whatever decision she made, but she was also pragmatic, she knew that getting a [Holy] attribute [Class] would allow her to become stronger than the [Pure-Heart] [Class], even if she liked it more.

Regardless, she lacked a reason to refuse the disgusting [Priest] Damus' visits, so she lost an hour every Highday to his visits. Oddly enough, the perverted old man seemed to be in an excellent mood. When she'd asked -mostly to be polite- he'd told her that he was working with another genius, a boy her age that had mastered two versions of the [Treatment] spell without a [Blessing].

Rhinese hadn't believed him at first, learning ANY spell without the [Blessing] was considered a task as difficult as soloing a boss ten levels above you, much more than that was mastering one. It would take a teacher of such skill as to rival the gods themselves, certainly not Damus.

Well, so she'd been told. Rhinese still hadn't awoken her mana yet, so it was all conjecture to her until she experienced it, but Kaine had privately complained to her about how difficult it was for him to learn the most basic spell in existence: [Magic Light], taking him a month to just learn the first level with some of the best teachers and tutors out there.

Being able to learn it in a month without a [Blessing] already catapulted him into the realm of a genius, so what about a kid who'd been able to master two spells without his [Blessing]? Unthinkable, she immediately called out his lie, but he offered to introduce them, which brought her up short. The mere fact that he was offering offered more credence than any other evidence he could have given at the time. Since a part of her believed him now, it was no wonder then, that [Priest] Damus would be so happy because of this kid. A part of Rhinese even wanted to ask to meet him, maybe he'd be able to help her when she'd get her mana awoken? But that would mean asking this goblin’s foot of a man for a favor…

Well, a thought for another time - their “lesson” -brainwashing- finished she had to resist the urge to sprint to the library when the foul old man Damus left with her cheerfully seeing him off.. Sariya was right behind her as they both moved as quickly as propriety allowed to get there. Considering how well know her love of books was within the castle, nobody thought it odd to see her rushing to the library, which was something of a blessing to her, she didn't need anyone finding out what she was doing.

Once they burst into the empty library Rhinese turned to Sariya, "Key please."

Sariya removed it from her inventory and passed it to her. She then turned to survey the space.

The place that made the most sense for the secret passage would be at either the top or the bottom of the central pillar. The library itself had a single floor, but there was a central pillar in the room with bookshelves running the circumference of the pillar with three floors allowing access to a variety of books, most of which she'd already read.

Around the circumference of the room itself, there were stain glass windows that allowed multi-colored light to stream into the room. Each window depicted a different kind of knight, but they were all wrong in a way, not human, but humanoid; all the knights were twisted in unnatural ways that brought to mind horrific monsters and not noble knights. They were still a bit freaky to her at fifteen, but not as bad as when she was a little girl. Kaine had grabbed books out of the library for her from the ages of six to ten before he helped break her of her fear. She hadn't even willingly let him go in there before then, scared for him.

The rest of the room was mostly empty space with a few tables and other bookshelves that her Father had installed to house her ever expanding collection of books.

Logically, the key hole should be somewhere on the central column, but no matter how much they'd searched yesterday they hadn't been able to find it, so that left...

Rhinese shuddered as she walked closer to one of the stained glass windows and started inspecting around it, but didn't find anything.

She glanced behind her to ask what Sariya thought, only to discover that the fox-kin had started searching the central pillar once more.

Well, splitting up worked too, she'd just keep checking the nightmare inducing windows. So long as she avoided looking directly at them she was fine, but that wasn't the way her luck worked, she had to look at them directly to check for a keyhole, not just the frame around the windows.

The windows themselves were eleven in number, and arranged like the numbers on a clock. The entrance would be where six was, and the one she'd just checked was nine, so she continued around clockwise checking each one, window by window, until she eventually reached the number eight window...

Seriously? What was her [LUC] stat at? 20? She just had to find it last!

Sighing, she glanced over at Sariya who had just worked her way back down to the first floor of the central column. With that kind of speed, she probably just increased her [AGI] somehow. Rhinese still hadn't asked her what [Class] she'd gotten, so there was no way to be sure.

She probably wouldn't ask till she'd gotten her own [Class], just to prevent any jealousy. Most fox-kin naturally had a high affinity for [Purity] because of their [Racial Traits], so she didn't want to cry over her best friend being able to get a powerful [Class] with the affinity, but her being forced to take a [Holy Affinity] [Class].

"Hey Sariya! I found something!"

"Really?" The fox-kin bounded over in excitement, "Where?"

Rhinese pointed at a tile in the ground with an irregular circular point right in the front-center of the window.

Saryia's ears flicked as she tilted her head in confusion, "That doesn't look like a hole, just some design in the tile."

