“This is the commoners’ library,” Boni said, using his hands to gesture at the entirety of the building in front of us.
It was a wooden building, same as all others in the town. Two stories tall, with a sign that hang just above the door. For a moment, I had expected it to read The Commoner’s Library. But that wasn’t the case. It said, Anwaz’s Bookhouse.
“Okay,” I said after I finished looking at the outside of the building. I was more interested in what I would find inside. Books, about magic. “Can we go in?”
“I had expected more enthusiasm than that,” he said showing hints of deflation before recovering, “Let’s head in then.”
“I care about books. Not the building,” I told him as we walked inside.
The first thing I noticed was the silence. Dead silence, not even the sounds I had heard out in the streets could be heard inside. Given that the library was located in the Merchants Sector of town, that was a huge accomplishment. I could spend days in here if I didn’t need to eat or drink. Or shit.
Then there was the smell of paper and leather. And a certain slightly irritating smell I couldn’t really pick out. There were five shelves in the middle of the library, stretching from the front to the back of the room. By the walls, there was a wooden wall about chest high with doors spaced evenly. I assumed those led to private study cubicles. At the back, there were the hints of a staircase which I assumed led to the second story.
I looked to my right to find that Boni had went to the counter there. I saw him place a silver on the counter before he came to join me.
“Come on. Let’s go find you a few introductory books,” he spoke normally. I looked around and back at the counter, but no one seemed to mind. I still stayed quiet though.
After a minute of going through the shelves, we found ourselves a vacant cubicle by the stairs at the back. Boni had picked up three books, but I had yet to see the titles yet.
“I assumed you had forgotten everything and picked these two to give you the basics,” he spoke in a normal voice again, presenting two books in front of me. The smallest of the three, I noticed.
I picked up the smallest one, The Basics of Mana. It was really small, around a centimeter thick and the size of my hand. It had a dark yellow leather cover, and when I opened it, the paper inside was a dull white. The text was large, simple and clear. It was definitely meant for kids. The second one, Introduction to Mana Manipulation, wasn’t that bigger. Only its length was different, being slightly longer than the first one.
The third one was a true book. Around two knuckles thick, a hand wide, more than a hand and half in length, and a kilo in weight. Farming with Magic. Even the size of the text was smaller and more professional looking. It demanded to only be read by those who knew what they were looking for.
“Now, this one—”
My looking around stopped him. He tried searching for what I was looking for before he finally understood, “Don’t worry, the cubes don’t allow sound in or out. We can talk as loud as we want.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“What was I saying? Right… I don’t expect you to read this one. Only the topic on imbuing which is in page 124 to 146.” He opened to that section of the book and presented it to me.
I went to fold the page to mark, but he stopped me. “Don’t do any damage to the books. It will cost us more.”
I turned the book upside down on the desk and picked The Basics of Mana book. Better to start at the beginning. Boni got up then, “I’ll go find myself something to read.”
“Wait. How long the silver last?”
I needed a time frame so that I could schedule how I tackled the books. There was no way I was leaving the library without at least the knowledge of at least five magic Skills. And also, a basic understanding of the Skill needed to imbue vigor into crops. My Mana base Attributes were both above my overall level the last time I had checked. That had to mean something. And if I had a talent for magic, the best option was for me to focus on it and maybe increase my value as a laborer.
“An hour for the two of us.”
When I nodded, he left the cubicle. And I dug into the books. First up, The Basics of Mana.
Boring. Boring and boring. Everything there was things that I already knew. Mana was the stuff that made all those amazing feats possible. You want to spew flames from your hands, Mana. Manipulate the earth itself, water, air, hell create icicles from the water vapor floating around; Mana, Mana, Mana, and you guessed it, Mana.
Mana was found in all living things. Plants, animals and everything else that could be called a living thing. It was actually safe to assume that a thing could be called living if they took in aether from the air around them and turned it into Mana inside them. Being able to use that Mana was something else entirely.
There was nothing new to learn from it. When I took up Introduction to Mana Manipulation, I realized that the first book had really been just the basics. Like the basics of basics that stopped being true when you actually learnt more about how things really worked. Things in the second book got very complicated, very fast. How is this an introduction? What about intermediate? Or advanced? I finally understood why Masi had stopped with the whole reading business. It was intentionally made more complicated to keep people out. They were trying to monopolize magic. I would not give them the chance.
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‘Clare, how would understanding all this help?’
‘Understanding how Mana works, and how to manipulate it to fit your needs will level up the Attribute [Intelligence].’
‘What about [Wisdom]?’
‘You will need to gain the ability to use that knowledge to help you achieve your goals.’
I had thought that with my Mana base Attributes high, it would be easier for me grasp the knowledge needed to work with magic. It was proving not to be the case.
‘Why were my Mana Attributes so high to begin with?’
‘Because you have an aptitude for working with Mana that is above average.’
‘Are you kidding me right now? I can barely understand introduction to Mana manipulation.’
‘Having an aptitude does not mean you will not have to work for the gains.’
