Chương 34: It Could Be Done [Part 2/2]

Instead of explaining to Scarlet why they had no time to sit there talking theory the Historian simply stood up and once more wandered off with the expectation she would follow him. Of course, he was correct. What was Scarlet going to do? Let herself be left behind? It just irked her that he didn't show even a modicum of courtesy. Where are we going?" Scarlet asked. Scarlet's gaze followed him as he crossed the office to an inconspicuous door that almost blended in with the walls.

"Your real office?" She asked? Lips twitching up at the corner. The Historian glanced back over his shoulder and Scarlet could sense the hints of amusement radiating off him.

"Someday, perhaps." He shrugged.

"Now come along, little human," he said, as the door in front of him slid open.

"We are going to the library." Scarlet rose carefully, suppressing a wince as her body reminded her of the abuse she'd been putting it through for the last day and a half. She had a fleeting thought that her VIT was about to shoot up. She collected her cane, slipped the puzzle back into her pocket, and followed the fast-moving fox person.

"So, it is possible, then? This saturation. Is it possible for me?" she asked as she caught up.

"That's what we will need to find out," he said. He led her out of the office and into a glass lined hallway that gave her a clear view of the atrium. The tower was extraordinary. The shifting stone, the mineral light, the quiet fox-people moving through their vertical city. That was not to mention the beautiful natural aesthetics of the architecture. Scarlet wanted a moment to take it all in. The Historian did not give her one.

Instead, he led her to a wall of lifts, all tucked unobtrusively behind a carved arch of dark stone and pale crystal. They looked, absurdly, like something from the nineteenth century. A narrow metal cage, ornamental bars and polished panels. Delicate enough at first glance that Scarlet did not immediately trust it would hold her full weight. She could feel the fluctuations of mana emanating from the metal cage. It hummed through the frame with a smooth, contained steadiness.

The door slid open without either of them touching it. Scarlet eyed it. There were none of the modern door sensors she was familiar with, and Scarlet could not detect the mechanism that was used to detect them. It was a mystery. Scarlet liked solving those.

"How does the magic sensor work?" She asked as she stepped inside. The Historian just gave her a look; one she was quite familiar with despite it coming from a vulpine face. Scarlet didn't back down. Eventually he sighed.

"You answered the question yourself. Magic. That word is translating as mystical acts and energy. I can see how mana might be considered 'mystical' coming from a world bereft." The Historian nodded to himself, apparently having satisfied himself with his vague answer, and not much caring how Scarlet felt about it. The Historian stepped into the lift and the doors closed. The lift began to move with such smoothness that she could not tell whether they were going up, down, or sideways.

There was no lurch, no pressure shift, no terrible stretching sensation of teleportation. That alone put the device leagues ahead of travel via teleportation. By the time the door opened again, Scarlet couldn't even tell which direction they moved in. She was only even certain they had moved because the scenery had changed. The library beyond made the atrium seem almost restrained. It was not larger, exactly. Or perhaps it was?

but Scarlet was becoming increasingly suspicious of the tower's geometry and did not feel equipped to make definitive claims. The room curved outwards from the tower in a manner Scarlet was positive she would have noticed when looking at it from the outside. Tall windows sent muted light across dark floors veined with copper and green stone, while shelves rose in sweeping arcs along the walls and disappeared into shadowed upper tiers.

Tables of polished mineral and dark wood filled the open spaces, each surrounded by chairs clearly designed for creatures with tails. Scarlet slowed despite herself. Books, scrolls, stone tablets, crystal-bound codices, and things that looked like books only if one were being generous filled the shelves. Some glowed faintly. Some pulsed with mana. Others were sealed behind glass or suspended inside lattices of carved metal. The air smelled of paper, dust, resin, and something loamy, like rich earth after rainfall.

She wanted to bottle the experience of walking into this library. There it was. A library inside the United Vulpian Wizard Tower, almost certainly holding more relevant information than she could have realistically hoped to find anywhere else in the portal world. Wasn't this place exactly what she needed for the quest? Learn the history of the Vulpian Empire? Of course she'd ask the Historian as well, but even if he gave her a perfect and unbiased accounting, she'd still have to confirm what he said.

