Demonic Magician

My fleeting desire to court the impressive tomes fizzled out almost as soon as we entered the library. Something that was clearly visible on my face, as Tanya grinned at my expression.

I had never imagined it to be anything elaborate, but what the room had to offer was somewhat lacking. If anything, I was glad at least that it meant we wouldn’t be searching around here for too long. The chamber was small, the back three walls holding bookshelves of polished wood, yet there weren’t that many books upon them.

“Alright,” I gestured Tanya and the spellcaster over. “Keep the others busy on guard duty while us two search the ‘library’.”

“As you wish.” The fateweaver gave me a nod and stepped away to arrange the awkward adventurers.

“Percius, was it?” I asked the man as we stepped onto the slightly raised platform where the all the books were. Behind us now was a raised stone area, not quite a table or lecturn, but the wooden chairs there suggested that was where the reading had been done.

“That’s right, Max. Are we just looking for clues about their disappearance and anything to do with Guardians?” He tilted the brim of his hat up, allowing some light to illuminate his usually shadowed features.

Younger than I had anticipated, but plenty of wisdom hidden away in his eyes. For a moment, I wondered how he had found his way to this world, before the present situation caught up to me.

“Correct. How the Eternal Wardens vanished is the most important thing, if not at least so we can avoid the same fate. Anything on Guardians is useful, but I could go without the lore as long as the power stays with me.” In saying that, there was a slight residual hum in my right arm.

“Understood. I’ll start on this right side, and you on the left. Then we’ll meet in the middle?” He gestured with his head, causing several bottles and random objects to clink together on the outside of his large backpack.

I gave him a nod of approval, and we did just that. Immediately, I realized I wasn’t exactly sure how in depth the check should be. Did I need to take them all down and rifle through a few pages to gather up the context of the contents? Most of these didn’t look like they had useful blurbs on the back or titles that fully summarized the internal subject matters.

The first I plucked into my grasp was titled Grass and More. A quick spray through a selection of pages determined the more was just grass-adjacent vegetation. Why this was necessary or interesting was beyond me. The prospect of digging through a dozen or two similarly drab novels had me…

I paused as my eyes caught sight of something unexpected.

A familiar spine that couldn’t possibly exist on a book in this world. Yet still, my hand reached for it, ignoring all others. Pulling it from the shelf and taking the heavy tome into my hands, I turned it to see what lay on the cover.

Demonic Rites and Foul Magicks, it read.

The very book that was the cause of my transposition to Othea. I held it for a few moments in disbelief before I gathered my senses up. After all, I had been holding it when I went through the portal. If it somehow got transferred but taken away from me, the System could have made this copy. Did that make sense, however?

For someone so used to suspending disbelief to the limits, I was frankly tongue-tied.

I turned, stepping over to the stone table, and placed the book down.

“Something useful?” Tanya asked, eyeing between me and any potential doom ready to pounce from the shadows.

“Hmm. Oh? I don’t know. Something interesting, at least.” I shook my head and opened it up to the first page. Yes. It was exactly the same. The comforting familiarity mixed in with the apprehension, knowing that this had a hand in… I didn’t know what. It couldn’t just be a coincidence, however.

I continued to flip through pages, each known to me, until I got to the page showing the portal. Pink light against the gray stone in the illustration. I ran my finger down it, as if tracing the memories of that evening. Interesting. Most of the book was just folk tales and other such fairytale mulch. Even being a Demonic Magician, nothing in this old tome really held much importance to me, aside from this page about the portal.

In an act that probably earned me a few valid scowls, I gripped at the book and tore the page out slowly. Folded it and put it in my pocket. That might come in use in the future, and part of me didn’t trust the System to hold onto it in my Inventory. After a few moments of idly staring at nothing, I cleared my head and snapped the book shut.

Percius was giving me a dull look, probably having a dim view of me mutilating a book. “Found what you were looking for?”

“Yes, and no.” I shrugged and returned to my side of the library. Part of me felt as though I had ticked a box off, but I wasn’t sure what I’d really accomplished there. Maybe just some minor joy in the fact that I had something to remind me of home, for all the good that did. Home now was anywhere with Ren. The showman had long died, no matter the way I ended up here.

Much like Tanya, I had come to accept that what we had at present was very real, and in many ways better than our prior lives. We had a lot to fight for here. I would ensure we win, and that nobody else had to sacrifice their life to make that a reality. A troublesome thought that half distracted me from taking down books from the shelves and glancing through them.

In fact, my awkward mood helped the whole process breeze by, even if it took longer than I expected. Ren’s group reported nothing interesting found, and were now standing guard back in the main hall. Between the spellcaster and I, we had procured three books on the Guardians of the world, but nothing else overtly hinting at where the Wardens went.

“Either it was the Crimson Shadow, or they dabbled in something with a Guardian here and paid the price,” I surmised, before we had even opened one of the books.

“I had assumed you would have been more of the studious type,” Percius said, glancing me over. “Not that kind of magician, ey?”

