Lihan did his thing and started scratching in his notebook. I mostly ignored him and got to my new book. Mythical Beings. The book was pretty much what one would expect from a bestiary. It had a glossary grouped loosely into types of species and another one grouped into confirmed, questionable and disproven. The disproven section was uncomfortably small. A quick glance at some of them showed they had mostly been mistaken for other unique beasts. The stories in such cases were oftentimes centuries apart and the newer entry had more detail on their actual capabilities.

Of course, I had something I wanted to know about. Dragons. What fantasy world did not have dragons? And indeed, there were some. Sort of. I found unique beasts believed to be evolved from wyverns, snakes, birds and even some mammals that all fit the description of fire-breathing monster or some of the more modern versions. Most importantly, there was one confirmed unique dragon evolved from an actual tribe of dragons. An interesting race in that they gained sapience most of the time but did not have it naturally. The parents simply roosted near a strong enough node to grow their child’s mental Attributes and mana enrichment. All of that was from a more common bestiary I had Lihan bring over for reference. Apparently, there was a roost community somewhere in the southwestern dwarven hills. They kept to themselves most of the time but the nearby city regularly interacted with them. That was also where the dwarves had confirmed the unique dragon evolution. Someone who had decided against an Affinity and wanted to live on their own.

I kept looking but found mostly hearsay and tales that had not been confirmed. Until, after about two hours, I found something I was familiar with. The being was called Stormbringer by the dwarves. A snake-like dragon controlling the weather and creating a permanent cumulonimbus to live in. The being would travel across the northern dwarven lands twice a year, once during summer, once in winter. Its route was mostly equivalent with the human-dwarven borders. The trade-town was on the human side but still dwarven controlled. The large stretch of land devastated twice a year was not as large as it might seem. The dwarves naturally built their cities far apart. Before I got lost in another rabbit hole, I turned back to Stormbringer.

The dragon was the first truly magical being I had seen with my own eyes. I was incredibly curious where it was going and why it was moving this regularly. Maybe I should try to follow the trail of destruction? Though, how bad was it really? I had seen the valley but all the trees were grown back within half a year if this information could be believed. I might have to trail it much closer than initially thought. With the flock of feathered wyverns following it all the time that could be dangerous. A thought for later.

I spent a few more hours going through the book. Many of the mythical beings described in it were similar to some of the fiction I remembered from earth. There were trolls, krakens, wyrms, dragons, satyrs and many more. What caught my attention were the tiny details. The trolls might be large hulking humanoids focused on strength and regeneration but all the ones talked about in Mythical Beings were something more. One had gills, one had six arms, one had chitin armour in place of skin. These were not your typical fantasy monsters. They were what a fantasy world might consider fantastical. Mostly, they were unique evolutions. One of a kind. Still similar to the original but different enough to be denoted something else by the system. I was looking forward to seeing some of these in person. There was even one Guardian living in one of the biggest dwarven cities listed in the book.

I spent the next two days reading even more books. It was fun to just completely lose myself in the library. Lihan helped me find just about any book I was interested in while explaining the way they were organized. The Adena Clan was using the same system in every library, simply upscaling it where necessary.

The first evening I used to prepare making another Thaumonomicon. Sadly, I would need some of every primal aspect to create a balanced crystal. Some sort of basic crafting material apparently, used to make a crucible as well as some other things. I had some crystals with earth and water respectively, or rather, I knew where to get those. The other four I had to source myself. Order, destruction and air were aspects I had access to. I could re-attune a crystal using some of the technology I had learned about from Riggard. Only fire was a little bit of a problem. Until I found the next morning that Riggard had an apprentice with the aspect. He agreed to help me out after we discussed our vis interceptor design for a bit. Riggard wanted to make his own thaumium to create more of them but was not sure about the marketability. The price was very high, after all. He was going to look for an alternative using brass. I agreed to provide him with a crucible if he could source the material for my balanced shards and soon I was back to reading.

