Library of Rain

Path Forward

When Rain came back to herself, the first thing she saw was Ise’s sleeping face an inch away from her own. Rain smiled and gently patted the bigger girl on the head. 

Not wanting to interrupt her sister’s chance to make a new friend, Rain slipped out of the bed as smoothly as she could, feeling like an assassin from the stories. After she got out without waking up the target, Rain posed and tried to think of a cool assassin catchphrase. She failed. 

Oh well. Playing aside, Rain needed to take care of some things while Sunrise was asleep. 

Rain slipped into the sitting room before pulling the black book out of her pocket. She turned it over in her hands, examining every inch of it. It was so small and unassuming, yet she had found it in such an ominous place. Just picking it up had caused her to dream about it all night. What would reading from it do?

Pondering aside, Rain already knew what she was going to do; she was just procrastinating. Rain took one last breath and opened the book.

Nothing.

The first page was blank except for a single line written at the top: ‘Project Blueprints and Theories #74 - Amagustus.’  Rain didn’t feel anything, so she flipped to the next page, which was blank. So was the page after that. Rain flipped through the entire book and found nothing, not a word or a blueprint.

Why had this been locked in a hidden room? Was it a trap to mislead people? She supposed it had been too easy to steal it, so maybe the real prize in that room had been something else. Though, that didn’t explain why the book was following her or why she dreamed about it. 

Rain leafed through the book again, but it was still blank. She went back to the first page and reread the single line. Who or what was Amagustus, and was it too hard to ask for some important blueprints in the book she had gained close to ten percent corruption to obtain?

Frustrated by the book, Rain decided to get a bit of revenge. She walked over to the Lucus bait, picked up a paintbrush, and opened a jar of green paint. Rain proceeded to paint a flower in the book right under the sole Line. 

“Heh, heh, take that cursed book!”

The book didn’t rise to her provocation and give away what it might be. Well, that was anticlimactic. She had built up this expectation in her head that this must be some big secret that no one was supposed to know about. 

Disappointed, Rain tossed the open book onto the table to let the paint dry. If nothing else, she could use the book to take notes for herself, especially if it kept following her around. 

Just as she made that decision, Mr. Purple decided to bleed into existence before her.

[Congratulations: Oru is amused by your actions in releasing knowledge feared by the Aimir. Oru would like to reward you with the limited skill: Librarian’s Search. Do you accept?]

[Message: A little gift for you, Champion. Use it to prepare for the coven.]

Rain stared at the messages for a long minute. She decided not to think about the fact that Oru was apparently watching her, though she made a note to only think aloud when she didn’t mind him hearing. No, the real problem was that she had no idea what information she had released! Had some knowledge escaped the pages of the black book? Was that why the pages were now blank? Or was everything written in invisible handwriting? Maybe it had nothing to do with the book at all. 

Rain sighed and reread the messages. Was Aimir the same thing as Zimir? Rain assumed it was different. After all, if Oru was related to the Zimir and he was also glad that information that the Aimir feared was loose then it was safe to say the two were different. 

Suddenly feeling drained, Rain flopped onto the couch. 

“What does ‘Librarian’s Search’ do, Mr. Pruple?”

[Librarian’s Search: Think of Information you wish to find in the Library of Oru, and the skill will guide you there at the cost of permanently raising physical corruption by one percent.]

The skill was exactly what Rain needed, which put her on edge. Oru didn’t seem like the type to give gifts for no reason; the last time he’d done that was when Rain embarrassed Agro. Rain had assumed Oru gave her that skill so she would continue to make trouble for one of his rivals.

Regardless, Rain decided to accept, and the Limited Skills section on her page reappeared with Librarian’s Search listed under it along with the number three. She was supposed to use those three charges to learn about the Coven of the Zimir or maybe just the Zimir. That would help her prepare for the coven, but Rain didn’t like doing whatever the mysterious Prince of Darkness wanted. Besides, three charges weren’t nearly enough; Rain planned to take far more than that from Oru.

Perking up at the idea of getting one over on someone for a change, Rain sat up. It was time to apply what Linette had told her. She would get some practice making skilled items, then use one charge of her limited skill to find a method to turn the limited skill into a skilled item that she could reuse indefinitely. She would use the crumbs that Oru offered her to steal the whole pie. 

She looked at the black book on the table one last time before shrugging. There wasn’t anything she could do about it right now other than keep it close. Until she had an idea, she might as well do what she could.

Rain hopped off the couch and walked to the bathroom door. She had already thought long and hard about what skill to try to turn into a skilled item; the only skill that might be useful was ‘Door to the Library.’ ‘Truth Sight’ might have been better, allowing others to see lies, but that was a passive skill, and Rain didn’t know how she could cast that, let alone cast it outside her body. So ‘door’ it was.

Rain grabbed the handle of the bathroom door and focused on her skill. Like always, she felt something drain from her as she opened the door to reveal the usual black veil. She closed the door and did it again, but this time, she tried to force the skill to not fully activate. 

The door opened to reveal the same dark veil.

Rain tried again and again and again, with the same results. Closing the door, Rain focused on her arm and the shimmer misting off of it. She used the skill and opened the door.

She noticed that after she activated the skill, the mist her skin let off was denser in a stream, running from her shoulder to her fingers. She assumed that was the skill running down her arm to affect the door. 

Getting excited, Rain tried to force that stream out of her arm without activating. She held her breath and watched as nothing happened. She wasn’t even able to get the skill to activate at all, let alone getting it to form outside her body.

Rain sighed. She should have expected that it wouldn’t be easy or they would have skilled items for every skill. The fact that someone like Linette could spend all their time trying to create a single new type of skilled Item just went to show that it wasn’t easy. Rain just hoped that she might be special or something. 

Nothing to do but break the problem down and work on it one piece at a time. 

Rain used the skill, not trying to do anything funny this time; instead, she focused on her body. She wanted to know where the skill was first activated. Like before, she felt the skill activate and run down her arm, but this time, she saw exactly where it formed. When she first felt the skill, she saw the shimmer right over her heart thicken. 

Was that where all skills started? Rain placed her home coin across from her on the table and looked at her chest as she warped to it. Sure enough, the shimmer around her chest thickened before spreading out to cover her entire body. 

So the heart was the activation point of skills. Or at least it was for the two active skills Rain could currently test with ease. If that was the case then the first step to creating a skilled item would be to learn to activate skills from a different part of the body. 

The natural location to do this was clearly the stomach. It wasn’t far to move the activation point and Rain thought it would be funny to use skills from her belly button. Okay, it was mostly because of the belly button thing. And like that, Rain spent the next hour staring at her belly while opening and closing the bathroom door.

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