Isil quite enjoyed books. The written word always seemed to be so calming and diverse. This was mainly why she was so thankful she had collected hundreds of books. It was surprising to see just how much previously quite brief books in the game became full encyclopedias of knowledge. Stories also expanded quite a bit as well, some even having previously non-existent sequels now on her shelves. She was quite happy how this change turned out.
However, her passion for writing books exceeded her passion for reading them. While it was hard for her to find inspiration when writing normally, she didn’t need any at the moment. In her hands was a magic quill with no other properties aside from being independent of an inkwell, and a brown tome. On the cover of the tome were the words ‘Isil von Caligo’s Grimoire’, along with a simple spell circle drawn on the front. There were also traces of freshly woven enchantments on the book.
After the meeting convened and Isil rediscovered her dislike of alcohol, she made a serious attempt at contacting everyone that she could remember from her friends list. Of course, as the menu now just held her character overview, there was no way to message them. There was a spell that allowed messaging, but her magic missives were unable to find their targets. Disappointed with the lack of recipients, Isil decided to turn to cataloging her abilities and traits. Her first section was that of magic.
Magic was separated into different magical Schools – Destruction, Restoration, Conjuration, Illusion, Alteration, and Enchanting. Destruction was mostly composed of ‘elements’ one might think of when imagining of magic and their combat uses. Restoration was mostly healing, but also contained unbounded wards, divine magic, and turn undead spells. Conjuration was about summoning things from beyond the material plane like souls or demons, and teleportation. Illusion was either optical illusions or mental illusions, such as fear spells, rallying spells, and invisibility. Alteration was about changing the world around the caster, and included physical attribute boost spells, telekinesis, and transmutation. Enchanting was about infusing magical abilities and properties into mundane objects.
In summary, Destruction was about using mana to invoke natural phenomenon to destroy, Restoration was about using mana to heal and protect, Conjuration was about using mana to move spirits and objects through time and space, Illusion was about using mana to deceive viewers, Alteration was about using mana to bring about direct physical changes, and Enchanting was about using mana to make magical objects.
Independent of schools, skills and spells were separated into ranks based on their complexity. The weakest in the ranking was Novice, then Apprentice, then Practitioner, then Expert, then Master, and then Omega. Special skills that did not fit into the rankings were simply called Unique. Uniques were self-explanatory, in that they only belonged to a single user and could not be shared or taught.
After a large amount of hard work, Isil had acquired what believed to be the best magic class in the game, Dynast Mage. A Dynast Mage was a rare class that only a few had due to the sheer difficulty of the class quest. But even after all the tribulations required to obtain it, it was most definitely worth it. The class bonuses were unorthodoxly strong, with the strength and effectiveness of all spells being increased by 200%, the base mana capacity permanently doubled, and the cost of all spells of Practitioner and below becoming zero.
While Isil had originally thought that her class would cease to exist with the creation of this universe, a quick casting of a couple of Practitioner-level spells had no impact on her mana pool. While she could feel whether or not a spell had an effect on her mana pool, she could not tell the size of it. Therefore, she had no way of checking if that class bonus affected her. However, considering the continued effectiveness of the other bonuses, she was fairly certain that it applied.
Continuing to catalog her known spells, Isil suddenly thought of skill books. As the name described, it was a book used to learn a spell or skill. The books were supposed to detail the properties of the skill or spell it described, skill books simply required a touch to activate, no reading required. Since the world seemed to be disassociating itself from it’s gaming past, she doubted it would stay the same.
Isil briefly considered trying to test it, but realized that she didn’t have any skill books she could use. All of what was left in the library and her study were just duplicates, minus normal books. She was quite miffed with the fact. However, there was nothing she could do, so she kept writing. Though her specialty was creative fiction, copying was a repetitive, but somehow soothing, task.
-_Hours Pass_-
“That took longer than I thought...” Isil muttered to herself, looking at her completed grimoire.
Truly, it was a surprisingly arduous task. Not only did she have to copy over a hundred spells, some of which she never remembered learning, she also had to copy skills, traits, and equipment enchantments. Often, these skills or spells would get a page of their own, causing Isil to need to re-enchant the book with spatial compression. However, she felt it quite worth it to finally have an actual book of magic in her hands, instead of a bunch of converted ‘1’s and ‘0’s.
Sighing, she put the book down, ignoring her desire to read her work. A problem lingered in her mind. How did magic work? Her class, her skills, her magic, her ability – it required a certain threshold of knowledge before actually using it. Isil had no insight into the inner workings of magic. It just worked, and she couldn’t explain it. In particular, the Alteration spell Slow Time got her worried. She definitely hadn’t used that before, despite how useful it seemed. There was no way it would work in a multiplayer game, unless she was in a solo zone.
It was an Omega spell, so it took a fair share of her mana, but she cast it. Instantly, it felt like she was immersed in water, but with no buoyancy pulling her in any direction. She moved just fine, but the effect of slowed time was… physically revolting. Her very being seemed to reject the current flow of time. It was certain, she had never learned this spell before. She had learned spells from various magic organizations, but never that one. Feeling discomfort, she ended the spell. Her mind flew into overdrive as ideas tossed themselves around.
“… literally create a world...” Words from the mysterious letter left her mouth.