On the second day when I just returned to Safrah’s house to rest for the night, I found my friends in the living room. Safrah had a cup of tea while Vivi was rolled up on the couch, resting. She looked exhausted. All the mana she drained the last few days must have been getting to her.

I greeted Safrah and went over to Vivi. The ocelot lazily opened an eye at my approach and blinked once before closing it again. I decided not to connect to her with the supersensory matrix. It would have been too dangerous to introduce more flux into her system. I carefully touched a tendril of darkness to her fur. Without issue, I could see the flux inside my friend's body. She was rather close to overloading. I tried to carefully prod and pull on the malicious energy but only elicited a wince from the ocelot. So I settled on comforting her with some cuddling.

The next morning, she was already feeling better. I asked if I could help her in any way.

“No. Thank you. I need to do this myself. I will be Guardian!”, she answered.

“Okay. Don’t overdo it, alright?” I turned to the dwarf watching us. “Make sure she takes care of herself.”

“Of course!”, came the answer.

With that, my friends started to settle into a routine. Three days at the lake then one day in town to rest. I flew over quite often, travelling between the books and my friends. The dwarves were slowly getting a basic road going to accelerate the transport of stone. Captain was confident they could have a decent outpost before winter. Right. Winter. That should be soon. I was born in spring and I was a little over half a year old. Maybe there would be snow in a month or two. I wondered how my body would deal with the cold? I was pretty sure the biggest issue would be food but with the option of civilization that was not something I had to prepare for too much. I still started to hunt and stock food in my storage. A long term test was something I wanted to do anyway. With my growing Attributes, my space had grown, too. The pile of books from the library to use for the Thaumonomicon would be gone soon so I could probably hunt about two cubic metres of food and still have enough for some new raw materials.

But before I was getting raw materials, I had something to do! My Attributes! I had completely overlooked assigning my new free points. And there was a total of six! I dumped them into Intelligence and Wisdom, bringing both up to forty. I had over forty levels to go in [Assassin] before the Class evolution which meant an easy sixty for both of those Attributes. Plus anything I got from race levels. Though, I was planning to invest some into my speed Attributes as well. My goal was getting both to forty before evolving [Assassin] which meant I needed another 25 points. Some of those would come from automatic allocation but I felt like 15 levels was a good estimate. That would also bring me close to the captain’s levels. He had an evolved Class and was level 40 in his race. I was right on track, maybe even slightly ahead thanks to my unique species.

Now, it was time to procure some more raw materials. I went to the blacksmith I had bought my iron from before. This time, the apprentices were much less scared. I heard some of them talking in hushed voices about the Guardian’s helper. Our hunt must have made the rounds in town. The smith was happy to see me and easily agreed to make a large, for dwarves, cauldron. That would be my base for the crucible. Another pile of iron went into my storage as well and some gold. Only one bar of the yellow metal, though. It was useful but I could make thaumium to do almost anything gold did, but better.

A visit to Riggard and I had my fire crystals. Just two, only large enough to provide enough essence to create two balanced shards. The process was simple. I used Riggard’s workshop since I did not want to flux up Safrah’s place, in case Vivi came by to rest again. I just threw in all the shards and got a reaction on the final one, which was order. I had to be careful since earth, order and magic combined with a vis crystal to make a cluster. That was something thaumaturges used to stabilize their infusion altar or turned into multiple sets of shards that could grow in the right environment.

The balanced shards all done, I put them into the grinder. Literally. I needed their dust which was called salis mundus by thaumaturges. An incredibly potent catalyst used to permanently and stably warp an object into a thaumaturgical construct. The dust just needed to be sprinkled on a pile of books and a few hours later I had another Thaumonomicon. The same for turning the cauldron into a crucible. Riggard’s wife paid me with another ten gold to make the deal more even but I refused to take more. That made up for all my expenses and with the reward from the hunt, I was now sitting on a comfortable 120 dwarven gold. One gold a month was a comfortable wage so I had about ten years worth of work done in a few weeks. I could relax and explore at my leisure. Which was what I wanted to do. I had nothing to fear besides flying into something more dangerous than I could handle. It was the perfect time to travel once more.