[You have leveled up to level 6! You should have leveled up after defeating Dulce, but I forgot]

'It's ok. What did I get?'

[You have gained Remote Bone Control and Bone Reinforcement]

[Remote Bone Control: Gives the user finer and longer-range control over bone constructs such as weapons. Multiple constructs can be controlled at a time]

[Bone Reinforcement: Makes all bone constructs harder and more durable. The user can also reinforce their own bones or the bones of others]

'Nice!'

Abigail and I walked the streets of the undercity of Ravenhold, in the kingdom of Kindlemire. She told me the names of those locations and her last name. Her last name was Dalion. King Dalion ruled over Ravenhold and Kindlemire.

We walked up and down the streets and found no magic bookstores. We were about to give up, when I said, "I really hoped we'd be able to find a magic bookstore in the undercity, but I guess we'll have to go back up to the surface."

Then Abigail said, "What about that place?" She was pointing to a bookstore that was right in front of us. I was certain that place wasn't there before, but I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The bookstore's sign read, "Granny's Grimiores." "Let's go inside," I said.

When we entered the store, there were beautiful rays of sunshine shining on the books, making them glimmer and gleam in the light. What was weird was very little sunshine if any made it down to the undercity. Everything was illuminated by street lights and torches.

So wherever the light was coming from, it wasn't from outside. There was an older but not old woman sitting behind a counter to the side of the books. She looked to be in her 40s at most.

"I hope this doesn't offend you, but you do not look old enough to be a grandmother," I said.

"Oh, it's just a nickname that the local kids call me. Did you come in here looking for a specific type of magic or are you just perusing?" She said.

"I wanted to know if magic users could learn more magic other than what's provided by their class. I'm specifically looking for something to fix up my injuries," I said holding up my arms. "One of them is broken and the other has a severe acid burn. I've lost most of the control of my right hand."

"Oh, my goodness. That is certainly a predicament I can help you with." She looked at my arms and held them both in her hands. She closed her eyes and concentrated. A bright light enveloped my arms. After a little bit, the light faded and she opened her eyes. "It's done."

I tried to move my hands and arms around. No more pain or weakness.

"Thank you! That's fantastic and I'll pay you handsomely for it, but I was looking for a solution to the problem of getting injured in the field and dying as a result of not being able to heal myself," I said.

"That I might be able to help you with. There are two solutions based on your potential rank. You can learn individual spells with a lot of study and practice and a high intelligence stat helps a lot too," she said.

"Or you can take on a new Grimiore and learn the magic by leveling up with that new book. If you have a rank below S, you have to use the first method, but if you're S or above you can take on multiple grimiores."

"Her and I are both above S rank. So we should be able to take on multiple grimoires. What does that entail?" I said.

"You find a new grimoire and put the intent to absorb it on the book. Luckily for you, I have a wide variety of grimoires to choose from. Most people have to chance upon another grimoire while adventuring. They're rare drops," she said.

"I'm guessing this is a secret bookshop. Otherwise, I feel like you'd have people coming from far and wide to take books off your shelves. And the undercity is no place for a bookstore this nice," I said.

"We're in the undercity huh? Of Ravenhold I'm guessing? Interesting," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "You're not from around here are you?"

"No, I'm not. This is a magical traveling bookstore actually. It seeks out people in need of our services and shows up wherever we need to be to pick up a customer," she said.

"We would have people knocking down our doors if there were more S rank and above magic users around. They're actually quite rare. As are all S rank and above adventurers."

"You said magic users can take on new spell books. Is there a version of that for non-magic users?" I said.

"Yes, there is! They're called skill books and I have some of them here, but not as many as I have grimiores," she said.

"Interesting. Can magic users use skill books too?" I said.

"Yes, but you get a 90% experience point penalty. You would gain experience points for the skill book at 10% of your normal rate. To better explain skill books and grimoires or spell books as you called them, everyone with a class starts with either a skill book or grimoire inside of them that gives them their skills or spells as they level up. So getting a new skill book or grimoire is like getting another class," she said.

"S-ranks can have two grimoires total. SS-ranks can have 3. And SSS-ranks can have 5."

