Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

I looked at the book I was failing to pull into [Bookwyrm’s Hoard], getting unreasonably excited. I couldn’t bring non-books into [Hoard]! Secret hiding spot for valuables!

By some divine grace, by some miracle of the moon goddesses coming down and touching me, nudging fate in the right direction, I managed to turn off [The World Around Me] before I peeked inside the book, and managed to compartmentalize what I’d already seen thanks to [Astral Archive’s] manipulation.

Books were cool. Books with secrets inside of them? That was fun!

The spine was ornate, and the letters were bold on it. The Lore of the Sword of Betrayal.

“Brrrpt?”

“Everything’s alright, I think there might be something special about this book!” I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice.

“Brrrpt!!” Auri flew over to my shoulder and perched there, leaning over to get a look at what I was doing.

I flipped it open to the first page, eyes briefly skimming over the words. Next page!

More paper. Well, it probably needed a bit of paper on either side to hide whatever was being contained.

Slowly, page by page, like I was unwrapping a present, I flipped through the book. As I got deeper and deeper into it, my face fell.

Nada.

I flipped through the book at high speed, not seeing a single thing. I held the book by its spine and shook it, a single leaf of paper falling out.

“AhHA!” I shouted with triumph as I grabbed the falling page. I furiously drank it the secret contents.

… and yet the temptation of easy power, of easy advancement was too much for Gwilithon the Seditionist. Maethedir was an old, forgotten friend, a supporter of Thraximundar’s reign, and it was all too easy for Gwilithon the Seditionist to justify his first betrayal with the sword, growing its power while removing a supporter. With this first taste of power, Gwilithon quickly thirsted for more…

I turned [The World Around Me] back on, to search the book cover to cover, spine to front. I easily identified where the page had fallen out, and put it back. Then I tried to move it into my [Bookwyrm’s Hoard] again.

I smacked myself as I realized the issue. Then I smacked myself again.

“I am an IDIOT!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

“Brrrpt?”

“I have a MAX STORAGE CAPACITY!” I roared in frustration. “I can’t take all the books with me!!!” I tried another random book just to make sure, but no. I was filled to the brim.

Auri took her wing and comfortingly patted me on the back of the head with it.

“Brrrpt, brrrpt…” She soothed. “Brrrpt?”

I gave her my best Evil Eye.

“Don’t you dare burn the books for fun. It’ll be water and melons for a week for you if you do.”

“BRRPT!”

Dejected, I started the process of kicking out less interesting books, and replacing them with more fun stories to read. I had what I thought was a reasonable set of priorities. Anything I could read in the modern day, I didn’t bother grabbing. Stories, as fun as they were, were just stories.

No, the true treasure here were histories and diaries. I didn’t know how long this place had been here, but I didn’t imagine it was a short time. Anything they believed about the past, anything they’d written about their modern day, was invaluable. I had a dream about returning here and continuing to empty the place out, but practicality reared its ugly head. There was a very good chance now that we’d found the place that others would find it, and it’d be stripped bare by the time we got back.

Adventurers were a locust-like plague after all. For all I knew, they’d see a bunch of books, and in their tiny, gem-addled brain go “Og no see money. Og see kindling. Og make fire!”, although with fewer words and more grunting.

Then they’d, I don’t know, drink while burning all the books and suffocating themselves down here or something equally stupid. Look, it was hard to imagine how bad they could be. They always found a way to sink themselves lower.

… I was particularly down on adventurers today. Something about them trying to murder me had me poorly disposed towards the lot.

[*ding!* [The Very Hungry Bookwyrm] leveled up! 90 -> 98. +80 Dexterity, +80 Vitality, +80 Speed, +240 Magic Power, +240 Magic Control, +240 Mana, +240 Mana Regeneration per level from your Class! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration per level for being Chimera (Elvenoid)! +1 Mana, +1 Magic Power per level from your Element!]

“I can’t decide!” I wailed after a few hours, one of the tables creaking dangerously under the weight of all the books I wanted to take, my [Hoard] already filled up with even more valuable books. I’d swept back and forth through all the books a few times, helping level up [The Very Hungry Bookwyrm] before diminishing returns and running low on mana stopped me.

I’d even debated getting rid of a few of my spell books to make room for more. All of my casual, pleasure books were out, but there was no way under every star and moon on Pallos that I was leaving any of the love letters Iona had written to me behind, the books she’d written about us, or the prayer my parents had left behind.

That was eternally safe in my storage.

