Libriohexer ~ 32!

Sam stood in front of the double doors that let into the Irondown Library, arms folded across his chest. He stole a glance at Bill, who was floating at his side as per usual. “You’re sure we can just take them? Aren’t they sort of attached to the dungeon?”

“Sure, technically they’re a part of the dungeon, but who cares?” the book announced hungrily. “I mean, the dungeon belongs to us… more or less. Besides, where exactly did you think we were going to get all the material for our Library, huh?”

Sam shrugged and started to walk forward. “I dunno. I thought we would build it ourselves, I guess.”

“What about me makes you think I’m some sort of handyman?” Bill flapped wildly to call attention once again to the fact that he was a book. “I’ve been a sword fighter, a mercenary, and a scholar. Handyman ain’t anywhere on that list. I can’t hold a hammer for one, and my knowledge of how to build a bookcase ends with the fact that you probably need wood. You’re a bookbinder and… chicken keeper. So unless you know something I don’t, neither of those skills is gonna help us a whole lot. Which means we’re going to steal stuff. Lots of stuff. It’s not like this place needs all those bookcases anyway. Once we finish capturing the Irondowns, we’ll turn it into a rec room or something for the new recruits. Now stop fighting me, and steal those doors already.”

Sam sighed and reluctantly pulled free his engraving awl. After fighting and subsequently bonding their Cores to both Floof and Blaze, they’d managed to successfully create an Interspatial Node, but now they needed to create a totem access point; a way to pierce the veil and step between dimensions at will so they could actually store stuff within their fancy new Library. That stared with these doors.

Thankfully, Bill seemed to have a firm idea of what to do now that they’d managed to create the Interspatial Node itself. Using his new abilities as a Master Bookbinder, Sam carved a series of location and binding runes into the wooden frame—those would tether the physical material to his Library and allow him to summon and dismiss the doorframe at will. The work was tedious and slow going—wood wasn’t nearly as malleable or forgiving as paper—but the symbols were familiar ones, even if arranged in some odd patterns. Unfortunately, he couldn’t use his Coreless Spell Infusion to magically enchant the door, since the spell was so much more powerful than anything he’d built before.

But with the abundance of pilfered beast Cores he’d lifted from the College, that wasn’t a problem at all. Once Sam was done with the spell construct framework, he inserted ten Monster Cores into ten key locations on the frame and activated the binding spell with a trickle of his own mana. Unlike most of the spells that he built, this one cost him next to no mana. Just the faintest trickle of energy to kickstart the process, and after that the beast Cores took over and did all of the heavy lifting.

They burned bright gold, releasing waves of arcane energy that powered the sigils and runes; which erupted to a blazing life of their own as they settled more deeply into the wood. When the spell finally finished running its course, Sam felt a strange connection form with the Library doors. It wasn’t quite like the connection he had with Bill or even with his Chickens—it felt more like he’d just grafted in another limb.

No, not a limb… like having a third open bloom on the center of his forehead. He focused on that image and ‘closed’ the eye. The floor rumbled and the walls shook; dust rained down from overhead as the doors abruptly disappeared from reality. Beyond was a rough hole in the wall that peered into the Irondown Library. Next, Sam ‘opened’ his new eye, and the doors reappeared in a blink.

“Don’t just stand there,” Bill urged him excitedly. “Go in already. Let’s see what we have to work with!”

Sam licked his lips, suddenly feeling both nervous and giddy, and strutted toward the doors. They opened for him on silent hinges, obeying his will. Inside was a cube of a room, three hundred feet by three hundred feet. Still bigger than his quarters at the Mage’s College had been, but only fractionally. The walls were blank and featureless—slabs of black nothingness. Not stone or plaster, just pure void. A shiver sprinted along Sam’s spine as he stepped across that threshold.

“It ain’t much to look at,” Bill whispered in awe, “but we did it. A genuine Interspatial Library. Well, more like an Interspatial broom closet at the moment, but as we level up, it’ll grow in size and scope. Honestly, this is way better than my first attempt. I ended up with a Soul Space, but it also broke three ribs and put me in the infirmary for the better part of a month. I couldn’t keep down food, believe it or not. I’d eat something, and everything would just sort of pop out through the interspatial hole in my stomach. Won an eating contest that way, before they put me in hardback. Listen to me ramble… 7ou’ve got better things to do. It’s time to go on a shopping trip!”

“You mean stealing, yeah?” Sam allowed himself to be persuaded, but he’d definitely let Bill know he was reluctant about it.

“Yes, obviously I mean stealing. To the Library!”

