The Librarian and All That...

"This is where Didi lives," Petty told Zheng Yichen. They certainly couldn't take the valuables straight back. If anyone discovered goods of unknown origin, envy would be the least of their worries; they might face questioning.

At Petty's call, the Half-Rabbit poked her head cautiously out of the rabbit hole. She looked around and only hopped out once she was sure it was safe. Zheng Yichen had no idea how Petty had managed to make a contract with such a wary little creature.

He soon found out. Petty took out a box of pastries and waved it in front of the Half-Rabbit. Her eyes lit up at once.

Oh, so she'd won her over with food?

The Half-Rabbit happily shouldered the bundle of valuables and carried it back into her hole. Petty had no reason to linger.

Zheng Yichen had stayed out of sight the whole time. If he had appeared, that rabbit probably wouldn't have shown her face, even with him shrunk as far as he could go.

"Coming here must be a hassle every time."

Petty shook her head. "If I spend a little extra mana during the summoning, I can bring Didi and whatever she's carrying together."

"What? You can do that? Even with a projection?" Zheng Yichen froze and hurried to ask.

"Yes, though if it isn't a physical summoning, anything brought along is only a projection too."

"Oh, that's still useful." Zheng Yichen thought it over. Now that he knew, he could carry a few things with him the next time he was summoned.

"...Looks like we'll have to spend the night outside the city." Petty stared at the closed city gates for a moment, then sighed dejectedly. She had planned their timing when they set out.

But picking out the jewelry bearing marks had taken her longer than expected, and she had missed the best time to enter the city. Her status was far too ordinary for the guards to make an exception for her.

"It's fine. I'm here." Zheng Yichen waved a hand, unconcerned. The only nuisance was that they hadn't brought a tent; sleeping outdoors wouldn't be easy. "Give me a moment. I'll check my book..."

He closed his eyes and shifted his attention to his true body at the castle. He picked up the book Lolise had given him, the one containing a vast number of spells, and leafed through it. It had no index, but some kind of permanent magic gave it a limited, fuzzy "search" function.

As long as Zheng Yichen had a type of spell in mind and the book contained one, a little flipping would bring him to something with a similar effect.

"Hmm... Earth Wall Spell. This'll do." Zheng Yichen nodded as he studied the Magic Array Pattern and notes. The name was a little plain, but it described the spell perfectly... Come to think of it, could he project the book over too?

He tried nudging the Summoning Mark that remained active in his Sea of Consciousness. While he was summoned, the mark gave off a faint, barely perceptible mana that enveloped his whole body. By influencing the mark, he extended that mana to cover the book in his hands as well.

The mana needed to maintain Projection Summoning rose a little. It looked like it had worked.

He closed his eyes again and shifted his attention back to Petty. His projected self now held a book identical to the one beside his true body, except that this one was just the right size for his hands. It was a projection too.

He flipped through it and tried searching for a few spells. Unlike when he used the original, doing so in this state cost a little extra mana. That was hardly surprising. He thought of it as making a phone call, and phone calls came with charges. Spending mana as the "call fee" to use the spellbook remotely through Projection Summoning seemed fair enough.

"Hmm... Earth Wall Spell!"

He traced the Magic Array Pattern recorded in the spellbook with threads of mana. A wall of earth rose out of the ground before him. That was the spell's basic form: a single, straightforward wall. If a ranked professional refined and adjusted an Earth Wall Spell they had mastered, the result needn't be a flat slab like a brick.

It might be a semicircular dome or a wedge-shaped ram, turning a defensive spell into an attack. An existing wall could also be reshaped by continuously feeding it mana. But if you'd already had to cast a defensive spell in a fight, how could you possibly have time to reshape it afterward?

Better to cast another spell and strike back!

Zheng Yichen kept changing the wall's shape with the mana he fed into it. Soon, a small square hut stood there. He then cast the Reinforcement Spell on it to keep the Earth Wall Spell's magical structure from falling apart.

An earth wall created by magic would crumble into loose soil or simply vanish once the magical structure holding it together broke down. It was formed from the earth element, after all. Walls cast by different people might last for different lengths of time, but once the mana sustaining their structure ran out, they would inevitably collapse.

"...You're casting a spell on another spell!?" Petty stared at Zheng Yichen in astonishment. Today had dealt her yet another shock!

"Is that not allowed?"

"Generally, no..." she answered, torn. "Connor, you really are amazing."

She murmured to herself, then said it with complete sincerity. She had already been shocked so many times that one more hardly seemed to matter. Her gaze fell on the book that had appeared in Zheng Yichen's hands. Its cover looked familiar, as though she had seen it somewhere before.

She frowned slightly. By the time Zheng Yichen had more or less finished the little hut he had created with magic, Petty remembered what she knew about the book.

"Connor, is that book in your hands... Bonnakane's spellbook?"

"Who's Bonnakane?" Zheng Yichen gave the spellbook a little shake. Seeing Petty's astonishment, he asked, "What's wrong? Is this thing special?"

"Very special," she replied, looking conflicted. A spellbook was a book a Mage used to assist and strengthen her spellcasting. In that respect, it was much like a wand, only in a different form, with the added benefit of storing knowledge.

But one particular spellbook was different. It offered almost no boost to a Mage's spellcasting, yet it recorded such an enormous range of spells that calling it an encyclopedia of magic would hardly be an exaggeration. Finding anything in it was effortless, too.

To learn about a type of spell, its holder only needed to think about it. Even without knowing its name, they could find a spell they had seen simply by recalling it—provided the book had a record of it.

The book had vanished for unknown reasons six hundred years ago. Now it had resurfaced in Zheng Yichen's hands.

"Oh? Sounds impressive." Zheng Yichen patted the spellbook. It had felt strangely familiar from the moment he first saw it, and after Petty's explanation, he understood why. It's basically an otherworldly, book-shaped search engine for magic! "You know a lot."

"I used to copy books for people as a part-time job," Petty said. The pay was low and the work dull, so few people wanted to do it. She rather liked it, though.

It let her earn money and build up her knowledge. She didn't come from a well-off family. If she wanted to make something of herself, she had to keep studying while finding a way to support herself. That job had suited her perfectly.

It was also how she had recently earned a place in the academy's trial in the Illusion Demon Forest. She was the weakest member of the group in terms of strength, but the most knowledgeable.

"You like reading?"

"Mm..." Petty nodded.

"Then why not try becoming a librarian?" Zheng Yichen recalled how people online before his transmigration had joked that it was a godlike profession.

"Uh?" Petty scratched her head and said, with a hint of frustration, "I tried for a position, but I couldn't get one..."