Suddenly, Isil thought of something. Berating herself in her head for what she was about to do, she casted a mirror spell – something else she didn’t learn. She looked at herself in the mirror, and was momentarily stunned by her own beauty. Her eyes practically glowed a dark orange, reminding her of fire, the pupils seemingly a gate to a realm of fire. Elven ears pointed directly backwards, sticking just barely out of her straight, jet black hair. On her face, two scars blemished the otherwise perfect face. A single, jagged, scar cutting down over her left eye, and a small scar marking the corner of her lips.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Steeling herself, Isil slowly began to remove her clothes. While she was now committed to familiarizing herself with her body and situation, this was not an easy barrier to hurdle. Her black robes fell to the floor, leaving her with only her undergarments. Her face was as red as a forge as she examined herself in the mirror. However, the blush quickly disappeared as she saw what dotted her body.
Isil did not have a perfect track record as a player, she had died many times, and had lost her fair share of duels. It was only until the later game that she achieved a higher status. However, no matter what happened to her, nothing was permanent. Health would regenerate, she would respawn, and lost limbs were never a problem. The character would always end up looking the same after it returned to it’s normal status. However, once she looked below her neck, Isil saw numerous scars.
Isil could not remember most of what her body looked like during character creation, but aside from the two facial scars, she knew none of the scars on her body had been added by herself. A tremor ran through her as she traced the largest scar with her fingers. It was a full body scar, running from her right hip to just under her left breast in a relatively straight line. Memories from her first death arose in her mind. An orc chieftain that wielded dual axes had charged her. Her mana was low, and she could not eke out a defense spell. She had desperately drawn a shabby dagger, but was unable to stop the orc’s second axe as it ran through her body.
A tremor ran through her. Indeed, that was how she remembered being defeated, but it was not so vivid. The chieftain had screamed his scripted lines, and retained the same facial expression the entire time. In the memories that she was recalling, the orc had screamed many things, none of which were scripted, and had smiled in a perverted way when he split her. The orc in her new memories was so much realer than the one she remembered. Her hand moved away from the scar and touched upon others.
Three on her left forearm, mauled by a bear. A circle on the right shoulder, where it was severed by a demon. A large one on the leg, bandit with a battleaxe. A vaguely hand-shaped blob in the center of her stomach, pierced through by the hand of a holy warrior. With every touch of a scar, memories of a death surfaced in her mind. They were blurry and unclear, but conveyed the scene with frightening realism. Isil swore she could feel phantom pain as she brushed her hand over the old wounds.
“How could this be…?” Isil absentmindedly questioned.
This was only one of Isil’s questions, and many more flitted through her mind. None of them could be answered at the moment. Sighing, she decided to take her own advice and deal with the other problems at hand. Almost reluctantly, she clothed herself. She would be lying if she said she didn’t want to stare at her beautiful body more, even if it was scarred. A small smile crept onto her face as she imagined herself as a narcissist.
With her grimoire done, she didn’t have much else to do. With nothing else to do she could either ponder philosophy, or do practical work. As tempting as becoming a philosopher sounded, Isil knew her limits, and assigned a task to herself. While she waited for reports to return from the field, she would need to re-familiarize herself with the black tower’s layout. Her sense of direction had always been terrible, and she often referred to the tower’s map when returning. She was extremely partial to not becoming lost in her own tower.
She left her office and immediately went to the roof. The roof of the tower was a small, but relaxing place. It was protected from the wind, rain, and snow via a weather prevention ward. The main feature of the roof was the gazebo. It took up most of the area, leaving only a small walkway around it, railings protecting any that might accidentally fall off. Just across from the entrance was a desk with many books on it. From what she could remember, the books should’ve been about the history of the continent of Tyverra – the one she was on right now.
Aside from a desk, the rest of the furniture was all chairs and a single hammock. As enticing as relaxation was at the moment, she knew she be working. Isil leaned against the railings, looking down at the land below. Dirak-Feûr was situated on the bank of the Redwater River, named such due to the red dirt that borders most of the river. The tower was on one of the rare areas without red earth, as it was build in the Deadlands, which only had gray soil.
The Deadlands was a forbidden section of land where mindless demons made their nests. Many of these demons were strong and desired nothing but the eradication of all kinds of life that wasn’t theirs. The reason Dirak-Feûr was in the Deadlands was due to the rich mineral resources, and the great training grounds the Deadlands provided. New members of Fallen Crescent were often tasked with either mining or demon extermination, which provided the guild with materials to either sell or use. It was due to the presence of Fallen Crescent that there were many villages and subsidiary guilds nearby.
Looking from the top, Isil could make out a collection of structures on the opposite side of the bank, outside of the Deadlands. This was one of the villages that managed part of Fallen Crescent’s farmland. While she couldn’t make out any activity, the structures seemed relatively intact, and the crop fields seemed lush. Nearby, she saw another structure. Like Dirak-Feûr, it was a tower, but far smaller and far less imposing. This was the magic refinery of one of her subsidiary guilds.
Magic refineries were places where alchemy and enchanting was practiced, and sometimes where magicians practiced spells. Simply speaking, it was a factory and laboratory combined with a magic world. Normally, the place was full of enchanters and alchemists, using the guild’s resources like they were without limit. Isil remembered how she had went looking in the guild for a single Soul Crystal for enchantment, and finding out a single refinery’s experiment had depleted their entire stock. Like the village adjacent to it, it seemed devoid of life, but intact.
As she gazed out at the scenery, movement caught her eye. A flash of gray was approaching the tower from the direction of the village. From the way it was moving, Isil guessed that it was jumping across the land.
“I sure hope that’s Blank’s team...” Isil mumbled and whipped around, returning to the elevator.