Sunlight shone through the gaps of the gently swaying leaves giving a beautiful natural light to the horrifying scene of a terrified, opened up boar like creature held down by unseen powers.

The suffering animal had part of its torso and ribcage removed in order to expose a peculiar jewel just under its heart, close to its stomach. This was a magic beast, and the jewel inside it was a magic crystal that the monster used to cast its magic.

Just a few steps from it was the figure of a skeleton resting its feather pen on a blank page of its diary, ready to put down any interesting happenings. During this time, the crystal embedded in the creature would absorb mana from the atmosphere, and once it fully charged, the animal would release it with a terrified whimper activating a spell. Spell that unfortunately for it, was always effortlessly cancelled or countered by its torturer.

Fascinating, these "magic beasts" seem to hold the ability of instantly chanting spells by only using one sound. Furthermore their ability to absorb mana is strenghtened by the amount of flesh they have on them.

Satisfied, the undead closed its diary and released the creature from its hold, soon after silence returned to the forest as the creature let out its last breath.

The skeleton had passed the last five days in the forest and was slowly walking toward Valian, perhaps it was lost, after all it didn't know how to orientate itself in this maze of trees. But it wasn't bothered by it because that allowed it to observe, learn and experiment on the life of the forest.

The corpse littered landscape was a testimony of its research, using multiple samples of various species, the undead improved its understanding of the living beings anatomy and psychology: during the day, during the night, under fear, under pain, under threaths or other, wether they were adults or pups, everything was used as a tool to learn from. And right now it just finished its research on the magical beasts' ability, exhausting all the subjects of discovery in this place.

Unfortunately, while very interesting, trees were not easy to understand as nothing it did ever seemed to provoke a reaction. As such, it now had to get to Valian or hope for a new animal to appear in the forest.

Running through the trees, a young girl was escaping from a group of people, sprinting between the gaps, holding a book between her arms, she avoided arrows and other projectiles thrown at her while nimbly moving across the forest.

The pursuers were a group of three grinning men armed in leather armor, a few magic cristals and swords, with one of them armed with a bow he was using to shoot the running child. From their movements, it was easy to see that they were only playing with their prey, letting her struggle before enjoying their eventual reward.

Gasping for air, the girl recalled the events that lead to this moment: two weeks ago a renown group of bandits settled in a small village called Laria, that, was her village, while their defenses were strong, their fighting experience was nothing compared to the enemy's, leading to them taking control of the town; in these two weeks they subjected the villagers to tyranny, pillaging their homes, taking their belongings and sometimes killing the unfortunate bystander out of sport.

The last thing was what was currently happening to her: as she was reading her favorite story under a tree near the forest, she got approached by three of these bandits with the intent of playing "games" together, invites that the girl refused by dodging their attempts of grabbing her resulting in the start of a "game of tag" signaled by a bow getting drawn.

Dashing throught the trees, the young girl skillfully used a fallen treebranch as a bridge to jump on the treetops giving her a tiny bit more cover against the arrows shot at her. Everyone in her village and any other town under the reign of Valian was trained in self defense and fighting since young age in order to have at least a possibility to survive the numerous attacks they receive every year. She was one of the most talented, having a knack for free running.

Having tired of their chase, the archer aimed the last arrow, ignoring her futile attempt of increasing her cover and lodging it in the girl's shoulder, causing her to fall. The child broke her left arm and let go of her book, while still dazed, she tried grabbing it again but she was too late as one of the men seized it before she could get close and another one held her in place.

"No! Give it back!" [Girl]

"Hahaha, why? We won, didn't we? It's only fair for us to take something as a reward, right?" [Boss]

"No, I wasn't playing anything, give that back! It's mine!" [Girl]

"Oh, really? But it's mine now, so I get to keep it." [Boss]

"But boss, she tried reeaally hard, she deserves another chance, doesn't she?" [Archer]

"He's right, boss, I believe we should go for another round, but maybe play something different..." [Bandit]

"Haha! Sure, what do you say little miss, we'll play another game: if you manage to stay awake during the next hours then I'll give you your book back. And don't worry, you're not going to faint out of pain, it's something much more fun than that. Is that ok?" [Boss]

"No! I won't play anything with you, you're bad people, you stole from us and hurt uncle Gherman, now give it back!" [Girl]

"Mm... How about no." [Boss]

The man proceeded to chant some fire into his hand and slowly brought it closer to the book.

"Noooooo, stop!" [Girl]

"Why? We don't need a reward if we're not playing, but don't worry, we're still going to play later anyway, although... because you were such a bad girl... It WILL be painful." [Boss]

The following moment the book fell to the ground, fire began blazing, burning any material it touched, rapidly spreading, becoming more and more intense, reducing the man into a charred corpse. In front of the still smoking body were a severed arm holding the book and the shocked looks of the little girl and the remaining bandits as they stared at the imposing figure now before them.

"Only a moron would dare to ruin a book, do you have any idea of what knowledge could've been lost through your actions?"

The skeleton heard by chance the sound of something crashing to the ground a few meters beside it, intrigued by what could've fallen down, the undead approached the place finding the group. At first its intentions were to just watch to see where it was heading, but that was until it saw a book and worst of all how it was on the verge of being destroyed.

