Chapter 19: 19 - Grimoires

The tome that landed in Vivi’s lap was unexpectedly substantial in all dimensions—tall, thick, and wide. Unlike Saffra’s, Vivi’s grimoire featured a polished obsidian cover adorned with elegant designs made from an unusual, almost pearlescent violet metal. Centered on the front was a raised ivory crown, points tipped with red gemstones. Ornate didn’t begin to describe the book’s appearance.

There was a solid heft to the grimoire as she picked it up, and when she flipped it open, the spell diagram and description of her lowest-level spell met her: [Illuminate], a tier-0 that summons a glowing ball of light. Looping black ink on cream parchment described the ability. She saw no additional information over what she could have found on her spell screen, but she admitted it was an interesting feature, being able to summon her spell list into a physical vessel.

When she lifted her gaze, she found Saffra gawking at her with an even more pronounced look of astonishment than usual.

What had Vivi done this time?

“What is it?”

“How many spells do you know?” she asked, sounding almost horrified.

Vivi paused. Right. The thickness of her grimoire would indicate how large her arsenal was, wouldn’t it? And as an over-two-thousand who had picked up just about every spell in Seven Cataclysms that wasn’t locked behind a super high-tier subclass, the tome was impressively massive.

“A few,” Vivi answered. “Why do ours look so different?”

“Grimoires change based on their owner. Class, level, and so on,” she said, staring at her dumbly even as she answered. “I’ve never seen anything like yours though. Not even the Headmaster’s comes close.”

“The Headmaster? Of the Institute?” Vivi dug through her memories. “Aeris?”

The question seemed to dispel some of her astonishment. Her mouth stopped hanging open as she studied Vivi with a furrowed brow. “Archmage Aeris? No…he stepped down shortly after the Turning, I think. He’s a professor now.”

“The Turning?”

“The day the Party of Heroes defeated the Seventh Cataclysm. You know Archmage Aeris?”

Vivi pursed her lips. “In a manner of speaking.” He had been moderately involved in the game’s plot, being one of humanity’s most powerful archmages. And also the headmaster of the Institute, thus appearing in various class quests. “Someone took his place?”

“Archmage Lysander.” Her nose wrinkled. She wasn’t a fan, Vivi could tell.

Speaking on this topic reminded her that Saffra had been expelled from the Institute for a yet unknown reason. She wondered whether she should press that matter.

She lifted the heavy tome with one hand and held it out to Saffra. “Trade.”

Saffra froze. “What?”

“Trade,” Vivi repeated, holding her other hand out and gesturing with a ‘give-me’ motion. “I’ll look through yours, as you offered, and you look through mine.”

Saffra continued doing her best impression of a statue. “You’re giving me your grimoire.”

“Stay to the first six tiers, don’t flip past that. Find something you want me to teach you. In the meantime, I’ll see what you’re working with.” She waggled the book impatiently.

Saffra didn’t move an inch. Just sat there, wide-eyed. Was the offer that shocking?

“Take,” Vivi ordered, pushing the grimoire into Saffra’s hand.

She finally seized the heavy obsidian tome, hastily handing over hers in return. Even when she had the book in her lap, though, she sat there, frozen, afraid to touch it. Her eyes flicked between Vivi and the grimoire repeatedly.

“Open it,” Vivi said dryly.

Clearly, Saffra was finding this a much bigger deal than Vivi had assumed. She guessed having one of the world’s most thorough compendiums of magical knowledge dropped in one’s lap would be overwhelming to an aspiring mage—even if Vivi was only allowing her access to some of the lowest-tier magic she had.

With the sort of slow and careful movement reserved for handling the most brittle artifact in the world, Saffra opened the heavy black cover of the obsidian grimoire. Her eyes widened as she drank in the sight of the first page, the tier-0 spell [Illuminate]. It really wasn’t impressive, so why did Saffra’s eyes keep rounding?

“And find a spell you want to learn,” Vivi said. “I have [Flame Bolt] in there somewhere, if you want to improve on the design of one of your staple spells. Or pick a new one entirely. Your choice.”

Saffra nodded rapidly, red hair bouncing with the motion, apparently mute.

Having the girl look through only the first six tiers shouldn’t be an issue. There were some rather...revealing spells deeper in, but there was only so much insanity a mage could get up to in the lower tiers. Saffra already knew she was a ridiculously powerful mage, so exposing the first portion of her grimoire wouldn’t matter.

Vivi looked down at Saffra’s much smaller book. It was a plain thing, reddish leather tied with strings to hold a few dozen pages together. The grimoire of not a beginner, but also not someone even into gold rank.