Rhinese nodded, "Yes, but look at the spear this knight is holding, it's pointing directly at it, most depictions of spearmen have them pointing their weapons up, not down, and most of the knights here have them at rest, not at ready. Even if it's a random guess, it's better than anything else we've come up with."

Sariya nodded, but Rhinese noticed both her ears and her tail droop a little.

Ignoring the stinging sensation in her heart from seeing that reaction, she placed the tip of the key on the tile, and it slowly started to sink into the tile which caused the disappointed Sariya’s tail and ears to perk right back up. Once it'd sunk all the way up to the handle, Rhinese started turning it, after it turned only a quarter of the way it stopped, and there was a great *clunk* that echoed through the room.

As she looked up, she leapt back with a curse as all the knights in the stained glass windows had shifted positions. She hadn't seen the movement, but now all of them had their weapons pointed to the central column.

"By the gods!"

Glancing at Sariya quickly to check her safety, she was happy to see her unhurt, but her tail hair was standing on end - she'd been just as scared as Rhinese about the situation.

"Are you okay?" Rhinese questioned with her breathing heavily layered with panic.

Sariya grabbed her sleeve and jerkily nodded twice.

Before Rhinese could continue, a great creaking was heard behind her, one of the bookshelves had opened like a door and provided access to a door in the center of the pillar.

It had chains wrapped around the whole piece and there was a giant lock in the center of it. Hesitantly, Rhinese retrieved the key from its place below the monstrous spear knight and walked over to the door.

The lock also fit the key she had, so with a deep breath, she slid the key into the lock, then gave it a quarter turn. Nothing happened until she removed the key from the lock, but once she did so the lock dissolved into particles of white light which floated off and faded away, then the chains all fell silently to the ground where they also dissolved.

There was another spot in the center of the door for the key, so she inserted it, and the door opened silently after another quarter turn. As the door opened, what greeted her was yet another library, but the reverse of the one she knew.

Instead of a central pillar of books, they were arranged around the edge of the room, and on the ceiling was a stained glass mural of the night sky.

The amount of books in this library also appeared to be several times the contents of her last one, the sight alone made her salivate at the chance to start digging into it all.

As she stepped into the space with Sariya still attached to her sleeve, the door quietly shut behind her. With a glance, she noted the hole on the other side for her key, so she continued forward without worrying about being able to get back.

Rhinese craned her head looking around as she quietly moved through the library, unwilling to break the majestic silence and enduring peace of the space, until she reached an odd space.

There were a bunch of tables pushed together to form a circle around an open space, with a few books laying on one of them. At the opposite end of the space, was a boy with hair of the darkest black she'd ever seen.

He was narrow in every sense of the word, everything from his shoulders to his fingers were thin, but everything was perfectly proportioned, so it didn't make him seem weak, but dexterous. Even through the rough clothes he was wearing -that denoted his status as a peasant- didn't hide the tightly corded muscles on his arms that bespoke a strength greater than his body seemed to allow.

The most interesting thing about him though, was his eyes. They were completely absorbed in the book he was reading and the silver of them seemed to shiver, shift, and change with every movement.

Seeing his unhidden love of books, coupled with his intense focus on the one he was reading, Rhinese felt an instant sense of kinsmanship with him. She hadn't had any other friends who loved reading as much as she did, so it had often been a bit lonely.

Eagerly, she opened her mouth to speak and get his attention, but Sariya suddenly spoke roughly, "Who are you?! What are you doing here?!"

The boy's eyes flickered up to them, but the rest of him didn't move. Rhinese felt stunned as a bit of a shiver moved through her when she made eye contact with him, his gaze carried a pressure like he was sweeping the depths of her soul with his gaze. After a moment of gauging them, he seemed to reach some conclusion. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted like Rhinese had been by Sariya.

"I'm going to call the guards!"

The once calm and thoughtful gaze of the boy sharpened as he stared coldly at Sariya with an intense focus. Less than a second later, a brilliantly bright [Magic Light] appeared in Sariya's face, blinding her.

She yelped and fell back covering her face as the boy quietly set the book down, then slipped away with a glance at Rhinese.

She hesitated a bit, glancing at Sariya, before setting her jaw in determination as she started to follow the boy.

"Wait, please wait!"

He was fast! By the time she caught sight of him he was at the top of the stairs leading up to the second floor. He paused there for a moment, then swiftly moved off.

Rhinese grabbed her skirt in both hands and swiftly ascended the stairs as fast as she could, she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to achieve, but she wanted to talk to him!

Unfortunately, she found the reason why he had paused at the top of the stairs. There was a barrier there. She had no way to catch up to him.

Looking up, she saw him slip between a pair of bookshelves on the third floor that slid together after he passed through, and the barrier in front of her faded away.