Though the ingredients to make the pain suppression elixir were not hard to come by, the price had been set rather high in order to deter its use. This was agreed upon by both the Army and the magic academy for when individual sale was to be allowed.

The senior alchemist who had 'created' the elixir was promoted to elixir master at the behest of the platoon leader and several Grand Mages, not knowing it was not his formula. He accepted the position with reluctance, and was asked to teach the beginner classes in order to acquaint himself with the duties. This suited him just fine in the end, as his current skills allowed him to teach beginner classes without issue.

Kinsey heard the news and was glad she did not come forward as the maker of the elixir. If she had, she would be swarmed with requests for assistance and would have no time to fulfill her duties to her Master or study. This would the ultimate insult to the Master who so painstakingly looked after her while she was still a novice.

Kinsey left the magic academy grounds once her business had been concluded and went into the Bastion of Hope via the public teleportation array. No students were allowed to leave the magic academy while they were studying at the school, but Kinsey was neither a student nor an ordinary person. Being the assistant of a Grand Mage gave her access to all but a few rooms and teleportation arrays. She was allowed to come and go as she pleased, only needing to show the runic symbols on the back of her hand.

She waded through the crowd of commoners in order to get to the main square, where the food was. She had intended to prepare a fish fillet, considering the fish market of the town was rather dense. Being so close to the open ocean gave fishermen a good export on the product, and the Bastion of Hope had fish in abundance. Kinsey looked for the freshest ingredients, spending the money her Master gave her for food. Once she was done, she activated the teleportation array back to the magic academy and waited patiently for Willem.

Still inside the Restricted zone of the Grand Library.

Willem knew it was time for him to return and escort Kinsey home, but he felt as if the book on the floor called to him. It looked worse for wear but still maintained its shape as best as it could considering the conditions it had been in. Willem hesitated, then picked up the red book and thumbed through it as quickly as possible.

Inside the book was depictions of gods that had claimed to have fallen from the sky and entered the world. Sketches showed severe scarring of the world, and Willem had known this scar to be true. Once, while using his magic to travel through the darkness, he reached an unbearably hot point to which he could tread no further. Deep in the magical lands was a long scar along the earth, it cracked and shifted, spewing out magical beasts from its red maw. When Willem realized where he had sent his shadow, he retracted it and there was luckily no repercussions. He felt, however, that if he remained there any longer he would have been in danger.

The book did not just have depictions of gods and sundering, it also had a vast amount of information in regards to runebinding. Runebinding was the act of carving runic symbols into a weapon or armor that imbues them with magic. He was currently enrolled in a class 'the study of ancient runes' that studied runebinding but had never seen symbols so intricate before. This was an advanced class, but the content of the class covered only a third of what was in the book. He placed the book within his spatial spell and teleported out into the main entrance. He met with Kinsey and they disappeared into the Private Sanctum.

A few seconds later they were in the private sanctum, where Kinsey had begun to prepare tea for Willem. He made his way to his study and began to peruse the contents of the book over and over again. He etched the runic symbols from the book into iron daggers as best as he could, and the daggers began to glow a silverish color. This color denoted that it was magical, but it was of low quality. The more intense a color was, the higher quality it would be.

Willem continued with fervor once he realized how potent the runes were. One should know that when runebinding, if there was even a bit of failure, the binding would break and the weapon would be destroyed. However with these runes, even a failure did not break and still created a low quality magical weapon. Willem wondered why the other Grand Mages did not use such a good book, but he was determined not to squander it. Last time he checked on Archus, he was still in the ruins. While the old man was gone, he would do his best to master this new runebinding and present it to Archus as a present.

Still, tomorrow was the promised day where he would go and seek out his brethren in the army under the guise of hunting magical beasts. He explained to Kinsey when she brought the hot cup of tea that he would not be accompanying her tomorrow as he had business with the army. He then took a magical stone from his pocket and gave it to her.

"This is a special magical object I have deemed to call a hearth stone. Throw it to the ground when you wish to return here, and it will teleport you back. It has only one use." Willem tucked the hearth stone into Kinsey's pocket and she scurried along to do her experiments in the other room as to not disturb him. It was an unwritten rule that when one was in the study room of a Private Sanctum, the creator was not to be disturbed.

