John left his building to look at it from the outside, take in his new additions as one would when they walk down the street. The windows looked bland, he thought. Near clear glass surrounded by stone that blended into the gray material making up the rest of his building. He reminded himself that the material would change in the future. Near future, perhaps. To something white, contrasting the dark stone surrounding his new glass.

The door looked stunning, John thought. The white paint drawing his attention, the border of vines pulling your eyes to the center. Empty for now, barring the rabbit knocker. John redrew his book near the center of the door, careful to use the right letter at the end to not create an explosion of colours. He wrote 'John's Books' near the top of the door and stepped back to look at his work.

It was better, he thought. He was still bothered that there was a need to replace the door, but this felt better. Looked better. It was clean, it grabbed your attention, it felt premium and quality but not gaudy.

Satisfied, he returned to his store to continue the time consuming work of checking every individual book for damages and replacing them. It took him another day to work his way through them all. Most of the books had survived pretty well, a fold in a page here or a slight scratch in the cover. Many had even got off unscathed entirely. It was only the few at the point of impact that had been damaged beyond redemption.

John thought about where you would go to repair books. When his door was damaged, it was the furniture store that replaced it. If his windows broke down, they said they would repair it. As a bookstore, if one of his books was damaged, would not his bookstore be the place to go to fix it?

And yet, John had no means of repairing them. He was a traveler, hoarding wealth as he roamed the universe. He had wares, but no means to fix them. It was something he could learn, given time. Most things were, that was why he had taken [Runic Inscribing] in the first place, having that freedom to do anything with enough time was important.

But fixing books wasn't something John was passionate about. It didn't excite him, he didn't even know how they were made in the first place. A bunch of papers bound by a thicker piece of paper? Simple construction, and he was sure he could make something passable but he'd never actually seen himself how they were made. Perhaps magic was involved, perhaps it was done by machine.

While he was daydreaming about book repair shops, a couple of customers walked into his store. Two humans, one male and one female. Both wearing leather armour, packs with rations and supplies hanging off their backs.

The two walked up to John, the woman asking a question, "We've been hired to take out a vampire that's been seen in the area. If you have any information we'd be willing to pay a substantial sum for it.

"No sorry." John said, the two customers looking to his side where the sound came from. Perhaps John would find a way to condense his magic down so he could create the sound in front of him and avoid this someday.

"Well that's fine, thank you anyway. Do you know if you have any books on vampires and their weakness, hunting patterns, and so on? We'd like all the information we can find." The woman said to John.

With a wave of his hand, the books moved themselves through the air to fill the bookshelf next to John with everything he had about vampires. He watched as the two walked over to the bookshelf, surprised at the space it was contained within.

"This one seems good maybe?" The woman asked the man in a whisper.

"No, I've never heard of vampires weak to moonlight. Can't trust anything else in the book if they say that." He responded.

"I don't disagree but that's the only thing that contradicts what we know about them too. Maybe they just met a different vampire? She asked.

"Maybe they did, but we're not hunting a different vampire anyway. I can't trust it, it's not worth it." He said, putting the book back on the shelf.

"What about the bookkeeper? Do you think he knows more than he lets on? How could a guy like that know nothing about vampires, when he has all these books on them?" She asked, glancing over at John as he sat motionless in his chair.

"If he knows more, he's not telling us. And I don't want to push him outside his comfort zone. Just focus on the books." He said, looking through another book he pulled off the shelf.

"Right. You don't think we could take him? He's only level fifty, what could he do?" The girl asked, looking away when John turned his head towards them.

"Maybe, but are we going to attack a bookkeeper just because he doesn't tell us everything he knows?" The man asked, shushing the woman.

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"We're going to go fight a monster that could kill us if we make one shitty mistake, and he might know something that could keep us alive. I'm not saying we attack him, but maybe apply a little pressure?" The woman said, keeping her voice as quiet as she could, almost inaudible.

"No. Levels aren't everything, you know that. This bookshelf shouldn't even fit here and yet it does somehow. And the worst part of it all is that for some reason it doesn't even feel like anything's happening. It just fits, so naturally. If he can do that just to fit another bookshelf in his store, we can't risk angering him." The man said.

"But he coul-"

"No. Keep to the books" The man said, cutting her off.

Their conversation continued for a little while, looking through books and debating whether or not the book is trustworthy. They finally settled on three books, bringing them up to John's desk.

"How much for these three?" The man asked.

