As the rank-up alerts for research appeared less frequently, I forgot about them and pursued knowledge to establish a foundation for myself in this fantasy world of Miros. Having a concept of one’s place in the universe is part of being human. It’s what everyone needs to move forward, regardless of their culture or background. It comes from the fear of uncertainty—the future. If we wanted to know our future, we needed to understand our past. And if people didn’t understand history, then they invented one. Some explained the universe using scientific and quantified terms. Some defined themselves by social standing—while others embraced superstitious or abstract concepts. And folk who don’t know how the world works concocted conspiracy theories.

  Regardless of their methods, the motives remained the same. We all want to know our place in the world.

  This theory explained my thirst for knowledge about The Book of Dungeons. Pursuant to winning the battle royale, I wanted to merge with this environment and become a part of its history and people. My sense of worth felt greater here than in Atlantic City, and perhaps that made me unique among the contestants.

  Knowing the environment had advantages. I didn’t care if the world used binary computer code or DNA for its building blocks. I wanted to embrace it to the core. For now, the residents of Miros counted as my people.

  The first subjects I sought included geology and history. The library contained nothing comprehensive, so I pieced bits together and sketched out the continent’s areas and zones myself.

  I learned that humanity inhabited the coasts and rivers while the interior remained a no-man’s-land. Monsters barred transcontinental traffic. The North had two mountain ranges—one infested by goblins and the other by orcs. To the South, a long barrier called The Highwalls stretched like a great curved backbone—its name alone explained why no one traveled them.

  I cribbed notes from Charitybelle to expedite my scholarly pursuits. We kept abreast of whatever the other discovered. She geeked out over medieval engineering ever since she found material devoted to waterwheels and opened it several times to study its blueprints. One day, I saw her copying one of its diagrams.

  “What are you doing that for?”

  Charitybelle didn’t acknowledge me until she finished sketching an assembly of wooden pieces designed to house an axle. “We can modify water power.”

  Her comment made little sense. She once explained that civil engineering focuses on drainage, but none of that seemed applicable to Miros. “How do you modify water power? Do you mean making steam or something?”

  “No. I mean, we can transfer the water’s movement into a gear—several gears, actually.” Charitybelle pointed to a picture of a water wheel. “We can make all the waterwheels in this book out of hardwoods. A current turns the wheel attached to a millstone or something. But gears can do more. You can connect them to a spindle and spin a vertical axis. This could lead to automation.”

  “Are you talking about a factory?”

  “No, just a few creature comforts.” Charitybelle showed me sketches of wooden cogs, rods, cranks, cams, and belts on a piece of vellum. She showed how they could drive heavy hammers to pound laundry or power bellows for smithies. Her enthusiasm amused me, and she took my smile as an appreciation for her designs.

  “We could build this for our hunting lodge.”

  Why would we need a waterwheel for hunting? I thought I’d misunderstood her. “A hunting lodge?”

  “Yeah. We’ve been talking about building a cabin on the outskirts of Belden, but what if we settled further away—in the continent’s center? If we learn how to really live off the land, we won’t need to keep coming into town for supplies. We’ll want to be near a river. If we could harness water power, we could bring civilization’s comforts to our base camp.”

  Charitybelle gestured to pictures of waterwheels in her woodworking books. “These pages show how to make all the stuff we’ll need, like how to hew lumber.”

  She pontificated what it would be like to create a self-sustaining hunting camp. From my findings, trees covered most of Miros, and only the southern regions received heavy snow in winter. Her research pointed to a central question—how long could we survive in the Miros outback in a cabin?

  “I’ve been thinking about this after exploring the frontier with PinkFox, RIP, Fabulosa, and ArtGirl. The problem with hunting involves the long hikes to and from Belden eating up our time and energy. Everyone loves warm beds and cooked meals, but we also enjoy wilderness adventures. Why not have both?”

  My back stiffened. Her suggestion reminded me of RIP’s ploys to get me to leave the university. Hearing Charitybelle echo his strategies surprised me. She knew I had two libraries to explore and enjoyed working with Mr. Fergus.

  Charitybelle turned her woodworking book to another page. “It takes only a few hand tools to construct buildings. Factories and assembly lines aren’t necessary. I badgered the blacksmith apprentices for information on how to make things. They got evasive when they realized I wasn’t joining their guild, but I still learned a little. With time and experimentation, we can make anything we need.”

  I never expected to be pulled away from my studies by the allure of a girlfriend. Charitybelle wasn’t batting her eyelashes, but her enthusiasm shook my determination to discover magic through academia.

  The feasibility made the proposition alluring. We didn’t need to pay for deeds, wait for building permits, conduct environmental impact studies, or curry favor with the neighbors. The wilderness became the dominion of anyone willing to stake their claim.

  My noncommittal grunts didn’t deter her from pitching the idea to the rest of the gang over dinner.

  They loved the idea but insisted that the lodge be secure, so I helped her research basic palisade construction over the following days. I combed through stacks, chapter by chapter, searching for relevant passages. Charitybelle took what materials I could find and figured out how to secure and maintain an outpost. If we could figure out how to move earth, we could build a basic motte-and-bailey fortification. I searched for volumes about battlefield earthworks, fortress design, and frontier life.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Charitybelle bought parchment and took notes about living in the great outdoors. Even the library at Our Lady of Balance had applicable books. I found relevant passages in stories about ascetics living in the wild, and Mother Marteen brought out books on flora and fauna that applied to our investigation.

  While I scoured the library in Our Lady of Balance, I kept things tidy at Belden. Even though I didn’t officially work there, I helped with little chores like re-shelving books. By this point, Mr. Fergus gave me the run of the place.

