Library stroll

Chapter 32: Library stroll

Mercury woke up after the best night of sleep he had gotten in a while. His log was comfortable filled with blankets, and the night had been silent. He had some amount of money and was slowly making more.

Things were progressing. Maybe it was going a little slow, but he couldn't do much about that. Oh well, for now he had to be patient.

After getting a good stretch and a morning jog in, Mercury headed off into the forest, snacking on some boar meat he was keeping. Of course, the meat would spoil very quickly if he stored it in his room, and even in his inventory it would still decay, so he had asked Davis if he could store it.

Turns out the inn had made an investment in a special container for meat, one that was inscribed with runes that used the surrounding mana to slowly transmute chill the inside of the box. With this effect being permanent, well, the box was about as cool as a fridge, the temperature being adjusted by adding metals with heat rune carvings into specialized slots.

It was quite complicated to make, expensive to buy, inconvenient to move, and somewhat small, but it did a good job at keeping meats fresh, and Davis let Mercury leave some meat in there for two Dims a month. Which our favourite cat needed to provide in advance, of course.

But for now, the city was quiet, and Mercury was able to use the next day and a half to hunt up the rest of the boars. He now had a little over 3 and a half Pales. That would surely be enough to get him a book or two?

It was already late afternoon by the time Mercury was back in the city and done with all of his business, and it was raining softly. It was early spring when he had set out for Stormbraver, but soring's green grasses and colourful flowers were slowly pushing against its chill. It was warm enough for Mercury, especially with his cloak, and he was thankful for it, simple since it kept him from becoming soaked.

Mercury had enjoyed rain when he was still a human. The soft pattering it had on the streets was calming, especially when it wasn't too stormy. On warm days, he'd even sometimes take down his umbrella, simply soaking in the atmosphere - very literally. Though definitely not in the colder months. He shivered at the thought.

But with his newly gained fur, having it all be wet was rather uncomfortable, and he avoided it when he could, though he still most certainly kept clean. Being well kempt was important, since it was one way for him to take care of himself.

For just a little longer, Mercury allowed himself to close his eyes and forget about all that was happening around him, thinking back to the time he spent with Cherry and the wolves, and the time he had spent somewhere else entirely before that. It made him a little sad, but that wasn't much of a problem. Just part of grieving.

Oh, he wasn't giving up on getting his companions back though! At least one of them was still alive, and when it came to the others he hardly knew enough to make any premature judgments. Right, back on track Mercury. You can do this!

With that thought in mind, he pushed open the door to the library. It was a rather small building, a wooden door that didn't quite close properly, making it easy to swing open, the walls made largely from the same. It wasn't particularly large, nor particularly bright, with very few windows and candles only burning on the select few reading chair in the corner, as well as on the counter itself.

The librarian was an elderly man, with short, white hair and a bushy beard, his blue eyes framed by crow's feet and other wrinkles. He sat a little hunched in a chair with many pillows, a square set of glasses on his nose as he gazed down at a book with a warm smile, wearing a simple shirt, striped and buttoned, and a pair of beige pants.

Mercury saw just fine in the general gloom of the library, most tables empty and their candles unlit, but the old man had one of them lit next to him, taking care to never hold the book to close. Mercury quietly stepped up, not wanting to disturb the old man, unsure what to do. Then, he simply turned around and walked outside again, taking care to open the door wide as he walked in again, making the librarian glance over.

Score! He didn't scare an old man! Mercury smiled to himself as he approached the counter once more. The man glanced at the cat curiously for a moment, before shaking his head slowly and kneeling a little closer to the floor.

"What brings you here, my little friend?" he asked, more himself than anyone else, but before he continued his musings, Mercury quickly spoke up.

"Well, I'd like to read a few books if that would be alright?"

The librarian raised his fading eyebrows at this, the wrinkles on his forehead growing in size and power. He then shook his head again as he slowly raised himself up.

"Well, I suppose that's what one would come to a library for, isn't it? I don't get much business anymore these days, much less from non-humans, please excuse my rudeness. Feel free to browse at your leisure, and don't hesitate to ask me if you need anything."

"Thank you, good sir," Mercury replied, "I'll take good care not to damage anything. Is there any way I could take the books with me?"

