When Villin was halfway to the practice grounds he stopped in his tracks. After thinking about it again, he didn’t think it was a smart idea to go. Even though he didn’t know how the school politics worked exactly he was sure it would be intense with the guilds in place and it might be best if he kept his fighting style and spells to himself.
If anyone wanted to know they would surely be able to find out he often used Reverto and Mentallage, also knowing Vinea Tenura. This could already be said to be too much, it was best if he didn’t reveal anything else.
With his mind that had now calmed down further, Villin ended up deciding to head toward the library. He hadn’t had access to the library for three months and the second grade library was sure to be better compared to the one from the first grade.
After walking for another ten minutes, Villin arrived. The library looked extremely similar to the one he was used to, the only real difference was a gate shielding a restricted section of the library. When Villin asked a contracted how someone could enter the answer was simple, reputation. Every guild had a certain amount of reputation, as did every person. The higher your reputation was the more access you had to obscure topics.
That being said, the contracted made it very clear most books of importance were in the regular library, the restricted sections only really contained information that wasn’t of a lot of importance to the students’ skill. The real benefit of having a high reputation came to play when it came to spells. Having a higher reputation meant you would have a discount, the more reputation you and your guild had, the bigger the discount. Some people could buy spells with a seventy percent discount, the only catch is that they had to read the spellbooks within the room and they couldn’t take it out to sell at a higher price.
Once he had a feel for the library system, Villin immediately paid for a couple of hours in the regular library. At first, he had the intention of looking up things about vampires but he quickly dismissed the idea. Information about vampires was probably restricted, if he asked about it, he might be seen as a liability and silenced. Even if the chance wasn’t that big, Villin wasn’t willing to take it.
And so, he started looking at books about golems, or well, rune-based puppets. For multiple hours he asked the contracted for book after book talking about runes and golems but he couldn’t find anything.
Villin frowned after spending three hours on dozens of books without finding anything. At most one of the books explained how, if you had enough time, enchanting a wall could be beneficial if you wanted to use transfiguration to turn that area into a golem. Something Villin already realized recalling the golems he fought three months back.
At this point, Villin was holding his hair as he thoughts of other ways the runic puppets could be called. This library was massive and the runic puppets seemed powerful and easy to control after some practice. In many ways being better than transfiguration, he just couldn’t understand why he couldn’t find anything about it.
When Villin made his was to the contracted once again to ask him to lead him to other books with similar titles the contracted finally spoke up “Esteemed magus, my apologies but I believe the subject you are searching for isn’t in the library, be it in the regular or restricted section. It might be restricted to higher grades, or if the matter is urgent some teachers may be able to help you.”
The contracted usually didn’t speak much so Villin properly listened to his words after which he sighed. The contracted was probably correct, Villin nodded toward the contracted and then asked to go buy some spells.
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There were a number of spells Villin wanted to buy. First, he wanted a spell capable of avoiding physical damage. He didn’t doubt The Academy was planning to retaliate against Decorus once they found them and he wanted to be prepared in the case he was asked to join the fight. He also wanted the spell to be usable in the case he went back into the mortal world, he didn’t want to be helpless in front of a gun.
He was surprised to find that almost all of the spells in this category were currently half of their original price. The contracted explained that due to the recent tension with Decorus, certain spells that are known to counter their fighting style were made cheaper.
He ended up deciding on a spell called ‘Obiectus Prohibere’. There were a few reasons he picked this one. For one, the spell was specified to be more effective wandless. Secondly, the actual effect. The spell would create an invisible barrier closely around the caster, this barrier would only stop non-magical objects moving at a fast speed.
This meant people could still approach them and even interact as long as they didn’t move at a threatening speed. As for magical items, Reverto was capable of stopping those so he didn’t have to worry about it. Overall he felt good about it. The spell was made out of eleven nodes meaning it was probably quite powerful and it was completely invisible so if he wanted he could have it active whenever he wanted.
The second spell he looked for was one with anti-magical properties. These spells were pretty rare and most of the ones he did see were defensive in nature, stopping spells by simply ridding them of their magic. With a limited number of options, Villin ended up picking ‘Void Arrow’. The spell could shoot out a black arrow that could move through some sorts of magical defense. It inflicted physical damage when it hit someone in addition to ridding them of some magic power.
The overall power of the spell wasn’t great, but as an anti-magical spell, it was very hard to learn. Even though it only had ten nodes he was warned the difficulty of casting it would be a lot harder compared to other spells with ten nodes.
With these two spells, Villin already felt a bit better but he still needed two more. The third spell he asked for was an environmental one. Vinea Tenura had shown itself extremely useful and Villin wouldn’t mind having another couple of those for different situations.
The number of environmental spells they had was quite large and Villin had to specify it quite a bit before he found a number of spells similar to those he was looking for.
In the end, he thinned it down to two. The first one was called ‘Syrtim Celer’ this was a spell containing twelve nodes, the maximum of this grade, and it turned an area of the ground into quicksand. Causing people to get stuck quickly.
The second one he hesitated between was called ‘Calidum Calor’. This spell also held twelve nodes and Villin recognized its effects. He recalled the advanced tournament where Silver turned the heat higher for everyone but herself, standing closeby it would be unbearable. ‘Calidum Calor’ had a similar effect but it was more condensed.
As he was hesitating he suddenly questioned his reasoning for doing so and simply bought both, he didn’t lack funds right now.
As for the final spell he was looking for, it was an explosive one. He knew he had few peers his age but people could easily group up against him to take him out. If they went in proper formations he would stand little chance against them. An explosive spell would help to disrupt a formation if it hit. He ended up deciding on “Bombardo” a spell with eleven nodes capable of causing explosions. Exactly what he was looking for.
Villin was about to leave after getting these spells when he recalled something. Kayley and himself had made a lot of progress studying their webs but they lacked data, they simply needed more spells to test out the similarities and give nodes more accurate properties.
And so he ended up buying a bunch of the cheapest, most useless spells there were. Some of these spells only cost a handful of magic crystals as they were seen as practically useless only having minor effects, with dozens of other spells capable of doing the same thing better. He made sure to buy the wooden spell books of these ones with two uses so that he could share them with Kayley.