Chapter 115: The Inherited Spirit (2)
The rain had slowed to a faint drizzle by the time Lucien set out, and the slick sheen of water over the neatly laid stone bricks made them glimmer under the pale morning light.
He kept his coat pulled close, his satchel thumping lightly against his hip as the crisp air carried the scent of wet earth and something faintly metallic, perhaps the tang of charged air residue that always lingered after storms.
Downhill, beyond the last cluster of student dormitories, the landscape opened up to what was arguably the most impressive, and confusing part of the Academy’s design: the Libraries.
Plural.
Five colossal buildings stood in a perfect circle, so massive that they seemed to cage the sky itself.
From a distance, they looked like titans, ancient and brooding, their dark silhouettes dominating the horizon.
Up close, they were even more imposing.
Each one was constructed from slabs of black stone cut with an unnatural precision, the kind of geometry that dared you to question how builders had managed it.
Iron frames reinforced the edges, and high, narrow windows slit the walls like the eyes of sentinels.
The combination gave the structures a brutal, medieval grandeur
Intimidating yet awe-inspiring.
Their arrangement was deliberate.
Each stood equidistant from the other, their wide staircases facing inward toward the structure at the center.
That one, however, broke the pattern.
It wasn’t made from black stone or iron but from pale, almost luminous marble, veined with streaks of gray that caught the light in soft gradients.
Compared to its towering neighbors, it seemed gentler, smaller, like a shrine surrounded by fortresses.
Lucien slowed his pace as he passed it.
The building had an unspoken quietness to it, the kind that invited reverence.
Even the drizzle seemed to avoid it, droplets sliding down its polished surface like respectful bows.
A marble spire rose from its roof, topped with a faintly glowing crystal.
Whatever that building was, it wasn’t a library, that much was obvious.
There was a different air to it, something more sacred than scholastic.
But Lucien didn’t linger long.
His destination lay in one of the black giants beyond.
***
The first building he entered was Library one: Arcana Theoria.
It greeted him with cold air and colder stares.
The interior was vast, vaulted ceilings ribbed with iron beams, shelves stacked to heights that made his neck ache to follow.
He wandered among towering bookcases arranged in clean, endless rows that smelled faintly of ink and dust.
Unfortunately, when he asked a robed scholar about texts on automaton mechanics, the man looked at him as if he’d just inquired about recipes for soup.
“Not here, my boy,” the scholar had said, returning to his scroll with dismissive ease.
“Try the other building. We deal in abstract theory here, not moving contraptions.”
Lucien muttered his thanks and backed out, the echo of his own footsteps following him all the way to the door.
Library two wasn’t much better.
This one was apparently dedicated to magical flora and fauna.
He was greeted by the distinct aroma of preserved herbs, the buzzing of mana-insects in sealed glass spheres, and an elderly woman gently scolding a student for trying to “borrow” a potted plant that could apparently bite.
Lucien decided he didn’t want to know.
And so, to Library three he went.
The third building, Machina Motus, felt immediately different.
The walls bore faint engravings of gears and circles, runic diagrams etched into the stone itself.
The air smelled faintly of oil and old parchment.
When Lucien approached the front desk, he was greeted by a man who looked as though he had been born in a suit and tie, immaculately pressed, hair slicked back, and posture sharp enough to slice bread.
“Good morning,” the man said with a polite, almost mechanical nod.
“How may I assist you?”
Lucien, a little out of breath from climbing yet another flight of unnecessarily tall stairs, managed a weak smile.
“I, uh… need some reference material on automaton movement. For an assignment. From Professor Taiga.”
The librarian’s expression softened slightly.
“Ah, Professor Taiga’s students. Always an ambitious lot.”
He tapped a polished finger against the counter, thinking.
“You’ll want to start with the basics first. A few texts on human biomechanical movement, Floor Four, Section C. After that, proceed to the beginners’ guides on golemic motion, those are located in the sublevels. Basement Seven, specifically. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with those, you may proceed to the automaton archives on Floor Six, Section G.”
Lucien blinked.
“Basement seven?”
“Yes,” the man replied, smiling faintly.
