The loss of the Zone Boss’s loot didn’t bother Vivi, obviously. There were a dozen higher-rank hunting grounds she could fly over to and clear out in an afternoon if she actually needed coin. She shut down Saffra’s panicked apologies for vaporizing an admittedly significant sum in crafting materials, telling her that if she had wanted to, she could have extinguished the supercharged [Scorchlance] herself. She had purposefully allowed it.

With the day’s leveling session coming to a close, Vivi handed over the last of her gifts: the scrolls of sixteenth-tier and higher defensive magics. Saffra really was adapting to the absurd, because she only gawked for about a minute as she listened to Vivi’s explanations. Then she groaned and accepted the items.

“We made good progress,” Vivi said. “You’ll need to pick another spell to start working toward, now that you’ve gotten [Scorchlance] down.” Interest sparked in Saffra’s eyes, and Vivi suppressed a smile. “There is something I wanted to bring up, though. I can coach you through spell designs and mana exercises, but there are parts of your education I’m certain I can’t help with. The Institute’s Library could help bridge the gap.”

Saffra stiffened.

“I’ve intended to search through it myself,” Vivi said. “There are resources I want to hunt down and read.” While she had Saffra and Rafael to provide her ‘common-sense’ information, it seemed wise to pick up a few primers on topics like basic history and world geography. Plus, there might be insight into dimensional magic and adjacent theory. “Of course, I know you don’t want to return to the Institute. So can you provide me a list of books you might want? I’m not familiar with what would be best.” She could ask Aeris, or someone else, but wanted to see what Saffra had to say.

Saffra was quiet for a long moment. “Not off the top of my head, no. But…I could…just come with you?”

Vivi paused in surprise.

“The library is one of the things I’ve missed most,” Saffra admitted. “It would be super useful to have access to it again, and it wouldn’t be a risk, not with an illusion, like you said.” She seemed to realize something. “Wait, are you allowed on the upper floors?”

Vivi had no idea. She hadn’t known the Institute divided its library. But demons and humans seemed to have diplomatic peace, and Nysari was a tenth-Elevation mage. Surely she would have implicit access to more restricted reading? Rafael would have arranged that.

“I believe so. Perhaps not the most restricted sections, but most.”

“Could I look through them?” Saffra asked, wide-eyed.

Whether it went against policy or not, the dawning excitement on her apprentice’s face meant the answer would be ‘yes’. Vivi was trying to obey laws and authority as much as possible, but if her—quite likely unjustifiably spurned—apprentice wanted to poke through the library she’d been banned from, Vivi would arrange it.

She just had to make sure the incident didn’t draw attention. Flouting her power was the problem; she didn’t want to scare the social structures of this world. As Rafael had pointed out, that might have catastrophic, cascading complications that Vivi didn’t want to deal with.

“You may.”

Saffra looked torn. Her desire to avoid the Institute clearly warred with her natural inclination for magic—her curiosity for what lay in the upper, restricted floors of the library.

“I guess you’d want someone to show you around…” she finally said.

“It’s up to you.”

Making her decision, Saffra nodded. “It’s not like many people would recognize me, even without an illusion. My hair is shorter now. I’m older. And I do want to go. Just, technically I am banned. It won’t be trouble?”

“That’s for me to worry about.”

“Then…sure, I guess?”

Vivi held a hand out, and Saffra blinked. “Now?”

“When else?”

Vivi warped them to a safe spot inside her manor, then [Blinked] them into the proper city. She targeted her manor first so the privacy wards masked the warp’s spell signature, in case there were prying eyes in Meridian. [Blink] itself was high enough tier she might draw attention, but she could fall back on Nysari’s identity if she needed to.

In preparation for heading to the Institute, Vivi layered carefully obscured illusions onto her apprentice. The same she used for herself, hiding her tear-trail tattoos and robe designs. Barring a stray dragon casting detection spells directly on her, nobody should have the slightest idea; Saffra might as well have been transmogrified.

Saffra chose black for her new hair color. She’d cut it short to better suit her adventuring career, so Vivi didn’t tweak that. She considered changing her height and other basic features, but a more thorough illusion would actually weaken the effect—or at least a powerful individual’s ability to see through it—and Saffra seemed convinced that nobody would recognize her even as such. She’d just been some random second-year who’d gotten into drama—if rather notable drama—so it wasn’t like everyone in the Institute knew her by face, much less well enough that even with her hair cut and dyed they would spot her from across the library. Nearly a year had passed, too.

They took the elevator up onto the Institute’s sky-island campus, and Saffra seemed jumpy enough that Vivi wondered whether she should have made this offer at all. Or maybe she should’ve dropped a warp anchor in the library and taken Saffra straight there.