With a shrug, I put my hand on top of the pile of books, each one vanishing as soon as I touch them, until my hand rested on the table. “I’m much more of a practical learner, I’m afraid. Seeing is believing, and learning.”

I’d never used this function before, or needed to, but if the System held a written item within it then you could get it to produce a summary. Not only that, but search through the produced text for keywords. Any irony that I, of all people, would have been able to ingest the world’s lore quicker than most was completely lost on me as I choose to ignore those thoughts entirely.

Instead, I swept through each of the books in turn, picking up some key phrases as I went. What I learned was… not entirely interesting, but might have the clue we were looking for.

“The Eternal Wardens were trying to summon one of the Guardians here,” I explained, the ears of everyone in the room piqued to listen in. “There isn’t meant to be any more in this area that we have discovered. This is only my assumption, but I can imagine they wanted to bring one here, kill it, and use the power to go against the Lady in Red.”

“But it backfired?” Tanya asked. “Something went wrong and possibly teleported them to where the Guardian is?”

“Possibly.” I gave her a shrug. That was just speculation, as we hadn’t found any proof at present. “There’s something about what each Guardian power represents, but I’ll vomit out that information once we are back with the rest of the guild.”

“Are you going to keep a hold on those books?” Percius asked.

I raised an eyebrow. “What books?” With a small flourish, I swept my hand over the plain table to reveal the stack of tomes once more. “I have a copy of all the pertinent information in my STAR. Did you know it could do that?”

“Yes…” he replied, pulling a face before lowering the brim of his hat once more.

Well, I didn’t. Not that I could really recall a time where that would have been useful. Skipping through the world had clearly left more than a few gaps in our knowledge of the System, not just the lore.

We left the room to join the others in the main hall, everyone looking a little calmer now that we’d been here a while and nothing bad had happened. Ren looked pretty bored, but practically slid across the floor to join me once she saw we were making our way over.

“What did you find out, trickster?” she began. “Is my Guardian cooler than yours?”

“You have the best Guardian, as it is what you deserve.”

“Bullshit.” She rolled her eyes. “We all know you’re the System’s favorite.”

I smiled and looked around the gathered congregation. Is that how they all felt? There was a certain amount of power that I had accumulated over my journey that put me on another level compared to most. Not just literally, but in every sense. It would take maybe ten seconds for me to kill all the other Players in this room, aside from my own Party of course.

“Actually, the truth is more mundane, I’m afraid.” I gave her a glum smile as thoughts of murder sunk away. “Although flavored certain ways, Guardians don’t really represent differing core values or certain aspects of the System as we first assumed. There are shallow hints at thematic differences, but that just allows people to read into what they want to believe. When you get down to how they empower us, they are essentially wish fulfillment, in a way.”

The elf crossed her arms, but her slightly grumpy expression didn’t change. “It’s more that the Guardian chooses how to bring that wish into reality that is the crux of it. I wanted to be your equal and so I got to copy some of your skills. A little too basic an interpretation, if you ask me.”

I nodded. “I suppose mine was to just ascend beyond my capabilities, unshackle myself from the overworked magician roots. In a way, my demonic powers culminated in unseating the king of hell.”

Tanya furrowed her brow and looked over at the exit. Toward the north. “So what does that mean for the two others who have Guardian powers? The Lady sounds like she has something like yours, Max. Except instead of hell it’s up here, taking over the normal Othea.”

Although I had some thoughts on the matter, I let them roll around I my skull a little longer and gave her a shrug. The Lady in Red clearly wanted to gather up an army strong enough to take over the world to try to change and escape it, and her Class seemed to rope in others like some manner of pyramid scheme. The unknown Player with clone bodies we knew even less about, but I was willing to bet their wish had been something about avoiding injury in this world. Now they could do everything by proxy. Still an assumption.

“There was something we found out,” Ren said, some of her ire waning. “The Eternal Wardens were a customer of the black market assholes.”

I shook my head and sighed. It meant in part they were to blame for the kidnapping of Quinn and I. Part of me detested them for it, but only because it made them sound weak. Having to buy their power at the expense of random innocents. Perhaps they got what they deserved.

“Anything lootable?” I asked.

“A few bits for the others that might be useful, but you know we aren’t likely to get much anymore, trickster.”

Such a shame to peak in my career so soon. All downhill from here.

While I was about to gripe even more about how overpowered we both were, I paused and pulled a face. The information we had found had been reasonable at best. It ticked off the long held questions in the most halfhearted way it could. The System had created these Guardians of power and any Player foolish or lucky enough to manage to kill one had their wish granted—if only in a way that the System itself wanted to.

But the Eternal Wardens had vanished. They had sought out this power and hadn’t been enough to earn it. Or perhaps they had, and it wasn’t a terrible end that had met them.

Things were never that easy.

As I gave the temple another narrowed glare, my arm tingled with the very real potential we were about to find out exactly what happened to them.