Willem went back to studying the book, and quickly understood why it was in the restricted section.

The first few chapters had to do with the multiple different gods, the sundering, where magical beasts came from and what magical beings truly were. This would have caused a sensation among the populous when they found out that gods truly existed and walked this world at one time. Some gods looked like large canines the size of mountains, others looked like man and woman but the size of a butterfly, with wings as black as night or as bright as the sun. All in all there were thirty depictions, and the bloodlines of the magical beings were also shown in the book. It showed the names and looks of the tribes who had drunk the blood of the fallen gods.

There was multiple sets of data on humans with magical beast body parts sewed on. They all had limited functionality but could perform the magical abilities of that beast for a short time before dying.

An entire chapter was devoted to carving runes on the human body to make them completely subservient but retain their mind. Willem's binding on Kinsey was a rudimentary form of this rune. It explained that when the rune is placed on a human with no magical ability, it can manifest the latent magical ability inside them. The downside to the servant is that they must be under absolute control of the creator of the rune, unable to resist in any way. The following pages had all the relevant experiment data including the multiple deaths by exploding limbs, heart and vein destruction, and mind convulsion from failed runebinding.

The final chapter was the completed version of the 'study of ancient runes' to which Willem was currently in the midst of learning. It had complex diagrams broken down to its simplest forms. The difficulties progress slowly as to get the user accustomed to the flow of the runes.

Willem studied over the book multiple times, taking mental note of how the flow of the runes was, what experiments were performed with the most success, and the names of the gods that had fallen to the world.

After his fourth reiteration, Kinsey came in quietly, sporting black lingerie that she had recently bought at a clothes shop in The Bastion of Hope. Willem knew she had come in, but was too involved in trying to consolidate the information in the book that he could not even pretend to look up. Feeling Kinsey's almost bare breasts on his back, he rose from his seat and lifted her up over his shoulder. He carried the book in one hand and her in the other over to the bed. When he arrived at the bed, he undressed and laid down on the bed, thumbing through the book. He motioned for Kinsey to join him and she pouted before removing the lingerie.

"You will be doing all the work tonight, since you interrupted my studying earlier." Willem could feel wet lips wrap around his penis, and a weird but pleasant sensation washed over him. Kinsey had become proficient with orally stimulating Willem and took pleasure in seeing him twitch slightly from her doing a good job of it. While she mounted him, Willem looked through the book once more before putting it down on the bed side table.

"You did not eat the dinner I painstakingly prepared for you either-" Kinsey pouted and was about to continue when she felt a pain from her neck.

Willem bit her neck in order to shut her up while he was about to climax. He did not bite hard enough to draw blood, but did bite hard enough to shock her and make her tighten her legs causing a tighter sensation between them. This made Willem climax but he was having too much fun teasing her to stop. Her flushed face after the teasing bite looked like she was enjoying herself a bit too much.

Seeing that Kinsey did not mind him being a little rough, he took position behind her and pulled her hair while thrusting from behind. Her beautiful red hair wrapped eloquently around his fists, and each thrust he made had her moaning in pleasure. After ten minutes of the rough pleasure she climaxed as well and fell asleep from the aftershock of the event. Willem coddled her in his arms before falling asleep as well.

During Willem's 'sleep' he meditated on the book he had just found, and all the information contained inside. He had already done this four or five times since he got the book, but inside his mind there was nothing but a still lake with which to swim in. As he began swimming, he noticed a small light glimmering nearby. As he approached the light, he saw an old ferryman making his way through the dark water on a small wooden boat for two. The ferryman stopped and lent Willem a hand into the boat, and continued to row without saying a word. An almost imperceptible glow came from his body, and the only reason Willem could see it was because of his power as a mage. This meant that the ferryman might be an illusion or hallucination, but that in itself was a danger. This was inside Willem's soul, and anything that can cause psychological damage was all the more hazardous.

Once Willem had steeled himself to the consequences, he asked. "Ferryman, where are you taking me?"

The ferryman did not answer in words but instead pointed to a direction. In that direction was a beach filled with nothing but sand. After the beach was pure darkness.

Willem once again prepared for the worst and stepped off the boat and onto the sand. The sand was rough but sank between his toes giving him a peculiar feeling of sinking but not falling.

He walked forward closer to the darkness...