Saffra was in the high three-hundreds, and while that was respectable, doubly so for her age, she’d only had time to pick up a few spells. A grimoire showcased breadth of knowledge, and Saffra was too young to have learned much more than the daily kit she used for adventuring. Especially having been expelled from her place of education. Vivi suspected a mage’s arsenal increased more than linearly with level and age, though probably not exponentially.

She flipped through Saffra’s grimoire. As the young mage had told her, she knew a few utility spells—[Illuminate] served as a staple for how simple and useful it was to an adventurer, so it was the first spell in her book as well. Otherwise she had learned mostly elemental combat magic. Predominantly ice and fire, though two earth spells and a single air. [Fireball] occupied the last page, her only tier-five spell.

“It’s nothing impressive, I know,” Saffra mumbled, her state of awe replaced with obvious insecurity, shoulders slightly hunched.

Vivi considered her. She leaned forward and, using the girl’s own grimoire, lightly smacked her on the top of the head. Her ears flattened in surprise, and she looked at Vivi with a startled expression.

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“It’s the life work of a diligent, earnest young woman,” Vivi scolded. “I would ask that you don’t insult her right in front of me.”

Saffra stared at her for a long moment, then lifted Vivi’s grimoire to hide her rapidly reddening face.

“R-Right,” she stammered. “Sorry.”

Vivi shook her head, then returned to studying Saffra’s grimoire. This time, the spell circles in specific.

They were…not good. Horrible, to be honest. Vivi could improve Saffra’s general casting ability twofold simply by giving her better designs. She could also make ones from scratch if she wanted.

The new spell circles wouldn’t even need to be more complex—they could be simpler and better than what Saffra had. Though the best would, admittedly, require techniques probably beyond the girl’s current ability.

Saffra had mentioned that the best spells were hoarded within guilds and families. Even the Institute, an establishment of learning, didn’t yield its best to its students. She found herself deeply disapproving, but supposed humans were humans. It wasn’t like things worked differently in her world. People hoarded wealth and power there too. Why would it be different here?

It took Saffra ten minutes to find the spell she wanted to work on. Hesitantly holding Vivi’s grimoire up, she displayed the page describing [Scorchlance].

“An upgraded version of [Flame Bolt],” Vivi said. Saffra had said she used [Flame Bolt] most often through her adventures, a standard fire-type spell that balanced cast time and destructive potential. It was tier three, however, and [Scorchlance] tier four. As far as picking a single efficient upgrade to her overall combat potential, [Scorchlance] was a good choice. “Very well.”

They traded grimoires back.

“Was that a test?” Saffra blurted out.

Vivi gave her a baffled expression. Or rather, that was what she felt internally. Like always, her face barely twitched.

“Like, I wasn’t supposed to get too greedy, or something,” Saffra mumbled.

Ah. She had been surprised Saffra hadn’t gone for the highest-tier, flashiest, rarest spell she could find. There were a lot of unusual spells in her grimoire, even in the lower tiers. Her choice had been practical and efficient instead. This explained why.

“It wasn’t a test,” Vivi said, amused. “You can change your mind, though I do think this is a good starting point.”

“Starting point?”

Vivi tilted her head.

“…I’ll get to pick more?” Saffra asked hopefully.

“Of course. Once you’ve grasped this one.”

Saffra bobbed her head eagerly, cat ears perking up at the news.

The first lesson began. Everything prior had been more evaluation and planning. Now, Vivi drew mana from her core and painted it into runes on the air, tracing the spell circle slowly for Saffra’s sake. Saffra did her best to imitate her, though she was horribly clumsy in comparison.

Vivi reminded herself that she had never struggled through any of this herself, and by all indicators Saffra was well above average. So it would be unreasonable to judge her by how easy the techniques seemed personally.

Patiently, she pointed out Saffra’s mistakes as she made them. Too much curve in that line, not thick enough there. Any time the spell circle had deviated far enough that she knew it wouldn’t activate—and probably run wild in the process—Vivi called the attempt off and had Saffra dissolve her mana and try again.

Moreover, she had Saffra redoing the same few runes over and over until they were meeting her standards—standards that weren’t anywhere near perfection, but Saffra struggled fiercely even so.

This was what she had meant when she said she wouldn’t make a good teacher. How strict should she be? Should she focus on getting Saffra to complete the spell circle to the bare minimum? Or should she insist on higher standards, even for a first cast?

Her instincts told her to keep drilling Saffra until her runes met some minimum level of quality. But could she trust her instincts? They did come from one of, if not the, world’s best mortal casters, but who knew if that meant a good intuition for teaching?

After an hour, Saffra couldn’t complete even twenty percent of the spell design to Vivi’s specifications. Vivi could feel a slight frown pulling on her lips as she decided to take a break, and the catgirl withered at it.

