Hirune snuck out of the secret room and closing the door behind her as she made a mental note to count the steps to the secret room while going back up before she continued her way to the library further down.
Once she reached the library, she found a large room three floors high with bookshelves stretching from the floor to the roof, a bunch of stone paths on the floor forming squares around pedestals with artifacts on display, a thin glass box being the only thing between whoever goes down there and the artifact itself. Each bookshelf labeled with a letter and a number on each shelf.
After looking around, Hirune found bookshelf A, with shelf 1 being the highest part of it. Luckily for her each bookshelf had a latter that reached the top of it. Taking a deep breath, she started climbing the latter, the latter shaking more and more the higher she got, then falling as she reached row one, where she barely caught onto the shelf itself.
"Are you 'trying' to kill me?!" Hirune whispered aggressively as she placed her feet on row 2 and started reading the spine of each book on the first row, leaning back a bit to read the names properly. After a minute or so, she found the book she was looking for, most of the book's name being blurred out due to age, 'Namulenza's I---nt--ion'- a-- ---___'. Now the hard part was getting back down.
"Let's see, how could I do this... ah, screw it!" Hirune suddenly let go of the shelves, barely catching herself back onto the shelves with her left hand and feet. Her hand and feet in burning pain, the book almost slipping from her right.
"Tsz, ok, just a couple more times and I'm down..." She said as she laughed, all of her breath leaving her before taking in a deep breath and letting go again.
The more she did this the more Namulenza laughed at her, which almost made her yell at her at the top of her lungs, but it didn't take her that long to get down so Namulenza didn't have much to laugh anymore.
Dropping onto the floor out of breath, Hirune opened up the book to find that the pages within the book were intact, yet the cover was almost completely withered. The book was also set up weirdly with nothing in the first couple pages saying how many chapters it had, or if it was like a type of holy book, or if it was something else. It just said the name a couple of times before cutting to large words in nearly perfect Times New Roman, the only thing giving the writing away as human being the slight imperfections in the letters. The top of each page saying, "Short Incantations", then after a bit of flipping, "Medium Incantations", and near the end, "Long Incantations".
"Incantations?" She asked while looking at the nonexistent person next to her.
'You know even though you can't even look at me it still feels like you just did. Anyways, I could've sworn I talked about those at some point but sure. Incantations are basically just phrases or words that allow you to reach deeper into your artifacts power without as many, if not, any drawbacks. In more detail, incantations are an essential part of your artifact's potential because without them most of its abilities are locked away from you, and you can't accidentally use an incantation because if you do then there'll be severe drawbacks like your flesh burning off or something. Not just that but if you try to say it in your head, you'll suffer some sort of brain damage or internal GI bleeding, and if you don't? Don't even get me started with the number of curses that'll be inflicted upon you. It doesn't even end there, if you try to force an incantation out without enough breath or energy the incantation will be handed over to your foe and will auto activate whenever it seems the best for them before coming back to you. This is because whenever you use an incantation, you're drawing out your artifact's energy which goes into your enemy in order for it to be able to hit. You can still miss, but whenever you have enough oxygen in your lungs you can easily finish the incantation which is when that energy comes back to you and the incantation is directed through that path to your foe, so if you say it and lose your breath the energy stays in them and waits for a good opportunity to come back to you.'
"So basically, there's a lock to your power and the incantation is the key, but if you drop the key somewhere and someone else picks it up, they can open that lock and that can affect you negatively. Alright that makes sense."
'I have tried for so long to simplify all of that- how did you-'
"I don't think that many people think of keys when trying to simplify something with a comparison," She responded as she went back to the beginning of the book and started thinking of how many she wants to memorize of each length.
'I recommend five short, three medium, and two long incantations. Five you can easily cycle through or spam, three medium ones to pack a punch whenever needed, and two long ones so that you can have a fake and a real ace up your sleeve. At least that was my setup, and it was pretty effective. You don't have to of course; I'm just trying to help you or whatever,' Namulenza said that last part sheepishly.