“You’ll find the stairwell just beyond that hallway.”
Lucien followed his gesture and immediately regretted asking.
The stairwell yawned before him like the mouth of some ancient creature, spiraling downward into what looked like eternity.
The walls grew darker the further he descended, the stone cold and slightly damp under his fingertips.
Light was scarce, at least, ordinary light. Instead, certain bricks glowed faintly with a soft, bluish hue, runes pulsing within them like gentle heartbeats.
They flickered as he passed, illuminating fragments of his path in slow, rhythmic intervals.
It was beautiful, in an eerie way.
The deeper he went, the older the architecture felt, less like a library, more like a forgotten dungeon repurposed by scholars who had run out of space above ground.
By the time he reached Basement Seven, his calves were screaming and his breath had turned shallow.
“No one,” he muttered between gasps, “and I mean no one, has invented elevators here? What century is this?”
He found the golemic motion section tucked away in a corner behind several shelves of dusty tomes.
The books were heavy, bound in thick leather that smelled faintly of ozone.
He grabbed it and began his ascent back to the surface, which turned out to be even worse than the descent.
Somewhere around Basement Four, he contemplated just living there permanently and becoming one with the books.
By the time he reached the front desk again, he was drenched in sweat and slightly delirious.
The librarian, ever immaculate, looked precisely as he had before, utterly unfazed.
Lucien set the pile of books on the counter with a thud.
“Got them,” he panted.
“Almost died. But I got them.”
“Excellent,” the man said, smiling.
“Now, may I see your library card?”
Lucien froze.
“...My what?”
“Your card,” the man repeated pleasantly.
“Students must register before borrowing. Standard procedure.”
Lucien blinked once.
Then twice.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“So I can’t-”
“Take the books? No.”
Lucien stared down at the mountain of tomes he had just risked cardiac arrest for.
His expression twisted between disbelief and despair.
The librarian’s polite smile didn’t falter.
“You’re, of course, welcome to read them here.”
Lucien opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again.
Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled faintly, mocking him.
He sighed.
“Right. Here it is then.”
***
Lucien’s climb up the library tower had been nothing short of spiritual torment.
By the time he reached the fourth floor, his legs were trembling like undercooked noodles, and he was convinced that if the architects of this place had ever heard of “elevators,” they had collectively decided such inventions were heresy.
The stairwell spiraled endlessly upward, every step lit by faintly glowing runes etched into the black stone.
By the time he pushed through the heavy oak door marked “STUDY HALL: FLOOR IV,” he was drenched in sweat, half-dead, and carrying three tomes heavy enough to serve as siege weapons.
The sight before him, however, almost made the climb worth it.
The reading floor stretched wide and open, bathed in the natural glow of morning sunlight filtering through enormous arched windows.
The ceiling rose high above him in sweeping ribbed vaults of pale marble, threaded with veins of faint gold that caught the light and shimmered softly.
It was less a “room” and more a cathedral of knowledge.
Long communal tables ran the length of the chamber, each large enough to seat twenty students on either side, while alcoves along the walls held isolated desks for those pursuing solitary study.
Between them, floating spheres of blue-white mana drifted lazily through the air, shedding a calm luminescence that mixed with the golden sunlight.
The air smelled faintly of parchment, ink, and the weary determination of overworked scholars.
Lucien picked an empty spot near a window and dropped his armful of books onto the table with a heavy thud.
The sound echoed.
Several students looked up from their notes to glare at him in silent disapproval.
He gave them a nervous smile and sat down.
His first victim was a tome titled The Biomechanical Principles of Mana-Driven Constructs.
He flipped to the opening chapter, expecting at least a diagram or two to make things easier.
Instead, he was greeted with pages upon pages of dense text and formulae that might as well have been an incantation for insomnia.
“When determining the torque-to-mana ratio in thaumic actuator systems, one must account for the residual flux gradient produced during mana dissipation-”
Lucien’s eyes glazed over.
He stared at the text, then at the ceiling, then back at the text again.
He wasn’t sure what was spinning more, his head or the diagrams.
“This… this is thermodynamics all over again,” he muttered under his breath, horror dawning on him.
“They’ve just changed the units.”
