The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Krow dismissed all his ghost-scouts after the teens had their fill poking the semi-corporeal animals and Olvier finished a short lecture on the Ghost-caller subclass.

"As Krow could use his spirits to seek out specific items, I imagine he is at least Second Apprentice in rank. By First Apprentice, it would be possible to use the spirits to send messages."

He was actually a bit over 50% through the First Apprentice rank. He hadn't acquired the sending message skill yet. Maybe by 75% mastery?

The old head of the library had known ghost-callers before, it seemed.

"Would those not be the perfect skills for archaeologists and the archivists? Why haven't we heard about this craft?"

"They are undeniably useful. In my early years as a librarian, apprenticing to a ghost-caller was considered desirable. But centuries pass and the times change, hm. There are fewer ghost-callers now. And not many master ghost-callers today would take a student who would not join their temple."

"Then how did you learn it, Krow?" A few students looked up at him.

Did picking it up during character creation count as 'natural talent'?

Haha.

"I bought Skill Shards," he said instead.

There were groans of disappointment.

But then Flare had a revelation. "Master Olvier, you are a ghost-caller too."

The students turned shiny hopeful eyes on the elderly vargvir.

Olvier chuckled. "If you choose to be a librarian, it is not impossible to ask the masters of the library to share their skills. The spirit-seeing skill, which is the Ghost-caller basic skill, is on our list of Skill Shards available to new librarians. Unfortunately, most people don't see the value in it."

A gleam formed in the eyes of the teen-agers.

Krow was amused. Crafty old wolf; he sure knew how to advertise.

Also, just joining the Library gave a list of skills to choose from? Thinking of what he had to do to gain Skill Shards from the masters in Rakaens, he couldn't help but complain internally.

This was too unfair!

"To qualify for the major skill called Seeker, which is what Krow used to search with his spirit-snake, you'll have to master Spirit-seeing to at least 50%." Olvier smiled at the sparks of interest in the students. He tapped his walking stick on the stone floor. "But enough of possible futures. Let us go on to your rewards for collecting these pages, hm? A definite future."

The reward was a junk storage room.

More specifically, they were allowed to take one item from the storage room, except for Flare who would take two.

"Enchanted artifacts," Olvier waved at the room. "Low-grade, of course. Pick what you want."

The students scattered, chattering enthusiastically.

Krow was ambivalent. All the shelves he passed, the items showed as various grades of Common, with a handful of Uncommon.

They were just piled on the shelves like cheap pottery in marketstalls.

Graded items had higher quality than ordinary ungraded items, so in general he could understand the students' excitement. But there was nothing in these thousand shelves he could use.

He spied a large wicker basket in a corner alcove.

Broken and unusable items.

A gleam of iridescent glass caught his eye.

He reached into the basket to pull out a vial with three withered seeds rattling about inside.

[Stardew Seed]

[The seed of a Stardew Tree needs to be rehydrated before planting in blackriver loam.]

It was still viable?

Krow had no idea what a stardew tree was, but he knew blackriver loam was one of the top quality planting soils in Zushkenar, taken from particular rivers.

The seed had no grade.

But what had Krow keeping it was the word 'star' in the title.

Undoubtedly, there was some secret about it. Like his Starfall starting gear. Like his Starseeker travel items.

He smiled.

There was something good in this room after all.

He straightened and jauntily headed for the exit.

He passed a young vargvir looking dubiously at a set of scribe's tools, happening to glance at the items.

"Those need repairing," he said. "Take the ones on the upper shelf. They're better quality, and only need to be cleaned."

The vargvir blinked at him, but took the recommended set. He scratched a claw against the grime on the stylus, revealing a jade-green material. "Thank you?"

"Welcome."

"Uh, wait!" The vargvir grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to another student, a siren. "Grenvel, I brought help!"

Krow was in too good a mood to refuse the pleading eyes, despite being half-dragged over.

Grenvel the siren was frowning at two items in her hands. Knives.

She looked up at Krow. "I don't know which of these is better? The one with the space for poison darts in the handle, or the one that separates into throwing blades'¦"

'¦weren't those just bookbinding knives?

