Library of Rain

Rain massaged her temples. This was the third night in a row that she couldn’t sleep longer than a few hours before Lon came. She wished Blondy was still around; she could use his advice. Or more of that sweet lemon juice. The steel flask he'd given her was long empty. She even tried sticking her tongue in to get every drop possible. 

 

She had asked Mr. Markson if he knew where she could find more. He, in turn, was shocked that she had gotten her hands on some of the stuff. Apparently, lemons grew on the mainland, and since no ships had returned from the mainland in years… well she doubted she would be seeing the sweet drink again anytime soon. A pity, because it might distract her from the headache her lack of sleep was giving her.

 

Returning her attention to her current distraction, Rain scanned the thirty wooden cages stacked close to the wall of the library entry room. She had moved her treasure into her room and even had Mr. Markson buy chests and other furniture to decorate the room. Now, it felt like a cozy home in the middle of a cursed library. Who wouldn’t want to live there? The best part was the pile of gold around the bed, making her feel like a dragon sleeping on her hoard of gold. It was every girl's dream. Or it would be if she could actually sleep without nightmares.

 

And her thoughts were wondering. She had important things to do this night besides wanting to sleep. She was going to test her books. She just needed to get off this super soft chair. Why had she insisted on scamming Manas out of a super soft chair? Now, she just wanted to sleep in it.

Prying herself from the loving embrace of the ridiculously soft chair, Rain picked up the first cage. Inside it was a uffter also bought from Mr. Markson. The adorable creature looked like a ball of fluff with stubby legs and a long bushy tail; large blue eyes peeked out of the floof in the front. Rain wished she could hug it. Unfortunately, the last time she had tried that with one of these, it had bitten her. Her aura scared the critters so badly that they got aggressive. 

 

Now that Rain knew that they couldn't be friends, these little fuzz balls would test her books so she could figure out how to use them safely on people. The first test was to see if the uffters could use the books despite their lack of reading abilities. Rain thought there was a good chance. After all, she had no idea what language the books were written in, but she had still been able to read them. 

 

Setting the cage with the squealing critter down, Rain entered the library looking for a book that might make for a good experiment. In the end, she picked a regal leather book that even had a title embossed in gold letters: ‘The Minds of Men.’ It should work. 

 

When she returned to the entry room, she was greeted by squeaks.

 

“You guys ready to learn how to read?”

 

They didn’t sound ready. Rain didn’t like this idea, but it was the best she had. Blondy had said that it wasn’t her fault because she didn’t know what would happen. Now that she knew how bad things could get, Rain needed to make sure that she learned as much as possible about the effects of her books so she never hurt a friend again. If that meant testing things on these critters, so be it. Rain would never stop trying to learn. 

 

The first uffter to get a book would be the one that bit her. She totally hadn’t picked it to be first out of revenge. That would be petty. Rain didn’t do petty things like using her skills to lock a woman in her house for hours yesterday because the woman had once shot a crossbow at Rain when Rain tried to play with some other kids. Rain was above such things. 

 

Rain turned the book away from her and opened it to the first page. She presented the open book to the cage so the uffter inside could see the pages. The uffter squeaked and hid under its tail for a bit, but eventually, it peeked out to see what Rain was doing. That's when it saw the book, and all its squeaks stopped. Rain couldn’t see any visible signs that the book was affecting the uffter, so she just turned the pages every few minutes. Eventually, Rain reached the end of the book and closed it. 

 

The little uffter stood on the other side of the cage, staring blankly before its legs gave out and it splayed out on the bottom of the cage.

 

[Reader [Error] has attained the skill: Mind Magic.]

 

[Creating class around Mind Magic for Reader [Error].]

 

[Notice: Reader [Error]’s mental corruption has risen [Error]. Current mental corruption [Error].]

 

[Notice: Reader [Error]’s physical corruption has risen [Error]. Current physical corruption [Error].]

 

[Reader [Error] has met the requirements for evolution from uffter to [Error].]

[Congratulations: [Error].]

 

[Warning: [Error].]

 

[Notice: You have created an unplanned type of monster. Do you wish to name it?]

 

Rain took a step back from the sudden barrage of messages. Mr. Purple was working overtime with all these. The number of errors was worrying. That last question, though. What was an unplanned type of monster? Who planned monsters? Was monster an actual class-related term? Rain had always thought it was just what you called something cruel and vicious. Curious about what would happen, Rain answered the question.

 

“Yes!”

 

[Please give a name for the new breed of monster.]

 

Rain didn’t know what mind magic was, so she decided to go with something simple.

 

“Mind Uffter”

 

[New monster type has been registered as Mind Uffter.]

 

[Congratulations: for creating the Mind Uffters, the first type of monster native to EW1, you [Error} c4n f1x m3 {Error] have gained the skill: Mother of Monsters.]

 

[Notice: In recognition of your past interactions with a dragon, the first type of monster, Mother of Monsters will be upgraded.]

 

[Mother of Monsters: monsters will be attracted to you and are more inclined to be friendly towards you. You may make a bond with one monster. You can improve this skill with practice.]

 

What just happened?

