The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

"It is a Grimoire." An elderly voice answered. "One of the oldest in the Library."

"Head!" cried the librarians, moving quickly toward the old vargvir.

The oldest of them held out his hands palm up. "Master Olvier, we apologize for not containing the disturbance."

The head of the Library chuckled. "It's good to have a commotion once in a while. Keeps us on our toes."

Say what?

Something just got stolen from the Library and the leader's reaction is 'it's good once in a while'? Krow inwardly questioned how the Library survived so long.

The elderly head of the Library had shorter, smaller ears than most vargvir, a telling sign that his ancestry wasn't purely of the race. The green eyes were another indicator. Pure vargvir commonly had irises in shades of red, brown, and blue.

Those eyes set on Krow. "It's been some time since we had to offer books to one not already inducted into membership. You wish to be an Enchanter, do you?"

"I will be an Enchanter."

It wasn't a wish. It was a certainty.

Master Olvier, as the librarians called him, chuffed. "It's a good thing for the young to be so confident of the way forward. But I see you have not used an Enchanter's Forge before?"

What, that can be seen?

The perception of high-leveled people was really scary.

Oh wait, this was still Redlands'¦his personal game data was under scrutiny by NPC AIs in order to facilitate greater immersion.

"Come, come, all of you young ones. I'll show you something good. You too, young draculkar." Master Olvier's walking stick rapped sharply on the floor, a firm rhythm as he walked toward the side wing.

Krow glanced at the exit.

"We will tell the Reeve where you are," said one of the librarians. She pressed fingers to her forehead. "I apologize for the earlier assumption."

Krow returned the gesture, smiled briefly, then trotted after the group of'¦librarian recruits? Future enchanters? Student tour?

Whichever.

The head of the Library led them to a large circular stone room, maybe fifty  meters in diameter. The pedestals, shelves and cabinets of the space were filled with books in individual crystal cases.

"This is the Circle Hall, where some of our most valuable texts can be accessed. You could buy a small town with the worth of the least of them." A small smile touched his lips. "What can you tell me about the room?"

The six students glanced at each other. Krow looked around the room. "You must have a lot of attempts at thievery."

There were snorts from a couple of the students and the head chuffed amusement. "We do."

Krow wasn't surprised. There was no indication of security around the place, simply a refreshingly airy room and several hundred books collectively worth more than a small country.

"It's'¦a ritual?" One of the students was peering at the floor, where the tiles were arranged in strange patterns, different shapes and sizes.

Krow looked down, then at the visible walls. The patterns were actually familiar.

He took a breath. "It's a Forge."

A massive Forge.

The room presented itself before his eyes in a new light. What did they need so large a Forge for? The room was big enough to enchant a house, and the magic needed'¦a single person couldn't provide it.

"A Forge!" A student breathed out the word in awe. The others looked around excitedly.

Master Olvier laughed. "Amazing, eh? It is not a working Forge, of course, but the power contained in the stones of the room is still significant."

He moved to the stone table in the center of the room. "People know that we have ways of recalling lost books. This is one of them. Come, children."

Krow would disagree about the children part, but he was too curious.

The vargvir directed them to place their hands on particular circles on the table. Eight people, equidistant from each other.

"Now concentrate. Imbue the table with your magic." The elderly vargvir placed his palm on the table as well, then closed his eyes. "You are learning something like it in school, at your age, hm?"

Krow did the same. Imbuing magic into items was not something he was unfamiliar with. Some leather curing solutions needed magic-imbued gemstones. But this, he could feel the other seven. Weird.

No sooner than all eight connected to the table, then something activated and with a whoosh and a flutter of pages, a book appeared in the center of the table.

Krow's appraisal triggered as he narrowed his eyes.

[The Book of Maron (incomplete)]

[Quality: B][Unique]

A small explosion sounded, and pages flew every which way.

"Kah!"

"Oh no!"

"What's happening?"

"Did we do something wrong?"

"Oh dear," Olvier chuckled. "They do this so often. Do they not learn?"

About a third of the pages of the book had been sliced out and now swirled all over the room like a flock of paper birds.

If Krow had to guess, he'd say the thieves had attempted to get around the recalling function. They failed.

Krow reached out to catch a page gently floating down.

Diagrams covered it, with writing in a small cramped hand.

[You've found a page of the Book of Maron!]

[Copying this page requires a copying medium of at least A Common.]

Krow fought not to immediately bring out his Scribe's stylus.

The smirk he felt only manifested as a brief lifting of a corner of his mouth.

All the paperwork he helped with for the Forester Lodge in Cerkanst, then the attached butcher shop once his two apprentices made wright-rank, all pushed his Scribe subclass to First Apprentice, gaining him the skills Copyist and Notary.

This was his first time to see the Copyist skill activate.

The copying medium was no problem. He had several blank journals with him graded D Uncommon.

He'd needed at least that much to port documents from his realworld computer into Redlands. It was how he left his former apprentices with a journal filled with Earth-based meat-curing techniques and tips so they could handle the butcher shop.

