CH313

In the days since the meeting, Ben could feel the tension in the village lessen. It wasn’t gone, but he no longer had the immediate fear that things might turn violent when he left and he was able to focus on teaching them what he could, with the day prior focusing on getting a group of magic users to learn the finer points of enchanting, as well as explaining how it could be used with connect when they’d get it.

That in particular seemed to capture their curiosities, understanding that it was a way to use the skill gifted by a god, and a part of him considered teaching it to the others as well. An entire village of enchanters sounded like an excellent time to him, but he decided to leave considering that for later in the end and used the day for other projects, bringing Thera with him far away from the village as he did.

“Did we really need to go so far for this?” She asked him. “Flying out for half an hour is a lot of distance.”

“What can I say, Greed got me worried with what he was saying about trying it out in the city. I don’t want to risk leveling the village we just worked so hard on.”

“If that’s a real concern then you shouldn’t be opening it at all!”

“Relax, I was told it’s a repository of knowledge so it will be fine.”

Probably. He kept to himself as she lowered the stone platform she’d been carrying them on to the ground in a distant part of the untamed lands as Ben took a seat and reached into his bag, pulling out the mythic artifact he’d gained after finishing the trial. The archive.

He took a moment to admire it, dense enchantments covering the form of a book in a way he was annoyed to know he couldn’t replicate but was still able to get lost in the beauty of them. As much as he personally hated the god who’d made it, he couldn’t deny the skill of the work.

He felt like he could have looked at the cover alone for hours, but he could do that anywhere. They’d gone so far for a single purpose, so without any more hesitation he gave in and opened it.

“…”

“You think something’s supposed to happen?” Thera asked him as she stared over his shoulder, seeing nothing but blank pages.

“I mean, since it’s a book I kind of figured there’d be something in it, but in the end this is a magic item so I should probably treat it like one.”

Hoping for something a little more interesting, he ran his mana through it as he would for any other enchanted tool, and in an instant he found himself somewhere else.

Calling it a plain white room wouldn’t be correct, it was more of a void. Lacking any distinction between floor and sky, the same as his god’s realm, it looked like it stretched on forever with only two distinct features. A small shelf of books a little way off, with a table closer to him in front of it with two books on it, as well as what he took to be a fancy pen of sorts.

“Alright, I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this.”

He no longer had the archive in his hands which left the uncomfortable issue of how he was going to get back, but he tried to ignore that in favour of exploring for the time being, hoping he’d figure that bit out as he learned just what the archive was for.

Starting with what was closest to him he went to the table and picked up the first book, planning to flip through it but experiencing something completely different as he opened the first page. For only a second it was blank, nothing to be seen until he felt something examining him in turn, a prickly feeling in his mind that made him jump as the page changed to a picture from his memories of the first time he’d made a resistance brace.

His curiosity peaked, he flipped through to the next page finding it contained an image of him refining the process, as well as the one after that, and continuing on from there until it got to the most recent one he’d made for Thera that was finally able to control her charm.

“Interesting, but not super helpful,” He muttered. He understood what it all was because they were scenes from his memory, but as a bunch of still images they wouldn’t give much context if anyone else looked at it. “So why did it start with that then? And is there more?”

He flipped to the next page, finding a picture that made him want to close up the book in annoyance. It was a scene from the trial, right as he managed to awaken his enchanting when he’d been attempting to modify the enchantments on it to keep the timer from moving. Even if it had been a point that had let him get some significant growth in the way he used his magic, it was far from a happy memory for him, with the next few pages being how he refined the process, followed by nothing. The book had taken those two things from his mind, and he had no idea why.

Do they have anything in common? The second is related to Galwax but the first isn’t so it can’t be that. Is there anything else about them that’s meaningful? I mean, I guess the braces were my first big discovery and how to use the different enchanting systems together was my most recent, but… actually, could that be it?

Everything he’d made other than those two things had been plenty impressive, but he wasn’t sure if he’d figured out anything other than those two things that anyone else could have achieved, or at least nothing as significant. That wasn’t to say that the rest of his items were underwhelming, just that they were things that would be easy for anyone to manage if they had the right skills and knowledge. Creating the braces and merging three distinct enchanting systems felt different.

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