There went my dream of an easy way out of the hell I was in. I would have to put my brain through the same arduous routine that my body was going through just to see any gains. Why again was it necessary? Maybe the one silver a day wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
I put away the Introduction to Mana Manipulation book and picked up the third one. Time for a leisure read. After around twenty minutes of reading, I was sure I had got the gist of it. This guy whose name was hard to remember, had somehow thought of imbuing mana to plants to make them grow faster and bear fruits and yields quicker. He had likened it to healing, giving a slight nudge here and there. Making the plants do what it did best a little bit faster. Make its own food. It had progressed to such a degree that the imbuing started happening before the seeds themselves were planted. The topic spoke of manipulating the attributes of the growing parts of a seed to make them emerge faster and with more vigor. The use of the term attribute had made me think that seeds and plants too could have levels, but the more I read on the topic, the less that seemed like the case. But there were still attributes, I just didn’t get what kind they were.
Reading about all the ingenious ways other researchers had added to the original works of the first guy had me invigorated to learn more about magic and Mana manipulation again. I picked up the Introduction to Mana Manipulation, and dived in again. I paced myself though. The first round had taught me that going in full throttle wound only end with me having understood nothing. It was a marathon, not a sprint. And I needed to tackle it as such.
I already knew the very basic of Mana manipulation; concentrate Mana in yourself, imbuing the intent you want expressed and then directing it out of your body towards the intended target. Which could be a foe or a friend, a living thing or a piece of rock. The book claimed that the easiest form of Mana manipulation involved working with what was already there, without changing its nature or properties. Things like moving an object from one place to another, a big drop of water, pushing air around, but not anything that could turn aether into Mana i.e. living things. It required the least amount of finesse and costs, as long as the thing being moved wasn’t heavy. As things got heavier, the mana costs rose exponentially.
The next form of Mana manipulation involved altering the properties of what already existed. Shaping rocks, creating waves and other figures with water, turning what into ice or water vapor and so on. The second form required a large degree of finesse but its costs weren’t that different from the first form, and faced the same restrictions. Some experts argued that moving air belonged in the second form.
The third form involved creating things from nothing. It was primarily known for its fire. But other things could be created too; water, air, rocks and so on. At its advanced stages, some healers used it to regrow limbs, organs and other parts of a living thing that were missing. It was the most demanding of all forms in terms of Mana costs. Though it required little to no finesse. Of course you had to control your creation, but that fell into the second form’s purview.
The fourth form was the same as the second form, only that the restrictions were reversed. It only worked with living things. It was the playground of healers of all kinds; and some other groups that the book didn’t bother explaining. It required finesse, was cost-demanding, and contact with the living thing was necessary.
Then there was the fifth form, otherwise known as the arbitrary form. It involved anything else not covered by the big four.
I was very pleased with myself for understanding that much. But by the end of the section, the author emphasized about how those were just the basic forms of Mana manipulation and that as the reader advanced in knowledge, they would be introduced into more distinguished forms that accurately represented the divisions in Mana manipulation. That, and the fact that it was the first chapter of the book completely destroyed my jovial mood. I was more than happy when Boni came to inform me that our time was up.
On our way back, I decided to ask about some of the questions that had propped up during my reading session.
“Why not weed with magic?”
He laughed a little when I asked that. “The first thing anyone ever tries or suggests really, when they come to farming. Why not do this with magic? Or that?”
I suddenly felt like I had asked a very stupid question. They had been using magic for thousands of years, someone had even figured out a way to make crops mature faster and yield more. I should have known it had been tried.
“It has been tried. And proved inefficient,” he continued anyway. “Weeding manually consumes Stamina, but using magic consumes both Mana and Stamina. The Mana I have would only allow me to weed for an hour or two at most. The Stamina I would have left by then would not be enough to finish the same amount of work if I had only done it manually. Farmers don’t have the Mana and Stamina necessary to work the whole day on a farm using magic. And those that do, go for better paying jobs.”
“I see.”
“Don’t sound so beat down. You didn’t know,” he said.
“Should have thought it through,” I commented.
“Asking questions is how we learn things.”
It wasn’t how I liked learning things. I preferred a more self-taught approach to life. Read as much as I could, and try to figure out how to apply the knowledge gained into everyday life. That was my motto. I decided to make the library a constant feature of my week. A silver could get me two hours, and that should be enough for me to read enough material to have a lot to think about during the week.
“How long are you planning to stay with us?” Boni suddenly asked.
That had been a topic I had had issues broaching. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the work, I actually enjoyed it. But the truth was that the pay was awful, and the hours awful too.
“I don’t know,” I answered after a while. “Thinking of joining the Guards. At 20.”
“Not a bad choice, but you need to be above Level 25 for that,” he answered. And I sighed inwardly when I didn’t feel any betrayal in his tone. But he must have noticed anyway. “I know we don’t pay well, but I was hoping you could stay until we harvest.”
That didn’t seem like an unreasonable request. With how short the growing season was, it would be over before I even made it to Level 20. But I still needed to know.
“How long?” I asked him.
“Six weeks at most. Less if the crops respond favorably to the next round of imbuing.”
“I think they will. They look healthy to me. A nice dark green color. Vigorous growth. Normal sized leaves. Low pest pressure.”
“You claim not to remember anything from before you woke up in the forest, and then you say things like that. It makes one suspicious,” he said in a light tone. And even if he had been serious, it wouldn’t have bothered me that much.
“I see other farms. Easy conclusion for keen eye,” I told him as we walked through the Merchants streets, on our way back to Silas’ compound.