They recruited Finn and Velkan to aid in their larceny, finding the two were more than happy to lend a hand. Velkan said he had nothing better to do, and Dizzy was trying to run Finn through a physical training routine to help fortify his strength and constitution. That routine involved combat sparring and weight training. Since Finn was made entirely of left feet and had the muscle definition of an eleven-year-old boy, that translated to a lot of sore limbs and getting pummeled with blunt sticks. The mage had leapt at the opportunity to get away before she broke anything in her overzealous attempts to ‘bring him to the minimum’.

Together, Velkan and Finn moved several bookshelves from the Irondown Library into Sam’s newly minted Interspatial Node while Sam and Bill set up their workshop in one corner.

They installed a cramped writing desk, a three-legged stool, and a variety of shelves to hold quills, inkwells, unused parchment, and binding materials. A couple of candelabras were bolted to the walls to provide candlelight, though the room didn’t actually need an independent light source. The walls, though featureless and black, cast an odd sort of witchlight that perfectly illuminated the space. The warm orange glow from the candles made it feel far homier.

“Eventually, this place really would be like a second home.”  Sam mused, thinking about having a private bedroom and office tucked away in here along with his entire poultry-to-parchment manufacturing operation. “Only a matter of time.”

Once the bookcases and furniture were moved in, Velkan headed out to take care of some business in New Narvik—Sam suspected he was going to report in with The O’Babba. Finn offered to accompany the Wolfman, though Sam suspected he was really just trying to avoid more training sessions with Dizzy. \\

Finn loved being around the frazzle-haired tank, but he loved not getting beat senseless even more. Bill and Sam spent the rest of the time going through all the various magic and mundane texts they’d acquired over the past several weeks. Most of the books were destined to be fodder for book bombs, but they’d also picked up a few gems that had some excellent utility.

“Not a bad haul, all things considered.” Bill seemed satisfied as they surveyed their handiwork: three large bookcases filled nearly top to bottom with books of various shapes and sizes. “I mean, it’s not a grand library, yet, but I know lesser Noble houses that would kill to have even this many magical texts. Abyss, we probably have more genuine magic books than the Scholar’s Library. You should be proud. You’ve put in a lot of hard work and all that elbow grease is finally starting to pay off. Speaking of paying off, now that you and I are bonafide Librohexers with access to our own Interspatial Library, we can finally learn the cool spells. The big spells. You ready to get magical?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “More utility spells? Maybe a spell of floor sweeping, or a Mystic Ritual of Dewey Decimal Sorting?”

“Please. Everyone knows rituals are overpriced enchantments and totally bogus,” Bill growled matter-of-factly. “I’m talking about magic-goes-boom spells. I’m talking fury from heaven spells! I’m talking armies of paper spells! See, that’s the thing. Everything that we’re going to learn now, we literally couldn’t have used as a mere Bibliomancer. The component costs are too high. Even if I would have taught them to you, there would’ve been no way to cast them.”

“Now that we have this bad boy?” Bill was positively giddy as he looked around the area. “Well, that’s a different story entirely. We’re going to bury our enemies in books and drown them in ink. I’m thinking we’ll start with a nasty area-of-effect spell that has lots of versatility—like I said, huge cost associated, but that’s going to become irrelevant before too long. Go grab that copy of Fundamentals of Meteorological Magic, would ya?”

Sam pulled down a thick volume covered in gilt edging. The book was a complicated one that covered a myriad of different meteorological phenomenon, along with certain explanations of how mana manipulation could be used to achieve similar results. There were two spells that Bill was interested in and both were located near the back. The first was an incantation for conjured rain. Essentially, it allowed the caster to summon a storm cloud capable of dumping monsoon levels of water over a given point for a short period of time. Powerful, though straightforward and simple.

When Sam pointed out that the spell was designed predominately for agricultural irrigation and not for combat, Bill just cackled like a loon. “In the right hands, anything can be used for combat. Remember, some skills and abilities have compatible synergy. That means they work together in such a way that you can combine them together into a single, new, awesome skill. The College always frowned on Initiates ‘creating’ unauthorized types of magic, but that was one of my specialties. Now, my question to you is this: do we make a very dangerous damage per second spell… or do we make a powerful crowd control spell? The real question is: which would you rather have? Bear in mind we only have the resources for one?”

Sam only had to think about that for a second. “Crowd control.”

In Eternium, most spells didn’t have the capacity to distinguish between friendly and hostile forces. If he cast a spell that did lots of damage for long periods of time, there was a good chance it would cause splash damage to his fellow teammates. If he were playing solo, there’s no doubt that’s the direction he’d go, but since he planned on operating with a team, a crowd control spell was the better option. He needed to make sure he was the best packmate he could be.