“Brrpt. Brrrppt, brrrrrrrpt brpt brpt, brpt brpt brpt. Brpt! Brpt brpt brpt.”

My mouth slowly dropped at Auri’s speech. In a nutshell, the books, practically speaking, hadn’t existed until today. Anything I managed to bring back now was a boon to society and history. They were marked, and anyone coming after us might recognize that they’d been isolated, and they had value. I was already helping, there was little sense in bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t help more. Even empowered by the System, there was only so much one person could do.

“All those lessons really paid off.” I said admiringly.

“Brrpt!” Auri preened herself.

With a force of will only possible due to my time during the Hell Months at Ranger Academy, I forced myself to walk away from the pile of books.

Then I had an Idea, and skipped back.

“BRPT!” Auri flew in front of me, trying to steer me away. She was trying to not be an enabler, trying to get the bottle away from the alcoholic.

“No no, I have a good idea! I promise!” I told her.

“Brrrpt…” Auri did her best to growl a warning at me. It failed, mostly due to how high pitched her voice was.

I kept it quick and simple, using an already-established warding pattern I’d learned at the School. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, and it wouldn’t last long, but trying to fix both those problems would have me here for hours. It wasn’t worth it.

I circled around the table of books I thought would be extra-interesting to [Historians] and the like, burning runes into the stone floor with [Lepidoptera]. I tied it all off with a generous heaping of my own mana to the runes, but it wouldn’t last long.

[*ding!* Congratulations! [Butterfly Mystic] has leveled up to level 449->450! +8 Strength, +8 Dexterity, +70 Speed, +70 Vitality, +70 Mana, +70 Mana Regen, +70 Magic power, +70 Magic Control from your Class per level! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control for being Chimera (Elvenoid)! +1 Strength, +1 Mana Regen from your Element per level!]

I needed to find more abandoned fortresses in the middle of nowhere if this was how quickly I leveled up walking through them! [The Very Hungry Bookwyrm] leveling up was improving things in more than one way. First was the obvious stat growth, but less obvious was [Hunger for Knowledge] leveling up. It was a 2.5% boost in my experience gain per level, and that was “feeding” on itself so to speak.

“All set?” Iona asked from the door. I jumped. I’d been so focused on the books, the runes, and my levels that I hadn’t noticed her coming at all, improved senses or not.

“Yup! Sorry this took so long.”

Iona nodded.

“I understand. I found the core room, it’s interesting, want to check it out?” Iona jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

“Yeah!” We left the library together, Auri fluttering around and following.

I turned to her, tilting my head at what was on her waist.

“Those… are interesting. What are they?” I asked, nodding to the two blades she had at her hip.

Iona looked crestfallen at my question. She patted the blades.

“They’re twin blades. Made out of dreamsteel. They’re supposed to be invisible.” Iona said that last part pointedly.

I shrugged.

“Eh. They’re like… completely clear, but I can see that they’re there.” My biomancy struck again! “Are you going to be changing your style?”

Iona shook her head.

“Nope. What do you think is better. Picking up an entirely new weapon, or reforging the blades into a weapon I commonly use?”

“Makes sense. Not a lot of metal there, and if you’re swinging your hand, it makes it clear that you’ve got a weapon there. Would it work better as a throwing knife or an arrow?”

Iona patted the twin blades again.

“Arrows need a bit of flex and fletching. Good point on the axe, and a glaive head would be a nasty surprise once or twice. Although…” Iona trailed off, pondering. “It would let me display a quarterstaff most of the time, and the fact that one end is much longer and significantly more lethal than people expect from a quarterstaff is one heck of a surprise. Only need to get one good blow to kill most people. Yeah. I think I like that idea. I’ll talk with whatever [Smith] I find to reforge the blades and see if they have a better idea, but right now I like that.”

“Sounds neat! Finding a [Dreamsmith] isn’t going to be easy.” I liked the idea quite a bit, and was wondering if there was any way I could incorporate that into my own equipment. Then again, it wasn’t everyday we found magic metals just lying around, and dreamsteel was frankly on the weaker end of the spectrum.

“Here it is.” Iona pushed open a heavy, reinforced door.

I’d just been rolling with things when Iona had said a core room. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, and I figured all my questions would be answered when I saw it.

And yes, it was immediately obvious what a core room was. The room was dominated by a fat cube of arcanite, with a few dozen skeletons scattered around it. A few runes were still glowing, providing light and other effects in the room.

