Viktor settled the rest of his dealings with Zachary and walked him down to the base of the base of the library. They'd settled on Zachary sending not only promising adventurers Viktor's way, but also preparing a caravan in 8 months to arrive at the library with a number of noncombatants: chefs, craftspeople, stewards, experienced politicians, and the like. What Viktor lacked in resources, he would need to make up for as soon as he got out. He'd need more than just soldiers in his war on Purgatory. He'd need a diverse set of skills and people to support him, and Zachary would help to do that. It was important, though, that they'd agreed that Zachary wouldn't tell these people about Viktor or the deals he would strike. Viktor would vet them himself and determine how much additional help to give them.

He clapped Zachary on the back and gave him a genial smile.

"I'm glad we were able to reach an arrangement. Are you ready for the journey?" Viktor asked as they walked towards the entrance, where Timothy sat. The skinny man rose to greet them.

"Hey, you two! Did Viktor get the information you needed?" Timothy asked.

"That and more!" Zachary responded enthusiastically. He'd been cautious after the arcane display in the upper floor guest diner, but after several minutes without anything weird happening, he'd warmed back up to Viktor. He hefted the sack of books and papers up and showed it off to Timothy, whose eyes widened with surprise.

"My god, Viktor, you found all that stuff in one night?" The other librarian exclaimed, looking at the sack full of resources. "Is that... all related to the sword?"

Viktor nodded with a small smile.

"I wouldn't dream of it. Our charge as librarians is to aid the librarians on their specific quests. Our friend Zachary here is on a quest to grow in power and fiery magics... I simply aided him in that," Viktor said, slightly teasingly. Timothy paused, but nodded.

"Well, I-I'm glad you were able to be of assistance. Will the young man be staying with us another night?" The final sentence was directed at Zachary, who shook his head.

"No, I don't think so. I appreciate your hospitality and the meal, but my information leads me to believe it's bad luck to overstay at the library..." He trailed off, hefting the bag over his shoulder. Something occurred to Viktor.

"Zachary, where are your supplies? Food? Shelter? Do you have anything like that?" Zachary looked back and smiled sheepishly.

"Well, I actually set up camp about three miles from here... I didn't want to show up with a bunch of bags or anything, you know?" Viktor sighed in relief, his lips quirking up with amusement. Even Timothy seemed to be stifling a laugh.

"Fair enough. I just didn't want you to be on your way with no way to survive."

"You don't have to worry about that. I've been living on the road most of my time awake, and I stocked up on supplies before leaving. Thanks again for all your help," He took another step towards the door. Timothy looked lost, for a moment, like he wanted to stop their only human companion in the last two months, but he said nothing as Zachary walked out of the entrance to the library and into the forest. Viktor realized something, then. He couldn't avoid his fellow librarians, any longer. He'd need them, and they needed him. He had every intention of focusing on only his goals, but that didn't mean he'd let them succumb to the loneliness of isolation.

"Hey, Timothy. Do you know where Hooch is?" Viktor asked, and Timothy straightened up.

"Oh, yes, I do. Did you have a question or some sort of book you needed?" He asked, and Viktor felt even worse suddenly. Is that the only reason I'd need to talk to him? But he realized that the answer was yes. In two months, he'd hardly talked to the other librarians. If not for his memorization practices and testing taking the use of his voice, he'd likely have lost it. Again, he resolved to spend more time with them.

"Let's all have dinner tonight, in six hours maybe?" Viktor offered, and Timothy smiled brightly.

"Oh, that sounds excellent! Yean, I'll go find him and we'll all eat together tonight." The frail librarian practically scampered off to find their musclebound third. Viktor turned to return up the stairs and get working on what he felt was now potentially possible: magic.

From Vokias' Introduction to the Arcane Arts, Viktor felt confused. As far as he could tell, he should be passively sensing the mana in the air around him through his soul. He knew that he had affinities now. It was part of his contract, and he'd seen them enter into his body. Felt them, even.

But now? He couldn't feel anything different. He couldn't feel them inside of him, he couldn't feel them in the air, he couldn't feel them anywhere. It was nothing like the books on magic he'd read had said it would be like. It was time to look into something else: matters of the soul.

