“No, there’s no need…Thank you again, Mr. Dorgh, and if you can please forward my message to that contact, I would be much grateful.” Anne replied confidently, any trace of her previous unwillingness had now vanished.
After completing the formal procedures on the spot, Mr. Dorgh wanted to take her back to the town since some renovations were still needed to make the building habitable. However, the girl’s stubbornness dissuaded him from insisting. He had to admit that she was giving her all to make it work, even ignoring the harsh environment to not waste more time. And so he left with the promise of contacting the mercenary company from the province capital and further guiding them here when they arrived.
In a way, the manager was underestimating Anne. What he judged as stubbornness and youthful driving, was actually part of a carefully made plan. As a guardian of knowledge, she knew the importance of being prepared. Aside from her performance as a bookmancer, the bookstore would also count on her business abilities to thrive.
At this point, her priority was saving on her few remaining gold coins and opening the store as soon as possible. Since the transportation of her books would take roughly two weeks, she would set it as the deadline to renovate the place as well. Without further ado, she took out a scroll with her plans and started to adapt it to the current situation.
Some pre-work had to be done before anything else. Basic cleaning and getting the essential resources up and running were a must. Also, she would need her bookstore magic circle to help all of the other tasks run smoothly. Then, she could start with the renovation.
First floor original [https://i.ibb.co/KVczf4Y/First-Floor-Original.jpg]
First, she would need to choose the layout of the bookstore and seal the other entrances and restricted areas. The size of the building would support later expansions but now, it was a liability. The four entrances were impossible to be kept open. The backdoor, which led to a fenced courtyard wasn’t a problem, but the stable and tavern doors were.
Since she could only count on herself and Moruh to manage the place, they would need a single entrance and limit the customers to a single room. So, the normal entrance wouldn’t do it. In the end, she could only seal the entrance and operate the bookstore in the tavern area.
The space would be enough to receive up to 50 customers, which was five times more than she hoped for a busy day. This arrangement would limit her services to normal research and study, but it would be enough for now.
After blocking the other entrances and areas, she would move to repair the furniture and damaged walls of the tavern area. Other crafters specialized in this job and they were much more efficient, but for now, her goal was to save on everything she could.
Fortunately, she had more than enough books and scrolls on carpentry and masonry. Of course, the theory and practice were entirely different, but everyone had started at some point, hadn’t they?
The last step would be crafting the bookshelves and a door sign. Although the work would rely on her crude and inexperienced woodcraft, she had the drawings and had been around bookshelves all her life. Anne was confident to get it done. Two weeks and a great deal of work ahead, she better get started.
First floor after modification [https://i.ibb.co/MN1wqQD/First-Floor-First-Modification.jpg]
The ideal placement for the magic circle is at a centralized and hidden location, preferably, below the building. Thankfully, the basement fit those requirements.
While Moruh was getting some water from the backyard well, Anne went down the clacking stairs of the basement.
“Illuminare!”
The energy condensed into a ball and turned bright in front of the young bookmancer. For this kind of basic magic, she didn’t need to bring out her grimoire. She only had to feel the connection and mentally locate the spell page before casting.
The stairs led to a cold medium-sized room filled with some broken chairs and tiles. The room was also connected to two small storage rooms, which wouldn’t be useful in Anne’s plan. She contemplated destroying the storage room walls, but after checking that the main room space would suffice, she decided against it for the time being.
Per tradition, the magic circle would be different for each bookmancer, a special design developed during their extensive training. Like their style and book repertoire, the circle would help bring uniqueness to the bookstore. Even though Anne couldn’t find any peers to compare, she would at least bring some contributions to her ancestral line records.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Anne had finished her official training ten years ago, and since then, she worked tirelessly to collect books, scrolls, spells, and prepare her circle. A proper circle would have three basic functions, establish a domain for the bookmancer, absorb the environmental energy, and move energy inside the domain. For example, it would allow her to cast stronger spells or affect any room in the domain without physical presence.
The cleaning took some effort and a lot of scrubbing, but they got it done in a couple of hours. Thinking about the state of the other rooms, Anne was reconsidering her decision of not wasting grimoire pages with a cleaning spell. Fortunately, the hard menial work didn’t diminish her excitement. So, after a brief pause and a bread loaf, she started drawing the magic circle.