"Yes, there is. You can borrow books by paying per day, and you can also buy copies of them if you have the money with you, though in some cases these will take their time. Of course, you can always read in here, though you will have to rely on no one else currently reading what you want to read. Taking books from others is strictly forbidden."

Mercury nodded at this and gave the man a short thanks as he headed into the library itself, hearing the librarian sigh as he slowly settled back into his chair. To be honest, Mercury also enjoyed the atmosphere in the building more than he had expected. It was quiet, but not suffocating, with the occasional page being flipped, or tapping of boots as someone went to relieve themselves or seek out another book.

The wood was lacquered, but not thickly so, and Mercury could still clearly smell pine and lavender in the whole place. It was also warm, perhaps because of the candles, and the rain pattered nicely on the roof, this one being made from what seemed like sheets of copper to keep the water out.

Mercury felt right at home as he went about browsing the shelves, looking at the different sections. History, science, medicine, geography, children's stories... he enjoyed simply checking the spines of some books, looking at the engraved leather in wonder. Some of them even had very pretty covers to attract the eyes of potential readers.

He even found some interesting books on warfare, and quite a bit of poetry, too. But when he got to the section labelled "Phenomena", one of the books stood out to him. "Eclipse - Crimson Sky". Mercury's blood chilled a little as he carefully pulled it out, with the help of a woman that saw him struggling with a ladder.

She placed the book on the table she was sitting at, across from herself, as she turned back to her own literature, while Mercury stuck his nose right down into the thing.

/When the sky turns scarlet and rivers of blood begin to flow, it has happened yet again. A blood eclipse must have come./

So it was what he thought. A book about blood eclipses. Mercury frowned at the thought, catching himself moments before he would have begun hissing at the book. Instead he simply continued.

/This is a name to be uttered only once, so read it closely and read it only once. After such, you may read it again only after you've waited for three hundred days and walked three hundred miles.

The sanguine emperor, Regalius Crimson./

Mercury felt his fur stand up as he read the name, the air around him seeming to chill as he smelled a huff of iron in the air.

But the very next moment, the sensation was gone, and all he saw was a curious gaze from the woman across him, which soon glued itself back to the book in front of her.

Regalius Crimson. Mercury played with the name in his mind, his thoughts not confined to the restriction of the book. He thought about what it meant, how it might feel if he spoke it, and he focused on how he felt about it.

He focused not just on the name itself, but the boiling hatred he could feel whenever he recalled the events of that day. It now laid behind him with some time, but he still was not over it. He couldn't be over it, not as long as he clung to the hope of one day seeing his friends again.

But as he thought about that name, remembered the chill he had felt in the air for just a moment, as his mind was drawn back to the time when the sky turned red and the city he had been in was torn to ruins, he realized he hated it.

Mercury hated that name. He hated the person behind whatever happened, he damned the voice that had sung that day, sung those disgusting words, summoned up those monstrosities as they-

Our hero clenched his teeth, biting his tongue a little as he started to get lost in his own mind. He had to stay above the waves, couldn't fall back into them.

Now, he had a name. A trail. A trace to follow.

/This person, if one graces him with the term, is a defiler of life. A-/

The page ripped from there on. Mercury hadn't quite seen it before, but the book he had grabbed was in rough shape, the paper old, worn, and treated poorly. But, with what little was still left, Mercury could scrape together some more intel on whoever was behind this.

/The eclipses kill many, just as many as are dragged into the portals the monsters emerge from. No one knows where the portals lead to, and the people behind them are just as lost as those that die.

Yet, some survive and tell tales of a song. A melody sung on every blood eclipse, though the voices singing it differ.

"This little sea of scarlet

Lets me tear the world apart, yet

When it's done I will still stand

On top a barren, beaten land." - Verse 1

"And these little eyes of mine,

they see a little fate of thine.

They see death, and they see carnage,

a river of blood, yet to be tarnished,

carrying your life within,

and dragging it,

into the pit." - Verse 2

After the-/

Mercury also remembered the song, though he only had a vague recollection of the memory, not the exact lyrics. The author seems to have pieced it together from multiple witnesses, since Mercury was sure that there might not have been a single witness remembering the whole thing.

But it was sung with reportedly different voices as well, so with all the missing pages, it was interesting how the author would have found out the name of the main perpetrator.

