ALL NOVEL CH.498 Missing Magic Books
In the next few days, I learned about Demonic Magic and Demonic Might. Yubel basically demanded to be my instructor in it, and barely let the other Fiends to assist.
And Demonic Magic is … it is interesting. Mainly because it uses mana and miasma, not just mana. You can perform it with just miasma, but that is more difficult, so when I was taught how to do it, I used about a 50/50 mix of mana and miasma.
Learning how to control miasma was the first problem. Luckily my Fiends and Janina knew how to do it, so they turned the environment around me into something optimal for the learning, and then I went from there.
During that, I realized that the Half-Demon title and the Cambion race come with quite the big advantage. I’m a lot more resilient to miasma than a normal person. In fact, the higher percentage miasma environment I trained in made me stronger compared to the usual mana and miasma percentages.
So while demon summoning, and the Cambion race as a whole, are seen as negatives, because of the entire sacrifice nature of demon contracts, the advantages it gives are actually very good.
I mean, if you need to enter high miasma density areas, it can really affect you. At least until you get the Miasma Resistance skill. So having Half-Demons who are naturally resistant to miasma do those kinds of jobs instead might be better.
Maybe I can overhaul the demon summoning magic circle and how demon contracts are made. I need to ask Pan if she is in charge of demon summonings, or if that falls outside of her expertise. She never did talk about it, so it is possible.
And if the Spirit of Beasts isn’t responsible for it, maybe there is some sort of an archdemon in the demon world I could bargain with. I mean, in theory, if there is one, I can summon him/her, Super Poly them with one of my monsters, and then because I used Super Poly, they should be under my command, so I can force them to change the rules.
So with those realizations, I decided to start operation: Overhaul Demon Summoning.
Though at first it will just be research Laura will perform with the Factory’s dimensional telescope. We need to find whomever is responsible for demon summoning.
Then we need to get access to the demon summoning magic circle. I hope the Sage’s tower is willing to share after I tell them what I need it for, and if they aren’t, I’ll just have to spy on their library with the dimensional telescope.
Calling out to the Sage’s tower about the books didn’t go quite as I expected.
At first they didn’t want to give me the books, because demon summoning and demonic contacts are banned for a reason, but when they had one of the sages check for the books, they noticed that multiple books from the Sage-level library were missing, including the books on demon summoning.
This caused them to check over the entire library and they found even more books missing. Most of them were from the Sage section, but some were also missing from the lower level libraries.
They even had the sage responsible for the Great Sage section of the library check that part out, and luckily, there were no books missing from that section.
But still, over 20 books are missing, all on high ranking magic, and mostly on forbidden or limited techniques like demon summoning missing. That isn’t good.
And that got them to launch an investigation, because not just anyone can access the Sage portion of the library. So they needed to find out if one of the sages had betrayed the tower, or if someone had found a way around the security.
The investigation didn’t have any immediate solutions, so the Sage’s tower decided to rely on what they know the best. Magic.
In this case, Time Magic. Sadly, none of the sages could use Time Magic, so they had to rely on an outside source for it, in this case, me. They did learn of my capabilities with Time Magic some time ago, and since I was already involved, and more importantly, trusted, they asked if I could do it.
They wanted me to perform a Time Magic spell called Temporal Recall. It would allow one to resee events that happened in a specific location, and the location and timing could be specified.
So for example, if I was standing in front of a bookshelf, with a single book missing from the bookshelf, I could focus on that spot and see times that spot changed.
Sadly, I didn’t know that spell yet, and learning it would likely take a week or two. But luckily, I have a card for that. Or monster in this case, but whatever.
So I grabbed Alice with me and we flew to the Hero’s country, getting access with the access device they never asked me to return, so I still had it. If they want it back, they’ll have to ask me to return it.
I landed my Victory Viper on the airship docks, and from there, we entered a Sage’s tower’s golem carriage, and headed for the tower.
At the tower, we were met by three sages, Ian Cobba, Shisu Tensei and Ted Miller. Met all of them before, so I was glad there were no introductions.
They then took us, because I refused to go without Alice, to the Sage section of the library. There they handed me a book on Time Magic which contained details on the Temporal Recall.
It really was an interesting spell, and there was an interesting note about it. It worked better if the user also knew Space Magic, probably because Temporal Recall does specify a location in space.
And as I assumed earlier, I could probably learn this spell in about a week or so, but I won’t be doing that. Instead, I’ll summon someone who is much, much better at Time Magic than I am.
I told the sages about my intentions, and while they seemed a little hesitant, they wanted to know what happened to the books, so they approved the summoning.
So I started by randomly picking ten monsters from my Collection and transferring them to the GY. I need them there for the summoning.
“Above the highest level of Heaven sang of in the hosannas of Saints and Seraphim, Enlightenment incarnate abides.
Redeem this derelict plane with your influence and make holy these terrestrial constructs
Sephylon, the Ultimate Timelord!”
Sephylon was an impressive sight, despite appearing in a much smaller form than his full sized form.
Yeah, my god, or Divine-Beast monsters, can do that. They can ‘compress’ themselves to fit into more narrow spaces, like this library. It does limit their offensive power just a bit, but they are still extremely powerful, and we don’t exactly need power at this moment.
