Chapter 127

A black cloaked figure paused by the shelves, the dim flickering of an enchanted light creating pools of shadow amongst the ragged fabric.

The hem raised and a yellowed bone hand emerged from a sleeve. A single bony index pressed against a book nearly as ragged and crumbling as the cloak, the binding lit by a low green from beneath the hood.

“Dungeonic encyclopedia, canidae analogous monsters, edition one ninety three.” came a strong yet somehow ancient voice from the hood. “And truly only thrice updated in all these centuries? Pathetic. These modern scholars are lazy, lazy and useless, lazy and useless and incompetent.”

“Why don’t you update it yourself then you dumb Boner?”

The hood turned and looked down. A Goblin stood there. One that was unique amongst all other Goblins. Not because she was some peculiar evolution that he didn’t recognise, nor that she was pregnant with some monster spawn he didn’t know, no, it was because she somehow managed to get under his skin, or rather, bones, like nothing else.

“I’m not going to sit down and write out hundreds of analogous monster species and paragraphs of notes on all of their intricacies.”

“Why?”

The bony hand twitched.

“You are asking me why I don’t simply sit down and write several large entire books right now?”

Opal tilted her head in question, as though she genuinely wanted to know.

It took a moment for Vash to recall that she couldn’t actually read let alone write and she likely really did not know what she was asking.

“Believe me when I say it is just not ... feasible. And in any case that is not what I am here for, I am here to research. Research...”

“I thought you said this ‘research’ was going to be easy.” gravelled a terrifyingly deep voice.

Vash turned his head to the side. The enchanted lights further down the corridor had died, likely a long time ago, just as the flickering one above his head was destined to. A pair of yellow eyes was watching him from that darkness.

“Yes, well, I may have slightly ... miscalculated, by a small margin ... of magnitude.”

The truth was that the number of rat, mouse, and lizard skeletons that were scouring the library was stretching Vash’s weakened state to its absolute limit. Hundreds of bony creations were scurrying through the walls and shelves and corridors, checking tens of thousands of books, dragging back those that showed some promise for him to check over properly, or being crudely fumbled through by the skeletons themselves.

His confidence at the start had been absolute. Stacks and stacks of books were brought forth, and with the help of his army of skeletons he had made quick work parsing and working his way through their contents.

But then the number of books the skeletons brought had started to slow to a trickle, all the easy and promising targets already taken.

His reading speed eventually caught up with the pace of the new books arriving and then as it slowed he found himself twiddling his bony thumbs in awkward silence as an increasingly unimpressed giant wolf monster watched him.

He’d gotten up and started looking himself just to get away from those accusing eyes, but then they had followed.

“Fine, I can admit it. Your species is not ... common.”

“I did tell you that they had last been around over a thousand years ago.”

Vash sniffed. “Yes, well, your academic source on that, a ‘goblin spider witch’ is not considered a quality reference in academic circles.”

“You haven’t found anything that suggests it isn’t true though.”

“It’s more likely that your kind exist in the deepest darkest depths in some godforsaken dungeon somewhere and only rarely encounter levelers to make a note of their existence.”

“Not once in over a thousand years? I think I believe the word of the spider goblin more, my species is extinct.”

“What I said is not impossible, although over a thousand years of such a state would make it rather, hrmm, improbable.”

“Either way this library must have something, even it has been so long, this place is endless.”

Vash nodded. “Yes, it is vast. My search isn’t so much a problem of running out of books but that all the easy obvious places to check have been used up in this disorganised mess. Thus I have come here.”

He suddenly turned and strode into the darkness, passing by the mass that was Rain, Opal following in his wake as bony feet clacked against stone.

As he passed by the cloak shifted and the things that were inside were momentarily made visible to Rain. A human skeleton. But more than that, a human skeleton swarming with smaller skeletons, rats and mice and lizards. The ribcage and the space below it had become something of a construction with floors and a spiral staircase all made from bone. Many small skeletons worked within, pouring over decrepit library maps and the many defunct classification systems that only ever encompassed a couple of percent of the library.

The cloak moved and the bones were once more hidden from sight.