Arcanite grew more potent the more of it there was in a single spot. Two crystals of arcanite were weaker than a single stone of similar mass. It behooved places to merge all their arcanite into a single massive block, then run enchantments from there.

The School was so wealthy it had multiple blocks running different things, along with a few redundancies, but the fundamental idea was the same. A single large block of arcanite let people do more than multiple chunks.

This block of arcanite, the core of the fort, had broken. Big cracks ran through it, shattering the stone into six smaller blocks. They were still stacked on top of each other, but they were no longer one whole.

“Think this is what killed the place?” I asked Iona. She nodded.

“It’s as likely as anything. Here’s what I think happened. A war was coming. A big one, a proper Immortal dustup. Surviving one takes a miracle. I think this group knew trouble was coming, and built this place deep underground to hide out the conflict. They’re elves, what does it matter if they spend a decade or a century underground, if they’re alive at the end? Everything was going well until something cracked their core. Maybe they didn’t have the proper Arcanite Classer with them, maybe there was another accident. Either way, the life-saving runes and enchantments no longer had enough mana to run. They tried to dig themselves out before time ran out, but…”

“That clearly didn’t happen.” I finished, looking at the bodies strewn around the room. I shuddered as I imagined their fate. The air slowly becoming thicker and heavier as people panted and exerted themselves to try and escape, their very efforts sabotaging how long they had to live. Or we hadn’t seen any water here, perhaps whatever hit the core also ruined the water generating runes, everyone slowly becoming more and more parched, licking the sweat off each other until there was no more sweat, filtering pee while small bits evaporated. It was the danger of using conjured food and water - it did vanish back after a time, and it didn’t care if it was in a puddle or a bloodstream when it did so. Or maybe the person who was locked up had accidentally unleashed some horror, slowly stalking through the hallways as - no, wait, there was negative evidence for that one.

“How much arcanite do you think we can carry out?” I asked, eyeing the literal fortune in front of us. Arcanite was the cheapest crystal, forming the backbone of the world’s currency. A single gram of arcanite was found in every coin, and were traded freely. There was no true way to figure out exchange rates or anything, but two arcanite coins bought roughly as much as a single Remus coin. They were inexpensive.

That was also for a single gram of a moderately dense crystal. The huge mass we were looking at had to be worth millions, if not tens of millions of coins.

Which also meant it was correspondingly heavy. A million coins worth of arcanite was, by definition, a thousand kilograms. Iona could lift… quite a bit more than that, but there was also getting it out through the hallways, up through the Pekari lair, onto Fenrir, and having Fenrir be able to fly it a significant distance.

Value per pound, arcanite was likely to be less valuable than what we’d found in the armory. It was the sheer quantity that made it attractive.

“I don’t think -” Iona started to say as I shook my head.

“Never mind, I did the math myself. I do want to mark this place, and get back as soon as we possibly can though.”

Iona gave me a brisk nod.

“Agreed. This… this can change everything for us. Look, I know it’s stupid to be discussing this here and now, but we probably should. Equal shares?”

I punched Iona, then kissed her shocked mouth.

“No, stupid. We’re a team. We’re together. What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine. What’s this ‘equal shares’ nonsense?”

“BRRPT! BBBRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPTTTTTTT!!!!” Auri loudly protested. She wanted equal shares to build her PERFECT nest. Mostly made out of gigantic blocks of arcanite.

Iona wrapped me in a hug, not letting me get a word in.

“Auri, we’re going to be building something nice for all of us. Of course you’re involved, and will be helping us out, and of course we’ll be figuring out your wants.” Iona reassured the bird. She then nibbled on my ear in a way that made my knees go weak.

“I love you so much right now.” She breathed into my ear. I gave her a hug.

“Is there anything else we want to see or grab to make sure we get it before we leave?”

Iona’s eyes unfocused slightly.

“Yes… yes, there’s one thing Selene wants me to do. Let’s go!”

I’d rarely seen Iona so animated or full of energy, and I had to hurry up as she tore through the hideout.

She stopped at one of the bedrooms, a larger skeleton curled around a smaller one. Iona motioned, and with [Telekinesis], delicately extracted a small little music box from the small skeleton’s hands. Iona respectfully closed the door, and kneeled down in the hallway.

“Oh Selene, great goddess of the moon, by right of salvage, by right of divine impetus, I gift you this instrument. May it find and soothe the tiny soul on the other side.”

With a glimmer of divine celestial lights, the box was gone.

Iona stood back up.

“Right, that’s all. Let’s go?”

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