The three sages were quite impressed by the sight. I mean, it isn’t every day someone just casually summons a god. Technically I should call Sephylon a God, with a capital G, but ever since Ra almost killed Janina, my god monsters have had to deal with the lower capital g.
If Sephylon does a good job, he might earn his capital G.
I gave the sages a quick lesson on the belief that is the tree of life and the Daʻat state. Yes, I’ve studied it. I had to. Yugioh fanatic, and I love the God monsters, so I read up on them.
No, I don’t live by those beliefs, but I did study them.
Then I had Sephylon perform the Temporal Recall spell, but he decided to do extra, and instead of using just Temporal Recall, he combined it with an illusion spell that would show all of us what happened, instead of just him seeing it.
We were led through a few ‘memories’ of different sages picking up and returning the book, until we arrived at the last one, where sage Robin Grannar took the book.
That was the last memory related to the space where the book was, so we had our culprit.
This led to an argument, because sage Robin Grannar is the Sage that is a part of Wendy’s team. And the members of that party are some of the most trusted people in the Hero’s country.
The three sages were all ready to head to Grannar’s room and rip him a new, but I wanted to find out more about when this happened.
“When did this take place?” I asked Sephylon, and we learned the book was taken on the day of the round 1 fights of the adventuring tournament.
Which led to an issue.
“... that can’t be right.” I noted. “Sir Grannar was with us in our box seats on that day.”
“You’re right, he was.” Alice agreed. “... maybe he has a splitting skill like Nel?”
“We don’t know of him having a skill like that. But he is skilled in Light Magic, so he may have used an illusion.” Ian told us.
“No way. I was using Mana Vision on and off for the day. If he was a spell, I would have noticed it.” I quickly debunked that theory.
“Doesn’t matter.” Ted said. “He is our main suspect, so let’s just go to his room and ask him.”
While I didn’t like his aggressive tone, I had no reason to argue against asking Sir Grannar about this, so after we checked the other books, we found out that all the missing books from the Sage section of the library were taken by Sir Grannar.
We then checked for the books taken from the other sections, and they weren’t taken by Sir Grannar, but instead by great witches and wizards. And they weren’t all taken by the same people, or on the same day.
The sages assumed that at least a few of them might actually just be legitimately borrowed, and the lender forgot to fill it into the lending book, because it does happen from time to time, but some of them were definitely stolen.
The same was true for books in the Wizard/Witch section of the library.
So with the information collected, we headed for Sir Grannar’s room.
Sir Grannar naturally defended himself, using the same argument I came up with.
The other sages weren’t fully convinced, and ‘forced’ him to reveal his status, which he did, as the sages do apparently show their status to each other, if asked.
He didn’t show any skills that were outside of the expected, and nothing he could have used to do what he was suspected of doing.
He then asked to prove his innocence by going under the Temporal Recall spell, which we had no reason to refuse. So I summoned Sephylon again, had him perform the spell again, and we did confirm that Sir Grannar had nothing to do with the missing books.
But while we were going over his history, we did learn something interesting. It was a few nights after the new year, while the adventuring tournaments qualifiers were going on, that someone snuck into his room. Not his room in the tower, but a room he had in a villa in the city.
The intruder not only cut off some of Sir Grannar’s hair, but also took some blood from him, before exiting the building.
And Sir Grannar’s house is decently well protected, so not just anyone can sneak in. This guy was a professional.
We don’t know for sure what the blood and hair were needed for, but we all had a pretty solid idea. Either a potion or a skill that lets you transform into a perfect, or near perfect, copy of another person.
Then either the intruder or someone else used that skill on the day of the tournament to enter the Sage’s tower’s library, and steal the books they needed.
Sadly it didn’t really tell us who the book thief was, but it did give me an idea on who may have been involved, and when they escaped the city.
Had the book thefts been spotted earlier, it is highly likely that people going out of the city would have been checked carefully, unless something bad was happening. And what bad happened just two days after Sir Grannar imposter took the books?
The almost stampede at the arena, caused by the group of adventurers. That caused a mess that allowed them to escape the city, so who is to say the person who stole the books didn’t escape at the same time?
And if they really have a skill that lets them transform into a near perfect copy of someone else, they may have killed the missing guard and let the adventurers free from the prison, as long as those adventurers agreed to go and set those smoke bombs in the arena.
This really has turned into a mess. When a simple terrorist attack, which was probably done in revenge/frustration isn’t nearly as simple as it at first seemed.
And now we have missing books on advanced magic. I don’t like this at all.
I’ll need to do some additional security upgrades on HomeBase. I need to find a way of preventing skills like what was used to infiltrate the library from being used to get onto HomeBase.
Sure HomeBase is more challenging, as you need a HomeBase access device, and they are protected by Owner's Seal. But since the skill got through the identity checks needed for the Sage’s tower’s library, they might get past Owner's Seal.
But still. I don’t want any of my employees attacked. And I’m not sure if theft of hair and blood counts as hostile intentions for their protection devices.
So many tests to run, so I can guarantee the safety of my people.