23

Charles walked beside the elf, moving nimbly through the morning crowd that filled the streets. He was not paying attention neither to his surroundings, nor to the crowd itself, leaving the job to the LAI which he knew was more than capable of following Eereen all the way to the library.

She looked at him, at times, as if worried that he could get lost. She noticed that he was looking at several blue screens filled with unrecognizable text, that floated in the air all around him. There were so many that he was practically surrounded by a cylindrical shell of blue, and he was focusing his full attention on them, even though somehow he managed to follow her without issues. At times, she noticed, he also moved the screens around by waving his arms and fingers.

There were pictures too, among the blocks of text and other symbols. They were very realistic paintings of cores and diagrams, projects and schematics. He wanted to build something, that much was clear, and it was probably connected to the experiments he conducted back in his lab. She pondered for a moment if she should help him, but decided to wait until they were done with the library. There was another issue, more pressing, on her mind.

She glanced at the crowd, and then at him again. Everyone was avoiding him by a large margin, and looked at him like he was some sort of demon. She knew that the reason was not only because of his new fame in town, unfortunately.

“Why are you acting all weird?” Charles asked, startling the girl.

Her heartbeat quickened, and her cheeks grew red. Not only was he managing to avoid the crowd, but he also saw her steal glances at him. She had to quickly think what to say in this situation.

“How can you walk with all those things around you?” She asked the first thing that came to mind.

“The LAI.” He replied distractedly, not taking his eyes off the screen he was reading from.

She was already thinking how to break down the problem to him, without him getting mad. It was a serious issue, but at the same time one that could look stupid unless explained properly. She was deep in thought when he, contrary to her expectations, stopped in place and looked at her.

“Wait a minute. You mean that everyone can see the screens here?” His eyes were wide.

“Y-yes.” She stuttered. “You’re projecting this strange arcane magic for everyone to see every time you use it.” She paused. “In fact, you should not do it in public.”

“Shit. How is this even possible? What the hell happened to my LAI? And, wait a minute, you said arcane magic? As in that arcane magic?”

She nodded. “It’s similar in principle, because all arcane magic comes from the mind and mana together. I don’t know much more, except that it’s not a good idea to be seen around using it.” She sighed in relief, the burden almost gone from her mind.

“I thought so. But why?”

Her mood returned to the chipper one she always had, and her voice was sing-song. “I don’t know. But there should be information about it in the library.” She said, and skipped away in the direction of the library, a smile on her face.

Charles, meanwhile, considered if he should deactivate the holograms. If everyone could see them, then it was a recipe for disaster. For some reason, something that should only have existed in his mind was being materialized by magic for everyone else as well. This also meant that the elf had seen him use the LAI god knows how many times, and probably had a pretty good idea about what it was by now. Or maybe she didn’t, considering her somewhat unusual cognitive capabilities. In fact, thinking about it, she either suffered from a dissociative personality disorder, or had some sort of magical condition in the head. He was at the same time confused and worried about it.

It was not something he could worry about right now, though. The blue screens and holograms were.

There was the fact that, until he managed to find a way to hide it, he could no longer use the hologram function in public. It was unacceptable. Without the holograms, he would lose a great tool and advantage he had. He didn’t want that.

It took him a few minutes of careful consideration and deliberation to reach a conclusion, because even though he had already made up his mind from the beginning, he had to convince himself that it was the right thing to do. He had to justify the choice, so that it made sense and was perfectly logical in his mind. Rationalization of flawed logic, of course, but a necessary evil of all men. In the end, he decided that the holograms would stay. The damage was done already: everyone in the street saw him use arcane magic. It made no sense to stop now.

The rest of the walk was spent in complete silence. Charles thought back to how many times his carelessness has made him reveal what should have been sensitive information, while Eereen respected the silence and didn’t even try to make a conversation. Once again, he noticed how at times she seemed much more reasonable than she was at other times, as if she knew very well when she could afford to act off. In any case, by now she knew that when Charles was deep in thought, it was pointless to try to speak to him.

It was in silence and in thought that they reached the library. It was a large circular building, hidden away in a maze of little alleys and filthy narrow streets. The place was dark and damp, even though it was morning, because the light of the sun was blocked by the mess of buildings all around. They were tall, but built with haste and without a real sense or plan, as if many different things had been dumped on top of each other. Wood was stacked on top of large stone bricks, and then stone once again crowned the structure in a way that should have been deemed illegal, dangerous as it was.

It all reeked of poverty. Through the dark windows, and the damaged walls, Charles could take a look into the bleak lives of those who lived here. And he wished he didn’t, because the more he looked the more he could feel something surge from within. Anger and hate, directed at nobody in particular, or maybe at himself. He knew that it was not his place to change things around here, but that didn’t lessen his emotions.

“Let’s go.” He eventually said, and walked towards the entrance of the library.

The doors were wide open, barely and crookedly hanging on their rusted hinges. The roof was rotten and damaged, and let several pillars of light illuminate the dusty air of the main hall. They looked like solid rectangles, connecting the ceiling with the upturned tables and torn books scattered on the ground.

Charles picked up one of those books, and gently blew the dust from the pages. As the little cloud dispersed and joined the rest of the floating particles that polluted the air, letters became barely discernible on the moldy paper.

“The history of the arcane, volume 1.”

At the end of the room, which was only filled with tables, chairs and the occasional damaged book on the ground, there were several stairways that led to a raised floor. Most were made of wood and had long ago rotted away, but in the middle, there was a larger and more decorated stone stairway that seemed mostly intact.

After the first few steps, Charles could finally see the rest of the library. It was a quite large room filled to the brim with shelves and the occasional table and chair.

