Chapter 113. Trash Fics and Hidden Techniques
Mouse scurried off, and Rhys headed off to the second story of the library, toward where she’d indicated the void myths awaited him. He kept his head on a swivel, but remained disappointed. No library cats, tuxedo or otherwise.
Rhys sighed. Az had said he’d leave before the Empire got here. The cat had no reason to go back on his word. Although the Empire clearly kept ‘useful’ books, and a few useless myths, he’d seen repressive regimes in his world, and he wasn’t shocked that the Empress burned Az’s favorite smutty fictions, and likely many other books the librarian considered useful, especially when Az seemed like a one-of-each kind of guy, who kept even fake, truly trashy manuals that taught their users how to ruin their potential magehood, but nothing else. Every book was valuable to Az, not just the good, valuable, useful, moral ones. Even if a book ran counter to everything he knew and loved, he would still collect it and share it, if only to show the world an example of what not to do. It was an extreme attitude on Az’s part, but, as a fellow obsessive, albeit one focused on a different topic, it was one Rhys could respect.
Perhaps as expected for books that even Mouse deemed ‘useless,’ the section on Asension and the void was made up of a handful of books. Rhys almost overlooked the entire section, that was how small it was. He picked up every book that even vaguely mentioned the topics, even though he could already sense that most of them would be bereft of information. All of the titles were cautionary, warning the waylaid mage from pursing the fairy tale of Ascension, laughing at the concept of the void as they worked hard to debunk it. Still, there was value to be found there. To debunk something, one had to explain what they debunked. To warn someone off, one had to describe what they cautioned against. Just as he’d read the fake manuals to figure out what they deliberately missaid, he could read these and piece apart what they said and didn’t say about Ascension, to pick out what little tiny scraps of information remained, and figure out from the contrapositive what the truth was.
It was disappointing, but it was better than nothing. Rhys pulled out the final volume and added it to his pile.
Thunk.
Startled, Rhys turned back. A small red volume, just big enough to fit in his hand, laid on the floor. It had been tucked behind the other books—perhaps deliberately, or perhaps pushed to the back accidentally due to its diminutive size. It had no writing on the cover or spine, and when Rhys opened it, he caught sight of a crammed handwriting, filling every page edge-to-edge.
He leaned in. Was it about the void, or Ascension?
BAM! The library’s doors flew open. Rhys turned, gazing over the nearby balcony. A dozen mages in white uniforms strolled in, laughing and chatting, about Rhys or Mouse’s age. At their rear, a powerful mage, at least Tier 4, if not higher, walked inside, wearing a finer uniform with glittering epaulets and shining metals, gold braid lighting up the white. Interestingly, Rhys remembered the Empress’s personal ship’s guards wore only white, with no adornment or medals. This woman was powerful, but she seemed to be of a lower class of powerful than the ones the Empress truly trusted. A noble? For the first time, Rhys found himself wondering about the Empire’s nobility. The Empress seemed dead-set against it, but at the end of the day, it took time for mages to grow. Years. Decades. Centuries. Since she’d taken over, it had been centuries, but how many people could ascend to Tier 4 in that time, let alone higher? Bast, Ev… and reluctantly, he had to admit, himself, were exceptions, considered talents among talents. Cynog and his ilk were more common, where they would have spent a century to reach Tier 3.
The point was, even if the Empress burned it all down and remade it anew, at the end of the day, she and her personal favorite talents-among-talents couldn’t be everywhere, running every part of the country with an iron fist all at once. The nobles who had existed before her rule still existed after she took over. Sure, she had the ability to remove cores and replace them, but the existing noble mages would have not only their magical strength, but also their logistical strength, the stability of the place they historically had ruled over, and the strength of their internal alliances. If every mage in her Empire over Tier 4 or 5 resisted and fought back, as they almost certainly would if she threatened their personal magehoods and paths, she would still have her hands full fighting internal battles… if she could win at all. On the other hand, if she looked the other way a few times, and let a few trusted nobles, ones who likely fought on her side during her takeover or pledged themselves to her cause early, retain their cores, and therefore their magical prowess, and logistical, social, and political networks in and out of the country, she could skip a lot of the internal strife and get right to what she wanted to do: conquest.
The Empress was insanely powerful, to the point Rhys couldn’t even quantify what Tier she was, but at the same time, she wasn’t the only insanely powerful mage in her country. There were bound to be a few hidden dragons and crouching tigers out in the hinterlands. She could either live and let live, or fight to the death and risk the death of her country in the process. When those distant mages had lived for untold aeons, and seen the rise and fall of countless countries and conquerors, not only was there a very real potential that she would fail to beat them, but she would be rubbing the cat the wrong way for no reason, when those very powerful mages were happy to close their eyes to her crimes, as long as they, and the things, people, and clans they cared about, remained untouched.