Explorer of Edregon

The librarian didn’t exactly give them an estimate on how long it would take her to figure out what went wrong with Alka and fix her, so they decided they might as well take advantage of the outstanding opportunity that had been handed to them. Just like the last time they’d come to the library, there were individual worker golems waiting for each of them as they entered the library proper, though Vin noticed one difference immediately.

The golem assigned to Scule had what looked like a purple necklace around its neck, and he could feel the spatial mana radiating off it. He had no idea what spell had been imbued into the necklace, but it was obviously a measure to prevent Scule from being able to throw his bag around the golem’s head again like he had last time.

“Wow, looks like I made an impression,” Scule snorted, waving up at his golem as he got its attention. “Hey you! I’ve got a couple of things I’d like to read up on. Any chance you can tell me where they are?”

“Of course,” the golem responded, craning down to look at Scule on the floor. “I am your assigned golem. Please direct any questions you may have to me, and I will do my best to assist you.”

“That’s what I like to hear!” Scule grinned, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s get away from these guys first, though, they’re a bunch of sticks in the mud. I’ll catch up with you all later!” With that, Scule and Reginald took their golem and ran off, leaving Vin to shake his head. He wasn’t sure if Scule had the sense required to keep himself from attempting to break into the subterranean levels of the library Groth had mentioned, but he would assume Reginald would keep him from doing anything too stupid.

“Where could I read up on astral projection and mana reflection techniques?” Shia asked her golem.

“The second floor of the third tower,” her golem automatically responded.

“I suppose that’s where I’ll be in that case,” Shia said, chuckling at Vin’s confused look. “What? I’ve got a new project I’m working on with my master. Message me via the golems if you hear anything about Alka.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot that was something we could do,” Vin said, looking more closely at his own golem. Each golem could link up and communicate with the others, almost like a magical telephone. In fact, that actually gave him an idea as to a potential artifact he should try creating in the near future, and he quickly jotted the idea down in his journal as Shia ran headed off to conduct her research.

Putting his journal away, Vin cleared his throat and spoke to his golem. “I don’t suppose you’d have anywhere I could read up on the Beyond the Veil ability, would you?”

Unlike when the others asked questions of their golems, his remained silent for a few seconds before answering. “Knowledge held within the restricted section. You do not have access granted to you.”

“Figures as much,” he sighed, going to his next question. He didn’t really want to learn more about his newest skill, but it was deadly enough that he figured he probably should. “Alright, how about information on the Manacraft skill?”

“Knowledge held within the restricted section. You do not have access granted to you.”

“Well fantastic!” he said, throwing up his hands as he turned toward a giggling Lumel. “There go the two biggest things I wanted to learn more about!”

“Come on, you can’t be that surprised that the skill and class ability are in the restricted section, right? They’ve each nearly killed you multiple times now!”

“Fair enough,” he grumbled. “What are you going to look into while we’re here?”

“There are a few things I want to research regarding spatial magic, but first I’m going to double check what Kym and I talked about,” she said, looking determined. “Not that I don’t trust him, but I’d rather be certain the passive we talked about me taking at level 45 does what he says it will.”

“That’s a good idea. I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about letting me in on what you're planning to do before you do it?”

“Not at all,” she grinned, giving him a quick kiss before taking her own golem and wandering off. Finally on his own, Vin sighed again as he stared at his waiting golem.

“...I have a feeling I already know the answer to this, but how about anything on how higher prestige classes affect a person? Or how the Gods influence our ability to talk about that sort of stuff?”

“Knowledge held within the restricted section. You do not have access granted to you.”

“Yeah, I figured that would be the case.” Shaking his head, Vin decided to go with a different tactic.

You know… my whole class is about exploration and adventuring into the unknown…

Rather than rack his mind for yet another idea, Vin matched his golem’s glowing blue stare and went out on a limb.

“Out of everything in the entire library… Or the entire library I have permission to access, I suppose… Can you bring me the book you think I would benefit most from reading?”

Yet again, his request seemed to stump his golem for a few seconds, and he watched as the golem’s glowing blue eyes seemed to flare in intensity for a moment. The motion startled him, as he’d come to recognize that as Alka’s version of a smile when she was laughing at them. But of course, these golems were lifeless constructs. It wasn’t smiling at him. Merely increasing its processing power or tapping into some network of information.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Probably.

“Please take a seat while I retrieve your requested book,” the golem said, motioning toward one of the nearby chairs scattered around the base of each of the towers. The golem waited for Vin to do just that, before turning and walking off.

Pleased with himself, Vin settled in and waited for his golem to come back. Shia had informed him the last time they were here that if he got up, his golem would come rushing back. It took a surprising amount of time, but eventually, his golem returned to him.

Carrying what looked like an old children’s book in its hands.

