After I’d spent most of the day talking with Professor Wotan, I had made the appointments to meet with the experts. They were apparently very busy since their services were very popular among the Asphons, and not even I could squeeze past the droves of people wanting to consult with them. Once they heard who it was that wanted to make use of their expertise, though, they did move me up the list quite a bit. As such, I’d be meeting with the skill expert in five days, and the mutation expert in three.

Then I spent the next day with Redax out in the field. I’d taken two quests that required us to go quite far away from the city in order to hunt down specific monsters, which took up most of the day. With those two quests, my total came up to fifteen completed quests, leaving only five more until I completed the main objective of this layer. Of course, I’d need to complete some village quests and some city quests as well before moving on. But that was for later. For now, I’d spent my accumulated skill points to buy a new node from the magical singularity skill tree.

Spell Flow Recognition (S)

You gain a deeper understanding of how to weave a spell matrix, making the creation of new spells easier.

The skill cost me eighteen points, being the last node of the middle path. I’d chosen this because the rest of the skill tree didn’t seem as important as this skill, or rather, I would benefit more by getting this skill early on. Most of the other stuff was nice to have, or hard to use, but this skill was just a straight increase in strength. Well, not raw strength of course, but by buying this I could spend more time learning how to make my own spells instead of waiting a long time to finally start on my research.

I’d already played around with it a bit, but I felt like I still lacked crucial information on how spells worked. Sure, I’d figured out quite a bit by myself, but in order to take full advantage of all the understanding I’d gained through my skills, I needed to do some actual, old-fashioned studying. To that end, I found myself back in school.

Or in the library of one, at least.

“Welcome to the biggest library in Lophan!” Andrius gestured at the admittedly massive building in front of us. Of course, most of the buildings in Lophan were massive, but this one was especially so. “Attached to the research institute I studied at, and the place I spent most of my time as a student.”

“Is this the archive?” I asked in amazement, wondering just how many books and documents had to be stored in there. “Like, the actual thing?”

“Don’t be silly, Gary,” Andrius started laughing. “One does not simply walk into the archive! You’d need a much higher clearance level to get in there. This is just a regular library with books on all kinds of things. Nothing as extensive as the archive.”

I once again took in the size of this supposedly “regular” library and had to wonder what the actual archive looked like then. Of course, I didn’t need to get into the physical building, since I could just query the whole damn thing via my skill. I had played around with the skill a bit after my conversation with Professor Wotan, using it to suss out the weak points of the monsters I’d been hunting for my quest. Sometimes I also perused random articles during my downtime, reading up on monsters I’d never seen before. I didn’t go into the deepest details like the researchers here liked to do, but I did make sure to get some important info and commit it to memory.

If I kept this up for the foreseeable future I might turn into something of an expert myself.

“Well then, I’d like to go into this “regular” library and read up on magical theory,” I commented, watching a stream of Asphons enter and leave the building, oftentimes carrying stacks of books in their arms. “You did promise to help, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” Andrius gestured for me to follow as he started walking toward the entrance. “You know that I studied magic quite a bit, being a mage myself. It’s also a nice excuse to return here, which I do at every opportunity I get, by the way. There’s just so much knowledge here and I’m not even close to done with reading everything that is of interest to me. You know what they say about us magicians, we never stop learning.”

We entered the library among a stream of other visitors and I got my first look at what an alien library looked like. There were no books to be found on the ground floor, instead, there was a mess of stairs arranged on the walls leading further up, while the center of the large floor was dominated by a reception. The square design allowed for eight Asphons to act as receptionists, talking with interested readers over the counter. Behind them were a bunch of shelves containing ledgers that occasionally got queried by the receptionists, most likely containing the locations of all the books in the library.

Above the reception area, there was no ceiling. A square hole opened up the floor, and upon closer inspection, this hole was present across all the floors, only broken up by the occasional thin bridge connecting two floors. At the very top was a sky roof, letting in the natural red sunlight of this layer. I looked up in wonder, once again wondering just how much knowledge was contained within these walls.

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“Tell me when you’re done staring,” Andrius commented off my side, a knowing mirth entering his voice. “I can show you where all the books on magic are.”

“Right, we’re here to study,” I directed my eyes toward the many stairs around us. “Does it matter which way we go?”

“Not really,” Andrius shrugged and started walking to a set of stairs to our right. “They all lead up, which is where we need to go.”

As we ascended, passing floors that were packed with both books and readers, an old issue wormed its way to the forefront of my mind again. I was trailing mucus everywhere I went and even after having accepted that the Asphons were completely fine with that, this place felt a bit different. There was a lot of valuable knowledge contained here and as much as I’ve learned about the Asphons, this was probably the closest thing to a holy place they had. And here I was, dirtying it up with my deadly mucus. What if I accidentally destroyed a book? I was a bit anxious about the whole deal, but neither did Andrius stop me in any way, there was also no enraged librarian running at me to throw me out.