“I’ll do better next go,” she declared with false bravado, but she didn’t puff out her chest like usual. Instead, she stared at her lap, hands clenched.

Vivi was definitely failing as a teacher. Maybe transparency was best. “I expect you could have come much closer to activating the spell by now, but I want it done properly or not at all. It might be the wrong approach. As I said, I have no experience teaching.”

Saffra’s mood brightened at that. Maybe she had assumed that every time Vivi called an attempt off, it was because the spell would’ve failed.

“Oh. That’s not so bad then. Usually my Institute instructors focus on reaching invocation first, then refinement of the circle afterward.”

Vivi pursed her lips. “I don’t know if that’s better. We’ll try my way first.” She would listen to her instincts unless given a strong reason not to. “I don’t want a shoddy first invocation—it needs to be at least acceptable.”

Saffra nodded, encouraged. “I’ll do better next time,” she announced. She stole a glance toward the other side of the carriage. “And, um,” she said sheepishly, “I didn’t have breakfast, so would you mind if…?”

“Feel free.”

“I’ll get you something too!”

Vivi almost stood to join her, since she wanted to peruse the spread of food, but, while she wasn’t normally good with people, she sensed that Saffra wanted to do something ‘apprentice-y’ to give back to the dynamic somehow. So she let the girl trek off to put together two plates.

They probably could have let the servants do it for them—they were stationed by the table still, and could have been hailed—but she hadn’t even considered it. In regard to ‘thinking like a commoner’, Vivi was no different from Saffra.

She sank back into her seat and ruminated over the situation. Perhaps starting with a tier four spell had been too ambitious. Saffra technically wasn’t even at the standard level for tier fours yet, though she wasn’t far. Vivi’s rigorous requirements might be better applied to a lower-tier spell so Saffra wasn’t discouraged by being stuck on the same design for too long.

And it would be a while yet. Despite Saffra’s fake-confident claims, they had only worked through a fifth of the spell circle, and the earlier parts were easiest because balancing and proportions mattered much less. The deeper into a design a mage went, the more the composition as a whole mattered, and thus difficulty and complexity rapidly grew.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a minor commotion. Vivi’s attention turned to the snack table—she wondered if there was a fancy word nobles used, since ‘snack table’ felt too pedestrian—to find that Saffra had been joined by the youngest of the nobles. The boy was probably around Saffra’s age, though a little shorter than her, and the effect was made more prominent by Saffra’s tall cat ears.

Saffra’s entire posture radiated discomfort. She was holding a plate which she’d been stacking food on, with another set aside presumably for Vivi. The boy was standing entirely too close, especially with the obvious signals Saffra was giving off.

Vivi felt her hackles rise. She almost rose and stalked over, but calmed herself and honed her senses to listen in. Considering her stats, hearing across the carriage posed no challenge. Which was why she’d thrown up a silencing spell. If she could eavesdrop, other people could too.

“You decline?” the boy asked, his words sharp with haughty indignation. “My father is merely interested in how a silver and a gold procured tickets into the Lounge. He wonders who his…guests are. You should be ecstatic to oblige his curiosity.”

Ah. Vivi had expected this to rear its head again. She’d tentatively given credit to Lord Barnaby Caldimore—who she was fairly certain was this boy’s father—for brushing past the minor offense Vivi had given, but apparently she would have to retract that recognition.

He’d sent his son after Saffra. Vivi would have been ten times more forgiving if he’d confronted her directly.

“I should get back, my lord,” Saffra said, sounding almost frightened, not at all like her usual self.

Vivi had to remind herself that nobility were important in this world, and made for dangerous people to offend. Her own blasé attitude born from experiences on Earth was simply inappropriate. Even Saffra, normally spirited, didn’t let herself get an attitude with a noble’s son. She clearly wanted to be anywhere else.

Saffra tried to edge away, and the boy reached out and grabbed her arm.

That erased whatever traces of Vivi’s patience had remained. [Telekinesis] formed, and she seized the boy’s hand, pried his fingers open, and bodily grabbed him and slid him across the carpet, putting six feet between him and Saffra. Not roughly, of course—the brat wasn’t even a teenager, and his behavior was probably a parenting issue. Not to excuse it, of course. But she wasn’t going to hurt a child.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only person watching the exchange. It had drawn the attention of everyone in the relatively small carriage. Lord Barnaby Caldimore bolted to his feet and spun, face beet-red and body vibrating with such outrage that she was almost impressed by how fast it happened.

He pointed a wobbling finger at Vivi and thundered, “You dare lay hands on my son!”

She guessed this had been inevitable.