“Would you look at that!” He said, a grin on his face, and approached a table with a large stack of books on it.

The echo of his steps was the only thing he could hear. The whole place was silent, and Eereen was once again moving with her usual grace, so that her steps were completely silent. He sat on the chair, and examined the books on the table.

“Carpentry and woodworking. The history of Unica, volume 3. Encyclopedia of monsters: elementals, volume 1.”

He frowned. There had to be something more useful than this somewhere. He needed information on magic, and only then would he consider wasting time on other books. Perhaps he had to go deeper.

The first three rows of shelves all hosted books on the same themes as the books he found on the table. Charles walked the whole corridor, and turned to the left, expecting to find another long row of books there. What he found, instead, was a completely empty space.

“Hey! Come over here!” Eereen yelled.

Charles turned around and went back, and then reached the elf inside a small stone room. Behind the creaking door, once again he found a large empty space. It was as if most of the content of the room was missing. Here, the wall was cut vertically so that he could see the adjacent room as well, and that room too had been emptied of its content.

Actually, half of the things were still there, giving the impression that something had removed everything up to a certain point but then couldn’t be bothered to go further. There was a half table, still standing even though it only had two legs, and a half chair. The books along the walls were cut too, and the loose pages were still attached to the remainder of the book but came loose as soon as they were touched.

Everything else beyond that point was still there, and there was no sign that anything had happened. If one ignored the empty space where the stuff was simply missing, they would never suspect that something was wrong.

The missing wall allowed Charles to examine how it was cut. While it was possible to cut wood or even a book so swiftly that even the loose pages wouldn’t fall, it was impossible to do so with a stone wall. And yet, looking at the wall here it seemed like the impossible happened.

The cut was perfect and clean. The dust and the loose mortar were fixed in place up to the moment when he touched them. The table and the chair too only fell to the floor after they were touched.

“It’s like someone removed a chunk of spacetime itself. No forces, nothing. Space, just disappeared.”

“But why?” Asked Eereen.

“Let me ask you this. What is missing from this library? What sorts of books?”

She thought for a moment.

“Oh, I see. There’s nothing on arcane magic.”

“Oh, no, no. There is something on it, but none of it would be useful if one wanted to learn to use it. Someone, or something, has done a quite large operation of censorship on this place.”

Her face turned dark. Charles too was quite angry, the whole thing leaving a sour taste in his mouth. All of his previous anticipation turning into frustration.

“Let’s make the best out of this shitty expedition, come on.” He said.

Seeing the face she made, he sighed. “It’s not your fault. Don’t be sad.”

The only mention of applied magic, he found it in the tome on the history of the arcane magic. Intrigued by the topic, he sat down to read, hoping to escape from his swirling emotions for a while.

Arcane magic. In this book we will cover the history of this dark and forgotten art, why it has fallen in disgrace, and why it must never come back again. We will try to warn you about the dangers that lurk beneath the enticing surface, but even then, read at your own risk.

Magic at its most primal, is nothing more than a strong will applied onto the world of the physical. It is the metaphysical becoming physical, thanks to the mediation of the all-powerful energy known as “mana”.

But such power comes at a cost. While arcanists can become able to split mountains, speak words of power that can shake the earth, their minds and souls are inevitably poisoned by the dark arts they practice.

Their obsession with the magic drives them mad, and makes so that all they can conceive in their world is the art itself, and nothing else. They might be capable to see more than mere mortals, but they choose not to. And, eventually, they lose their ability to.

When the system came, it came to save the sentient races from a fate of darkness and pain. It came to rescue all of us from the dark arts and it offered us a better way to wield the power. Gone were the dangers, gone was the risk of losing ourselves to the dark path.

The system brought forth the promise of an age of prosperity and peace, and the means for all of us to vanquish the evil that were the arcanists. Immortal monsters, twisted by their own magic into creatures of evil. They had to be defeated.

But they proved to be too strong. Even with the Quests, the Dungeons, and the Skills on our side, the arcanists were winning the war.

Eventually, however, one by one they fell. The people saw that the system was good, and that they were evil. As they fell, peace returned to these lands.

Their false words fell empty before the truth of the System. Their teaching of a false god subjugating the one true goddess was proved false once and for all. Their alliance broke. They were vanquished.

Charles put down the book, and a small plume of dust rose from the worn-out table. The chair creaked under his shifting weight, and he sighed a long and strained sigh.

“I see now. Why the Metalmancer was attacked, and why you didn’t want me to use arcane magic in public. The system, it hates arcanists and fears their power, and thus sends people after them through its quests. Offering rewards, no doubt.”

“Yes. It does.” She said somberly.

“Did it ask you to kill me?”

She didn’t reply.

“Did it?”

“…Yes.” She said eventually. Her voice was low and small, sad.

“The village. It was a lie, then?”

“No! It wasn’t!”

He got up to his feet. “Then… why would you ask me, of all people? I don’t have access to the system, and I’ve used arcane magic now. If I wasn’t being hunted down before, I surely am now! Why are you still following me?”

“You’re the only hope for my people…” she said, a silver tear rolling down her cheek.

He slumped back into his chair. She walked away.

When she was far enough away that she knew for sure he could not hear her, she lost the façade of sadness she was wearing. In its wake, anger and resentment crawled in her mind, gripping her whole being in a vice grip. She kicked a book, and it flew away so fast that when it hit the wall it disintegrated. The mold that was covering it exploded in a cloud of spores, and she coughed.

Then, she collapsed onto the ground and cried.

She was going to pay for her lies, and she knew it. She knew that she could make this right, and that it would be so easy to do it. Then, why didn’t she?

She didn’t know the answer to that question. She just cried.