Acquiring a full human skeleton had been surprisingly easy. Extremely old people wandering through a vast maze of books had a habit of dropping dead in some forgotten corner and his rat scouts had found a number of differing skeletons to choose from. The one his skull was currently perched atop of had been found jammed behind a shelf, the owner in life apparently having gotten stuck and left to die in obscurity. Which seemed a fitting end for the clumsiness of life in Vash’s mind.

He stepped into a dark dust filled space beyond the shelves.

“So you aren’t giving up?” gravelled Rain.

“Hardly. My credibility as a scholar is on the line and I find myself taking some ... personal interest in this matter. As much as it galls me to say it you are a different kind of monster, a different kind of monster of some scholarly interest.”

A mouse skeleton clambered from his shadowed hood and crawled onto his head. A small candle was produced and after a moment of fiddling with a tiny flint and steel, the mouse skeleton managed to light it.

It held up the candle over its head and a dim light was cast over the rectangular hall, a room lined with steel doors. Door after door on either side. Most of the doors were open, the barren vaults inside laid bare, dunes of centuries old dust washing up against the walls, the remains of fragmented furniture and bookshelves sticking from the dust like broken teeth.

“I came to this particularly well hidden part of the library for a reason. In my time you could rent this space. Family dynasties stored their secure records and scholarly works here in case their estates suffered an attack and were burned to the ground. Which was a wise thing to do, although it seems it is no longer practised.”

Every door in the hall was open and empty, except for the last door at the very end.

Rain approached, struggling not to sneeze from the dust kicked up by their every step. The door was like a normal door, if a little larger, and much more secure with heavy steel reinforcement. Eager to be out of the dusty space Rain stepped forward and took hold of the iron handle. Obviously it was locked and they didn’t have a key.

“It’s locked.”

“Clearly,” said Vash acidly. “But I hardly think that is-

Rain punched his paws into the stone surrounding the door frame and curled his digits. With a grunt he heaved backwards and the entire door frame with door still in it was ripped out of the wall and sent flying across the room where it crashed against the opposite wall with a screech of twisted metal.

“-a problem.”

Vash looked over the remains of the door. It was a lot thicker than it had appeared from the outside, ten inches of solid steel and likely many very very old enchantments. It hadn’t mattered of course, as far as the enchantments were concerned the door was still closed.

It was more than a little concerning how much stronger this monster had gotten in the short amount of time since he had first met him in Lynthia’s dungeon. How much stronger would he get?

Rain ducked inside the hole in the wall and after a moment Vash followed.

The interior was dark, but, surprisingly, there was only a little dust.

The mouse on Vash’s head lifted the candle and a spill of yellow light illuminated the rows and rows of bookcases

Behind the necromancer a swarm of rats poured through the broken hole and into the vault, climbing the walls and bookcases and dragging free book after book, flipping them open and pouring through them.

Vash paused as he noted a bronze bust by a set of reading armchairs.

“The Woldgut dynasty appears to be the ones responsible for this vault. In my time I did wonder, access was not allowed.”

“And they are?”

“A powerful dynasty of minotaurs. Their ability to level was remarkable, even their children became high levelers. Judging by how this place hasn’t been touched for many years they are either no longer using it, or ... they are all dead.”

Most of the shelves had been checked over by this point, a swarm of rats furiously scanning through hundreds of books at a breakneck pace, occasionally turning over a book to Vash to be read properly.

“How curious.”

“You’ve found what Iwant?”

“No. But this is the oldest book in the vault by far, maybe even the oldest in the library. I can’t date it exactly but it speaks of events and peoples I have never heard of. A species of wooly elephant leveler called a mammoth? It sounds fantastical but according to this they once supposedly existed in ancient times.”

Vash put down the book on a reading desk and flicked through it showing Rain, Opal scrambled up onto a chair to see. The book had dozens of illustrations including a picture of the wooled elephant like people, a kind of strange jellyfish creature, a giant dragonfly person which was distinctly disturbing to look at, a frilled lizard wearing an intricate gown and holding a mages staff, a mole like-

“Wait, go back!” said Opal.

The skeleton paused but then flipped back a few pages.

“Hey, isn’t that ... Bean?”

Rain and Opal stared at the illustration, an aquamarine scaled lizard with an imperious look, its neck frilled, its clothing clearly of great value, and the staff it held black and encrusted with gold and jewels.