Chương 26: Don’t Judge a Book

"Lock." Enzo pulled the bookstore's door open after hearing the click.

"Magic will never get old," Kenzo said with awe.

"You've gotta teach me how to do something like that." Enzo glanced at him and grinned.

"No can do. Wizard privilege only. You'll have to settle for headbutting things open." Kenzo chuckled as they filed in. The store was untouched. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, tables stacked with displays, and a reading nook in the back corner. The air smelled like paper and dust and the faint sweetness of old wood. But there was no broken glass. No ransacked shelves. Nobody had thought to raid the bookstores yet. Their loss.

"Alright," Enzo said, leaning on his cane as he surveyed the layout.

"Survival guides first. Anything on first aid, emergency medicine, water purification, outdoor subsistence. Then we branch out." The group split up among the aisles. Sumi's voice drifted from somewhere near the back.

"There's an entire section on local plants. Edible species of Northern California. And a foraging guide." A pause.

"Oh, and vegetable gardening. This is good."

"Grab all of it," Enzo called back. Val had found her way to what sounded like the outdoor recreation section.

"Hunting and trapping over here. Fishing techniques. Bow making." She pulled something from the shelf.

"Beginner snares. That could be useful." There was a thud from across the store as Kenzo grabbed an entire shelf's worth of books and dropped them on a table.

"Food preservation," Sumi announced.

"Canning, smoking, drying, pickling. There's a whole shelf." Enzo grabbed a thick first-aid manual from the health section, flipped through it, and added it to his own small pile. With it he placed a field guide to edible mushrooms and a book on composting. Then he made his way to the travel and reference section. Maps. Topographic guides to Marin County. Trail maps for Mt. Tamalpais and the surrounding watershed. A road atlas of the Bay Area. He pulled them all.

After those, he found a slim volume on celestial navigation and a star chart for the Northern Hemisphere. A book on compass use and land navigation went on top. He stopped at a shelf labeled 'Science and Nature' and ran his fingers along the spines. Then he pulled out a geology field guide and a book on mineral identification. He flicked through them with a bit of nostalgia. Before his grandfather died, Enzo had been studying geophysics.

When Gramps had passed, he'd left Enzo the boutique store anyway, trusting fifteen years of weekend visits and quiet lessons to mean more than Enzo had understood at the time. Back then, the store had felt like proof of everything he had failed to become. After the accident, it became somewhere to keep his hands busy when the rest of him had nowhere useful to go. He'd always had a talent for the work, but not even learning to love the art made the losses any easier.

"Hey, guys," he called out.

"You know how wizard spell forms are kind of symbolic? Each thread carries a conceptual purpose?"

"Yeah," Sumi called back.

"Is it the same for what sorcerers do with circulations?"

"Yep," Val said.

"I think so," Kenzo added.

"But I only just started and Val is a terrible teacher." A book sailed over the rows of shelves, and Kenzo's hand shot up and caught it without looking. He glanced at the cover, made an approving face, and added it to his pile.

"It's not the sensei's fault that the student is a bipedal boulder," Val shouted. Enzo ignored them.

"I've been thinking about spell ideas, but I don't know where to begin with some of them. Like your spells, Sumi. You said they only worked because you understood the biological processes to some degree, right?" Sumi appeared at the end of his aisle, arms already full.

"I think so. When I was constructing the spell forms for the first time, I was imagining what I wanted them to do. Other mages at the hospital failed even the basic spells until they started doing that." She frowned.

"I know it sounds contradictory, but Heal doesn't just magically make the problem go away. It speeds up their biological processes, making natural healing that should take weeks happen in seconds." Enzo nodded.

"Right. And now we know we can improve a spell's design. We just need to know what we're trying to achieve and change the form to carry more ideas. Which makes me think complex spells will require greater knowledge." He paused.

"So, if I wanted to create a spell that sent out a pulse of mana which returned with actual information, I'd probably need more than a basic conceptual understanding, right?" Sumi rose onto her toes, peering over the shelf with a frown.

"That's an interesting idea. And you might be right, but our spell range is really limited. Even if we assume a spell can travel three or four times further than our casting range, we're talking maybe forty meters."

"For now. Maybe we can create an adaptation for Mana Control that extends spell range." She brightened.

"Is that what you're thinking of making for yours?" The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Enzo shrugged.

"I don't know. Maybe. Or something that lets me construct spell forms faster. Or makes it easier to manage all the threads at once." He slid the geology guide into the crook of his arm.

"I haven't decided."

"Maybe you can finally fix your mana conversion problem when Absorption hits level ten," Val called out from wherever she'd wandered. He thought about it, then made a face.

"Not if we're right about people having types they're natural at. I probably just haven't found my type yet."

"True. I can barely feel life and water and wind, so that's kind of like you sucking at everything so far." Enzo glared in the direction of her voice. Kenzo leaned around the end of the aisle.

"Don't worry, bro. I suck at fire, so I'm right there with you. She made me keep trying for like an hour." Enzo refocused.

"Okay, forget the conversion stuff for now. What would I need to understand if I wanted to create a magical sonar? Something that sends a pulse out and maps what's around me based on what bounces back?" Kenzo straightened.

"Acoustics. Basically, you'd need to understand how waves propagate through different mediums like air and water. That means frequency and wavelength. Then material conductivity for impedance and reflection." He scratched his jaw.

"Probably be useful to understand attenuation, too." Enzo nodded. That matched his own thoughts.

"And if I wanted a spell that could analyze the properties of something? Give me feedback on the object's composition? But leaning more toward reading any magical properties?"