Saffra relaxed slightly as they passed by various Institute-goers and nobody gave her a second glance. Their attention fell, generally, on Vivi, the bigger curiosity by far. The Institute was composed almost entirely of humans and beastkin, probably because of how differently the long-lived and short-lived races developed mentally, physically, and strength-wise. Demons and elves leveled slower; hence, they had their own academies. So Vivi’s short stature—suggesting she was a student—despite her clear demonic heritage made her an object of interest to anyone passing by.

“I should mention,” Vivi said as they ascended to the first floor of the library via an elevator, “that you should call me Nysari when we’re in public. That’s the persona that will have access to the restricted sections of the library.”

Though she didn’t know yet if she did have access. It just seemed like something Rafael would have arranged, or barring that, access would be implicit in her status as a high-ranking mage. She had appropriate identifying material: a signet ring with the Keresi seal, and a ‘letter of credence’, as Rafael had called it.

“Persona,” Saffra repeated. “You have…several of those?”

“I do.”

Saffra clearly didn’t find anything strange about that. An ancient immortal would be more than capable of arranging a fallback identity, or several, to prowl the mortal lands with.

The elevator shuddered to a stop, and the gate swung open. She strode down a short hallway and through a huge, arched doorway, and put eyes on the first floor of the Thaumaturgical Institute’s library, one of the premier collections of knowledge in the world.

The Library spanned the entire diameter of the Institute, which was not a skinny tower by any imagination. Vivi’s gaze drifted across the open space, taking in the millions—and yes, surely millions—of books organized in shelves along the circular walls and throughout the ground floor. Enchantment-fueled glowing white orbs hovered throughout, washing the library in dim atmospheric light. The air was thick with the scent of paper and vellum.

The library’s design had changed less than she had expected, given that a century had passed. It was as grand a construction as she remembered. Mages did have a natural instinct to show off, after all, and since they were academic creatures by nature, the Institute’s Library had been one of their great focuses. She stood at the entrance for a moment, absorbing the sight.

A receptionist sitting behind a half-moon desk blocked their passage. Vivi approached and stated her identity and explained the situation in brief. The poor woman immediately started sweating, which told Vivi she wasn’t going to have an issue gaining access.

“Of course, any member of the First Blood is welcome to all but the highest level of the Library,” the woman assured her nervously, “though the Deep Archives are, unfortunately, restricted to Grand Magi and other officials with proper clearance.” She swallowed. “I see you don’t have a badge. I’m afraid I’ll need to see some…identifying documents? To confirm that you are who you say you are? No offense meant whatsoever, my lady, it’s just policy.”

The receptionist seemed braced for anger or worse, but Vivi of course offered no such thing. Vivi showed her signet ring and letter of credence, signed by the patriarch of the Keresi family. After inspecting the seal with an enchanted magnifying glass, the receptionist seemed immensely relieved.

“Thank you so much, Lady Keresi,” she said, handing the paper and ring back. “Please, let me know if you need anything at all.”

When they were out of hearing range, Saffra said, “Isn’t the First Blood basically the same as a ducal family? How do you fake an identity of one?”

“I have connections,” Vivi said. “You know your way around?”

Saffra shot her a sidelong glance, but didn’t comment on the vague explanation. “I do. The Library is easy to look through. Maps are everywhere. The helper golems will find specific books too, if you know the title or author.” She tilted her head. “I always wondered how they did that.”

Vivi’s gaze drifted over to one such helper golem. The iron constructs lumbered around in long gaits, blocky humanoid creatures with dull black gemstones for eyes. They trudged along the walkways lining the circular walls and on the ground floor, stocking shelves or tracking down requests.

If they really could find a book by its title, Vivi was interested in how. That implied an extremely sophisticated construction. Something novel even to Vivisari’s sensibilities. She couldn’t help but start churning over her own implementation—how would she create semi-intelligent helpers that could find any given book in a sea of tomes? The magic would be too complex to apply to any individual golem, so they surely linked to some master enchantment array.

“So what did you need again?” Saffra asked.

Her train of thought cut off, and she shelved that thought experiment for later. “Basic information. History, politics, geography. I’ll make copies, so I won’t need to sign them out. I just want material to poke through when I have a spare moment.”

“Make copies? Is that…allowed?”

“Is it?”

“I don’t think you’re allowed to make copies.”

“They’re for personal use, so it’s fine.”

Saffra opened her mouth, probably to contest that obviously incorrect point, then hesitated and closed it. “Anyway. That’ll obviously all be on the ground floor. And then we’ll go to the higher ones, for instructive tomes?”

“Training material for you.” Vivi nodded. “Grab anything you want from this floor too.”