The initial steps followed the standard, from inside to the outside, starting with the absorbing array at the center, always encasing the drawings by a circle, which symbolized limit, power, the beginning, and the end. Then, she placed a crystal at the center to store the absorbed energy and moved to draw her unique arrays at the outer circles.
Drawing arrays took energy and perfect concentration, making her exhausted four times. Slowly, but steady, she traced the lines of power outwards, until it was finally connected in the last circle. The timid glow in the central crystal proved the circle was working just fine. With a deep sigh of relief, Anne allowed herself to fall, drained.
The bookmancer dragged her tired sight along the lines, admiring the result of years of hard work. Her character wouldn’t admit a single known mistake. Everything, from the wisdom tree ashes and dragon blood mixture that she used as ink and highest quality crystals, to the adapted ancient drawings that consumed years to study, was done to the utmost of her abilities.
An accomplished smile spread on her lips, resonating with a memory. Her late grandpa was trying to teach a relentless child, speaking of the importance of a solid foundation. ‘In our craft, it doesn’t matter how far you can go, the foundation will always be key. A weak bookmancer won’t fault with a strong foundation in the back. However, a strong one might live short to their potential without one.’ The old man would be proud of her. He wouldn’t admit it, but he would be.
The archivist had to suppress a tear, which threatened to be followed by many others, before jumping back into action.
Next, she would need to secure the essential resources, clean water, and staple food, which led her to the backyard. Holding her breath, Anne walked out of the building towards the simple wooden fence that marked the end of her territory. Her steps slowed and tensed until she stopped, only a couple of steps from the fence.
“Phew… Thank the Gods, it covers everything!” The girl let out a deep sigh, revealing a hidden worry about the circle coverage. As much as she was confident in her work, the theory could always diverge from reality.
Then, she looked through the short-grown weeds and located the well, conspicuously built ten steps from the back door.
“Moruh, is the water clean? Can it be consumed?” Her voice carried a hint of command.
The cat-like familiar gulped and stared aggrieved to the well. Anne could certainly understand the familiar’s reluctance but chose to ignore it and only nodded. Moruh swallowed dry and jumped towards the well. Drawing an air sign with his tiny paw, he floated a small ball of crystal water from the bottom of the well, then he hesitated for a moment before licking it.
“It’s… clean water albeit some energy traces, mistress. It should be the underground water drained from the mountains that gained some weak magic properties…” He made sure to sound offended for being used to test the water.
“Great! It’s another benefit of being close to the Wall.” The excited bookmancer continued to ignore Moruh as she approach the well.
The ancient-looking grimoire appeared again and she minded it to flip to a specific page. Anne hesitated for a second before retrieving a vial containing the previous ink of ash and blood mixture.
Using such a precious resource pained her heart, but water was an essential resource and few materials could resist the worn of time in contact with it. Re-drawing an array every week was still doable, but the energy cost, in the long run, would be too wasteful.
“Ianua Annectit!”
Anne chanted while forming an invisible array on her palm. She poured five drops of ink on it, making the array visible. Then, she guided the floating drawing to the bottom of the well. Last, she struggled to trace an invisible line of power connecting the array and the magic circle.
The panting young woman leaned on the stone wellhead and cleaned the sweat streaming down her face with a handkerchief. Even with the help of the circle, this level of spatial magic was already her limit.
Now, her final task for the day was setting up some basic fields. Fortunately, the town had been keeping the weeds controlled to cause a good impression on potential buyers, so she only spent an hour cleaning the required space. After getting the soil ready, the tired bookmancer took six small leaf bags from her magic pouch.
Since she couldn’t provide special care for crops nor would she have a lot of space for it, Anne had prepared some blessed seeds beforehand. The so-called blessed seeds weren’t actually blessed by any Gods. They were the product of the careful and hard work of herbmancers, which priced them in gold in exchange for the ability to produce crops faster.
The obvious price restraints limited Anne to six types of plants, two trees with one seed each, and four common crops with a few more seeds each. For the trees, she got a pink apple and a soul tea tree. While the crops were wheat, sunflower, parsnip, and longleaves. Except for the soul tea tree, which had cost her a fortune, the other five were rather common and would be present in most households. Her intentions were clear, surviving on these crops until she could spare the money to improve her diet.
And so, her survival resources were all in place.
Tomorrow, she would focus on renovations and start preparing for the arrival of her books. Soon, she would become a real bookmancer and start spreading the path of knowledge to those lost souls! But first, she needed a bath.