For now, I tried to accept the fact that it was really a non-issue, but still tried my best to keep my footprint low.

After a while, we arrived at what I counted to be the eleventh floor and Andrius finally veered away from the stairs and toward a particular bookshelf. “Beginner Magical Theory,” he announced pointing at a sign that I couldn’t read.

“I’d like something about the structure of spells and how they are constructed to work like they do,” I reminded him since we’ve talked about this before coming.

“No problem,” Andrius confidently walked to a certain part of the shelf and took some time to look for the book he had in mind before pulling it out. “Come on, there’s some reading tables over there.”

Just as he’d said, there was an area filled with about twenty tables that could seat four people each. About half of them were occupied so we simply strolled up to the closest unoccupied table and sat down across from each other. I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the present Asphons took a moment to look up from their reading material and nod toward us before continuing. For the first time, I wasn’t entirely sure if that gesture was meant for me or Andrius, since he was apparently a renowned mage in Lophan.

Andrius put the book on the table and I was once again faced with the fact that I could not read their language. A massive part of the reasoning to bring Andrius along. Not only was he willing to translate for me, but he also understood the subject matter intimately.

“Have I ever mentioned how impressive it is that you guys can speak so many languages?” I said, remembering the first time we met when Nimma cycled through a bunch of languages in an attempt to communicate with me.

“I don’t think you have,” Andrius said, flipping open the book to the first page and scanning over its content. “It is actually a requirement for teams like ours to know at least twenty different languages. I’m sure you’ve noticed that most of the regular Asphons around can’t speak the void language and it’s actually more of a coincidence that all four of us speak it. You already know how rare voidlings are, so it is considered an esoteric optional pick.”

“You can speak twenty different languages?” I asked, massively impressed.

“Thirty-four, actually,” Andrius corrected me with a chuckle. “I know the most out of my team since I like studying. Redax knows exactly twenty since according to him, learning a language is a hassle. Everybody who is at a high risk of coming in regular contact with a traveler is expected to know a lot of languages since travelers come in many shapes and forms, and you never know what odd languages they might know. If we’re unlucky, the traveler might not be able to speak at all, which leads to all kinds of awkward situations. I’ve even heard of some Asphons picking special mutations just to be able to communicate with certain types of monsters, like a pheromone gland, for example.”

“Aside from that being kind of mind-blowing, I think I’m with Redax on this one,” I never had been very studious, and learning twenty languages seemed like a massive time sink. Well, the system could upload a language directly into my brain, but I didn’t think that spending a valuable skill choice on a language was a good idea.

“It’s not that hard, to be honest,” Andrius waved off my concerns. “Once you’ve learned your fifth language, the system rewards you with the ‘Fast Learner: Languages’ passive skill, which expedites the process quite a bit. It even gets upgraded to a higher tier for every ten languages you learn after the fifth. If I really wanted to, I could learn a new language in a week of dedicated studying at this point.”

I sat there contemplating his words. It was coming up quite rarely, but once again I’d learned of a skill that could be unlocked through other means than getting it as a reward from the system. There was the void trading skill that was unlocked by trading a whole bunch of times and was restricted to voidlings. There was the Archive of Asphon that could be unlocked by years of dedicated studying. And now there was the Fast Learner: Languages skill, that could be unlocked by learning five languages. I would really need to bring this up when I met with the skill expert since there were probably a few skills I could get by simply working hard at them.

Learning five languages the old-fashioned way seemed like a daunting task, but I could probably cheat with the system. Then again, I wasn’t sure what I’d need to know five or more languages for. I held that belief for all but ten seconds when I remembered the travelers and my encounter with them on the floor above. They’d been speaking a language that I couldn’t understand as well which made me wonder if I’d even be able to talk to them once I left the planet. There was a chance that the system would help me out with this, but I couldn’t know for certain.

“You wouldn’t happen to know what language this is, right?” I asked Andrius as I pulled out what I assumed to be a business card that I’d gotten from the travelers. “I got this from a few travelers I met, but have no clue what it says.”

“Let me see,” Andrius said as he took the card from me. “I have no idea what says, sorry. I know that the travelers have a special language they use to communicate with each other, so it’s probably that.”

Andrius handed the card back to me and I stored it in my inventory again. If the travelers really used some super secret language, the chances were good that I’d learn it once I got off-planet. I spent a few more seconds wondering just what I’d see once I finally left Suigoss before Andrius slid the book across to me, a drawing of a spell matrix prominent on the page it was opened to. I could wonder all day what was waiting for me in the future, but for now, it was time to learn some magical theory. As Andrius began to explain and translate the text next to the image, I shifted all my attention to him.