Ch39 - Inked

[21 days cooldown]

I was interrupted from my thoughts from a knock at the door, 3 quick knocks followed by a voice of authority say, "Charles, we're with Candlekeep security, we beed to ask you a few questions about the events of last night." With a sigh, I shifted into a human again and sat in my chair. My cane rests against the desk and I'm now fitted with a silk vest and a plain black pair of cotton trousers.

I briefly transformed into a ghost to open the lock with telekinesis before reverting to a human again. "Come on in then". With another click of the door, two lightly geared guards came into my room, closing the door behind them. "This is a formal questioning about the events of last night, to clarify, you are not under arrest, just a potential victim."

"I appreciate that, but I just have to check one thing." I cast [Anti-magic cone] over the both of them, however neither of them begun to change. Though sensing something they both reached for their weapons. "Relax, both of you, I was just checking if either of you were doppelgängers. It was anti-magic, it would've reverted your form if you were on."

They were both surprised and concerned at my use of anti-magic, but pressed on anyway. "Would you please describe the events in as much detail as you possibly can?"

"Of course, why not? Whilst I'm telling you, do you want tea, coffee?" I stand up and go to the pot, filling it with water.

"Tea please, 2 sugars." "Black coffee please." They responded kindly.

"Well it all started when I went to Erilys' bakery…" I poured out their drinks and I took a seat and accounted for the events exactly as it happened. Fortunately for me there was little back and forth as I memorised everything. They asked a few questions like "Where did the body go?" To which I responded, "I don't know, I went to bed."

The question ended and they said they would keep me up to date with the investigation and should I have to testify in court, all my costs getting there would be paid for. And they simply left again, I laid down in my bed for one single moment just for another knock to alert me.

This time I just opened the door myself, undoing the lock to see a monk of the keep looking at me. "This is the residence of Charles, correct?"

"Yes that's me" I answer, it's obvious what he's here for.

"Your book called 'Nomad on the neo-illithid empire has been graded at G9. Due to this, you are hereby exempt from monthly donations and have a permanent pass to the halls of wisdom. You may come immediately for orientation, or you may schedule another appointment. Here is your new amulet, I will be needing the one from the local library." He held out an emerald emblem of a book held by an embroidered black thread, a feather stitch if my reading was correct.

I swapped out the amulet and he left, no words needed from him I suppose. So I followed behind him and locked my door, he was a quick walker and it was an awkward pace to keep up. He nodded at me, acknowledging something I haven't said yet and we walked back to the keep.

Reaching the large emerald doors, my amulet shone and it opened automatically. A reception area greeted me, but the monk directed us down the north-west corridor. We passed by a lot of odd rooms, some were practicing strange magic, and others had books talking to each other. Finally, we reached the halls of wisdom, which as I guessed, was a massive library. Great cylindrical towers lined with books reached the skies, like a field filled with tornados, the books would fly off randomly to other readers here.

The readers were even weirder, I saw a chest with eyes, grabbing and reading a book on magical puppeteering. There was a huddle of drow reading books on flesh crafting, and a swarm of ravens reading about Strahd. To put it simply, I could change into my [Aberration Form] and no one would care here.

"Pillar one is charms, 2 is transmutation, 3 is necromancy, 4 is history, 5 is herbology, 6 is bestiary, 7 is people, 8 is societies, 9 is…" He just carried on, in total there was 37 different pillars of knowledge, a stupendous figure seeing as though each pillar contained thousands of books. "Your book is in the bestiary section, a debate arose if it belonged in the history section instead, but the zoologists won." And he spun around and left, no words said, a bit rude really.

I walked over to the 'forge' pillar, large, bold words glow in a variety of languages all over it. I walked over and took one of the many seats, sinking into it as I do. "Erh, blacksmithing." A rumble shook the tower and about 60 books fell from the tower, immediately I sighed, I wasn't reading all of that. I sent them back and went to one of the tables where a tortle was sat, I whispered, "Hey how does everyone read so fast?" I couldn't help but notice his violently flicking eyes as he burned through the pages.

He slowly shifted his head to face me, even slower he said, "Itsss, thee glassesss mann." Before reading again, he pointed over to the shop just outside the entrance of the library. And with a vast shift in pace, he went through five more pages before I could even start walking away.

The library shop sold what you would expect, speed reading glasses, panels of translation, anti-paper cut amulet, self-writing quill and a yellow paged magical book that shows every single book in the library and which category it's in. "I'll take 2 books, the quill and the glasses." The toucan styled aarokocra merely presented a number on a ball displaying 692p. So I slid the money over and took my items. Everything aside 1 book and the glasses went in my bag, I've got no plans for today so I'll just spend it trying to hone in on my crating knowledge.

The book was a blank green hardback that was light and thin, the glasses were medium rimmed black glasses, thin lens and no decor.