"That's more like spectroscopy. You hit something with energy and measure what comes back. Different materials absorb and reflect differently depending on their composition." Kenzo shrugged.

"Bro, you already know most of this stuff. Physics was more your jam than mine. Just grab a textbook for a refresher. Maybe chemistry and materials science, too, if you're worried about it." Sumi was staring at Kenzo. He noticed and raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Nothing. I just wasn't expecting that." Kenzo chuckled.

"Yeah, I get that a lot."

"Big guy was the smartest after Claire," Enzo said, pulling a thick physics book from the shelf.

"Not so sure now that he's been professionally headbutting people."

"Third smartest." Enzo glanced up.

"We aren't having this argument again. Claire was the perfect student. You were the dumb jock genius who took second place every year."

"Only 'cuz you slept through class all the time, bro." Enzo shook his head, dropping what wasn't really an argument, anyway. Then he grabbed a chemistry reference, a heavy engineering and materials science textbook, and after a moment's consideration, an introduction to acoustics. The material analysis spell would have to wait until he understood the principles well enough to form a coherent intent. But the sonar concept felt within reach. And the spell form might be partially reusable for analyzing items.

He made his way toward the front of the store and found Kenzo by the fiction section. The big man had an armful of paperbacks, all of them featuring shirtless men and women in various states of embrace on the covers. Enzo stopped.

"What are you doing?" Kenzo turned to him with complete sincerity.

"Bro, we gotta be thinking about morale." Enzo looked at the pile. Novels. Board games. Cards. Then back at Kenzo's earnest face.

"You're grabbing romance novels."

"For our sanity, man." He hefted the stack.

"What happens when people get bored? When we have one too many days dealing with Eaters and going hungry? A little escapism goes a long way."

"You're unbelievable."

"I'm a visionary." He added two more to the pile.

"Besides, Val told me I should read more."

"So you chose," Enzo reached out and lifted the corner of one to reveal its cover, "'Wolf or Fang: Torn Between' to preserve my sanity?"

"Yeah, bro." Kenzo nodded sincerely.

"Exactly." Enzo stared at him a moment longer, then shook his head and headed for the door.

"Now I need a spell to cleanse my mind." Sumi appeared from between the shelves and joined him outside.

"That sounds like a great idea, too!" She began stacking books in the panniers on her bike.

"Just thinking about potential spells is so much fun. I keep wondering what we might achieve if we could just get the basics figured out."

"Yeah." Enzo sighed.

"Be nice if the Guide understood we don't have mentors and whatever a magical technician is." Val shouldered through the doorway.

"That'd make it too easy." Then she poured books from her arms into the packs, having to grab a few that spilled over. Kenzo stepped out of the store last, took one look at the rapidly filling storage options, and hesitated.

"Uh. What about all my stuff?" Enzo looked up and down the street. Then he pointed to a shopping cart further down the road.

"There you go." Kenzo leaned around his pile to look at it.

"Oh, hell yeah." He grinned.

"That's going to come in handy for so many things."

Kenzo's words turned out prophetic. The team hit a few other places on the way home. Hardware stores. Camping and outdoor supplies. The garden center. Unlike the bookstore, the others had plenty of people avoiding each other, each trying to grab what they needed without looking like they were taking too much. Even though Enzo insisted his father had their needs covered when it came to their hardware needs, the group chose to err on the side of caution. He didn't argue too hard.

One shopping cart became five, with Kenzo managing two himself, and everyone else deciding to chain them to the back of the bikes. They went for the essentials. Nails and screws. Wire mesh and chains. Tarps and plastic sheeting. Duct tape, zip ties, cord, rope, padlocks. Hand-powered tools. Buckets. Piping. Axes and saws. Whetstones. Lots of the valuable things were gone. Portable wood stoves and fire-starting equipment, lamps and oil.

Even the generators and fuel containers, though those last items weren't likely to be as useful as people were hoping. Radios, walkie-talkies, and batteries, too. The camping and outdoor supply stores came next. Again, they'd missed out on a lot of the valuables. Much of it was the same, too. Firestarters and waterproof matches. Water purification and portable filters. Survival packs. Ready-to-eat rations and energy bars. Headlamps and lanterns. Camp stoves and fuel canisters. All gone.

As were all the firearms and ammunition. And the bows, crossbows, arrows, and bolts. They didn't walk out empty-handed, though. Everything else had been picked over, but plenty remained. Sleeping bags and thermal blankets. Fishing line, hooks, and nets. A few knives. Enzo picked up more maps and threw in a few compasses to go with them. The others grabbed waterproof backpacks, binoculars, canteens, insect repellent, and sunscreen. Kenzo made sure they picked up some sewing packs and repair kits on their way out.

By the time they reached the massive garden center, the carts were already packed high. They wouldn't have room for much, but what they took was essential. Seed packets. None of them knew anything about seasons or climates or soil suitability in relation to gardening, so they just grabbed everything. There was no room for plants and soil mix, but they took a few watering cans, trowels, and garden forks, though they all agreed that returning later for any of the seedlings and fruit tree saplings was a must.

The trip home was subdued. The joke of raiding stores for supplies had worn thin somewhere between the empty shelves, the wary looks, and the fifth shopping cart chained behind a bike. The stares they received from people who might once have been neighbors and casual acquaintances, people they passed at the mall or sat next to at the lights, maybe even gone to school with, took on a darker layer. The shopping carts dragged behind them, loaded down with the weight of their families' survival.