He didn't have a reason to lie to her, but he also didn't have a reason not to. Under any other circumstances, she would have stopped immediately and started cataloguing. Right now, she was more interested in this spontaneous leveling and why it was so important. She'd return later. Contrary to her expectation, there did not appear to be a dramatic keeper of the library standing watch over the shelves as was customary for such settings.

Instead, a few other fox-people were present, moving quietly between tables or reading in one of the plush little nooks Scarlet just knew Maus would love. Five days, she reminded herself. The Historian did not pause. He moved through the library at a brisk pace, and Scarlet followed. No one seemed inclined to question either of their presence as she and the Historian swept through the room. He led her toward the rear of the library, where there were no tall windows letting in 'natural' light.

The shelves here were darker, older. At the end of one row, a narrow staircase curved upward behind a stone arch. On the front center of the arch was a marking of some sort. Scarlet wasn't sure what it was or what it meant, but it radiated power. The feeling wasn't overwhelming, just potent. The Historian pressed one clawed hand against the arch, and a thin lattice of mana shimmered into being. Scarlet felt it scan him, then briefly brush against her before withdrawing.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The Historian glanced back.

"Private section." He stated.

"I do not recommend offending the archive."

"Does the archive offend easily?" Scarlet asked. His responding shrug was not reassuring. The stairs were narrow with only enough space for two people to brush past if one turned to the side. Scarlet eased her way up with deliberate care, letting the cane take enough of her weight to spare her side and leg. The medication and poultice were doing their jobs, but her body still had a great many opinions about being dragged up a staircase right now.

The private section they ended up in was smaller and warmer than the library below. It looked less like a place where books were stored and more like a place where knowledge was studied and answers pursued. The shelves here were lower, some of them tilted at an incline. The lighting was softer, and the tables larger, each one carved with inset channels of mineral and metal that Scarlet suspected served some function beyond decoration. The books here looked older as well. Heavier, and more dangerous.

The moment they were all the way inside, the Historian immediately pulled a tome from a shelf, a notebook from his robes and whirled on her.

"Tell me about your stat distribution," he said. Scarlet looked at him.

"Excuse me?"

"Your stats, what are we working with?" He began flipping through the thick tome on the table in front of them and began muttering to himself about soul reinforcement, or something. Scarlet took a seat beside him, as he slid the tome to the side. Scarlet watched in supressed astonishment as another book simply zipped from a shelf and placed itself on the table in front of the fox. He had used magic. She had felt as he had used magic to recall the book.

She looked down at the book he was flipping through, her mind silent as the gravity of this new reality began to dawn on her. Magic. Real objects floating through empty air, 'invisible hand' type magic. The emotions she'd only been somewhat throttling before she now chocked off ruthlessly. She couldn't afford this right now. She had too much to do. The Historian's voice cut off her musing.

"Well?" he demanded.

"My stats?"

"Yes," he said, pulling forward a notepad and prompting Scarlet to bring out her own, which she made look like she'd pulled from her jacket pocket.

"Let me be clear," he continued.

"I do not know that saturation is possible for you. The only reason I'm even considering something so absurd is because you're from a newly integrated world. I just can't believe you have enough or will have enough FS to allow for full saturation without extraordinary conditions.

"Now, we can create some extraordinary conditions. I just need to know how extraordinary they need to be." He clarified. She studied him in silence for while, expression blank. Was she getting ahead of herself? Was she about to trust this guy? This could be a terrible mistake, or an incredible opportunity. Or both, sometimes it was both. The Historian shut the cover of one of the books. It was a casual motion, but it caught Scarlet's attention.

"If you are not going to give me anything to work with, I am not sure how you expect us to work together at all," he said. That was fair. Besides, could she afford not to trust him, at least with some of her information. It's not like he wouldn't have exact numbers if they managed to succeed. She needed every edge. Anything that made her survivability more likely. Anything that might prevent what happened to Maus from happening again. She cut off that train of thought before it could leave the station.

"How many points do you actually have?" he asked again. More gently this time. Perhaps he'd sensed something from her despite her tight control.

"When you reach Level Ten, assuming no further anomaly, how far short of FS will you be from full Tier 0 saturation potential?" Scarlet did the math. Then, making up her mind, and going with her intuition she spoke.

"Twenty."

"In each? Well, that is…"

"No," she cut in softly. The Historian stilled.

