I've spent months after the deaths of Diana and the others just wallowing in misery, poisoning myself and procrastinating. I've kept up this destructive lifestyle of mine by destroying and robbing powerful and unjust nobles, infamous bandit gangs and anyone else I deemed unfit to live. In essence, I became the scourge of all those that do wrong and those that have any connection to them. Subordinates, lovers, friends, kids, I took it all. After all, if you want to pluck out a weed, you have to get out all of its roots.
But enough is enough, before completely destroying myself and the world around me, I still have to fulfill the last will of that idiot and for that, I have to return to my world. In order to achieve that goal, I started researching summoning magic - the very magic that brought us here. That's why I'm now in the city of mages, scholars and historians - the city of 'Babel'.
'Babel' is a city in the northern parts of the 'Cheliyan' kingdom. Legends say that it was built by the first human mage that roamed this world in the 'chaos' era - an era before kingdoms, where divided into the four that exist now. It was the era of constant war and bloodshed, humans fought with the elves, beast men, dwarfs, demons and even the gods.
The first mage, after studying the gods up close, deciphered a fraction of their power and took it for himself. Legends say that he was able to wield every element with considerable proficiency and established the city of 'Babel' and the 'Tower of Babel' in its center as a place to train other humans in wielding and comprehending magic.
And now I'm here, in the 'Great Library of Babel' - the place that houses all the knowledge humanity has collected over the years. Honestly, it's a pain to find anything in this place. The library is simply massive, it is said that it would be impossible to count all the books here and I am supposed to actually go through most of them in order to find what I need.
As you might have guessed, I'm not a big fan of reading, in fact I can barely read in the first place, so this is challenging. It's a good thing that when we were summoned, we were granted the ability to speak and understand the local language and writing system, but still… This is such a pain in the ass.
As you might have also guessed, this library isn't a place that you can just waltz in whenever you want. It's reserved for scholars and mages of the highest class. The bribe I had to give was inconceivable and I'm still allowed only to a part of the library. For some reason they don't want me touching the really old books. I guess they think that a brute like me might destroy them.
For the last two weeks, I've been basically living here, scouring the shelves for anything remotely involving summoning magic and here's what I've found out - 'Summoning' magic is one of the higher classes of 'light' magic. It allows you to call forth a spiritual being - a spirit or a spirit animal and, if both parties agree, forge a contract.
The summoner can theoretically call a spiritual being of any class, but in order to forge a contract, the summoner has to provide an exorbitant amount of mana for the being to materialize and sustain a body. Therefore, it's usual to call and contract a spirit one class lower than you.
Now, all of this sounds nothing like what happened to me and the others, so I kept digging until I found a really old document that entailed the summoning of human souls. It was a theoretical publication about 'necromancy' - one of the higher forms of 'black' magic. It reads that if done moments after death, you can reattach the fleeing soul to a new body or an object to preserve it. Unfortunately it was all theoretical and full of flaws, even an idiot like me could see that.
This still wasn't what I was looking for and it was getting late, so I decided to pocket a few books that I hadn't looked through, while no one was looking, and head back to the inn.
After the dusty and moldy library, the fresh, crisp winter night air felt wonderful. I walked slowly, taking in every gulp of air with satisfaction. While going through one of the back alleys a saw what looked like an extremely malnourished corpse of a female beast person with grey hair, wolf ears and tail, wearing rags laying on its belly. Maybe a runaway slave? How unfortunate, but, ultimately, not my problem.
I kept walking when, to my great annoyance, the corpse latched one of its grubby hands onto my ankle. Huh? Still alive? I stepped on her arm with the other foot with a considerable amount of strength. The soon to be corpse contorted in pain and opened its mouth as if to scream, but no sound came from its frozen lips. It didn't let go of my ankle, though.
I was tired and in a bad mood, so I stepped on her a few more times, targeting the back. Same thing happened - more contorting in pain, more soundless screaming and still not letting go of me.