 

For starters, it was pretty clear that Mr. Purple was not feeling well with all those errors. Rain really hoped it wasn’t her fault. Was there a way to get rid of Mr. Purple? Would she be able to survive without him helping her know how things worked? But wait, she might not need to; looking back at one of the messages that had worried her, she saw the message in the twisted letters ‘can fix me’, was Mr. Purple saying she could help fix him? 

 

Rain added Fixing Mr. Purple to her growing list of things to do: restore Mr. Markson’s business, adopt a criminal organization, learn how her library works, take over the archipelago, save the world… find a family. Rain crossed that last one off the list. She shouldn’t be greedy. 

 

Another thing Rain didn’t understand was ‘EW1.’ was that another symptom of Mr. Purple's sickness, or did it mean something? Was it perhaps supposed to be Ewi? That might make sense. Ewi kinda sounded like a place, but how big was it?

 

All that boring stuff aside, though, when had Rain interacted with a dragon! Nothing came to mind, leaving Rain with the sad realization that her past self had probably met the dragon. Rain had never wished for her past self’s memories more than she did at that moment.

 

A weak squeak brought Rain out of her thoughts. She really was struggling to stay focused tonight. She was just so tired. The squeak, right! Looking at the new mind uffter, Rain noticed the differences in its fur. Where a few minutes ago, the fur had been a solid ash gray now, it was more of a silver color with bolts of blue fur streaking out from the side of its large blue eyes. 

 

Rain thought it looked even cuter than before. She wasn’t dumb enough to try to pet it, though. It had bitten her once before it turned into a monster. 

 

Studying the floof ball a little closer, Rain realized that it didn’t seem afraid of her or the library anymore. Before, it had been panicked and would try to hide in its tail whenever it could. Now, it just looked around in a daze. The second thing Rain saw was the faint shimmer above the uffter. It looked like a gas was drifting off the little thing. Rain knew that warping. It was the same as the distortion coming off Lon while he read the book she had given him. Rain grimaced and decided to try her next test. 

 

Taking another uffter in its cage down, she opened the ‘The Minds of Men’ again to the first page. After going through all the pages with the second uffter, it collapsed, and she got another string of messages from Mr. Purple. The uffter’s name was still written as [Error], but the corruption levels were normal, unlike last time. Both had risen to 100%. It still got the Mind Magic skill, but there was no message about evolution.

 

Looking back at the uffter, Rain realized its fur was falling out, revealing twisted, lumpy flesh. Walking around the cage, Rain looked at its head; its tiny face had huge closed eyes, and its tiny mouth was partially open, drool leaking out. One of its teeth had grown nearly as long as it was tall. It jutted out of the corner of the mouth in an unwieldy fashion. 

 

Why didn’t this one evolve?

 

Rain repeated the experiment on two other uffters with similar results. One had its fur turn into scales, and it grew aggressive, trying to chew through its cage. The other grew eyes on the back of its feet and started bashing its head into the floor of its cage. Neither evolved like the first. 

 

What was the difference? Is it because the first one bit me?

 

Deciding to test this theory, Rain got the next uffter to bite her before exposing it to the book. The results were the same as the last three. Her blood wasn’t the reason. Unsure how else to test this, Rain decided to move on to the essential tests. How much could the uffters read before the corruption grew too strong? 

 

The next three uffters only got to read the first page. The results were promising. They each got the Mind Magic skill; however, unlike the others, their corruption only rose between 10% to 30%. If having her mental corruption at 19% caused Rain to see and feel things crawling under her skin, then 30% could be dangerous. She also noticed that the one with the highest physical corruption at 27% showed visible signs of change, with its fur starting to turn black. 

 

Rain returned to the library and found another book; this one had tree bark for a cover, and leaves were growing out of the pages. Repeating her actions with this new book, Rain made three uffters read the whole book. Each of the uffters gained the Plant Manipulation skill and corruption between 60% to 80%. The one exception was one uffter, which, according to the messages, was immune to mental corruption. That didn’t stop it from growing long, sharp horns, though. 

 

When Rain showed only the first page to a group of fresh uffters, they gained 3% to 8% corruption but no skill. 

 

Rain continued her experiments until she ran out of uffters. During her tests with her fifth book, another evolved after gaining a Windwalking skill. This uffter grew a second tail, and its fur turned pure white. It too, had the warping vapor floating off it. Despite all her efforts, Rain never found what those two had in common. 

 

The result of the experiments was that each book gave a different amount of corruption. The corruption wasn’t always balanced, with some books giving far more of one type than the other. She also found that between 20% to 30% was where things started to get nasty for the uffters. 

 

Rain decided it was relatively safe for someone to read the first page. Hopefully, that would be enough to gain a skill. Some books took longer, and some never gave a skill at all. Rain messaged her temples, trying to work away the headache. This was enough for now. She really didn’t like testing this on the uffters. She decided to release them all outside and give them lots of food as thanks. Then maybe she would try sleeping again.

 

It had been a long night, but now Rain could start creating heroes to improve this world. Looking at what she had done to the uffters, Rain couldn’t help but wonder if she belonged near heroes.