He'd recently unlocked floor 23, which had books on magic of Tier 3 or equivalent rarity. With that level of access, his gophers should have something on soul magic. With a wave of his hand and a quick word, he had several gophers running about and building a stack of books on his table. With access to magic, he had a list of things he really needed:

1. Communication Magic

2. Extradimensional Storage

3. Transportation Magic

4. Illusion Magic for disguises

5. Divination Magic or other ways of scouting

6. Defensive Magic

7. Offensive Magic

His top priority right now was communication magic. He needed a way to talk to those on the outside and build his network. He also needed a way to store the items he'd be collecting, the books he'd want to save, and the money he'd make. In order to most efficiently collect items, he'd need a way to get around. All of this would make him a high value target, which meant he'd need a way to disguise himself. Theoretically, illusion magic could also help him with combat as a way to distract or delude his opponents. Finally, he'd need the actual magic required to fight and scout in areas or situations he didn't have perfect knowledge of.

All of this, however, was useless if he couldn't access magic to begin with. After a few minutes, there was a small stack of books on soul magic. He opened up Omuzahl's Treatise on the Properties of the Soul, a short book on examining foreign souls, categorizing them, and how to examine one's own soul. The entire first half of the book was dedicated to exercises for achieving awareness of the soul. By page 18, it had described seeing the souls of others as a glow that manifested outside of their body, and Viktor slapped his hand to his forehead. Soul Awareness was one of Mephistopheles' gifts to him. He'd already achieved it with Zachary, and momentarily with Timothy and Hooch. Now, it was time to do it with his own soul.

He sat cross-legged on the floor. He breathed in, cycling air like the book advised. He tore out the pages of the book with aiding symbols and laid them in a square around them. He rested his hands on his knees like a buddhist monk and tried to turn his vision inward. He looked for the hollow feeling from when he'd been dragged towards the library. He searched, and he searched, and he searched...

And he found nothing. He left his eyes closed, frustrated, and continued. After a half hour, he stood up and walked around to relieve his legs. He ran a hand through his hair and reviewed the chapters in the book on sensing one's own soul. Every guide had instructed him to look at the core of his being, where his soul would reside. He skimmed a few of the other books, and they recommended the same thing.

He sat back down and tried every exercise the books recommended. After an hour, he felt the world around him fade away, and it was like he was in an endless void. He could feel where something was supposed to be, but the orb made up of myriad colors and things that the book described... his soulheart... was gone. Instead, there was just emptiness. He could feel the emptiness. As he focused on the feeling, it grew, like something was missing. It hurt.

Viktor stayed, focusing on the feeling and the void, the pain growing in intensity over time. After a few minutes, the pain became unbearable. Viktor opened his eyes, gasping, but it was worth it. He'd felt something at the end, there. Like something flowing through the vacuum. Mana.

He was laying on the ground, now, resisting his body's natural movements into the fetal position from the pain, but a grin sat on his face. He'd felt the mana flowing through. And if he could feel the mana flowing through, he'd be able to do magic. Somehow.

He returned to the books, intent on devouring each one to find some clue Before he knew it, several hours had passed and it was time to go to dinner with Hooch and Timothy. He cursed himself for inviting them, but stood to attend the dinner. He massaged his temples and walked away from his research desk.

Viktor sat at the table, cutting away at juicy steak. He watched Hooch out of the corner of his eye, the larger man chewing loudly on mutton. Timothy sat picking away at a salad, his steak relatively untouched so far. Viktor cleared his throat to break the silence.

"So, what have the two of you been reading up on? I've mainly been focusing on the world around us, as you pointed out Timothy. How are your magic studies coming?"

Timothy's face lit up.

"Excellently! I'm up to floor 24 now, but I think I'm close to passing the test for floor 25," he said enthusiastically. Viktor smiled at the young man's energy.

"Wow, I'm still on floor 23. Have you devoted all your time to magic?" Viktor asked.

"Yeah, pretty much. I've also explored a bit of the alchemy books, but yeah mainly magic," Timothy explained. Hooch continued to munch on his mutton, and Viktor tried to loop the man into the conversation.

"How about you, Hooch? Have you been reading anything or just kinda hanging out?" Viktor tried not to assume that the large man wouldn't know or want to read.

Hooch giggled and flexed a monstrous arm.

"Hehe, I've been learning how to make things. And break things!" Hooch said enthusiastically. Viktor chuckled and shook his head, but Timothy leapt to the bigger man's defense.