"Wait, wait, wait! Where you just-"
'SHUT UP! I may not like to admit it but deep down I do care about my servants!... Even the jester.... You're the jester by the way...'
"Aw~! That's adorable! I'll make sure to tell everyone about this," She teased as she started reading the incantations and what they did. Zoning out Namulenza's rambling.
***
After an hour or so of flipping through the pages Hirune found the ones she wanted to memorize, these incantations being 'Snake', 'Hound', 'Skeleton', 'Judge', and 'Chainsaw' were her short incantations. 'Snake' summoned a large Titanoboa sized snake out of her shadow, 'Hound' summoned a large hound out of her shadow that reached up to her waist while standing, 'Skeleton' summoned a skeleton out of the ground and could be spammed, 'Judge' was chosen because a judge stands for justice, and 'Chainsaw' is surprisingly the most elaborate one she chose. 'Chainsaw' made it so that the chains of a chainsaw shot out of the tips of her fingers and wrapped around her enemy, where they would then start slowly ripping through the enemies until submission, and if they don't submit to them, they get ripped to shreds.
For her medium length incantations, they were 'Forsaken Realm', 'Devour Distance', Steeds Spirit', and 'Presence Concealment'. For her medium length incantations, she threw Namulenza's advice out of the window and just chose useful ones, 'Forsaken Realm' being a pocket dimension, 'Devour Distance' allowing her to devour the distance between her and her chosen target, 'Steed Spirit' allowed her to summon the spirit of any steed in history no matter if they were fictional or not (she plans to summon Don Quixote's steed Rosinante), and 'Presence Concealment' explains itself.
And for her two long incantations they were 'I Call Upon with My Life and Honor, the Full Body of These Starved Jaws of which I Rely on so Much, Come Forth and Feast Upon This Banquet, Bring Famine Upon Those Who Oppose You My Trustworthy Glutton, Beelzebub!' And 'With My Last-Ditch Efforts, I Shall do a Truly Foolish Act and Call Upon your Name, With These Words That You've Allowed Me to Conjure You Forth: The One Who Reaches Far Beyond Time, Collecting the Knowledge of Those who Couldn't Share it, Pulling in Fools and Pushing Away the Wise, A Concept Far Beyond Any Human, I Humbly Ask Yee to Come Forth and Bring Upon Your Gaze to the One Who Opposes Me At This Current Moment, King of Yellow and Black!' Both of these were mouthfuls she had to memorize, and she wasn't sure what they even did because they only had three question marks as their descriptions, all she knew is that these two long incantations were the only ones which held the names of two very powerful figures within them. One from a religion that was only recently overtaken by the Verachian Pantheon and another from quite the intriguing tale of madness.
'Hm! Let me use this one for you, 'Target: Hirune to- Forsaken Realm.'
With a bright purple flash, she was suddenly in a damper, darker, and colder space. The smell of roses pungent, yet when she looked up from the pavement, she saw that they were all withered although they smelt sweet. Some roses suddenly bloomed before withering again causing others to bloom and do the same, the two meadows to her left and right each having decently large ponds with some fish in them that caused a special type of plankton in the water to glow bright purple that seemed to be the cause for the weird blooming and withering roses.
The sky filled with a bunch of tiny red stars and three moons, one bright yellow, almost hypnotic moon furthest to the left, furthest to the right a moon darker than the night sky itself that gave off the same hypnotic presence as the yellow one, and in the middle of the sky there was a blood red moon with a crack through the middle that shot out a bunch of purple lava that shot out so far it orbited around the moon at the same speed as it spun.
Behind her, a large dark castle with three watchtowers erecting from the front of the castle itself, the only thing keeping people out being a gate which wasn't even closed and was already rusty enough to break if you hit it hard enough with your fist.
'Welcome to my humble abode, feel free to make yourself at home,' Namulenza greeted as the castle gates flew open by themselves inviting her to step in.