With his new bonuses as a Master bookbinder, learning ‘Storm Cloud Conjuration’ was a piece of cake. As soon as the spell officially appeared on his status sheet, Bill had him combine that with both Ink Lance and Weak Paralysis. That was more than a little concerning, since both spells were staples in Sam’s current offensive line up, but Bill assured him the payout would be worth it.

Since they were combining three skills, the cost was a staggering two hundred gold. He could foot the bill with plenty left to spare, thanks to his chicken earnings. Combining a skill with another took twelve hours, plus an additional twelve hours per skill added, but thanks to his Experimental Forger Title, that time was reduced by fifteen percent.

Extreme skill synergy detected! Storm Cloud Conjuration, Ink Lance, and Weak Paralysis all share similar features and can be combined to form a new skill. By paying two hundred gold, you can combine these three skills into one single unique skill. The level of the new skill will be the average of the original skills, and any remaining skill points (rounded up) will be returned as free skill points! If you do not have the necessary gold on hand, you may combine these skills at a later date or choose to have the money taken from your bank account.

You are about to combine three skills: Storm Cloud Conjuration, Ink Lance, and Weak Paralysis. Are you sure? Yes / No.

He hated to see good spells go, but he trusted Bill’s wisdom and hit ‘yes’.

Time until skills have combined: 20:24:00.

In a flash, the knowledge regarding all three spells was rudely ripped from his head, gone in a snap of the fingers. Not only could he no longer cast or inscribe any of the spells, Sam couldn’t even fathom how he had ever been able to do so. It was a disorienting experience that left him feeling momentarily queasy. This wasn’t his first rodeo, and before long the sensation passed.

Next, Bill had him learn a second spell from Fundamentals of Meteorological Magic, this one a powerful offensive Whirlwind Cantrip. It was a spell that was closely associated with the Aeolus Sorcerer, the very class Sam had once been before joining his Core and fate with Bill as a Bibliomancer. The spell was a powerhouse that called forth a massive whirlwind that would cut and slash anything that got in its path of destruction.

Naturally, Sam couldn’t cast it.

Bill took care of that too, by having him merge two more skills—Rorschach Test and Paper Pigeon, an odd combination Sam would have never tried on his own. But, once again, he received an extreme skill synergy notification. Bill could be an annoying know-it-all, but the fact that he was a skill trainer who did pretty much know it all definitely had its perks from time to time.

Sam spent another two hundred gold and received another twenty-hour notice. While they waited for their two new spells to combine, Sam sat down in a meditative pose and went back through his notifications from the day before, reading through the other new spells he’d earned after unlocking his Libriohexer Specialization.

Mummify (Beginner I): Unleash a flurry of flying paper that wraps around a target, binding them in a cocoon of Papier-Mache. Opponents must make a saving throw against Dexterity or Mummify will incapacitate them for .5n minutes, where ‘n’ is equal to the skill level. Beginning at the Apprentice Level, Mummify can target more than one opponent at a time, and at the Journeyman Level, Mummify has a 1n% chance of controlling the mummified opponent causing them to fight on behalf of the caster for the duration of the spell. Production Cost: 20 Mana per second until spell script is completed or the attempt has failed. Casting Cost: 50 sheets of paper per cast.

On the surface, it seemed like Mummify was a more powerful version of Weak Paralysis. It probably wouldn’t be effective against a Rogue or any other high Dexterity build, like a Ranger or Monk, but it would be a great ace in the hole against beefy Constitution-based tanks or spell-slinging mages. If he could level the skill up to the Journeyman rank, he’d be able to not only target multiple enemies at once, he would be able to conscript them into his army.

Origami Costume (Beginner I): Paper is a versatile material, and when combined with the right inks it can be folded and formed into intricate costumes capable of hiding not just your clothes, but even your identity. Wrap a marked target in a layer of flexible and versatile Papier-Mache, which can perfectly mimic clothing or armor. Origami Costume does not count as Mage-Armor and offers no additional protections against damage, but it does mask all negative titles while active. Cost: 20 Mana per second until spell script is completed or the attempt has failed. Casting Cost: 25 sheets of paper per cast.

Sam nearly salivated after reading through the description of Origami Costume. His Mask of the Plucky Rebel was an amazing item, but the problem was they couldn’t get another one. Sphinx’s Infiltrate ability could also help conceal negative status, but as with the mask, it had severe limitations. Namely, she couldn’t use it on more than a handful of people at any given time. But with this spell, the only limitation was the resource component. As the Wolf Pack recruited, their sabotage missions would only get bigger and more elaborate; this would allow them to gain access to all sorts of human establishments; and all the prepared spell books in them.