“To make copies of.”

“Yes.”

“How, again?”

“With magic.”

“There’s a spell to copy physical objects?”

“Not physical. Or, the copies won’t be real. But you’ll be able to interact with them. It’ll be a physical illusion, of sorts.”

“Illusions by definition aren’t physical,” Saffra said dubiously. “There’s no such thing as a ‘physical illusion’.”

“It’s an illusion with a physical aspect, then.”

“Right.” Saffra seemed torn between amusement and bewilderment. “History, politics, geography. Probably some general encyclopedias? That’s gonna be in a lot of different sections. We should split up, or it’ll take forever.”

Vivi’s eyebrows rose at the suggestion. “If you’re fine being alone.”

Saffra nodded, not conflicted. “Seriously, no one will recognize me like this.” She shook her head and set her short, jet-black hair bouncing. “I’ll keep an eye out, too. I know how to walk around a library without setting it on fire, I promise.”

Vivi was somewhat worried about letting Saffra go off on her own, but she seemed certain that she would be fine, and it would

take a long time hunting down each book herself.

If Fate truly was out to get Saffra and leaving her to her own devices for all of a few minutes spawned a debacle—well, then Vivi would take matters into her own hands. Maybe even somewhat happily.

Referencing the map, Vivi began her hunt. When she tracked down her first target and cracked open a random book to skim the words within, an unexpected burst of disorientation hit her.

There was so much information in that one page, those dense paragraphs of neat lettering. And there were millions of other books just like it scattered throughout the library. She had hardly forgotten that she’d been thrown into a new world, but the sheer quantity of history and culture in these shelves—these insane amounts of shelves—served as a stark and surreal reminder.

Shaking those feelings away, Vivi closed the book and cast [Illusory Scan]. A copy of the book’s physical structure tucked itself away into an archive inside her head, and she would be able to call out a magical copy of it when needed.

After storing several more general resources on world history, she headed for the nearest library map to hunt down the next section. But a ping to her magical senses interrupted her.

She slowed, then came to a stop.

There, set into the wall and between two bookshelves, was a door.

An absurdly well-guarded door. On initial appraisal, she guessed that even she would have to put some elbow grease into battering the enchantments down. Not that it would give her trouble, but the strength of the magic radiating off the unassuming slab of wood put even the Convoy’s defenses to shame.

Sixteenth tier? Higher? What was something so obscenely defended doing here?

Vivi blinked at the door. She looked over both shoulders, then back. There were no signs or placards explaining its purpose. The door could be a simple staff entry or a secret passage into the most restricted sections of the library, where archmages hid away their personal codices. She had no idea.

And she didn’t muse over which, because her attention latched to something more important: the markings covering the rich teak wood. There was a half-finished spell design etched into it. The beginnings of a…a gravity spell?

A puzzle.

She was looking at a puzzle, she realized.

A really interesting one, too. It ensnared her attention wholly. Brow furrowing, her eyes flicked across the dense, complicated design, trying to make sense of it. The longer she studied, the more certain she grew: it was the outline to a gravity spell. Specifically, a way to attach anchors onto objects—or any target?—that would subsequently be attracted to each other.

Had she gotten that right? Yes, she thought she had. She saw no other unifying purpose behind the design. But it was tricky to make sense of. She could, with relative ease, create a spell circle that accomplished something of that ilk from scratch, but having to understand someone else’s spell and modify it was far more difficult.

What a delightful brain teaser.

If she hadn’t been so absorbed in the discovery, she probably would’ve thought twice about inscribing symbols into strange doors sequestered in random sections of the Institute Library. As it was, she traced the runes in with a few quick brushes of mana, feeling immensely satisfied with how quickly she’d grasped the solution—her brain passively working on more efficient, or alternate ways she could’ve patched together the incomplete design.

Nothing dramatic happened. Horns didn’t blare and the door didn’t explode to release hellfire. A slight click echoed through the air, and the defensive enchantments guarding the door faded. The slab of teak wood creaked open no more than two inches, allowing entry if she so desired.

Vivi frowned, only then realizing her judgment had faltered again. Not that it seemed to have mattered. She’d just solved some interesting puzzle left behind by an Institute mage. Maybe there were tons of these scattered throughout the Institute, or other challenges for the students. The building had been the congregating point of mages for millennia. Quirky situations like magical puzzle doors were probably everywhere.

Sensing an approaching presence, she looked over her shoulder—only to find Saffra slam to a stop and stare at her, and the door, with abject horror, a bundle of books hugged in her arms.

Vivi read the expression and suppressed a sigh.

“What did I do, then?”

“Isn’t that Osmian’s Door?” Saffra choked out.