"Total." Scarlet couldn't figure out why the silence that followed was so deeply satisfying. She just knew it was. The fox person's eyes narrowed.

"What is the real number?" He asked. Scarlet just shook her head, expression unchanged.

"Fifteen," she said. The noise he made was small, sharp, and shockingly close to a squeak. Scarlet just watched as he abruptly stood and began pacing.

"Fifteen," he repeated.

"Total. Across seven core stats. At Level Seven or Eight, unless I am thoroughly mistaken in my assessments." He paused.

"No, impossible. Which means… Yes, it changes if–""Seven," she said. He looked at her. Clearly exhausted, obviously wounded, and yet managing to sit with an air of dignity and poise. The Historian sneered and made a soft clicking noise. Those appears-put-together-despite-all-circumstance types of people were the worst. Then her words registered.

"Level Seven," he said.

"Yes." His excitement flared so strongly that Scarlet suspected even people without powers could feel it.

"It's doable," he grinned that unsettling grin. Then his mood tanked, before shooting up once more. Scarlet wondered if it was possible to get second hand emotional whiplash.

"You just had to go and invent a faction, didn't you?" Scarlet blinked once. A faction? What faction? What did that have to do with anything. Wait. StarNet? The spontaneous level, the passive experience. Of course! Perhaps the System was counting newly created accounts as members joining a faction? The Historian was muttering again. There was a book floating steady in front of him pages turning on their own as he mumbled. He turned to her, tapping an open page.

"If we start this, I cannot make any promises or guarantees," he said. Scarlet's gaze sharpened.

"So, it is possible then? Also, it's fine. I know how it goes. Once we begin, I won't be able to quit. I'll have to stick it out–""Pardon?" The Historian looked genuinely offended.

"Of course you will be able to quit. What do you take me for?"

"What do you mean?" He drew himself up.

"I will have you know I have my scholar's licence. I am not one of the One Hundred for nothing. I have never conducted a study on a sapient without explicit consent." Scarlet understood perhaps half of those words in the way he meant them. Also, what was this one hundred? It had sounded strange when he said it. She had a feeling the Guide wasn't quite translating the meaning. The important part, however, was clear. She could leave at any point. If she needed to.

"Of course, if you were to leave us, I would have to request compensation for time and resources wasted," he said. There was a dangerous cast to his energy that told her she probably couldn't afford the 'compensation', and she didn't want to be indebted to this creature. For some reason, she got the feeling he was more than just a being in a tower in a pocket world. Well, that was fine. She'd never planned to quit partway. That did not mean she trusted him. Just that she felt they had a mutual understanding.

"Alright," she said.

"Yes, quite," he replied, as though offended she had made him clarify basic ethics, despite ending with a silent threat. Then he turned back to the book, pages flipping so quickly even her advanced perception couldn't pick anything out.

"Before we can confirm anything we need your baseline."

"Baseline?"

"I can make no definitive statements before testing," he said.

"Capacity, aptitude, tolerance, and discipline. You require at least all four to a high degree just to get a single stat to saturation at any tier. We need to know where you measure, stat by stat.

"Even if we stuffed you full of FS and trained you like a circus pet, even if you had all the discipline and tolerance in the world, unless you have the aptitude you won't reach saturation. We need to know before we make the attempt." He reached into his robe and withdrew a small object that looked, at first glance, like a compact mirror. The exterior was made from dark metal and polished stone, with a silvery surface that shimmered when he opened it.

Scarlet felt mana shift through the device, then something like an energy pulse pinging outward. Between one breath and the next, a person appeared on the surface.

"Prepare the testing chamber," the Historian said. Someone on the other side responded in the affirmative. It did not say enough for Scarlet to really parse anything about them. The Historian closed it with a decisive click and then stood.

"Where are we going?" Scarlet asked. His ears twitched.

"My dear," he said, "this is a library."

"Yes, but you have yet to tell me what we're doing," Scarlet waited.

"Merciful spirits," the Historian looked up before shaking his head as if in consternation.

"We will be doing some physical testing. Any books we need can be brought." He said, floating the one he was taking with them into her field of view. Scarlet opened her mouth, considered several possible responses, and closed it again. Then she stood, swayed, and promptly collapsed.