"Help me gather the pages, hm, children? Afterward, I'll give you all a treat. The one with the most pages gets two treats. You have until you hear the bell."

As if the elderly vargvir couldn't gather the pages with a single word?

Krow glanced at the head of the library, suspicious.

Olvier only smiled genially at him. "Go on."

Krow could've resented being lumped in with teenagers. But this was an opportunity to copy at least a few pages of a Unique tome. And if the old vargvir was watching them, well, as long as he wasn't stopped, he'd take it as permission.

He stepped into the careful arrangement of shelves.

When he got to a suitably secluded place, he took a journal and his scribe's stylus. He opened the journal and pressed one of the loose pages to it.

He tapped the stylus and the page'¦

Bloomed into a puzzle?

Unexpected.

It was a pictorial logic game.

Krow slashed a line through the picture with his stylus, solving the problem.

[You've copied page 312 of the Book of Maron!]

He'd recovered and copied ten pages when he realized it was taking too long to find them. So he called out the spirit-snake and sent it through the stacks.

"Eeee! Snake! There's a snake!"

Ah, oops.

He mentally adjusted the spirit-snake's form to be less corporeal, then toggled up the local Map and started hunting down the targets.

Thirty minutes of stalking up and down shelves and curio cabinets, the bell sounded.

Tsk.

If he didn't have to do the puzzles for every page, he'd have gotten more.

"Let's see what everyone has, then?" Olvier waved a hand, and the pages of the Book flew from the seven page-hunters, arranging themselves into neat stacks on the table.

He knew it.

A few pages fluttered down, coming from various places in the room. "Looks like not all of them were found. Let's count them, shall we?"

Krow leaned against a shelf.

"The highest count is you'¦Flare, yes, at 51 pages. And the young draculkar'¦"

"Krow."

"Krow, at 45 pages. The third is you'¦Grenvel at 27. All the rest got counts less than 20."

"Flare, how did you search?"

"Sympathic Detection Spell, Master Olvier."

"Ah, a tracking spell! An excellent choice of spell to learn. And you, Krow?"

Krow brought out the spirit-snake without a word.

"It was you?!" A vargvir girl pointed at him, indignant.

Krow eyed the finger jabbed at him, bemuse.

Oh. Someone had screamed earlier, hadn't they. "Did it startle you? I'm sorry."

She inhaled a breath, but then eyed the snake coiled around Krow and deflated. "Sure, whatever. Just scared a year off my life, that's all. I have more years in storage, don't worry."

She paused, then finally gave in to her curiosity, eyes shining. "Can I touch it? Can it be touched? It's a ghost snake?"

Olvier chuckled. "A ghost-caller, are you?"

Krow nodded.

"An excellent set of skills." Olvier praised.

Then the elderly head librarian  arranged the pages into a sheaf with a twist of fingers, then shuffled them into the book.

"The use of a Forge differs from that of a smith, who channels power through the hammer and tongs. An enchanter imbues power into the Forge itself. Success depends on your focus, the quality of your catalysts which is in this case a secret, and the quality of your magic energy."

The stone table at the center of the room glowed, and the Book of Maron was whole once more.

He took it and returned it to an empty crystal container, smiled at them all. "But you are not so interested, most of you, hm? Come, ask young Krow questions. Learn."

Krow sighed, slithered the spirit-snake closer to the students. "I only know the basics, but it's great for scouting and exploration. You can touch it. It has the ability to be semi-corporeal."

The six younger people in the room took the opportunity to study the spirit-snake, crowding around it. "A Tree-gliding Snake? Did you choose the form?"

"I didn't choose. The ghost-stone used to call this spirit-snake into existence is made from the Bones of the Tree-gliding Snake."

"Can it be learned?"

"You might want to ask your parents, young ones," Olvier interjected. "Ghost-callers are often attached to the Temples of Takrul and Bothadin."

"The death gods?"

At that, they looked at Krow, curious and alarmed.

"I'm not attached to either deities. But I bought my ghost-stones from a Bothadin Temple."

"You have more than one?"

Krow called the spirit-bird, letting it settle on the table. "A Hallagon Sparrowhawk."

"One of the fastest flying monsters in Marfall!"

"Just the two?"

"There's also a Rockeater Worm."

"Can we see it?"

Krow eyed their enthusiastically curious expressions. "It's not a pretty sight."

"We're here because we do not want to turn away from knowledge," reasoned the one called Flare.

Well, alright then.

He called the spirit-worm.

Screams and curses filled the air. The massive circular mouth full of hundreds of tiny teeth and the spiked tentacles was probably a lot.

The spirit-worm dived downward. Even in death, it didn't really like being out of the ground.

"You should dismiss it before it falls afoul of the spirit traps," cautioned Olvier.

There were precautions against ghost-scouts on the Library?

What was he asking, of course there were.

It seemed the Library was as often hit by thieves as the Temples.