<~> Chapter 228I oking through the stack of books that Man had brought over after I put down the book on gods I had been reading. Most of the books she gathered looked like they were on niche magical topics. I wasn't sure exactly what she was looking for based on her pile, sihey seemed to cover a wide variety of subjects. The only thing they had in on was that none of them seemed approachable to me. Just as I utting down one of the books I heard a gentle knock at the door.

  Standing up, I walked over and ope. The librarian I had asked for help from earlier was standing outside of the door and smiling. "Hello again, Miss Baphomet. After talking with my colleagues they poio the perfect book for you. Before I came up here, the head librarian stopped me and asked me to have a personal ade for you, free of charge. I'm not sure who exactly you are, but you must have pleased the Goddess greatly to receive such favor from the head librarian," he finished with an awkward chuckle before holding out a retively thiher-bound book. I ope up and skimmed a few of the pages. This would be perfect!

  "My colleagues also told me that the head librarian offers employment to ah [Sightspeak], if that is something you are ied in."

  "Please, e in for a moment." I led him into the meeting room and he gnced over at Raya and Mimi in the er before fog bae. I gestured at one of the chairs before sitting down across from him. Giving him a weak smile, I shook my head. "Sorry, but my circumstances are too plicated to stop and work here. Besides, I have my own avenues of research that I'm w on. Thank you for the offer though."

  He dipped his head. "Think nothing of it. The offer for transting a book into the nguage that earned you [Sightspeak] is still open. Did you find a book that you would find suitable?"

  "Actually, I'm waiting for a friend who—"

  Just then Man opened up the door and smiled when she saw the librarian there. "Lilith, I think I found something that would be good."

  The librarian looked up at Man as she brought over the book she had found for us. I ope up and thumbed through it a little befoing back to the beginning and looking at the title. Elemental Magic Theory: A Primer. The book was mostly a theuide but it had a few spells embedded into the pages here and there as examples. It covered a few things I already knew about magic but expanded on most of them ier detail. Even though it's a theory book it looks like it would be helpful for learning specific spells iure and guiding the system into giving you what you want.

  "This looks great Man." I closed the book and ha to the librarian. "Would this work for you?"

  He flipped open the cover and skimmed it before smiling brightly. "This would do well yes. This book is very popur and has been transted into quite a few nguages already. This would be a great starting point fetting a proper record of your rare nguage. I'll go have a ade of this right away. It seems that poor Seagrim will have to work more than usual today," he said with a chuckle. "Would you like your copy of this book in Sorsettian or anuage?"

  I frowned and looked at Man who ughed at my expression. "Sorsettian is the official name for on. Since Sorsette's libraries are so widespread, the nguage spread quickly and became a trading nguage aany different tries. Most people refer to the nguage as on though sinearly everyone who is with fners knows it and not everyone is happy about its e with the Goddess Sorsette. It also happens to be the first nguage of most people here in Torlimal."

  The librarian raised a dising eyebrow at Man's expnation and gave me a curious look. "Correct, I apologize for being unclear." I got the impression that Man just expined something very well-known, everyone should know the nguage they're speaking... uhey're a [World Traveler] like I am.

  "Sorsettian will be fine. Uhere would be a more appropriate nguage?" I asked.

  Man shook her head. "No, Sorsettian will likely be the best to transte from. It's among the most diverse nguages and has many words taken from uages that would be hard to trao others. Something like Elvish is more restrictive and might lead you te word choices. Besides, I checked and this book was inally written in Sorsettian anyway. It would be best to tra from its inal version to avoid drifting from the inal meanings."

  The librarian nodded. "It's as she says. Transting from Sorsettian would be preferable for the library as well."

  "Alright then, I'm happy with that. Please bring me a copy of the book in Sorsettian and I'll tra to English for the library."

  The librarian smiled and stood up. "I will be back shortly then. Thank you fiving us the opportunity t a new nguage into our records."

  As he was leaving he passed Torien at the door. "Who was that?" she asked.

  "Lilith is going to be transting her inal nguage into on for the library and they're giving us a book and some money in exge. Oh! What do you have there?" Man asked her sister.

  Torien held up a book with an embossed boat on the cover. "It's a book about sailing. Sailors use a lot of knots for different purposes so I thought it would be iing to learn a few while we have the time."

  I nodded. "Things like that be pretty useful. Are you ied in sailing Torien?"

  She smiled and shrugged. "I hought it would be something I would have the ce to do. I think it would be fun to see the sea and maybe ride on a boat if we get the opportunity."

  "I'll put it on the bucket list then," I said with a ugh. The twins looked at each other in fusion whily made me chuckle more. "Don't worry about it, I'm just saying that we should go out of our way to ride on a boat eventually. I'm not sure how long they'll tie us down in Traehall but it would be o visit Ara after hearing about it so much."

  "I heard Ara is nice! I've always wao visit!" Raya piped up from the er.

  "Hopefully we go with everyone." I looked around the room. "Where are the others? It's been a while and they haven't joined us. Are they still looking through the books?"

  "I saw Cecilia in the Elvish fi se. I didn't see Aunt Lori or Sibyl but the library is a big pce," Torien said.

  "Have you had much time to talk with your aunt tely?" I asked.

  The two of them frowned and Torien sat down across from me. She sighed and shook her head. "Unfortunately, we haven't had much time to spend with her yet. She's been busy with her st-minute preparations for tomorrow. Assuming everything goes as pnned, we should have plenty of time to spend with her once we're on our way to Goldeh."

  "Is she pnning on going all the way to Traehall with us?" I asked.