"What about N-ranks?" I said.

"What is an N-rank?" She said.

"It's a rank above SSS," I said.

"What core stat multiplier does it give you?" She asked.

"10x," I said.

"Then you can hold a total of 10 grimoires. I wouldn't necessarily suggest having that many unless you can prevent them from becoming redundant somehow," she said.

"That makes sense," I said. "So should we start looking?"

"Yes. It's best to choose additional grimoires that synergize with your starting class. When you do that, it allows you to use them together in powerful ways. What are your starting magics?" She said.

"I'm a bone mage," I said.

"And I'm a bubble witch!" Abigail said.

"Interesting. Very unique classes. I think I might have some grimoires for you two to look at. Wait here." She walked down the aisles and grabbed a few books. She put them down in front of us.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Healing magic for the bone mage, and Enchantment and Protection magic for the bubble witch. I'm sorry, I don't have any other magic types that synergize with bone magic," she said.

"That's fine. The healing magic should be a great addition. It would let me heal my bone constructs faster right?" I said.

"Much faster," she said.

"Ok, how does enchantment and protection magic help me?" Abigail asked.

"Enchantment lets you give properties and behavior to your bubbles. You can make your bubbles explosive and have them seek out enemies. Protection magic is good for protecting allies, but it could also be used to make your bubbles more durable. And you could make his bone constructs stronger too," Granny said.

"Oh. Yay! That sounds amazing!" she said.

"Right?" Granny said.

"How much?" I said.

"530 gold for all three," she said.

"That sounds right to me," I said. I activated Soul Inquiry anyway.

'You're not ripping us off are you?' I asked.

'No. I'm actually giving you a discount.' Her soul said.

'Oh. Thanks.' I said.

'You're welcome.' Her soul said.

"Abigail, I can only have about 190 gold. Can you get the rest?" I said, wincing.

"I can get the whole thing! I have way more money than you. Besides I consider as both our money," she said. Abigail set three coin purses on the counter.

Granny counted out the money and gave Abigail a half-full bag of coins. "You overpaid."

"Oh. Thanks!" Abigail said.

"Now let's have you absorb your new grimoires," Granny said.

When Abby absorbed her grimoires, pink light came out of her body and tinted the air, bubbles formed and popped, and the grimoires floated around her before entering her chest in a bright pink light. Sparkles shot out of her and glinted in the light.

When I absorbed my grimoire, the color drained from the room, and bones showered down from above, clattering on the ground. When the grimoire absorbed into my chest, it made gross squelching sounds.

"Well, that wasn't as awesome as yours Abby, but at least I can heal now, right?" I smiled.

"Actually, you can't yet. New grimoires start at Level 0 just like when you're a new adventurer," Granny said.

"Oh. That's a little underwhelming, but I'll make it work. So how do you level them up?" I said.

"You just gain experience. The experience gets split among all your grimoires. The new grimoires will level up quickly, and then it'll take a while for them to catch up with your other ones depending on your level when you gained them," she said.

[That is the case for most people, but since you have a system, you can choose how to spread out your experience among grimoires and skill books]

"So I can choose to only give experience to my healing grimoire, to get it up to the same level as my bone mage grimoire?'

[Yes]

'Then let's do that. I've been thinking about getting a skill book. Should I get one now?'

[I would advise against that. This bookstore is likely to only have standard class skill books. If you run enough dungeons, you should find a rarer one. Rarer is almost always better]

'Thanks. Wait, when is rarer not better?'

[Rope Master. It's a very rare skill book, but its applications are specific only to rope. So unless you have a way to carry around a ton of rope, the usefulness runs out when you run out of rope]

'Assuming you have infinite amounts of rope, are the skills any good?'

[The skills are great. The ability to supply the skills with rope is the hard part]

"Ok. Note to self, find rope master book and then get infinite rope.'

[Good luck]

"What do we do if we need to find you again?" I asked.

"Just say 'Granny's Grimoires' and my bookstore will show up, as long as it's not already busy," she said.

"Thanks. Alright. I think we're set for now. Have a good rest of your day Granny," I said. Abigail and I walked toward the door.

"You too, guy and girl. What are your names?" She said.

