Sam made his way over to the library to return the two books he had finished reading that he had borrowed last week as well as hopefully pick up the two more advanced books approved by Professor Loupis. He double checked to make sure he had the form the professor had given him in his storage space before taking the path past the administration building down toward the library.
When he entered and approached the reception desk he was greeted by the same receptionist as last time. “Hello again, how may I assist you today?”. “I’m here to return two books as well as pick up two more approved by my professor” Sam answered. “I see, let start off with your two returns, can you please hand over the books you would like to return along with your student ID card?” the receptionist asked. Sam pulled the two books out of his bag and placed them on the counter before retrieving his student ID from his storage space which he had moved it to as it’s considerably more secure than the bag and easier to access quickly. He had thought about moving all of his things to his storage space but decided to keep his textbooks and a portion of his writing utensils in the provided bag to keep them separate. Sam knew that they didn’t really need to be kept separate as the storage space skill would list each item individually, but he thought it might be useful to keep the bag around.
Pulling himself from his thoughts he placed his student ID on the counter and watched as the receptionist process his book return. The receptionist placed the ID card on the glass magic item and then placed each book on a larger magic item on the other side of the desk before handing his card back to him and placing the books behind her. “Your book returns have now been processed. It should now show on your student ID that you have 4 of 5 spots free to borrow books. Now can you please pass me the form provided by your professor” she asked. Sam pulled the form out of his storage space and passed it over to her.
The receptionist looked the form over before placing it onto one of the magic glass panels face down. The panel glowed momentarily before a small piece of paper popped up out of a device next to the counter. “Please take this and have a seat by the entrance gate. One of our library assistants will be with you shortly” the receptionist said. “Thank you for your help again” Sam replied to her as he went and took a seat where he had the last time he had been here.
Sam waited around 10 minutes before he saw Annabelle Durmont the third-year library assistant approached him. “Good evening Sam, it’s nice to see you again. How can I assist you today?” she greeted him. “Hi Annabelle, I took your recommendation and asked my professor for some more books on the Fall of the Jardish Empire and the founding of Keivania” Sam said as he passed her the slip of paper he had been given by the receptionist. Annabelle looked at the slip of paper for a moment “Two books, okay follow me” she said as she motioned for him to follow her through the gate and into the forest of shelves that was the academy library.
Sam followed Annabelle down the giant staircase that spiraled around the centre of the library. As he descended below the ground floor he could see an even larger area. The first underground level was incredibly vast. So much so that Sam failed to make out the walls surrounding them as he descended down the stairs. “Come on Sam, we’ll be here all day if you keep standing around gawking at the view” Annabelle said to him. “How can you not? This is incredible” Sam exclaimed in amazement. “How many books are down here?” he asked her. “This floor alone is somewhere between two and four million. The records were destroyed during an incident centuries ago and the number of copies of each book was lost. We know we have two million books just not how many copies of each one” she explained.
“How did the library get so many books?” Sam asked. “A large majority of them have been donated to the library by former students of the academy. Some dungeons have entire libraries contained within them and those with large storage spaces can afford to clear them out. It’s not an overly common occurrence as they tend to be on high floor numbers in A or S ranked dungeons, but it does happen. Then there are those who get multiple copies of a book during a dungeon run and they donate a copy to the library and keep a copy for themselves. Most of the highest-ranking adventurers and divers have homes in their own pocket dimensions so they can afford the space for a vast library which comes in quite handy when studying a dungeon” she explained. “The unique properties of the space the academy is built in is also why we can have such a large library underground. Otherwise, you’d never get approval to dig this deep in the capital” she followed up with after a brief pause. “I see” Sam muttered as he continued following Annabelle down the stairs.
Sam continued to follow Annebelle down to the floor where they spent the next five minutes walking to the shelf the book was stored on. “This is where all the books for the founding of the Kingdom of Keivania are located for 2nd years so take note of the section number” Annabelle said. Sam looked up to the sign at the end of the bookshelf. 2-E4-46 was displayed on the placard. “What does E4 mean?” Sam asked and quickly followed up to clarify his question before she answered him. “I mean, I know 2 stands for floor 2 and I’m guessing 46 is for the 46th shelf in the section but why E4?” he clarified. “E4 is just because the original design of the library was for sections A-Z but they needed to expand the number of topics and so they just put numbers next to the letters instead of changing everything” Annabelle replied. “So, there are 26 times 4 sets of topics?” Sam asked. “No, there are 38 sets of 26 topics per floor with more constantly being added. They recently expanded the library to make room for more variation and specificity. They’re actually planning to do a complete overhaul of the library, but it will require a lot of manpower to get it done over a single summer break period between years” she explained. “I can imagine for millions of books it would be hard to get it done even with enough manpower” he said as he turned to follow Annebell back towards the staircase as she headed off the get the second book.
They descended down onto the next floor which looked identical in layout to the one above it. This book was a lot further along the shelves and took them nearly 15 minutes of walking through the shelves before reaching the one the book was on. “This is taking a lot longer than I thought it would” Sam said as Annebelle passed the second book to him. “It can take a while. That’s why most students drop off book request slips in the morning and collect them in the evening after class. It’s only those who don’t know what they’re looking for that normally walk around the library to pick up the books themselves” she explained. “Some even spend days down here during breaks or weekends” she said adding on to the explanation.