[Reading glasses - 5hp

Enchanted item, offers no AC boost. Wearer can increase their reading speed to any multiplier, caution from overuse is migraines, paranoid schizophrenia, death, madness and a stubbed toe.]

Right, they're pretty nasty, but hopefully with an INT score of 23 (illithid ring), I'll be fine. I put them on and adjusted them, sitting down I pulled out the book and flipped through the seemingly endless pages to find the crafting section, reading quicker…and quicker… and quicker until I finally finished it.

Some of my finer choices were: Adepts' fleshcrafting guide, Grandma Hilda on knitting, Moradin approved forging and The Lord of Blades biology. Aside from these there was a vast list to read from, these were just ones that I was completely fresh in or stuff that I want the extra development in.

Out of pure curiosity was it that I chose the knitting book, the cover of this says it's G6. So clearly, Hilda knows her shit. It was the first one I opened, I breezed past the first chapter in half a second, the book was finished in 5. In summary, Hilda is a Bheur hag one that found ways to weave magic into knitting, specifically giving them enchantments. An example is knittng blankets for the members of a town she's freezing to death, but the blankets actually sped up the freezing process.

The only other one that isn't self-explanatory is the Lord of Blades biology. As the book details, he is a warforged being with little known about him. But, the woman who wrote this book made modifications to his disfigured leg one time, she wrote everything down about him and how to create it herself in this memoir. As it's a memoir, she uses contractions in her writing for random words so even though I know the language it's barely readable for me. Readable enough though for me to get a good grasp on warforged as a whole and what made Lord of Blades special. (G8).

I spent the next few hours reading about 40 different books on crafting, though I did get bored of it towards the end and read up on short sword techniques, since I have one. I would've carried on reading if I wasn't so full of ideas for stuff to do, quite frankly, I have no money for the stuff I want to buy. I have a good amount of money, not enough to buy the materials to create an unending bag of wool.

In my books, I surmised that to make an 'unending bag of 'x'' I need about 100 pieces of that thing (within reason), then I need to infuse it with a bag of holding. Originally, I was going to fuse it with the bottles of poison writing, but I doubt they'll be in demand enough to make a profit. Instead, I'll create an 'unending bag of many inks', I can make most inks myself and I can be the main supplier of any tattoo parlour.

Back at my room I set up a standard ritual circle, I placed my empty bag of holding in the middle along with 100 1oz bottles of the poisonous ink. I chanted in Sylvan, praying to no one that the initial ritual will work, I didn't need a god for something this simple.

[Unending bag of Talon's scripture -

Ritual infused bag of holding. Unlimited charges, user can pull out infinite 1oz jars of Talon's scripture.]

Though that is a great start, I still have roughly 150 litres of it left, of which I have no idea what to do with, maybe I can throw it on Raphael? Next I get my ink guardian to fill up the bath with ink again, now I want to make some bestial ink. Bestial ink requires a sliver of a being's essence to be mixed with the ink, it allows viewers of the tattoo to see a very intricate image of the being in their minds.

I interpreted 'essence' as heart or whatever that would be for those without. Fortunately, I still have about 8 giant wolf spiders, 6 giant spiders, 20 kobolds and most of a wyvern. The first batch of ink, I used the wolf spider hearts. It was completely successful, once again, I didn't bother with aiming it to a god.

[Bestial ink - Giant wolf spider] 250oz.

[Bestial ink - Giant spider] 450oz.

[Bestial ink - Wyvern] 3040oz.

[Bestial ink - Kobold] 353oz.

(species.kg X 9 = volume of heartcm3. Volume X 10 = total essence in heart. Essence / 29.574 = US fluid ounce. Just wanted to show it wasn't arbitrary.)

I also had my guardian produce 100oz of regular ink as well, so I can give it a break once this first bit is finished. So with all the inks ready I infused it into the…

[Unending bag of inks -

New features - wyvern, giant wolf spider, kobold and giant spider bestial ink. Regular ink.]

I'm not done either, as with the remaining spider bodies I can create a detection ink for monstrosities. And so I did, pulling out 100 regular ink bottles in a large ritual circle, I threw the spider bodies on top and begun my chant.

[Detection ink - Monstrosity

When in 500ft of a monstrosity, the tattoo will visibly glow.] 100oz.

I even used my [Slime finger shooters] to create one for oozes as well, even a bestial ink for it. Along with that I used the remaining wyvern corpse for dragon detection ink.

[Detection ink - Oozes

When in 500ft of an Ooze, the tattoo will visibly glow.] 100oz.

[Bestial ink - Undead ooze] 100oz.

Detection ink - Dragons

When in 500ft of a Dragon, the tattoo will visibly glow.] 100oz.

With everything ready I finished my money making machine, I can sell ink to scholars, artists, regular people and tattooists.

[Unending bag of inks -

Bestial inks - Giant wolf spider, Giant spider, Wyvern, Kobold and undead ooze.

Detection ink - Dragons, Oozes, Monstrosities.

Unique - Talon's scripture.]