Chapter 14 – I spent the night talking with a book.

[I am a Grimoire.]

Excuse me.

Getting used to this thing talking really was something ...

Anyway, for some reason, that may or may not be connected to my tragic back story™, I decided to not sleep that night.

At least for now.

At least until I had figured out how leveling up in this world would work exactly.

[You level up by collecting experience.]

[Though a leveling system does not exactly exist, I figured it would be the most understandable way for you to let your overall power be compared with others.]

That is kinda weird, but thank you for being considerate, I guess?

[It was a pleasure to do so, master.]

Oh no, did I get myself another servant?

[Oh, but master, I’d prefer if you’d call me your maid uwu (≧∇≦*)]

Wha- what’s that all of a sudden.

[I am just trying to keep the male/female ratio accordingly to certain people’s needs.]

Only two genders? As a Gen-Zer, I consider myself disappointed.

[My humblest apologies master (⌯˃̶᷄ ﹏ ˂̶᷄⌯)]

[Should I change your registered gender?]

Do as you see fit.

[Gender >>disappointed<< confirmed.]

Back from tasteless jokes to the important matter, that’s at hand here ... I have a “level” and “experience points,” how exactly do they work?

[While you have a level you don’t have experience points.]

[You only have experience, that can’t be measured as a number.]

[Through these experiences you change, which affects certain stats.]

So, right now, I am level 2, right?

[Precisely.]

What was the cause for my level up?

[Your battle in the underground chamber with the Succubus, as well as exposure to magic counted as accumulating experience.]

I did not do anything useful though ...

[Your health has increased, and you’ve gained the ability to learn spells.]

Okay, stop. While I’m really excited to cast magic myself, I have to file a complaint with the developer already. You can’t just measure health as a number, can you? I won’t lose HP, if someone blows me up. I’ll die!

[In that case your health would decrease by 105 points.]

And if I had 1000 points, I would still lose them all, right?

[Correct.]

See, that’s why it doesn’t make any sense, measuring my health as an absolute number, rather than a percentage.

[Incorrect.]

[This has to do with the way magic works for you.]

[Spells use up a certain amount of energy.]

[That energy is your blood.]

[By accumulating experience, you have also raised your blood reproduction by a certain degree, thus allowing you to now safely use the lowest class spells.]

Wait, stop. Again. So, you’re telling me that theoretically I can use any spell, that you know, but if I use something that needs more energy than I can provide ... what happens then?

[You die.]

Of course there’s a catch.

But then I suddenly remembered a conversation with Aster about his eyes, and how they use too much mana.

Why can’t I use mana for my spells?

[You don’t have a mana circulation.]

I... do not?

[That’s because you’re human.]

Of course, I am human, what else am I supposed to be?

[An Anthromagi like your friends for example.]

What? What’s the difference between the two?

[Error.]

Error?

[Error.]

Are you serious now?

It took me a lot of energy not to shout that out loud. In fact, I did not even realize that I had jolted upward. An omniscient Grimoire? Bullshit! Why can’t it tell me the most basic information?

“You can’t sleep?”

I jumped forward, not having expected someone to talk to me all of a sudden.

“Princess?” The princess suddenly approached me from where everyone else was sleeping. We pretty much stopped in the middle of nowhere due to the old lady’s weird ways. We left the cart standing on the roadside and moved into a field next to it. The princess had used her fire magic to slowly burn away the grass, creating a clearing where it would be safe for us to make a campfire. She had great control over her power it seemed.

“Please don’t call me that.” She sighed and then stopped next to me. I was standing further into the field, having leant against a tree, until a minute ago or so.

“What should I call you then?” I could not entire make out the features of her face. Only after concentrating for a couple of seconds, it seemed as if the moonlight got bright enough.

“By my name?” She paused. “I don’t know, my friends call me Aurie. But that’s weird, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t?”

Not having a nickname at all is.

“I’ll call you Aurelia then.”

“Alright.” She moved past me, letting herself slide down against the tree. I followed suit.

“What were you doing?”

“Oh, you know, just talking to my b- Grimoire.”

“So, what did it say?”

I thought about some witty answer for a second but decided to simply tell her the truth.

“Error,” I said and tried not to sound too bitter.

“Error?” she repeated.

