A Lonely Dungeon

I had another visit from Mr Lewis today. Every week like clockwork, he turns up. Keeps ordering newly released books I've never even heard of. Then he goes and carefully inspects my store top to bottom for anything he may have missed. No idea why he bothers. The last time he found something he didn't already have was five years ago! He confided that he'd hired one of those academy mages to come and enchant his whole library with preservation magic. Seriously, his library! We don't even normally use preservation magic on food, and he wastes it on something that will last for far beyond his lifetime anyway. He does pay well, so it's not as if I can complain, but I really wish he would turn that fervour of his towards something other than trashy romance!

- Letter to a friend from the owner of Berju South Road Bookstore

Erryn looked again at the library. The preservation enchantments were woven into the bookshelves, so removing books from them long term would expose them to decay. Not that there was any way to take a book out in the first place. The bookshelves had closed glass doors, and Erryn had no hands. Erryn could relocate a bookshelf and turn it sideways to tip everything out, but that would just make a mess. It couldn't relocate out a single book, since it wasn't in contact with any part of Erryn's body. Each bookcase counted as a single unit.

Actually, to bring a book into contact didn't necessarily require moving the book. Erryn grew a tendril of stone, smashed the glass front and poked a book with it, allowing relocation of that one book to the core room. Next was how to open it. Erryn's mana cap was higher now, and it hadn't done anything other than slime summons recently. Perhaps it could produce something with fingers?

New monster unlocked: Dire wolf

Alas not. Erryn found only a single additional monster it could unlock, and seemed to be reaching the limits of what it could do with the available base monsters. Then what about the tendril idea? It wasn't as if Erryn could manipulate the stone once created, but growing a thin sheet between pages would be sufficient. Unfortunately that didn't work out either; the stone couldn't be made thin enough. How frustrating it was to have so much knowledge in reach and no way to access it!

Erryn relocated the book a few times, inspecting the cloud of mana it became. Relocation permitted rotation, but Erryn couldn't make it vanish closed and reappear open. The cloud of mana theoretically contained all of the information needed for a perfect reconstruction of the book, yet precisely because it contained such an overwhelming amount of information Erryn was unable to interpret it. Erryn wanted to read the text, not know the exact position of each atom that made up the ink on the page. Just like the system produced standardised items and monsters, it would be helpful for it to magic up a standardised copy of this book.

The cover advertised this volume as some sort of romance novel. In that case it wasn't all that important to keep it intact. A bit of destructive experimentation here would be acceptable if it resulted in the ability to read more important books later. Erryn called over the dire wolf. It did after all have very sharp claws, and could probably poke them between pages. The result kind of worked; Erryn got to see a few random pages of the book, but the wolf lacked the required dexterity to turn one page at a time and Erryn's control over it was not sufficiently fine grained even if it did. There were already some crumpled or torn pages. The book wouldn't last long enough for Erryn to get through it all.

Since Erryn was willing to try destructive experiments, there was one very obvious thing to try. Erryn absorbed the book. As expected there were no system notifications, nor did the books contents magically appear in its mind. Erryn had traced the cloud of mana as it flowed into the core and noted that once it entered it broke down from the original highly structured mana into a formless clump, which merged in to the cores existing mana. Erryn had already theorised that the system did nothing that could not be done manually, so by what process did the system generate its loot unlocks?

Erryn created and absorbed some items, observing the mana flows. Erryn then used its new powers of customization to generate nuggets of different shapes. Reabsorbing them displayed that part way through being broken down each one converged on the same pattern, one that matched the default nugget. So there was some sort of form conversion or simplification before an objects complete absorption? Erryn attempted to replicate the process with reclamation, but there the mana just drifted apart with no sign of the same simplification process. The system was obviously doing something, but Erryn's mana perception and control where at nowhere near the level to even see what it was, never mind replicating it.

Fetching another book from the same shelf, which also turned out to be a romance novel, Erryn made another attempt with the dire wolf. This time Erryn had the wolf slice off the spine of the book, unbinding the pages. Separating the pages afterwards took some time and resulted in some damage, but as no claws were required everything remained in readable condition. This would be time consuming, and end up destroying the books, but at least would allow reading them. But it wasn't as if Erryn had a perfect memory and since this method destroyed the book, rereading it again later would be tough. Erryn needed some way to store the pages in an organised fashion. Erryn finished reading the book, from which the only useful information it gleaned was that humans were highly illogical creatures, then turned its attention back to matters of storage.