Sam sighed. He wished someone had told him this beforehand as he would have left the list with them and returned tomorrow if it was going to take this long. He had wanted to get to bed early, so that he was fully energized for tomorrow’s trip into the city but alas that seems to have been blown out the window.
By the time they had returned back up to the surface and checked out the books at reception it now turned dark. Sam checked his pocket watch and considered dropping by the dining hall but instead decided to just whip something up quickly back in his room and go to bed. He didn’t have much in as he hadn’t bought many perishables when he last went out shopping. His next trip into the city to buy food would now however be different since he could store the perishables in his timeless storage space which meant he could stock up. It would also help to increase the space by having a larger variety of items stored in there. He could now also store meat for months without it going bad and even cook it up so that he could have a hot meal while out and about the city. In fact, he could probably head out of the city and do a bit of hunting as well. Then he wouldn’t have to pay the inflated prices of the capital for the meat either. Sam pushed the thoughts aside as he was starting to get distracted and picked up the pace as he walked back to his dorm.
After Sam had finished his light meal he went to bed and immediately fell asleep as his head hit the pillow. He awoke as the sun raised above the horizon and shined in through his bedroom window. Surprisingly he wasn’t feeling too sore and had gotten a pretty good night’s rest. After getting ready for class Sam went through his storage room and transferred the majority of his equipment to his storage space. He would be going into the city, and it would be good to be fully equipped when entering into the adventurer’s guild. You never could be too careful after all.
Once he had moved everything into his storage space Sam headed down to the dining hall where he met up with Albert for a large breakfast. Sam was feeling especially hungry since he barely ate anything yesterday and did a lot of exercise, but they also knew that they were unlikely to get a proper lunch break when out in the city so they wanted to ensure they had their fill while they still could.
After homeroom Alice and Sam made their way over to the magical arts building. Instead of the classroom they were previously in for the potion brewing lesson they were now directed to a different classroom that was a lot darker and more mysterious looking with various magic tools hung along the walls and a huge crystal embedded in the roof in the centre of the room which was also the only thing providing enough light for everyone to see.
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The room appeared to be in the centre of the building as there were no windows looking out onto the gardens outside. Sam thought that this might be by design to ensure nothing could easily escape or get in. As it turned out his thoughts on the matter were proven correct when the professor entered the room and the two doors both sealed shut behind her before disappearing and turning into solid stone. Alice and Sam looked at each other as they realized they were now trapped inside and unable to leave.
“Welcome back students to the Magical Arts. Today I will be doing an overview on how to enchant a sword with a simple strengthening enchantment. This will be a basic demonstration on what you do before we properly go through how enchanting works and a plethora of different basic enchantments that by the end of the year you should all be able to perform. Now, firstly you might be wondering where we are and how do we get out. Well, this room we are in today is especially designed for enchanting. The crystal embedded in the roof fills the room with mana which allows me to use more ambient mana instead of my own mana when doing the enchantments. The room is sealed off to stop the mana from leaking out, which is why the doors have now turned to stone. The walls are lined with a mana resistant substance that stops mana from leaking out through them. Anyone who wishes to focus on enchanting will want to build a chamber similar to this one in their own workshops. The doors can be opened again by simply waving your mana over a rune inscribed here on the wall in a specific way. I will teach it to you once you have all gotten the mana manipulation skill” Professor Waterwind explained pointing at an unlit rune carved onto the wall.
“I guess that’s another reason to work on mana manipulation and getting the skill for it leveled up like Professor Tinderfall said. It must have many applications in the Magical Arts” Sam whispered to Alice as the professor started to draw something on the board.
“This here is a basic empty enchanting circle” the professor said pointing at the magic circle she had drawn on the board. “Alone this circle will do nothing but draw in mana however when modified it allows you to convert the mana it draws in into an enchantment” the professor explained as she began modifying the magic circle. Once she had finished drawing she put the chalk down and spoke again.
“This magic circle here is for the basic strengthening enchantment that is compatible with weapons, equipment and tools. These modifications tell the magic circle what to do with the mana when it’s pushed through it. It tells it how to convert that mana into the properties of the strengthening enchantment. Using these magic circles requires skill in mana manipulation as the mana must be pushed through the circle evenly or the enchantment will fail” the professor explained as she pulled out a bottle of liquid from her personal storage space.
“This here is the blood of an Aether Dragon. It is used to draw the magic circle on the surface you’re using for your enchantment. The material the surface is made out of also matters when enchanting, but we won’t get into that today. Now, Aether Dragon blood is very expensive which is one of the two main reasons you don’t want to be making any mistakes when drawing out your magic circle. The blood is harvested one of two ways. The first is either via a pact or tamed Aether Dragon which in and of itself is very rare and it must willingly give its blood for collection which is where maybe a third of the supply comes from. The second is from killing Aether Dragons in the dungeon and harvesting the blood from their corpses. There are a few dungeons in Keivania with Aether Dragons but they’re all A rank dungeons and therefore require high level parties to collect the blood for us, which is why it’s so expensive. Now moving on from that, we use a spirit reed brush to paint the blood onto the enchanting surface like this” the professor said as she pulled a thick brush from her storage space and dipped it into the bottle of blood. The professor then began carefully drawing the magic circle out onto the round metallic table in the middle of the room with the steady hand of an expert.