"I'm Tom and this is—"

"Abigail!" Abigail said.

I was going to use a fake name for Abigail, but I guess it couldn't hurt that she gave away her real name to a bookstore owner who barely knew the name of the city we were in.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Tom and Abigail. Good luck with your new grimoires!" She said.

"Thanks!" Abigail said as we walked through the door.

We ended up back in the undercity, but Granny's Grimoires was gone. In its place, was just a run-down house.

"That went well," I said.

"Yeah, I think so too," Abigail said. "What's next?"

"We need to level up our grimoires. Dungeon run?" I said.

"Yeah! Let's do it," she said.

As we walked to the dungeon, I did system stuff. Experience Plunder had been bothering me for a while. I was going to ask the system if we could fix it somehow.

'Is there anyway to make Experience Plunder only take from evil people rather than all people?'

[Yes! We can adjust it by leveling it up. Why don't you try doing that now?]

'How many justice points do I have?'

[10]

'How?'

[Dorian was 4 points, Bruno was 3, and Dulce was 3. That equals 10]

'Oh right. He died so quickly, I forgot about Dorian.'

[Seems logical]

'Ok. Let's just go ahead and spend all 10 justice points on Experience Plunder.'

[Excellent choice. You have upgraded Experience Plunder 10 times!]

[Experience Plunder changed to "Take 50% of all experience and stats gained by evil people. Then it increases to 60%, 70%, 80%, then 90%. With the next upgrade, this was added, "Take 1% of the accumulated experience and stats of evil people."]

[With 4 more upgrades, the radius of effect increased from 10 miles to 14]

'Nice! That's perfect.'

[I'm happy you're satisfied]

[You gained 50 good aura by changing your ability to a good effect (-35)]

That effect was overpowered beyond belief, but I did upgrade the ability 19 times. I thought the overpowered-ness was appropriate and earned.

I mean, not only is it going to give me a ton of stats, but it's also a denial of future experience points and stats for evil people. I also get the ability to steal some of their accumulated stats, not just future stat gains. So not only am I preventing them from getting stronger, I'm also weakening my enemies.

'So, we won't be able to do the dungeon multiple times today will we? Since it respawns daily.'

[You will. Dungeons respawn daily or when they are completed. As long as you complete the dungeon every time, you can go again]

'Oh, nice.'

Abigail and I arrived at the dungeon. We entered the dungeon without any packs this time. We didn't want to collect any crystals and the cores we would just pop as we went.

When we encountered the bats and giant rats, we destroyed them. Abigail trapped them all in floating bubbles and I pierced each of them with multiple bone spikes.

We picked up all the cores and split them down the middle, trying to evenly distribute the different stats. Red cores were strength, blue cores were agility, green was stamina, and yellow was intelligence. I popped all of the cores at once.

[You have gained 22 strength (207), 24 agility (199), 23 stamina (227), and 250 intelligence (572)]

Holy crap! My stats were starting to get reasonably impressive. An experienced C-rank adventurer with strength as their primary stat would probably have between 200 and 300 strength. Their other stats would all still be less than 125.

I was already able to compete against any C-rank adventurer's primary stat. After a few dungeon runs, I might be able to compete against B-rank adventurers in all stats.

My intelligence was so high, that I could probably compete against B-rank intelligence stat adventurers now. My spells would be insanely powerful now. And this was just the beginning. By the time we finished this dungeon my intelligence would be over 1,000.

"This is incredible! My intelligence is 255! And my other stats are increasing too! Look at my arms!" She flexed her arms.

"They look the same," I said. They did. She had dainty princess arms. They were cute and adorable, but in no way scary or intimidating.

"I know! And yet I'm a lot stronger! Isn't it great?" She said.

"Yeah. That is pretty great, I guess," I said.

I guess it was great. If she gained muscle equal to her strength, she'd be buff as hell in no time. Not that I wasn't into muscle mommies, but I liked her as she was, and I thought her dainty figure perfectly matched her personality. And by matching, I mean, they weren't similar at all.

As we continued through the dungeon, killing creatures as we went, my shirt felt tighter and tighter, and I kept having to adjust my pants.