After some time, she lost consciousness, but kept holding on. This intrigued me. She looked on the verge of death - malnourished and frozen, but she still had enough willpower to hold on? She might be worth taking in. Someone like this deserves to live. I unclamped her frozen hand off of me, tossed her over my shoulder and headed back to the inn.
In the inn, I was greeted with judgmental looks from the others. Why would I bring a beast person to such an upscale institution? I bet that was what they thought. The innkeeper was about to object, but I just dropped a gold coin in the ground and walked to my room.
My room was lavishly decorated, spatios and overall looked expensive. That was because it was expensive. Over time, I acquired a taste for the finer things. And why not? After all, with all the killing and looting I've been doing, I had a fortune just waiting to be spent.
I placed my new guest in an armchair next to the fire in hopes of defrosting her. I took a better look at her. She was skinny, dirty, but, even in this condition, her natural beauty shone through. She looked around fifteen to sixteen. Hopefully I haven't stepped on any really important organs, otherwise, this might be bad. After an hour or two, she woke up, moved a bit, then opened her eyes. She looked around, amazed at the scenery around her, then saw me.
Her demeanor changed - fear and uncertainty filling her. Without a word, I handed her an apple. She looked at it, smelled it, then looked at me. I nodded. She took a bite and started chewing. Her tired face immediately lit up when the sweet apple juices touched her tongue.
"You like?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Good. After an hour or so, I'll feed you properly. If you eat a lot all at once after starving for days or even weeks, you might just die." She looked horrified. "Relax, it's called refeeding syndrome. If you wait a bit, it will be fine." She nodded, finished her apple and got comfortable in the armchair.
"You do understand me, but can you talk?" I asked. She shook her head. "I see, this is gonna be tricky…" I leaned closer to her, making her recoil on instinct. "Relax, I just want to try something." I placed my hand on her head. "This is tricky." She just stared at me confused.
After around five minutes, I retracted my hand. "Try thinking about something." I said. She tilted her head to the side, as if asking what I meant. "Just do it." She closed her eyes hard and concentrated.
"Huh, it actually works… Sorry, but it's still not the time to eat." She looked at me in confusion. "Yeah, I kind of understand you. It's not real telepathy, but I sense your emotions and can, to some degree, tell what you're thinking. You could call this a mental link. Although, it's spotty at best. Who knew that wielding telepathy was so hard?" She looked so excited.
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm the most awesome… Anyway, what's your name?" She tilted her head again. "I see, you don't have a name… Then how about I give you one?" She liked the idea. "Then, what do you think of Frozen popsicle?" She wasn't impressed. "Then, Wolf ears?" No again. "Oh, I know a good one, how about Bob? What do you mean, I'm not trying? Do you think it's easy to come up with a name on the spot? If you're so smart, do it yourself!"
While arguing, a mysterious green light filled the room through the window. This immediately got her attention and she rant to the window to get a better view. I followed her. She looked mesmerized. "How about Aurora? That's the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn and also the name of the phenomena that you're looking at right now." She turned to me, all excited and started nodding furiously. "Alright then, Aurora, nice to meet you. You may call me Adam."
We spent what felt like hours just enjoying the view, it seemed that Aurora had forgotten her hunger, so I had to remind her. "Hey, you still hungry?" She turned to me, as if remembering something important that had slipped her mind, and started nodding. "Good, here." I produced some dried meat and flat bread from my personal stash kept in the ring. "Enjoy."
Her eyes gleamed, her fingers shook, she grabbed the food and started eating like there was no tomorrow. Her eyes began to water. "What? You haven't had this before?" I asked. She shook her head. "Geez, what kind of life were you living before?" She stopped eating for a while, then I was mentally bombarded by memories. Memories so scary and cruel that it made me shake with fear.
"I… See. You had it rough." I stopped for a while. "You wanna stick with me from now on?" She hesitated. "I'll give you lots of tasty food." She started nodding. Travel companion acquired.
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