The next last two spells were summoning-oriented, and the material costs of each gave Sam actual heart palpitations.

Origami Structure (Beginner I): Create a Papier-Mache Wall that measures 5 feet wide by four feet tall by two feet thick. The wall acts as a semi-permanent barrier and cannot be moved until it is destroyed or reabsorbed by the caster. The created wall can bear up to 500 pounds and acts as a summoned creature with 250 HP.

The wall will absorb damage until its HP is fully depleted and will then disintegrate, consuming all used materials. The caster may reabsorb the wall at any point; material reclamation is equal to the total percentage of remaining Health that the structure has. For example, 100% of the material will be reclaimed if the wall is at undamaged, while only 90% of the material would be reclaimed for a wall at 225 HP. A damaged/recalled Origami Structure may be recast without supplemental materials but will spawn with the same amount of Health Points it had when recalled.

Origami Structure has an addition .75 resistance against the element effects wind and earth but suffers an additional 0.75 damage against the elemental effects fire and water. As this skill advances, you will be able to create larger and more intricate structures with progressively higher HP values. Production Cost: 50 Mana per second until spell script is complete or attempt has failed. Casting Cost: 150 sheets of paper per cast.

Origami Guardian - Small (Beginner I): Summon a small origami guardian inside of an unoccupied space within a thirty-foot radius of your location. These origami guardians are completely loyal to you and are friendly to your companions. Although lower-level origami creatures are not necessarily the sharpest crayons in the toolshed, they will obey all verbal commands given by the caster and will defended themselves or allies, unprompted, against threats.

Summoned Small Guardians have the following stats: Strength, 7; Dexterity, 6; Constitution, 8; Intelligence, 5; Wisdom, 3; Charisma, 3; Perception, 5; Hit Points, 90. The Small Origami Guardian will absorb damage until its HP is fully depleted and will then disintegrate, consuming all used materials. The caster may reabsorb the summoned guardian at any point; material reclamation is equal to the total percentage of remaining Health that the creature has. A damaged/recalled Origami Guardian may be recast without supplemental materials but will spawn with the same number of Health Points it had when recalled.

The caster may have an active number of Small Origami Guardians equal to 1n where n = skill level. List of currently available small creatures to select from when creating an Origami Guardian - Small: Horned rabbit, Feral Fox, Jelly (non-elemental), Chicken, Maintenance Automaton Keeper. Origami Guardians have an additional .75 resistance against the element effects wind and earth but suffer an additional 0.75 damage against the elemental effects fire and water. Production Cost: 30 Mana per second until spell script is complete or attempt has failed. Casting Cost: 150 sheets of paper per summoned creature.

Summoned Shelf of Casting (Apprentice IV): You have learned a sub-variant of Orbital Tome of Casting, Summoned Shelf of Casting! Summoned Shelf of Casting can be used in lieu of Orbital Tome of Casting as a spell casting mechanism and has the same rank as the primary skill, Orbital Tome of Casting. Because of the high cost associated with many Libirohexer spells, the Libriohexer summons not a single tome—or even six—but an entire bookshelf worth of firepower.

The bookshelf itself must first be magically enhanced and permanently bound as a summoned totem. Once prepared, it can be called at will from the Interspatial Library and will be tethered to the caster until it is dispelled back to the Interspatial Library. The enchanted bookshelf levitates above the ground and its position can be shifted by the Libriohexer with the merest thought. Only one bookshelf may be summoned at any given point, and the bookshelf cannot be more than ten feet away from the caster at any given time. The Libriohexer can still utilize Orbital Tome of Casting as a spell casting mechanic, but Orbital Tome of Casting and Summoned Shelf of Casting can not be equipped as the Primary Casting Method at the same time.

“What did I tell you?” Bill crowed as Sam finished reading. “Awesome, right? You wanted to go with Biblioblade… aren’t you glad you listened to me and stayed the course? I mean, sure, the material production costs are through the roof, but thanks to your chicken farm we’ve essentially created a book making mill, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Still going to have some wicked hand cramps,” Sam stared at the production cost for his Origami minions and his Papier-Mache Structure. “Even with Auto-Writing and Transcription Twining.”

“Eh, we’ll get that ironed out eventually,” Bill whispered in a conspiratorial tone, “but until then, best you get working. You’re not just the Legs in this relationship, you’re also the hands. Those spells aren’t going to write themselves.”

Sam sighed and headed over to his work desk. He was sure that Libriohexer was going to be a blast, but he didn’t realize just how much writing it would involve. He glanced at the countdown clock for his new skills. Twenty-hours left to go. “Better get a pot of tea. It’s going to be a long day.”