Putting the loose pages back on the bookshelves would be tough, but possible. Erryn had a different idea though. Probably not one that would work, however it had some luck interrupting the system trying to destroy things before, so it was worth a try at least. Erryn absorbed a page, waited as the mana drifted into its core, then drawing on all of its experience of stopping the system from erasing monsters, pushed. Erryn was surprised to see the cloud of mana shrink away to nothing while not losing any of its structure.

New skill unlocked: [Inventory]. You may now store items for later retrieval.

Erryn was overjoyed; it really hadn't expected to achieve anything there. It had even been prepared to abort at a moments notice if it looked like it was going to damage its core by messing about with system controlled mana inside it. Now it apparently had a way to store things inside its core. "System, display my inventory."

Inventory: One paper page, containing text [collapsed].

Huh? Erryn swiftly discovered that it could indeed expand the text. Did this work on whole books?! How to add to the inventory... Since it unlocked a skill, there must be a system approved way to do it, rather than interrupting the absorption process. Yes, like the small difference between absorption and reclamation, there turned out to be a third similar option to store an item. Erryn used it on the pages of the destroyed book, then on the next book along on the bookshelf. The system did indeed permit viewing of the book. Not merely reading, but a full illusionary reconstruction that shimmered in the core room, pages turning on demand.

Some hours later, Erryn was again frustrated, having stored away several bookshelves worth of books and found nothing but works of fiction. Usually with scantily clad women on the cover. This place that it thought would be a treasure trove of knowledge was in fact nothing but a den of depravity. Erryn worked away regardless, in the hopes of finding just one piece of useful knowledge.

Fate was not kind to Erryn. No reference books of any kind. No volumes of history nor tomes of magic, or even any letters of correspondence. Just... whatever this was. Wanting to forget about this disappointment, Erryn turned back to the reagents and other useful looking items it had wanted to keep, storing them all in its inventory. The descriptions of these items in the inventory listing were interesting, telling Erryn exactly which species monster parts were made of and the names of the various powders and liquids it had to hand.

Erryn played around with the other debris of the town, storing it, looking at the description, then retrieving it. Some of the worst condition objects literally showed up in the inventory as 'debris'. Descriptions like 'rotten armour', 'rusted sword' or 'human bone' were also common place. After searching the town like this for a while, another notification popped up.

New skill unlocked: [Analysis]. You may now see the Status of any item within the dungeon.

Erryn wasn't going to turn down a new unlock. This one appeared to function as a shortcut to the store/read description/retrieve cycle, although the skills description that specified a capitalised 'Status' was interesting. Erryn could just point the skill at an item and read the same description it would have in the inventory. Mana flows showed that it was undergoing the very start of the storage process, encoding the objects information into a mana cloud which immediately dissipated. Wait, did that mean? Erryn retrieved a book back to its bookcase, and used analysis. Yup, it meant exactly that. With this skill, Erryn could have just read the whole lot at its leisure without having to touch a thing. Oh well, its inventory was safer anyway. As long as there was no maximum capacity or something to worry about...

Bored of the town, and reminded of the books it was ignoring, Erryn decided it could face the disappointment of its newly acquired library once more. Even if these were works of fiction, they needed to relate to their readers in some way. They couldn't just set off and start using terms and concepts that the readers would not be familiar with without explanation. Therefore, by reading them all, seeing what concepts were used without explanation and perhaps which place names repeated between different authors, Erryn could extract some useful information after all.

Some weeks later, Erryn decided that it had probably been born in a kingdom called Jetosu. It apparently bordered another kingdom called Soutso and from the many tales of forbidden love between citizens of the two, it was obvious that they did not get along. Some of the stories were set in periods of outright war. There was also a good amount of knowledge about how the civilization around here functioned, but given that a lot of that information seemed to be common sense to Erryn there must be some more subtle innate memory at play there. That included facts like the way all kingdoms of the world were made up of nothing but humans, and the existence and general capabilities of mages, as humans capable of wielding mana were apparently known. Jetosu and Soutso appeared to be the two leading superpowers of the world, other kingdoms being significantly smaller. Most were allied, to at least some extent, to one of the two greater powers.

Erryn also decided that if it ever saw a so called romance novel again, it would be too soon. It almost wished it knew how its own memories were stored in its core so that it could call Mr Dire Wolf back over to perform some surgery. Since that wasn't possible, it made a note of a few authors who would definitely be getting some intimate time with the pointy end of a wolf claw should Erryn ever encounter them. Whoever had owned that library was... eccentric.