  The summer before my senior year in high school, I’d been working as a stock boy in a local grocery store. Making managers happy became a tried and true tactic. By working hard, the boss gave me more freedom than other employees. Even though it took some extra effort, becoming valuable to my boss ultimately made my job easier. No one hassled me over the little things like showing up late or switching shifts. They gave me independence and more ownership of my position.

  I invested the same ethic into the Belden Library and even enlisted Mr. Fergus to suggest helpful books.

  Completing the catalog earned me clout, and Mr. Fergus trusted me. I approached him about the books on the top floor. “Could I look through the special collections for anything about the wilderness?”

  Mr. Fergus didn’t balk at the idea. “You think you’ll find information on the continent’s interior in children’s books?”

  “Even fables might have some truth.”

  “Hmm. That’s a possibility. While you’re up there, pick out a few of the most ornamented books. A collector from Jarva passes through the river to Grayton every spring. He’s usually looking for well-made editions—perhaps you could pull a few to sell.”

  “I can do that. Is there anything in particular you want me to pull?”

  “Any topic, or rather, the lack thereof, will suffice. Good luck with your search. If you can find material in that flotsam of misspent scholarship, you’re welcome to it.”

  I became a bibliophile in my teens when libraries became a lifeline from despair and loneliness. Reading did more than stimulate me. It weaponized my imagination and prepared me for adulthood after the relatives in my life called it quits.

  However, the pristine condition of the volumes in the special collections felt wrong, sad, and unhealthy. Books should be dog-eared with use, not put on pedestals. The top floor of the library amounted to vanity projects, a pageant of inept, outdated, and insincere thoughts, never to be treasured by readers. The special collections served as a graveyard where uncelebrated ideas went to die. Mr. Fergus had been right to cull them from circulation.

  After a week of organizing and searching, I happened upon a book called A Beginner’s Introduction to Applied Magic. My jaw dropped as I flipped through its pages. I always suspected another school of magic existed. The four other schools bore associations with celestial objects—the sun and three orbiting satellites. But nothing drew power from Owd, the fourth moon.

  I wrapped my arms around it, danced from foot to foot, and jumped with excitement. After plopping onto the floor, I pored over its illustrated pages, reading it from cover to cover. Hours later, I closed the tome, prompting an alert to surface on my interface.

  No one could see my jig because the library designated the fifth floor off-limits to students, and Mr. Fergus rarely came up here. I took care not to slip on the dusty floor as I pumped my fists and flailed about like a lunatic.

  And how did runes work? Did they use magic differently than spells?

  I’d discovered another school of magic, and its cantrip didn’t require a target like Animal Empathy. I didn’t need to look for bugs or birds to rank up the new skill. Like Heavenly Favor, I could spam it whenever I liked.

  This book vindicated all the effort I’d put into the library, and I immediately made plans for spamming Detect Magic. Unlike the other cantrips, Detect Magic required 10 skill ranks in research, making it inaccessible to anyone except Charitybelle. After a short internal debate, I showed the book to her and my allies. Unless I wanted to sow distrust among us, I couldn’t spam Detect Magic without explaining how I’d acquired it.

  Charitybelle had some difficulty reading the book’s text, but she adored the artwork, declaring its illustrated pages, decorative animals, and illuminated initial capitals to be “cute.”

  As I predicted, none of my other friends could understand it enough to pick up arcane magic. When Charitybelle finished the book, I showed it to Mr. Fergus. I expected him to be embarrassed or impressed that I’d discovered something valuable in the library’s special collections, but he received the news with minimal shock, making me wonder if he planted it. I never voiced my suspicion.

  It wasn’t the only book I gave him.

  Charitybelle and I compiled information about medieval technology and the continent’s interior. I grew adept at finding and reading things, but Charitybelle excelled in understanding them. We couldn’t take the books with us, and her notes became so extensive organizing them wasn’t easy. Expediency forced me to separate her records into sections, and the idea occurred to compile everything into a journal.

  Writing a book involved an immense undertaking, and I had to rearrange the sequence of my information several times to make it easier to read. I condensed and edited the content until I couldn’t improve it.

  While I worked on the book, I made mnemonic associations with places and events to remind myself to practice my spells. Whenever I stood up or sat down, I cast Heavenly Favor. Whenever I walked through a doorway, I cast Detect Magic. The cantrip took 10 seconds to cast, so I soon learned to step aside to avoid blocking traffic. I subdivided my routines with little exercises to grind my cantrips. Cast after cast, I slowly progressed through skill ranks. Ironically, this process was more efficient than off-campus spamming because I couldn’t afford to be caught in the wilderness with an empty mana bar.

  When the final version of my book coalesced, I created a second copy, cleaner than the first, and presented it to Mr. Fergus for the library. Behind his thick glasses, the venerable librarian’s eyes widened with admiration.

  Mr. Fergus fingered its pages. “Mr. Apache and Miss Charitybelle, this will be one of my most treasured books. Never have I had apprentices this diligent.” Embarrassed, he wiped his eyes and dried his hand on his tunic to avoid smudging the ink.

  His reaction almost choked me up, so I preemptively excused myself so he could take time with the book. We left him with his nose buried in the pages.

  A nervousness that I hadn’t expected unsettled me. What if the book wasn’t good enough? What if mistakes or errant writing forms disappointed him? If he found anything wrong, I trusted he would point it out. While I wanted it to be perfect, his critiques didn’t disappoint me. Analyzing and articulating thoughtful responses took time and trust—it showed respect. Maybe having someone to impress was like having a father.