What is that human doing!? That's a source of knowledge, is he insane!?

Seeing as the man was serious in his intent, the skeleton quickly double chanted a blade of wind, cutting off his arm and securing the book, subsequently it burned him down using his same spell.

"What!?" [Archer]

"Jacob!" [Bandit]

Without wasting time, the skeleton binded the archer in mana and threw one of its knives at the other one while activating two magic circles spawning a pair of ice spears. The archer couldn't escape the bind and died impaled to the tree behind him, meanwhile the other bandit dodged the knife and parried the ice spear with his sword. The man glared at the undead for a second before trying to grab something from his back, and judging from his reaction, he could not find the item he was searching for, leaving him in a short state of confusion that costed him his life as an earth spike appeared from the ground impaling him.

Having taken care of them, the undead returned its attention to its book, book that had disappeared along with the child.

That little... Was all it could think of before casting [Haste] on itself and searching the small human with mana.

Another chase started for the little girl as this time a two and a half meters tall monster was catching up to her.

I can't cast any magic on her, I can't risk damaging the book but I can't let her get too far away, if she notifies any of the Valian guards then I'll have to face something more than just a few people.

The undead began casting earth walls in front of the child, creating bogs under her feet and blowing wind whenever she jumped. To its surprise, the girl always managed to avoid all the obstacles resulting in the spells becoming a hindrance to itself. At this point, the skeleton resorted to using the mana to try and bind her, but unexpectedly, she held out a small magic crystal and shined it, releasing a small burst of light mana that cancelled its magic bind out of surprise. This happened again in the next tries but while the mana did not lose its strenght as the undead wasn't losing control of it, it was always blocked out for enough time to allow the girl to escape.

A grim reality dawned the undead, making it worry for the future: it was chasing a child and she was able to keep it at a distance and avoid spells appearing out of nowhere, if a still growing human was this agile and able, what kind of monsters would the fully grown Valian people, famed for their fighting prowess, be?

Its thoughts were interrupted by a small yelp as the girl tripped, falling out of the forest. The undead finally caught up with her and was surprised by the sight of houses some meters in front of it. The child, reeling and gasping for air was shining the crystal before her, using it as a shield for her and the book while preparing to shout.

Oh no, oh no, oh no, I'm in front of the kingdom of Valian, if she screams here I'll have to face the whole city.

"W-wait child, I do not have ill intentions, do not shout"

The girl was left confused as the skeleton raised its hands, it could very easily break that weak light barrier as it was just light mana being expelled randomly, but that would require at least a second and as it observed before, one second was enough for the child to react to. So it had to get her trust, after all the undead was only after the book, after getting it, it could go back to the safety of its forest to prepare an actual plan.

"I know you don't believe me, it would be weird after what just happened, but I swear there was a reason for that. I can show you I'm not lying, I can fix your arm for you, of course you'd need to lower your barrier but don't worry, if you don't want to, you can just expose your injury and I'll do the rest, ok?"

Still confused, the child decided to give the skeleton a chance and, after securing the book with her other arm, she presented her broken limb to the creature. Keeping its promise, the undead softly chanted a healing spell and carefully guided the pure mana through the various broken bones and vessels being careful not to cause any pain during the operation, during its time in the forest the monster had practised this ability a lot.

Calming down after being healed, the girl spoke up.

"Why did you help me?" [Girl]

Oh, good, I seem to have lowered her guard.

"Well, I am on a journey to learn all that this world has to offer, and as such, I would like to acquire your book."

"No! I... I can't give this away..." [Girl]

"Why? I just wish to learn from it, I swear I won't ruin it in any way and I can also return it if you wish."

"..even then, I can't, this book is too important for me." [Girl]

Damn it, it seems that I have no other choice than to kill her and take it by force, I've been around for too long anyway, I'm risking getting discovered even if she doesn't scream.

Before it could go through its new plan, the skeleton was interrupted by a request.

"Please, if you're not bad, help us out, bandits attacked our village and they're now controlling it." [Girl]

"...I'm sorry, child, but that is not what I'm after and as you don't want to give up that book, I see myself forced to-"

"Uncle Gherman has a book shop, if you help us then I'll convince him to let you read all of them!" [Girl]

Book shop?

"One time I asked him how many books he had and he told me he had over fourty different books!" [Girl]

Fourty different books!?

"So please, save our village!" [Girl]

The skeleton was pondering over its new informations, it never heard of a "book shop", it only knew of libraries but the name sounded really nice to its ears. If it helped getting rid of the bandits then it would gain access to a number of literatures to learn from, but would they just let it do that? From its encounters with the human race they didn't seem that fond of it, but perhaps by becoming their savior and with the help of the human child, the undead could manage to get accepted, resulting in being able to study their habits or gaining access to a large source of knowledge in the best-case scenario. The problem was with the worst case, but...

"...so, if I help you, will you truly speak with this "Uncle Gherman" of yours to allow me access to this book shop?"

"Yes!" [Girl]

"And does this place truly have this many books?"

"Yes!" [Girl]

"Mm... Then, child, I believe we have struck a deal"