Chapter 697 The Royal Library
?Arad walked around, looking at the seemingly endless shelves of books spreading across the library. "So much in one place," He said.
"All those books must be worth a fortune," she looked at one shelf, finding several magical books for spells and weapon schematics.
Arad approached one shelf that was locked inside a steel cage and ripped the lock apart, looking at what was inside. "Eris, look at this."
She approached, "Hair, art, and toes? What in the hell is this?"
"[It's a basic witchcraft guide, nothing amazing,]" Doma created a mouth on Arad's face and spoke, "[I can translate it for you if you want,]"
Arad opened the book and looked inside. From the first chapter to the last, it looked like a guide on how to make delicate haircuts, nail care, and how to draw tattoos with a needle and some ink. A weird subject, but it didn't look that witchery for him.
"You say it needs to be translated?" Eris looked at Arad, talking with Doma.
"[It's one of the books I read in the past. I won't call it great, but it's a start.]" Tattoos spread across Arad's arms and neck as Doma took control, "[Let me show you how to translate it]"
"[Some body parts are considered dead in the magic formula, that includes nails and hair. Witches paint their nails with magic-infused ink, usually created by the witch herself after years of brewing. They can then use all of their nails as an arcane focus enabling move versatility with spells.]" She pointed at the nail care section, "[It's not that accurate, but this is how you apply it. And it's usually extremely painful as the magic seeps into your nerves.]"
"I remember," Eris gasped, feeling a shiver down her spine, "When I used that ink I bought to paint my nails black. It hurt like hell,"
"[The purer and stronger the magic, the more painful the painting is.]"
"It felt like a nail piercing my finger," Eris looked at Arad.
"[No wonder your witch nails are weak. Not only you didn't make it yourself, it barely caused any pain. You should try making one and re-painting your nails.]" Doma smiled, "[It's called Pain-ting for a reason,]"
"It did hurt!" Eris gasped, "How much else should it hurt,"
"[A good measure is that if nothing leaked out, you probably didn't make it good enough. I writhed in my own waste for a week after painting each nail," She lifted her finger and showed them to Eris, "[Look, even in Arad's body, they still show up. They are engraved into my soul.]"
Arad blinked, retaking control of his body, "What about the hair?"
"[The hair isn't used as an arcane focus, but it's used as a substitute for consumables and a medium for magic. Curses especially benefit from it, like you can make someone insane by just putting a hair strand on their door,]"
Eris nodded, "And I heard that blood is used as a sacrifice,"
"[That's a whole other subject of witchcraft and an advanced one that this book doesn't even mention. This one here is tattoos, you can think of them like writing a spell's formula on a scroll, but now the scroll is your own skin. Those tattoos on my body draw channels for mana to move through efficiently, amplification, and sensors, I also have several ones running passive tasks like deflected lower tier spells and sending a wave of jamming magic to make casting spells harder and also muffle detection and prevent people from seeing me through high-level detection magic. It's the most complicated one, and not something a beginner witch should dabble with,]"
"I'll probably be bald with black nails and a body full of tattoos if I wanted to become an experienced witch." Eris sighed.
"[I've seen many witches turn into shriveled hags with long noses and half-balding heads, don't go overboard.]" Doma giggled, fading into Arad's body.
"Guess I'll keep this one," He swallowed the book into his stomach and kept looking inside the locked shelf while Eris exploded the rest of the library.
Several minutes later, "Arad! I found this one," She approached, carrying a thick book with a leather cover and title engraved with gold.
[Sara's Guide to Kingship]
"What's that?" Arad looked at the book in her hand, "It doesn't look like a magic book,"
"Because it's not. It's written by the first queen of the kingdom and talks about how to manage a kingdom. I bet several kings have read this to learn from it,"
"I'm going to manage a castle, which is more like a small kingdom so this would be useful…" Arad opened the book to read it, but his eyes immediately started hurting the moment he saw the pages almost black with how much was written on them and how absurdly small the font was.
"Did she have to pack it like this?" He looked at how thick the book was, "She could've written four or five small books," He sighed. The thing weighed over 10kg…
"It'll be useful so keep it," She gave the book to Arad, who swallowed it immediately. "It's going to be a pain to read it all, but I'll manage over a few weeks."
"We'll probably need to build you a study or a wizard's lab," Eris looked at him, "I can't wait to see you sitting behind a desk, starting a book for an entire day."
"I'll probably use [Time Slow] to finish it quickly,"
"Believe me, time slows on its own when you try studying magic," She giggled as Arad kept looking for any useful book. She on the other hand looked around and found several notable books about agriculture, cooking, and entertainment, there were even several stories thrown around.
As Eris explored the library, Arad pulled another strange book from the locked shelf that tickled his interest. [King of the Seven Seas: Jack Parrot]
"It's the man buried in Rita's temple," He smiled, "Was he important or something, I guess a king is a king,"
"Did I hear Jack Parrot?" Eris started toward Arad from behind the bookshelves. "That man ruled all of the world's water with his massive fleet of pirates. If you want to travel the seas, reading about his life and how he navigated is a must."
Arad opened the book, this one seems to be written by the man himself.
[I have never written a book before, so I don't know how to start, I'll just wing it. I love my wife, her red hair is striking…] Arad flipped several pages of the book, and Jack was still praising his wife in detail.
Then it suddenly shifts in tone, [Beware, the overgod's brother resides in the seas, his name is Abel. A one-eyed, tall, and white-haired slender man with a toned build and seven beautiful witches that live with him, they are his wives. After a conflict with his brother, he decided to live a calm life of peace on a private island and keep to himself. I only ruled the seas because he isn't even trying, don't sail the waves with arrogance, or he'll strike you down,]
"That escalated quickly, after a long dragged wait…" Arad sighed, closed the book, and threw it into his stomach, "I'll read it if I want to sail across the sea."
He kept looking, and he quickly pulled out another strange book.
[Heroine of Bronze: Shout of Thunderclap]
He stared at the book for a second and gave the first pages a few reads. The book was written by a woman called Roberta about a bronze drakaina called Nemmoxon. She mastered the power of her draconic shout, the supersonic blast of the bronze dragons to a degree where she could fine-tune it into an even deadlier weapon. It details a theory about how the drakaina used her wings and scales to amplify the volume of her force breath to the point it could reverberate across the whole world like a massive explosion called Nemmoxon's thunderclap. There are even records of her shouting at a devil so loudly she erased him out of existence.
The book also details that sound is waves, vibrations that travel in the air. When the pitch is high enough, it can shatter glass, even humans can achieve this. But when someone like Nemmoxon learned that, she screamed a devil into nothingness by creating an extremely high pitch that vibrated through his body and destroyed his molecular structure.
"A drakaina that loud, I wonder if she would be alive somewhere…" Arad flipped the pages of the book, [...Nemmoxon was fond of sharks and whales, and she almost ate them to extinction…] The book had too many details.
"I can be quite loud so I might be able to weaponize this as well," He tucked the book in his stomach and kept looking.
"What's…" Arad gasped, feeling his head hurting when he saw the next book's title.
[Heaven's Kitchen War: Goddesses of the divine order stomped by an old lady.]
"What even is this?" He opened the book and looked inside, the few first chapters detailed a crisis that occurred in the world after the ancient god abomination war and how all divine magic halted across the world as the goddess reserved all of their power to face off an old lady called Mabel in a contest to cook off the overgod. And they lost badly.
The book details several recipes that could grant various effects and blessings depending on the way they were prepared and the ingredients used.
The sourc𝗲 of this content is free(w)ebnov(𝒆)l