After quietly eating diner while sitting across the table from Vayentha, Ayana stands up walks to the counter where she got her diner and hands over her dishes to the apprentice behind it.
Slowly but steadily on her way back to her room, until somewhere vague in the distance she hears some noise. She stops to look around only to discover nothing behind her. She continues to move up the stairs until a hand is placed on her shoulder. “pfew, I finally caught up to you”.
Ayana turns around and replies: “it’s about time, join me in my room, I have some things I need to figure out.”
“how did you even know it was me?” Vayentha asks with her mouth agape. “simple, you are the only one that has changed significantly in the last couple of months”.
“you keep track of the progress everyone makes? “”Yes I do” “And on the scale to know these kind of things?” Vayentha kept on questioning, while thinking “what has happened to her? Why would she do that kind of thing while all the others are just trying to improve themselves? What use is there? What And so on.
Ayana chuckled, “Know thy enemy and know yourself, in a hundred battles , you will never be defeated. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle.”
this only made Vayentha’s face wrinkle even more, “huh, what are you talking about?” “well, it comes down to: just knowing a lot about them makes me stronger as well.”
“that still doesn’t make any sense, but now I could follow what you where saying” “lets just forget about it for now, come inside and show me what you have learned”. Was wat Ayana said after she opened the door to her room they arrived at while walking and talking.
Ayana closed the door. “well, show me or tell me, what happened to you?” “well, when I got taken away, master Wilson just made me promise to not kill any more of the apprentices, after that he just asked me a couple of questions about how I was feeling, or if there was anything wrong. I answered and he asked one last question, if I wanted to continue my apprenticeship here or….?” “well? What was your answer?” “I said yes of course.”
“Uh.. Oh… that is a good thing, than at least we get to stay here in the tower together……..” before Ayana could finish her sentence a thick book got shoved against her face. After composing herself again, “what is this? Why are you giving it to me?”
“this is something I got from pickpocketing that snob of an apprentice leader before slashing against his throat.” Was her answer, a snob he was, always surrounded by those two little helpers and bugging other apprentices. “I will have a look at it and let you know what I find.” “let me know, books are not my strongest point Hehehehe..”
“I know, even before your transformation your where a hands on kind of girl and not the book studying type” “hey……!, I know a thing or two from books as well.” “oke oke, I will shut up about that subject. But I have one last question: what did you transform into? “
“Euhm…. Master Wilson told me that he used the blood or tissue of some kind of infant dark undead creature.” And Ayana took some parchment from the desk behind her and the quill out of the holder to put it in the ink and note down what Vayentha just said.
“Oke time to go for you, so I can do some research” while moving her hands, bidding Vayentha to leave the room. “oke.. oke.. yes madam, I will leave you to your own devices…. for now.“ while pulling the door shut behind herself and walking to her own room while giggling .
So, lets get this book cracked. Hmmm, this is actually a book in a language I don’t know yet, lets have at it then.
Ayana opened the book and looked at the first page completely filled with words in a language that is completely made up form runes, sigh “well this is going to be a very long night”.
Right at that moment something started stinging at her left arm, and after a few seconds a menu popped up, it had a simple few sentences written on the, almost digital looking, screen, which said the following:
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
*New book has been detected, do you want to copy the contents of the book to the database?
Spirit cost has yet to be determent.*
well, I did not see that coming, but if this works, lets try something. “can I just copy the first page of the book?”.
The screen changed:
*order received………. Calculating spirit cost…… *
A few seconds later it changed again:
*Copying first page of the book
Spirit cost: 0.3 spirit.*
“hmmmm…. Wil this be a permanent loss of some spirit or just depletion of the spirit reserve?” Ayana thought out loud.
And the screen changed again:
*it will just deplete your spirit reserve*
“hmmmm, let’s do it then” and the screen changed for a fourth time
*order has been received, commencing copying progress*
Well, I have no idea how long this is going to take. So let’s find out what language this actually is, it looks a like there are Darmassian and Nazja elfish runes mixed together here. For what I can see there is also Eltharin and Pyandonean, but there are still some pieces that I can’t place yet.
Just as she was deep in thought, the screen popped up again with the notification that the first page had been copied to the database. “how much spirit does the first chapter cost?”
*order received……… Calculating spirit cost……*
*Copying the first chapter of the book
Spirit cost: 7.7 spirit*
Sigh, all of my remaining spirit, well it just has to be this way.
“start copying”
*order received, commencing copying progress”
As almost all her spirit had just been depleted she got light in the head, her mind had become fatigued, the most annoying symptoms for this are dizziness, swelling of some parts of the brain and mumbling.
The spirit attribute can be described as the container for the spirit, just like a pool, the bigger the outline the bigger the amount of spirit, the water of the pool can be compared to the amount of energy you can use.
And if the pool has been partly depleted, your spirit related performance drops as well. Overuse of the spirit energy leads to something that’s called spirit exhaustion.
So as soon as Ayana noticed that the mystical screen drowned her of her spirit she stumbled to the bed, dropped down and while her head did not even touched the bed yet she was already sound asleep.
While she was asleep everything went silent for the night and slowly everyone in the tower went to bed.
* - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On the next morning Ayana was woken by banging on the door of her room yet again. She gets out of bed but her head starts hurting a little and her vision becomes just slightly dizzy, while walking to the door.
At the door the banging intensifies, “open the door and let me in!” can be heard from a loud voice of the other side.
Waiting for her head to clear up Ayana takes the last step to the door and opens it up. Immediately Vayentha rushes though and starts asking:
“Well? Well? Well?...... tell me, did you learn anything?”
“I did, but it is not much” Ayana replied mumbling to her question. “just that it is a combination of a series of runic elfish languages, which I am still deciphering”.
“well, if that is all, I am leaving again, your no fun at all.” And with that she leaves the room and slams the door shut.
What happened just before Vayentha’s visit was that stinging at her arm again, by now she had learnt to focus on it, so it was easier to distinguish, she focused her mind on it and luckily the screen popped up again,
It displayed:
Copying of the first chapter complete, would you like to review it?
Ayana replied to the screen with her mind “show me what you have”.
Almost Immediately after that the screen started displaying the whole chapter that it had copied.
In contrast to the numerous elvish languages jumbled together in the text, the Deviants alphabet uses only 26 major runes but hundreds of variant runes, there is actually also a book on the rune shrift of the Deviants.
“That reminds me to get that book copied” thinking about the book named Runes for Beginners, she should have it laying around here somewhere.
That’s when the screen gave a new prompt:
Book Deviant Runes for Beginners has been detected, copying cost: 6 spirit
Would you like to start copying?
After reading trough the message, she agreed to it and her spirit drained again while she moved to the door, this al happened in the few seconds between getting up and moving to open the door.
-----------
After Vayentha slammed the door shut Ayana started reading the mysterious text again.
While reading through the first few pages the screen gave another prompt.
It said: would you like to display it in Deviant rune language?
“Wow, it can do that?” whereas Ayana realized, I don’t even know what the screen is capable of at all, and thus she was left whit more questions than answers again.
“yes, if you can do that, that would be very helpful” and the screen started loading again, piece by piece the jumbled up elfish rune started being reorganized and transformed into the runes the Deviants use.
“Hehe”, Ayana started again on the first page of the text and what she saw stunned her, “Who would have thought that you were a book on the beginnings of magic circles, I certainly did not.”