Almort's eyes widen and then he carefully reads through the spell again. Then he starts to cast it, but I quickly interrupt him before he can finish it.

"There is not enough room here for me to be forced into my normal form without damaging things."

Almort says "Oh, right, sorry. I forgot myself for a second, I will go outside and try it. I will be back in a few minutes."

Almort leaves in a rush and I just chuckle as I go back to working on the spell. He comes running back into the library with an excited look on his face about ten minutes later. Before he reaches us, Almort stops to catch his breath, then walks over calmly.

Almort says "This spell is much better than the old one. Not only is it easier to cast and has a better range, but it even costs less mana! Are you sure that you don't want to be paid for this?"

"I'm sure. The knowledge in this library is going to be very useful for my people. It will help them fight the demons and that is worth far more than a few minor improvements to a single spell."

Almort says "Well, I am not going to argue. Thank you, this will be a big help to us."

Almort is smiling as he takes the spell and goes running out of the library. He is probably taking it to show to the council, hopefully it gets him some credit with them. Although, it doesn't really matter to me whether the council is grateful or not.

After Almort leaves I go back to working on my spell while Lin goes back to reading her book. About an hour later I finish the spell and then spend a few minutes checking it. Then I hand it to Lin and have her check it as well, but she doesn't find any problems.

Lin says "This is a good spell. It is very stable and will be easy to enhance, good job."

"Thank you. It is all thanks to what you taught me."

Lin says "So, what's next?"

"Dinner. I am hungry, are you?"

Lin says "I am, but I was planning to have dinner brought to me here. There are so many books for me to go through!"

"They let you eat in here? That's unusual for a library. Aren't they worried about people getting food on the books?"

Lin says "The books are enchanted, they can't be damaged that easily."

"Alright, I guess we will eat here then."

Lin smiles at me and then calls over an attendant and orders dinner for the two of us. Actually, she orders dinner for ten people, but that is because she knows how much I eat. While we are waiting for the food to arrive I look through the rest of the books in the stack.

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All of them interest me, but I don't stop until I find the book on shapeshifting. I am going to stick to working on one thing at a time and try not to get distracted. So, I start reading the book while waiting for the food to arrive.

When the food arrives Lin moves all the books to the floor so that there is room for the food. Then the two of us sit side by side and eat while we read our books. Lin isn't really reading the books, she is just skimming through them to see if they are worth copying.

Those that aren't worthy in her eyes get sent back to the shelves right away. Those that she likes get copied before they are sent back to their places. The copies get put into her pouch before any of the attendants can see them.

Lin says "Ash, at this rate I think I am going to run out of wood for copying."

"That's no surprise. When I gathered the wood I was only thinking about copying the books we had. I never expected that this place would have such a huge library."

Lin says "I have come across copies of books that we already have, but there are still a lot of books that I have never seen before. It is a very impressive collection, it makes me curious as to how they collected it."

"You can probably ask Almort when he comes back. If he doesn't know he should at least know who you can ask."

Lin says "That's a good idea. I think I will. Did you suggest that just so I could satisfy my curiosity?"

"Yep."

Lin smiles at me and then reaches down to grab the next book on her stack. She is working through the books fairly quickly, but the sheer amount in the library is overwhelming. Even if she gets through a thousand books a day, it will take months to get through the library.

Since that is the case, she probably won't be done by the time we are supposed to leave. That means that I will need to decide if getting more books is worth staying here longer. I guess it will depend on Lin and how badly she wants to stay here.

If she really wants to stay, then I will probably give in and give her more time. I really want to get back to the peninsula, but I also don't want to tell Lin no. Considering what she has to put up with because of me, she deserves whatever I can give her.

She will have to put up with a lot more in the future once she becomes my queen. Because of that, I would prefer not to deny her anything if I can help it. So, for now, I will just wait and see what Lin wants to do and then decide.

Lin finishes eating first and then she gets up to go get more books to go through. I keep eating and reading my way through the book about demon shapeshifting. The demons shapeshift through an ability rather than a spell, but there is still some useful information.

However, it does give me some ideas, including how to beat the detection spell. My shapeshifting and the demon's has something in common, it isn't natural. The way to beat the detection spell is to make my shapeshifting count as natural.

What that means is that whatever form I take will become my natural form until I change it. The problem is that I don't really know all that much about natural shapeshifting. In fact, the only reason I know about it at all is because I have met some natural shapeshifters, Keeble and Neesha.

Because of my issues with Neesha, I don't want to ask the two of them if I can study them. Then again, if there is one type of natural shapeshifter there are probably others. Considering how big this library is, there is a good chance that they have information on them.

"Lin, does this place have an index or something you can use to search for information?"

Lin says "Not exactly. There is a librarian responsible for each section and they are aware of the books in their section. You basically have to ask each of them until you find what you are looking for. What are you looking for?"