This was the first time a customer wanted multiple books, and John was unsure how to handle it. One story for a book was fair, he thought. But if they wanted three books, would they have to tell three stories? He supposed it was only fair. But if they pushed for two stories he'd accept it, he felt. Two stories was better than no stories.

"One interestink story per book." John said, 'g' being another sound he didn't understand yet.

"A story? Huh. We've got plenty of those." The woman responded.

"How 'bout that space one from a few years back?" She asked the man.

"Sure," he responded, "I'm a space mage, and a few years back I was really engrossed in my study, watching the fabric and how it moved and flowed. When there was suddenly a surge, everything around me rushing forwards for a moment before it all settled back down. I have no idea what happened, but it drained my mana almost by a third and I levelled up three times in that moment. Three times! I wish I knew what happened so I could make it happen again, but I haven't seen it since. Maybe it happens all the time but I can't keep my spells up all the time and I just miss it.

"But whatever it was, it was the most powerful spacial shift I've ever seen. Everything seemed to warp for a moment and then it was just fine again. But different, the fabric had changed forever. Nobody else noticed anything, but I swear it happened." He said.

"Two more stories, lets see... Oh there's that one time with the headless horserider too." He said to the woman.

"Right, yeah. A few months ago we were traveling down the road when we see this person on a dark horse, blackness flowing behind them and there was no head poking out of their pitch black clothes. We were so sure it was a monster of some sort ready to wreak havoc on society, so we got into formation ready to defend ourselves. It stopped just in front of us, the black dripping off the horse, staining the ground.

"The rider hopped off and approached us, asking if we had a water rune on us. This dumbass says yes and throws our only fucking water rune at the rider." She said, poking at the man next to her before she continued, "And the rider just sprays down his horse, all of the black washing out of the horse revealing a totally normal looking brown horse.

"Apparently, he was trying to make a magical darkness rune but just ended up covering them both in some kind of black fluid. And then when he tried to clean themselves up he made an invisibility rune. He gave up and was heading back to town to get somebody better to fix them up. Thank god we found him first, they probably would've killed him if he rushed into town looking like that." The woman said, shaking her head as she finished.

"Hmmm. One more story. Oh I guess we could share how we met." She said, looking at the man as he shrugged.

"So there's actually four of us, the other two are off buying more supplies for our hunt. But we met four years ago in a tavern. Some old guy just runs in screaming about some chicken or something. Or was it a sheep?" She says, looking at the man.

"I think it was a sheep," he said, "Apparently the guy pissed off some wizard and as revenge the wizard turned his wife into a sheep. So he runs into this random tavern begging people to fix his wife, the sheep."

The woman continues, "Yeah, I mean there's magic guilds and adventurer's guilds and so many better places to go, but he runs into this tavern for some reason. The four of us all get up, interested in what's going on. It might be a trap, but I didn't really care. It would be fun, whatever happened.

"He takes us down to his house on his farm and in his living room is a sheep just sitting on a couch. It looks over at us when we enter and waves at us." She said.

"Yeah! Just a sheep, sitting on a couch waving at us when we entered. I was flabbergasted, I thought for sure we were all going to be attacked as soon as we entered. But nope, it was all true." The man said, laughing.

"Who the fuck goes to a random tavern for something like this, like seriously. Anyway, one of the four of us happened to be pretty good with this kind of magic and he prepares this ritual in this guy's living room. Drawing all over his floors with chalk. I swear it looks like we're sacrificing a sheep to some elder god or something.

"But then the magic surges, and the sheep transforms into a woman, on all fours on the ground, naked as the day she was born. The man covers her up and offers us a few gold as payment which we took and then left. After we were outside the four of us just died laughing at the whole situation. I mean, what kind of wizard turns somebody's wife into a sheep? Why a sheep? What do you have to do to piss off a wizard enough for petty revenge like that, but not so much that they just kill you?

"We talked amongst ourselves on the walk home and it turned out we were all looking for party to join, and we happened to make sense as a party so we just stuck together. We call ourselves the Heeps now." The woman said, finishing her story.

John pushed the three books towards them, nodding his head. The two took their books and were almost out the door when he realized something. He did in fact know a vampire, a half vampire anyway. And he was quite fond of her.

"What does your wampire look like?" John asked, the 'v' sound giving him pause.

"Same as any other vampire. Red eyes, white hair. A younger woman this time, a damn shame. She was seen in the area a few days ago and after the whole vampire thing a few years back they're taking sightings a lot more seriously now." The woman said before they turned around and left.