D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

[Now Kat you have distracted me long enough. I MUST read that new book on paper magic]

Kat couldn't help but laugh as she gave Lily a few more scratches before she got up and grabbed the book. Book in hand Kat set herself back down on the bed before shuffling things around. Lily needed to read the book but there wasn't any great ways to do that. The best Kat could come up with was leaning against the backboard herself with Lily wrapped around her neck and the book off to the side. Kat had mastered the technique of turning pages with just one hand after Lily taught her in the past so she didn't need to lose any comfort.

Lily would give Kat a slight mental nudge every time she wanted the page changed. Kat also found the book had a particularly interesting form of protection even from her True Sight. When she glanced at the book instead of Lily, instead of hiding part of the information, the book somehow managed to throw the entire contents of itself straight into Kat's eyes. Even with her perfect memory it was too much information in a single moment and she couldn't deal with it. The words got all mixed together making it basically useless.

With the pair settled that's basically all they did for the next day until it was time to head in for their check-up. Vivian had been informed of their activities. Sylvie had pouted but said nothing while Kat gave her head pats. On Lily's end of things she was absorbing as much information from the book as she could. Despite its small size it contained many more pages. A simple thing for a paper mage apparently.

Just the introduction was taking her a long time. It was all about the most efficient way to picture your spells, and the potential ideal paths for moving mana throughout your body. Lily was rapidly learning the 'potential paths' were basically endless. Slight variations, complete reforms and abstract oddities were everywhere. It was probably easier to just say 'go with what feels best' but apparently whoever the previous paper mage was, they loved to have people read their work. It wasn't necessarily poor writing but Lily, as a researcher at heart, could already tell it was organised to a barely acceptable level with additional details that were completely useless for most people.

The fact that when talking about mana pathways they simply went through the 'common' types but then it was in the variations section of each common type that it started specifying what species and gender these variations were commonly found it. It was irritating because quite a lot of the pathways were completely invalidated by Lily's body. Her ears and tail weren't regularly accounted for. The fact she had wings in one form but not in the other. The fact she was a beastkin at all.

Even accounting for the fact the author had likely never heard of a Memphis any beastkin reading this was in for a terrible time. Lily wasn't sure what race the author was though. She was leaning towards elven, for that seemed to be the standard, until they talked about variations for people without wings as if that was the norm…

Only to then speak about fey a paragraph later and the variations required for them. Lily considered the possibility they were a beastkin with wings… but they barely took into account other beastkin and she felt no beastkin would organise the book so poorly for their own kind. For they really did have it the worst in this section. Variations for ears but not tails, variations for ears on head and to the side, even variations for no ears. But it was almost never a standard feature of the pathways.

Now, one might hope the next section was on how to cast your first spell. A very basic step in any budding mage's education. For most it was a simple command spell, not full manipulation, just 'higher' or 'lower' or 'move left'. Basic stuff that you can do with every element. Not in this book. Instead, they go on to list not a series of exercises, but a series of series of exercises. Each built supposedly for people with different mindsights to help with controlling paper. It might have been more interesting if they had details for who they were for. Instead they were just 'mindset one, mindset two etc…' and it went on and on. Lily was currently at 'mindset 57' and there was still more. She was mostly skimming things at this point because a lot of the exercises were slight variations for previous mindsets but they weren't in any coherent order.

For example, 57, the current exercise series she was looking at, was most similar to 13, with a little bit of 27 thrown in for some of the later sections. Which sounded fair until you realised that 13 was a combination of mindset 3 and mindset 4 but 27 had no similarity to anything that came before it despite 26 and 28 both sharing similarities to mindset 8. Lily couldn't even test any of them because she couldn't feel her mana just yet.

Sure she wouldn't have been able to cast a spell even if she'd gotten to that section, but that didn't mean she was happy about the fact this book seemed to just be wasting her time. Lily was starting to notice her claws extended and trying to dig into Kat's flesh. Kat didn't so much as twitch. She was half in a meditative state, exploring her mind pool while keeping enough physical awareness that she could turn the page on command.

That was the only thing she could do without breaking the state… and it wasn't as if Lily's claws could actually cut Kat's skin. In fact, they struggle to break through her clothes. Without mana flowing around her body she just wasn't capable of testing any of them out. What was annoying Lily further was that from what she noticed during the tournament, this sort of minor elemental movement shouldn't require these kinds of intense mental exercises.

Best Lily could figure was that they would improve her control in minor but noticeable ways… but that was a generous interpretation. There just didn't need to be so many alternatives. Only the fact that Lily had to stop occasionally for short naps due to her new body let her continue working. Her body was helping her sleep more and her mental fatigue was making it harder to ignore. For the best perhaps, but rather annoying.

The second time Lily woke up during her massive reading binge she complained mentally, [GAH! This doesn't feel like a book for paper mages. This feels like the DRAFT for a book for paper mages. Nothing is proofread, they haven't tested out which of these techniques are common or even work consistently…]

[I haven't even SEEN the rest of the book and I can tell that this author was using these more as a notes journal with minor organisation then a training tool. I'm pretty sure that they've thrown in anything that might even be remotely valuable and are counting on their theoretically large number of students to essentially be the trail group where they test what works best for them and then somehow get the information back to the original mage.]

[The thing is, not even Thyme is sure if they're still alive and there is still only ONE rank five paper mage. I initially thought it's because it is a rare element, and while that's still true I'm now wondering if this isn't a form of subtle sabotage. I mean, if I actually believe that whoever made this didn't completely sabotage their writings out of some sort of professional pride.]

[The chance of picking the wrong mana path or the wrong set of mental exercises is ridiculously high. I haven't even gotten through all the exercises yet! None of them stand out to me as 'the one' and ok maybe I'm doing something wrong but… I just don't know how useful this can actually be without just wasting time testing things. Could I be missing anything?]

Kat thought for a moment. She didn't really know anything about paper mages, what the book actually contained or how likely Lily was to find something useful. She did however know at least a few things about fantasy cliches. Ones Lily should know as well considering she was the source of most of Kat's own knowledge. "So… not to discourage you at all… but… I have an idea…"

Kat waited for a few moments trying to figure out how to phrase it the best only for Lily to give her a mental 'get one with it' shove. "Ok fine. See… it opens for a paper mage… but perhaps it reacts further to your mana?"

Lily let out a hiss as the understanding hit home. [Of COURSE it's a MAGICAL ARTIFACT. Why did I think I could just read it without mana? I'm either looking at everything, even the stuff that can never be relevant to me… or this is protection of some kind. Maybe a kind of double confirmation? A paper mage has to be looking at it and supplying it with mana?]