Oh well, he might as well read on. There was a lot of gibberish that he couldn't piece into anything coherent, but Mercury continued on, flipping through the pages whose ink was smeared, and the ones that were burnt or wavy and illegible from water. Some even had splotches of dried blood on them.

But at the end of the whole thing, he found one last interesting bit.

/"Survivors of eclipses are more frequently affected by another. Examples of this are the famed Yvette Lumineux, as well as the, now deceased, master of house Lionheart./

Well then, wasn't this something. This crimson emperor actively hunted down survivors of the blood eclipses? That seemed unnecessary. And incredibly cruel as well.

Mercury honestly felt sorry at Yvette for this. He could now perhaps understand a little better why she had always been so on edge and pushed him to do better. She had sought out more control over her life, and maybe scraped up her last bits of empathy to nurture his potential and hope he could escape what was eventually coming for her.

It was... rather sad. He didn't blame her for the eclipse. She was a victim as much as he was himself. She had likely lost people to it before and might have to lose people to it again, and the same now went for him. Well, then again, this was simply a hurdle to overcome. And quite frankly, given that he now knew a person was behind the blood eclipses things were a whole lot simpler.

If he stayed in large cities, they might not happen because of incredibly powerful people in said cities. So, in his eyes, Stormbraver was most likely not too dangerous to stay in, since it was a capital and had many people as strong or even stronger than Avery.

Of course, he was still in danger, but at least it wasn't as urgent as it could be. Well, to be quite fair, his life in this world was always woven with danger. Every step he took forward was met with quite a bit of resistance, but that was just fine.

For now, he decided that it was unlikely another blood eclipse would come after him. He was too little of a threat to whoever this crimson emperor was, and in to secure a location. So, Mercury nodded to himself and put the book away, with some help form the kind lady. It had helped him shed just a little more light on his fate and it had also given him some hope again.

Hope, that maybe, just maybe, this blood eclipse thing wasn't insurmountable.

Ah, but for now, he wanted to look at other books. Maybe something on magic? No, that wouldn't do. Mercury didn't simply want a book on magic in general. If he found a book that was simply on mana, he would probably avoid it on purpose, simply because he didn't want any preconceived notions to get in his way.

This was simply what his <Intuition> told him would be better in the long term, though it would most certainly keep his path of advancement thorny. Instead, Mercury set out to find anything dealing with revival or souls, which netted him a handful of children's stories and nothing more.

It was frustrating. He was making very little progress in his research, his funds, his magic... he let out a sigh again, drawing a few glances from the handful of people still reading. It was dark outside by now, but Mercury hardly even noticed.

[<Night Vision lv. 2> has levelled up!]

Well, that was a pleasant surprise to be sure.

Right, everything was fine for now. He wasn't in a great rush to find out everything he could, though of course, he didn't want to become lethargic and slow either. Mercury would simply keep doing what he had been doing. Work on his mana control and transmutation whenever he found the time, while completing commissions and researching books during the day.

This was fine for now. He would simply continue to amass experience slowly, though it was already a slightly increased rate compared to most other people because of <Talent>. He had only been in this world a little over a year by now, so he still had a lot of time left to do everything he wanted.

If he found the time, maybe he'd even start a kingdom of his own. It wouldn't do to revive his friends only to show them his grand plan had made no progress after all this time.

Mercury smiled to himself at the thought, but was soon interrupted for a moment as the librarian rung a small bell.

"We're closing for today, so please get home safe. You are all welcome to visit again tomorrow." The man spoke loud enough for everyone to hear, which, admittedly, wasn't very loud. A few people still came to his counter, probably to borrow or buy some books, which the old man took time for, but Mercury was not among them. He simply decided to head home.

It had stopped raining by now, though a bit of fog had laid itself peacefully along the city. Mercury wasn't bothered by this very much at all, simply enjoying the feeling of a walk home instead of running. He didn't want to risk banging his head against a wall or something.

The streets were largely empty by then, but when he was just a few blocks away from the church, he heard someone approach him.

"Awwww, what a little cutie you are!" a girl with black bangs, wearing a maid's dress yelped out while quickly walking towards him.

"I swear if you try to pet me I'll fucking bite your ass."

"AIEE!!"