Once she had finished drawing the magic circle she washed the brush out in a small bowl of water before returning it to her storage space along with the bottle of dragon’s blood which had now diminished by around a quarter. After returning the brush and blood to her storage space she pulled out a simple sword. It was just a normal steel sword according to Sam’s item identification skill.
The professor placed the sword in the middle of the circle where an open space had been left. “Alright, we are now set to begin the enchantment. When I begin the enchantment I will first need to kick start the magic circle with my own mana. This will begin the process of mana collection where it will draw it in from the ambient mana. It will continue to draw from me as well but at a significantly reduced capacity to what it would do without the thick ambient mana. Now please watch closely as I activate the magic circle” the professor instructed.
The professor placed her hands in two circles with strange characters written in them. Sam watched as she pushed a small amount of mana into the circle beginning the process and activating the circle. Sam felt the magic circle slowly beginning to draw in the mana floating around in the room and watched as the circle began to glow. Sam continued to watch as he shifted his position in his chair leaning forward to get a better look. What the professor had failed to tell them all before she had begun was that this was a very long process. It had been nearly 20 minutes since she first activated the magic and the end was still nowhere in sight. Another five minutes went by before Sam finally began to notice a change. The light from the magic circle had begun to shift towards where the sword had been placed dimming as the light moved inwards causing it to shine much brighter than before. A few moments later the light had faded, and the professor lifted her hands away from the magic circle. “And there you have it, a steel sword with the basic strengthening enchantment” the professor said as she picked up the sword and showed it off to the class. It didn’t look any different than it had before as far as Sam could tell but that was possibly because it was quite dark in the room and they were seated quite a distance back from when the sword was being held up by the professor since the enchanting table was quite a few metres back from the student seating area.
The professor placed the sword back into her storage space before speaking again. “Now that you have seen an enchantment in person does anyone have any questions” the professor asked enthusiastically. In response to the question posed every student in the classroom raised their hand. “That’s quite a lot of questions. I’m sure some of you have the same question as each other so please put your hands down if I answer your question while I answer another” the professor said as she pulled up a chair to sit down in front of the students.
“Alright, let’s begin. You there, what’s your question?” the professor said pointing at a girl who was sat at the back of the room. “Why did it take you so long to perform the enchantment” the girl whose name Sam didn’t yet know asked. “That was actually twice as fast as what it would take normally without a room especially designed to speeds up enchanting times like the one we have here” the professor explained. “A basic strengthening enchantment is actually one of the quickest enchantments to perform” the professor explained. More than a third of the raised had now dropped as the professor finished answering the question.
“Alright next one, you there” the professor said pointing at a boy sat in the front row. “Which enchantment takes the longest amount of time to cast?” the boy asked. “Well, that’s a hard question to answer as there are a few with around the same length as well as some that are unknown as we don’t have any records left from when they were casted. The longest time however is about 4 weeks with a proper setup. It could however be exponentially longer without a room like this one” the professor answered. The faces of the students went wide at the answer. Four weeks to cast an enchantment. That was an insane amount of time Sam thought as he took the professor’s words in. The professor spoke up again adding onto her answer “That is also with 10 enchanters rotating out constantly to take breaks” the professor said to which even more faces lit up with shocked expressions as a few more hands fell.
“Alright, one more as we’re running short on time as some of you will need to leave early to head into the city” the professor said. “We have to leave early?” Sam asked Alice. “I guess, I wasn’t aware of it, but it makes sense” she said. “Okay, the final questions will be from you” the professor said as she pointed at Sam. Sam quickly stood from his seat to ask his question which he had almost forgotten because of the shocking answer from the previous question. “I thought you needed to use materials similar to potion crafting when enchanting, but you didn’t for this sword, why is that?” Sam asked.
“Good question, the simple answer is that this specific enchantment doesn’t require anything. There are many strengthening enchantments that do require materials for the enchanting process, but this one isn’t one of them. Most of the basic low-level enchantments don’t require materials as producing low tier enchantments still nets a pretty profit and adding the cost of materials to low level enchantments would make them a lot more expensive which would reduce the demand for them” the professor explained. “I see thank you” Sam said as he sat back down.
“Alright we’ll leave it there for today. Those of you with free time please behave and don’t get into any trouble. Those of you in the dungeon diving class please head over to your designated classroom” the professor said as she stood up and walked over to the wall and waved her hand over the rune. A moment later the doors reappeared allowing the students to leave the room. “Alright, let’s head straight to the classroom. If they’re letting us out early it must be a tight schedule, so we best get there as soon as possible” Alice reasoned. “I agree, let’s go” Sam said as he motioned for her to lead the way.
