Shelves full of books stretched as far as I could see. Twelve rows of just shelves, and thousands of books. Most were covered with skin or some other hard stuff. The pages within were of the crude quality but the writing was very legible.
"And this is where we keep our hard covers," said the librarian. "It truly delights me to see that you have finally found some interest in books."
"Thank you."
"However, I must warn you, should I find any pages 'missing' or 'tampered with' in any way… there will be consequences and you will be banned. Understood… my lord?"
"Understood."
"Good."
The librarian… wasn't from this household and while I wanted to dig deeper into why she held so much authority or barely respected mine… I had better things to worry about right now.
I'd come early so the librarian wouldn't have been here but she'd been sleeping on her desk at the literal front of the library so there was no other choice… sigh. She did leave me alone though so all good.
Some maids were cleaning and dusting the place while the butler who'd led me, took his leave.
Okay, let's see-
There were dedicated books on fencing, archery, math, monsters, philosophy, lots and lots of legends and myths, and magic.
I was sort of interested in fencing and archery but clearly from a hobbyist perspective. I couldn't see myself diligently following a routine and standing up to the giants of this world. I knew math and was sure I'd be fine with the limited knowledge I still retained. Part of me wanted to open a book and see if it was any different from what I remembered but the other part firmly rejected the idea and made me pick up a different book- An Introduction to Magic by JRRS Sarton.
There were three types of magic systems in this world; I was familiar with them but I still didn't trust my memory hence I decided to spend the entire morning reading and figuring out whether my past knowledge was going to be of any use.
Let's see. "Hide." One hand outstretched, the other clutching my book ferociously, I chanted the magic word. Literally.
Something left my body and dissipated just in front of my palm. Like a small exchange of heat. Soon bits of my hand were covered in a dark haze. I could still vaguely make out an outline. Well, it works… kind of. The actual spell should have shrouded the whole hand but I guess it was stupid of me to expect it to work the first time.
Couple of seconds later the haze dissipated and left a gnawing void in my body, like I was cold but not really. I didn't like this feeling….
"Excellent, my lord!" The maid chimed, clapping with a delighted smile. Crooked teeth… better give her some toothpaste.
The first- traditional mana to magic. It worked sort of like I remembered but differed in other prospects. I remembered it needing visualization and some mana. The mana was static and unchanging but I could clearly feel the void enlarging. Maybe I just needed to use magic frequently to increase my capacity? Even if it only increased by a small amount, that was still not 'static'.
So past understanding's not that reliable.
The other two kinds of magic were also fascinating but my head throbbed whenever I tried to do anything with my mana. It was just a simple spell but still drained more than half of my reserves. I need to increase this thing before anything else huh?
Sighing anew, I tried something that didn't require active mana. In other words, draw something fancy on the ground using white ink I found lying around. Yeah, no. I didn't find it lying around. I had one of my maids stol- ahem, borrow it from the librarian's room. This particular ink contained some mana and was often used to send confidential letters to other nobles. Won't they beat my ass if they find out.
Better hurry before they did.
"Umm my lord?"
"Yes, Molly?" I said.
"Would it… be alright if I just returned it?" She whispered with a bit of a blush.
"Of course. I have enough." I'd already siphoned off a fair bit of ink.
"Okay!" She ran back.
I had limited ink, and my drawing skills wasn't very good. This body wasn't super agile either. Still, I drew a rudimentary sigil on some paper that looked about right- very close to the stuff in the beginner's book. "Oh! Almost forgot…" I mumbled before running my hand through my hair and getting a hair, which I placed on the sigil.
"Let the haze flow, sneering light; BLut."
A glob of hazy darkness oozed out of the ground through the summon circle, stared at me for a second and disappeared into the floor. Failure. Did the drawing fail or is the ink not good enough? I also had to consider some other aspects but right now this was fine.
The ink's faint glow faded and it was just an ordinary ink now. I tried wiping it with a wet cloth and it disappeared. Basically, summon magic: I could summon something to do my bidding. A complicated type of magic that demanded sacrifice depending on what I was summoning. In this case, I'd sacrificed a strand of my hair which clearly wasn't enough.
I was tempted to summon demons who'd do all my work for 'free' whilst I was alive and grant me whatever I wanted but I was looking to live a life of peace, not of constant stress and fear of persecution. Besides, my afterlife wouldn't be very 'fun'. Still a 'reasonable' price, right? Heh!
Which left me with the more plausible choice. Read more about summon magic.
Ow. Ow. Ow… My stomach hurt a bit. But this was fine.
Totally fine.
God I should eat something first…
Anyway- I could summon some lowly spirits and form a contract to increase my mana pool and base strength or I could try my luck at some higher spirits which could set me up for life. Both of them had significant risks and disadvantages but I was sort of betting on the lower spirits one. At least the spirits would respect me… hopefully. Hopefully they wouldn't just stare at me for a few seconds and then vanish with disinterest… again.
Hopefully….
There was of course another kind of magic. Something I was interested the most: Magic circles. Since I lacked the inherent mana to cast magic the traditional way, I could supplement with circles and talismans. Hmmm… so the ink won't be enough? The book was clearly telling me that I needed a small gem as a catalyst too embedded in like a wand or staff made of high-quality mana material.
Argh!
But yeah, those too were expensive.
"My lord," Molly panted. "All done."
"Good job," I said, giving her a pat on the head. Her fluffy kitty ears were a joy to pet.
Wait, wait… weren't there other kinds of-
There were some minor practices like using magic with weapons or enhancing physical attributes but they were far too advanced and required a teacher or so the book said. Of course, I didn't take it at face value but for now I didn't have the resources to experiment.
I guess operation get better at magic is coming to an end faster than planned….
There were still ways to make this work. One of the most prominent ones being money.
I could always try to borrow money from the family whilst I still had some decent enough reputation, however, that was going to be my last resort. Right now, I wanted to build a relationship with them that made them slowly care for me rather than the other way around. If I became an asset later on, they couldn't throw me out. Meanwhile, I'd also be working to go independent, so if the family went under, I'd be fine. I really hoped they didn't go bankrupt though.