The ghosts of his past life’s college lectures rose before his eyes, endless nights spent trying to memorize the Navier-Stokes equation, the hum of malfunctioning projectors, professors who could kill joy by reciting equations.
And now, here he was again, reborn into another world, only to die once more at the hands of academia.
He groaned, closing his eyes for a moment.
His thoughts drifted to the D’Claire estate, how much simpler things had been there.
He missed the smell of the baked goods in the mornings, the quiet rhythm of the town library, and even Vaelira’s stern voice lecturing him about proper posture while studying.
At least there, his failures were met with exasperated sighs.
As he sighed, his fingers absentmindedly reached for the two small wooden figures Professor Taiga had given him.
He began moving them around like little soldiers on campaign, one marching stiffly, the other pretending to fly.
The simple movement brought an odd comfort.
For a few minutes, Lucien was content to let his imagination wander.
One figure raised an invisible sword.
The other ducked.
“Take that!”
He whispered under his breath, tapping one figure against the other.
“You’ll never take me alive, you splintered fiend!”
He even made sound effects.
Quietly, but not quietly enough.
Several students down the row looked up, blinking at him.
One young woman, wearing a monocle, gave him a look that could curdle milk.
Another leaned closer to her friend and whispered something, Lucien caught the words “unstable” and “first-year.”
Realizing how absurd he must look, he froze mid-battle and coughed awkwardly.
“Field testing,” he mumbled, setting the figures down as though he’d been conducting an important experiment.
The judgmental silence around him was deafening.
He tried to return to the text, but the words blurred together into a soup of nonsense.
The lines on the page seemed to swim, and his eyelids grew heavy.
“Maybe… maybe just a little break,” he murmured.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
Thoughts of home filled his mind again, Terrin, Ms. Celeste, Richardson, even the quiet peace of the estate garden.
And somewhere deep inside, his mana pulsed softly in tune with his emotions.
Without realizing it, that pulse spread from his fingertips into the table, then into the wooden figures lying beside the books.
A faint warmth passed over them, subtle at first, then punctuated with tiny vibrations.
Lucien’s eyes snapped open just in time to see both figures twitch.
“Oh no,” he whispered.
Before he could react, the figures jumped to life, one somersaulting off the book stack, the other vaulting across the table.
“Wait- hey! No, no, no, no!”
Lucien lunged, but the little constructs scattered like startled rats.
They sprinted down the length of the table, dodging quills, inkwells, and the horrified hands of nearby students.
A wave of panic spread across the reading floor.
One figure jumped onto another student’s open textbook, then used it as a springboard to leap off the edge.
“Come back here, you suicidal kindling!”
Lucien hissed, diving after them.
Books toppled.
Scrolls went flying.
A candle snuffed itself out as he accidentally swept his sleeve across it.
The quiet, orderly reading hall turned into a battlefield.
Lucien managed to snatch one figure in midair, holding it triumphantly above his head.
“Gotcha!”
But as he turned, he spotted the other one racing full speed toward the nearest window.
The figure reached the sill, hesitated for the briefest moment, then leapt dramatically into open air, vanishing into the sunlight.
Lucien froze.
“For the love of–”
He stormed over to the window and leaned out, staring down at the courtyard four floors below.
There was no sign of the tiny fugitive.
Just students walking, oblivious, and the distant sound of bells chiming the hour.
“Great,” Lucien muttered.
“Excuse me.”
The voice behind him froze his spine.
He turned slowly.
Standing there was a librarian.
Tall, composed, with steel-gray hair pinned into a perfect bun, and eyes sharp enough to file metal.
Her robes were immaculate, her expression carved from stone.
“Mr. Lucien, I presume?”
She asked in a voice that managed to be both calm and terrifying.
Lucien swallowed.
“Uh… yes?”
Her tone didn’t change.
“Kindly refrain from launching enchanted projectiles out of the fourth-floor windows.”
He blinked.
“It was an accident?”
“Kindly,” she repeated, “leave the premises.”
Lucien opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and shut it again.
A minute later, he trudged out of the library, clutching his one remaining wooden figure, his dignity shattered somewhere around floor three.