Girl, what do you want to be in the future?

An assassin librarian?

He really wasn't coming back to this Library.

"What features are you used to in the knives you use?"

So Krow spent nearly an hour debating the merits of various items, his Greater Appraisal skill advancing incrementally because of six teenagers who took his being able to identify the status of anything as a challenge.

Tsk.

Brats.

Still, everyone left the room satisfied with what they had.

Olvier was talking with several people at one of the window alcoves, snacks arranged on a side-table, when they exited.

Was it alright for the head of the grand and prestigious Tvarglad Enchanter's Library, which was as big as a town itself, to be so carefree?

Olvier cut his conversation with the senior librarians short and exuberantly got into a discussion with the students regarding their choices.

He turned a curious eye on Krow. "And what did you choose?"

He took out the vial of seeds.

"Oh?" Olvier leaned closer. "I'm certain there were no seeds on the item list."

"It was with the discarded items."

"What?"

"Krow, are you joking?"

"Is it a super special seed?"

"It doesn't have a grade." Krow was amused at the dismay on the students' faces. He could see what they were thinking: 'what did I choose with his help???!'

"Why this one then?" Olvier asked, a thoughtful smile on the seeds.

"All my gear is Uncommon grade or better; I didn't need anything. These seeds are at least a mystery. Who knows what they would grow into?"

"You show-off!"

"Yeah Krow, you should treat us to meat if you're so rich!"

Krow laughed at them. "Hurry up and get a job if you want better gear, you little terrors. I'm not giving you food. What if you grow?"

Which reminded him'¦.

He glanced around. "Marses isn't back yet?"

He should be lurking around Circle Hall.

There was no sign of the eye-catching red cloak and dark grey armor though.

"The Reeve? He's not in this part of the Library, at least." Olvier glanced out the window. "He has not entered the outer hall since he left."

Scary information gathering skills.

Krow nodded. "I should go find him. Who knows what trouble would be piled on my head if it gets out I lost a Reeve?"

A round of goodbyes and Krow was stepping out of the grand doors of the Library.

Marses wasn't in sight, but there were two Reeves at the nearby stables.

Did they change his guard-slash-spy?

The woman frowned as he came up, eyes roving the surroundings. "Marses isn't with you."

"Someone stole the Book of Maron. Marses went after a suspect."

"He left you alone."

"I was safely in the company of the head of the library. You can ask."

"It is not like him," the other spoke. Male, with a natural growl in the way he formed his words.

Krow lifted his hands, a half-shrug. "I'm also surprised he's not back. It's been an hour. The one he was chasing wasn't that fast."

The two glanced at each other.

"Something happened, didn't it."

The woman inclined her head, repeated the words of her companion, "It is not like him."

And it had been an hour.

That was a long time to be missing.

"Appear." The spirit-snake coiled around him, surprising the two Reeves.

[Find a person or object?] the Seeker skill immediately asked him.

Earlier, he'd just put a book page in the slot, but how did it work with people? He chose the first option.

A grid of headshots appeared.

Huh.

It was all the people he'd met locally.

He tapped the image of Marses.

[Marses Levent of Tvarglad. Confirm target?]

Yes.

[Target confirmed.]

The spirit-snake shimmered to translucency and slithered rapidly away, starting to circle.

"You are a ghost-caller." The vargvir half of the pair rumbled.

"Yes?"

"I have a gauntlet that used to be his."

Oh. Right. Olvier mentioned a search for people could be done by following the traces of personal essence. It would have been logical to ask first.

He was used to Gazzy not having anything needed in his storage.

Was Gazzy already in Redlands?

He shook the thought away.

They wouldn't be the same people.

He dismissed and then recalled the spirit-snake.

The vargvir held out a leather gauntlet.

Krow eyed it. How was this supposed to be done?

Should he let the spirit-snake 'smell' the item?

The vargvir waved it through the incorporeal ghost-form of the snake.

[Target confirmed. Marses Levent of Tvarglad.]

There were multiple ways of confirming a target?

Good to know.

Krow let loose the snake again. This time, instead of a circling pattern it moved in a line.

Useful.

He pointed.. "That way."