"No, Viktor, seriously! He's up to floor 17 with alchemy, and he's up to floor 46 with martial knowledge! Hooch even showed me that if you go down the stairs, you can get to a big arena type area," Timothy said, and Hooch gave a proud smile. Viktor looked at the oafish man appraisingly.

"Hooch, maybe you could show me sometime. Tomorrow?" Viktor prodded, and Hooch nodded emphatically.

"Sure! I'll show you how I smash everything!" This time, both of the other librarians chuckled.

Something occurred to Viktor.

"Hey, Timothy, you seen anything about the soul or affinities in your magic research?"

Timothy considered the question for a moment.

"Yeah, a bit. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I was just curious if you'd heard of someone not having a soul at all? Like, what if it's just missing?" Timothy looked at him, somewhat alarmed.

"The only time I've read about a soul not being present is if it's been forcibly removed," he said. Viktor kept his face calm.

"How would it have been removed?"

"It'd have to be a devil, demon, djinn, or some other creature that was both powerful and well versed in soul magic. I'm not sure of an exhaustive list... you could maybe check through some bestiaries if you were really curious. Does this have something to do with that Zachary kid from before?"

Viktor seized onto the lifeline before him.

"Yeah, I think that he might've gotten mixed up with some devil lord maybe..." He watched carefully for any sort of reaction, but Timothy didn't seem extremely concerned.

"Hmm, that makes sense I guess. Dealing with contractual beings isn't an uncommon way to get magical experience. I've seen a few books about them, but nothing on the particulars. It looks like most of the powerful contracts are racelocked."

"Racelocked?" Viktor questioned.

"Oh, it's a gaming term! It means that you'd have to be one of those monsters in order to use the poweful soul magics required to work contracts like that. It's not a spellform or anything of that nature. The best a human could do is work a powerful geas spell with the punishments that entails," Timothy explained.

"So when devils make these contracts, what happens to the souls they take? Where do they go?"

"Well, most devils have some sort of storage for souls other than the housing for their soulheart. See, in core of our being is a human's soulheart. That's where our affinities are, it's where we process mana, it's where life energy reinforces our soulshape and allows us to surpass our normal limits.

I haven't done much research into it, but allegedly they shake your hand and hold your soul in their own hand. That's the only thing I think I've seen about it. Not sure that's any help to Zachary, though."

"Yeah... I don't know..." Viktor trailed off, picking at his food as his mind worked quickly.

As soon as they finished dinner, Viktor raced back up the stairs to his research desk, pulling out the papers with the ritualistic symbols on them and laying them in a square at his feet. He sunk back into the exercises, but this time he didn't focus on the core of his being. Instead, he focused on his right hand, the one that had shook Zachary's.

After a few moments of deep breathing, the feeling of being sucked into the void of before returned, but now he felt himself looking at something that looked somewhat like a cave: just cool grey stone floors with dim lighting. He immediately became excited, though, as he saw a few pinpricks of color. So excited, that he lost his concentration and slipped out of his soul awareness. He took a moment to calm himself down, and then resumed.

Three orbs of light in varying colors floated gently above the ground. In the center of the space was a blank piece of parchment with two signatory lines on the bottom, his own named filled into one line. A quill surrounded in blue flame floated alongside it, and on the ground elsewhere in the area was a rolled up piece of parchment he knew instinctively was the contract he'd struck with Zachary.

His attention turned to the orbs he felt certain were the affinities he'd traded for. The orange and red one seemed to grow in substance as his consciousness approached, sprouting flames that indicated he was correct in his assumption that it was the fire affinity. Given that fire magic seemed to primarily have combat applications, he was wary of latching onto it, but fire magic was also notoriously easy at the lower tiers. As it grew in power, it became exponentially more difficult to control for anything other than blasting away enemies, but it would be a perfect test. He focused on it, imagining that he was grabbing it. It floated towards his vision, and he focused more intently, manipulating it.

He made it drift side to side, then in a circle. He imagined it moving up his arm and into the core of his being. It drifted slowly towards his sight before disappearing. He felt it, then. Not an imagined feeling brought on by his soul sense, but a real feeling. It was hot, like his core had filled up with roiling lava.

A moment later, the feeling dulled, but he was certain of it. He'd taken the affinity into himself for his own use. He could use magic now.