“Well, after asking it what the key difference between a human and an ‘Anthromagi’ was” – (Yes, I put that in quotation marks) – “it just said error. So much for ‘I contain all knowledge of the world.’”

“You were looking for information about humankind?”

“Well, obviously since I am human and you are not, and there seems to be some difference, although we both look pretty much the same ...”

“Interestingly, I’ve also been doing some research. Well, at least I hoped one of the books I took with me would have some information on that.”

“Oh, so that’s what you were reading?”

“Yes. You know after that whole fight with Ebony I got interested and ordered some books from the state library.”

“You actually have books on that? I tried bribing the library of Dementia Mansion – its collection is huge – but that turned out not to be too much.”

“Yeah, all my reading so far pretty much amounted to nothing. It’s so incredibly weird, because look: the key difference, and as far as I am concerned only difference between the humans and the Anthromagi is that the latter have what is called a mana circulation parallel to their blood circulation-”

“I know about that ...”

“But humans don’t. Didn’t. Because they are extinct. But the weirdest thing is, I can’t find anything on that. No history books, research papers whatever. It is something that appears to be common knowledge but is not documented whatsoever. There have been publications talking about ... some sort of ancient civilization, but the word human is not once used. Oh, in fact, the one I was reading today was written by Raynard’s brother.” She giggled a little, probably to drown out the serious aura that was emanating from what she said.

“Was it any helpful?”

“No, not really. It was some sort of history book. Honestly much better than the ones used at Ataraxia. Actually, let me grab it real quick. You might want to get a grasp on what our world is like.”

She quickly stood up and I tried not to pay any attention to her skirt moving above me. Luckily, she then quickly jogged away to our campsite before returning, holding the book in both of her arms.

It was what you expected a history book to look like, thicker than the bible, in a generic leather binding. She sat next to me and spread the book between our legs so we could each look inside. Only problem was that it was a bit too dark for reading, which she also realized.

“Oh, let me just use some ... no wait. I’ve never seen you cast a spell,” she said.

“Well, I’m still figuring things out ...”

“Have you ever cast a spell?”

“That was actually what I was talking about with the Grimoire earlier.”

I took the Grimoire, that was just carelessly thrown onto the ground earlier. I opened it but wasn’t quite sure what to search for.

“What kind of spell, do you want me to look for?” I asked the princess.

“Actually, I was thinking about just explaining to you how it would work, but ... can you really just look it up in that thing?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never done it before.”

“Well, the spell I was thinking of is called luminae. It’s a spell to create a sphere of light.”

Luminae ...

Suddenly the page I had randomly opened first turned blank, before ink blots started appearing and spreading over the page, forming words, and finally resulting in what appeared to be the spell Luminae, with a short description, and how much mana it used. The princess of course wasn’t able to read it. I proceeded to read through the entire page, that gave me a detailed explanation on how to use the spell. It sounded a bit esoteric, I had to concentrate my energy onto my fingertips, until ...

“Woah, you did it!” The princess suddenly exclaimed.

“I did not even realize it!”

The tip of my index finger glowed, and we both looked at it in awe, even though for her it probably wasn’t the first time seeing someone use that spell.

Well, that was easier than I thought.

[You could have also downloaded the information directly into your mind, without having to read the entire page.]

“I could have done that?”

“What?” the princess responded.

“Oh, I was talking to the Grimoire. It told me that I could have downloaded the entire page about the spell into my mind.”

“... downloaded ...?”

Oops, I did not think about the possibility of her not understanding my vocabulary again ...

“Um, does ‘printing it into my brain’ work for you?”

“Ah, now I think I understand. Anyway, let’s take a look at this.” She said, tapping on the first opened page of the history book with her index finger.

“It is chronologically sorted, and thus begins with the creation of our world by the gods. Well, most people don’t actually believe in the work of gods anymore, but no one really has any explanation for how the world came to be either.”

I thought about how my world was supposedly created by the big bang, and I was thinking about telling her about it for a second. Eh, why the hell not.

“People in my world actually used to believe gods were the reason for everything too.”

“And now?”

“They don’t anymore, but they aren’t quite sure how everything works either.”

We shared a laugh, before returning to the book and her ... Aurelia talking to me about god, the world, and everything else we deemed insignificant at the time.