“You’re serious?” Vin asked as it held the book out to him. Taking it from the golem, Vin stared down at the thick cover containing a picture of a smiling, glowing woman on the front soaring through the sky with a little golden rainbow trailing behind her. Even the title was childish. “‘Ophena Becomes the Sky?’ You do know I’m in my twenties, right?”

“You requested the book you would benefit most from reading,” his golem said, startling Vin and nearly causing him to drop the book. The voice had come from his golem, there was no doubt about that.

But it was clearly the librarian speaking to him.

“You think I’d benefit most from reading a children’s book?” he repeated, looking at his golem far more cautiously. Naturally, he’d suspected she was capable of seeing through her golems and communicating with them, but it was another thing entirely to actually witness it first-hand. “Why?”

“Read the book and find out.” The golem’s eyes flared briefly, and it spoke in its old, robotic voice once more, the librarian’s presence gone. “Did you have any other requests?”

“Not yet,” he said slowly, leaning back and staring at the offered book once more. He had no idea why the librarian had selected this book for him, but he’d be a fool not to take her suggestion more seriously. She didn’t really strike him as the type for jokes, even if she’d still had her emotions about her, which meant there had to be more to the book than met the eye. With the Relic Guardian dead, the librarian was also officially the highest leveled person they knew in the entire world. Someone who had achieved their fourth prestige, and was somewhere between level 80 and 99.

“Okay, Ophena… I’ll bite.” Opening the book, Vin began reading.

Once, there was a young woman named Ophena, the book started, written along a page depicting a smiling woman with a yellow dress and brown hair fluttering in the wind as she gazed up into the sky. Ophena loved the sky more than anything else in the whole world.

She loved the clouds… the next page was a picture of Ophena dreaming of one day hugging a cloud, smiling widely as she did so.

She loved the wind… Ophena danced in the wind, another smile on her face as her bright-yellow dress fluttered around her.

She loved the rain, and the snow, and even the storms… the page split into three pieces, each one showing Ophena laughing and enjoying the various forms of weather.

She loved the sky so much, when it was finally time for her to choose her class, she became a Skygazer.

“Skygazer…” Vin muttered, blinking at the strange-sounding class. It certainly wasn’t one he’d ever heard of before. Curious, he kept reading.

With her new class, Ophena’s love for the sky only grew…

A picture of Ophena looking at the heavens with hearts in her eyes.

…and grew…

A picture of Ophena desperately trying to jump up and hug a cloud, laughing as she got closer with every attempt.

…and grew.

A picture of Ophena performing some sort of dance to summon the rain so she could play around in it.

“Alright, so a Skygazer is like some sort of weather-witch,” Vin muttered, turning the page.

The years passed, and Ophena’s love for the sky grew so powerful, that she was no longer content to remain down on the ground, separated from her true love.

For the first time, the book revealed a picture of a much older adult Ophena as she frowned, gazing up into the sky with a look of longing on her face. She still wore the same fluttering yellow dress, but her hair was far longer, reaching almost down to her waist.

Ophena did everything she could to prove her love to the sky. She studied its many moods…

Ophena was surrounded by dozens of thick notebooks, scribbling away into them as she monitored the sky with complex instruments that Vin wasn’t sure were even real, or if the author had just made a bunch of things up.

…she learned to communicate with it…

Ophena danced under the clouds once more, singing up into the sky and receiving a combination of snow, rain, and sunshine all at the same time. The different types of weather swirled around her, creating a magical sight.

…and above all, she learned to understand it.

The next page depicted other people for the first time, whom Vin looked at curiously. From what he could gather, it seemed like a handful of angry farmers were trying to get her to make it rain for their crops, but Ophena refused, indicating that they’d had too much rain recently and the sky needed to shine brightly.

More years passed, and Ophena grew older still. Her love of the sky hadn’t grown any weaker. The opposite in fact. But she’d finally learned the truth. There was no way a person could love the sky in the way she wanted to.

A far older Ophena stood upon a hill, gazing longingly up at the sky while the angry farmers shouted at her some more, telling her to get her head out of the clouds and help them with things down there on the ground. By now, she was wrinkled, and her white hair stretched down to her ankles. But still she stood tall.

There was no way a person could love the sky in the way she wanted…

The book repeated its last sentence, showing an image of Ophena with a single tear trailing down her face as she turned her back on the sky and looked as if she were going to walk down the hill and finally join the farmers shouting at her.

…so she became something more.

Rather than walk down the hill, Ophena leapt from the top, shocking everyone beneath her as she was surrounded by a brilliant light and took off into the sky. Her wrinkles vanished and her long hair fluttering in the wind transformed into a rainbow of gold trailing behind her as she soared high into the sky.

If she couldn’t express her love as a mere human…

The final image of the book was of Ophena finally achieving her dream since she was a young child, hovering in the air as she reached out, wrapping her glowing arms around a particularly fluffy cloud with a massive smile on her face.

…then Ophena would become the sky.