  Torien nodded. "When I asked, she said that she didn't want to be away from us any more than she has to be. She intends to follow us wherever we go and help us out after the raid. I'm not sure if she wants to join us as a full-time party member or not but she isn't a member of the adventurer's guild."

  "She told me that now that she freed the Pantharians, she feels less reason to work with the Order of Lilith," Man added. "She didn't say that she was going to retire from it pletely, but I got the sehat she was a lot less ied in being their assassin now."

  I scratched the base of my horn awkwardly. "Does it... bother you that she's an assassin?"

  The twins looked at each other with odd expressions on their faces. Eventually, Torien shook her head. "She's followed in the footsteps of our aors and the way she's talked about her targets don't make me feel like she's just doing it for the money... I might feel differently about it if that were the case."

  "What about Silva then?"

  Torien grimaced. After a pause, she sighed. "I suppose I feel the same. I think... what bothers me more is that she was hiding things from me. I'm not very... open with other people except for my sister normally, so when I found out that she was hiding so much from me after I tried so hard to be ho with her... I don't know..."

  "It's okay, I get it," I told her while patting her arm.

  "You know," Man said. "If Aunt Lori use Shado, that means we might also have access to rare bloodline shadow magic too. I wouldn't be able to do anything with it since I don't have much personal mana, but you might be able to learn it Torien."

  "Do you think she would be willing to teach me? I don't really want to be an assassin but shadow magic would be useful to me as a scout and archer..."

  "I'm sure she would!" Man said with excitement. "You might o start allog some points to yic stats but Aunt Lori has always been kind to us, I'm sure she would teach you if you asked."

  "I wouldn't be so sure about that..." Torien said while awkwardly scratg the back of her head.

  "No reason not to ask though, is there?" I asked.

  Torien just shrugged in reply.

  Man patted her on the shoulder. "We talk about this some more ter. For now, why don't you spend some of your time on that book yht, I'm excited to have a ce to dig into some of these books too."

  Torien chuckled. "Yeah, that's a good idea. It's not like our time is unlimited here. We're leaving town tomorrow."

  I stood up and walked away from the twins and decided to check up on Mimi and Raya. To my surprise, Mimi looked rather frustrated, an expression I hadn't seen on her before.

  "Is something wrong?" I asked the two of them.

  "Well... It looks like reading isn't ing naturally to my little sister here." Raya said while looking at Mimi.

  "I don't uand why it's so hard. It's just reizing symbols, but there are so many binations! How does everyone remember all of the binations!" Mimi grumbled.

  "Uh... You don't o remember all of the binations, you just he meaning of the words."

  "How am I supposed to remember the meanings if I don't remember the binations? There's so many!" Mimi said exasperated.

  I scratched my head. There was obviously some kind of misuanding going on here. I already khat Mimi's mind worked a little bit differently from most people but I was having trouble uanding what she was asking fht now. binations?

  "What do you mean by binations Mimi?" I asked.

  Mimi frowned and pulled out a chalkboard from her pocket dimension. She then wrote out several words, a few of them were gibberish but I was already sensing a pattern in what I was seeing.

  "Mimi, not every bination of letters means something. You o focus on the words that do have meanings, not try to fill out a table of every possible string of letters that make a bination. If you don't uand a specific word you look up its meaning, but you shouldn't try to go at this from the opposite direost binations of letters are meaningless."

  Mimi looked aghast. "What? But that's so ineffit! Why did people bother to make so maers if so many of their binations are meaningless?" she asked.

  Raya ughed. "Is that what you were trying to do? I was so fused by your questions."

  "Mimi, written nguages usually e after spoken nguage. These symbols are just eople haphazardly kludged together to try to describe the sounds people were making. Try to memorize the words you want to use instead of just random letters."

  Mimi rubbed her fa frustration before writing on the chalkbain and showing it to me. It read: "Is this all there is to reading and writing then?"

  I ughed. "gratutions Mimi, you were overthinking it. You already know how to read and write. Reading and writing is a skill, it's not something you just do or not do for the most part. You learn more words and learn new aer ways to express yourself over time."

  "There is still a bit more she could learn about grammar and vocabury, but she's got most of it down now," Raya agreed.

  "Should we get her a diary?" I asked.

  "Do you think that's wise after what she just told us?" Raya asked. "She would just memorize the entire diary and therange words that no one knows stantly. I think it's better for her to learn things naturally over time rather than brute f it like she's obviously capable of."

  I patted Mimi on the head. "You're such a cute and smart Mimic."

  Mimi rubbed her head. "You're teasing me... but it's fine if you pet my head some more..."

  I ughed and the three of us rexed with Mimi for a while. We spent the rest of the day at the library studying and looking at different subjects. I was a bit tired of stuffing my brain after a while and instead started drawing while everyone worked on their own stuff. Eventually, the rest of roup joined us and I received the copy of the book I had promised to copy for the library.

  It was a bit of a challenge dragging Man out of the library when it was time to go, but we managed.

  Saine

  Hello! This was a fun chapter. Lots of little lore tidbits, a bit of character development for the twins, and a look into Mimi's perspective. I like the idea of Mimi's thought processes not matg up to the other characters since her in is so different but it's hard to get an opportunity to show that aspect of her character. Her misuanding the strategy to learning to read seemed like the perfect opportunity to show that. I hope you enjoyed reading!

  As a reminder, I'll be posting each story once a week from Ded until Dec 29th when I will resume my normal upload schedule. That means four less chapters of each story than usual this month. Umbral Feast will be posted on Mondays and Lilith will be posted on Wednesdays.

  Chey other story here: Umbral Feast

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