The Search for Knowledge: New Beginnings

The Search for Knowledge - Chapter 8

(Author's note: Heya! A quick note before we get to the good stuff, sorry, but you'll all wanna see this. The arc is not even CLOSE to being over, but I figured it might be fun to allow YOU ALL to decide what the big bad boss of the chapter is going to be! All you gotta do is go to this poll https://www.strawpoll.me/17001212 Vote for whatever you want to see them fight! Don't worry about the story, just pick the one you wanna see the most. I only gave options that I can forsee writing into the story without causing any issues. Secondly, My webtoon artist friend is drawing up some fan art of Rox. Honestly, I can't wait to see it, and I plan to share it with all of you when she finishes lol. But you guys should check her out on Webtoon, her comic is called "Aitai" and I highly recommend it. The art is top notch and the story is hilarious. LASTly... Everyone send some love to our editor, PlasticSaint, who edited this on his sickbed. Whattaboss. Alright, Now let's get to what we all want, right?)

After Rox was taken away by the guard, Kara quickly set about searching the restricted area of the library. Gathering every book on the subject of sealing, as well as the Aetherous, that she could find. She spent as much time as necessary to fully comprehend each subject. Using her intelligence ability to enhance herself; she only needed an hour to get through the parts of the books that she wanted to read, and by the end of it she had a stack of books next to her along with an abundance of new knowledge on seals. As luck would have it, she even managed to learn a few things about the mysterious Aetherous race, although not very much.

Regarding the Aetherous, she had learned only a few scraps of new information. First was that the Aetherous were not so much a race, as they were a select group of individuals. There were seven of them, to be precise, and they were not born in the same way as the rest of the races. They were beings formed from the same substance their world was, aether, having obtained both sentience and a physical body. Due to this, they were quite powerful, possibly as powerful as the mediator gods that every chalice-born being worshiped as they protected the world from the pettiness of the other gods. This was all that she could learn from the restricted section, however.

On the subject of seals, she had learned quite a bit more. Possibly the most important thing she had learned was that something cannot be sealed with two different spells that would seal away different things. For example, it would be impossible to seal someone's physical body into a location while using a separate seal on the same person to lock away their magic power. However, you can put multiple layers of seals that accomplish the same task, such as putting seven layers of a seal to keep someone locked in a location. The reason one would have for doing this would be to seal away an extremely powerful being for a long time, for example, a powerful monster that the current population would never be able to defeat with their own power.

She also learned that seals, unless made with a specific amount of time in mind, are potentially eternal. Once placed, the seal draws in magic power from the world around it in the same way as mages when gathering magic power for a spell; it is also able to store an infinite amount of mana. However, they can only draw in a specific amount at a constant rate, if the sealed person or object is able to deplete the magic stores faster than it can be replenished, the seal will break. This is one reason for putting multiple layers on something, so that all layers can work towards replenishing the depleted mana much more quickly than a single layer would be able to. It is said that the more layers something is sealed with, the more dangerous it is. Since the lock draws in magic from the world, it seems to be impossible to create a seal from a physical magic attribute, such as strength, since to use those abilities someone must use magic from within themselves rather than the world.

Furthermore, she learned that a seal always has a written manifestation similar to barrier line writing. The language it is written in changes depending on the number of different elements that were involved while the sealing ritual was taken place. This language that the seals use is commonly referred to as "runic." If a seal was made with fire as well as water, then the runic writing would be entirely different than if it had been made using fire and lightning. If one can decipher the language of the seal, then they can easily destroy the lock and dispel it by commanding it to do so by writing somewhere on the seal in their own blood using the same runic language.