Viktor sat, eating a final meal with Timothy and Hooch.

"Well, this is it," Timothy started. "Are you feeling prepared?"

"Yeah, I am. As prepared as I can be, anyways," Viktor replied.

"Is... Mephistopheles coming here? Like personally?" Timothy continued. Viktor shrugged.

"I hope so... I mean, I don't trust him. But I do definitely trust him more than some random demon or devil, you know?" Viktor explained, and that was the truth. Viktor didn't trust Mephistopheles, but the archfiend had done nothing but good for him. Well, mixed good honestly, if you counted taking his soul and locking him in the library for a year as having mixed results.

"I want to meet him!" Hooch asserted loudly.

"Well, um, you know--he's coming sometime tomorrow. I'm going to go down in the arena tonight at midnight to see if he's a cheeky bastard like that and he's gonna come right at midnight. You're both welcome to join if you'd like to meet him. Personally, I'm not sure it's worth the risk... he could immolate you." Timothy paled at that.

"Hooch... maybe it'd be better if we just hung out up here?" Timothy hedged, but the bigger man shook his head in a surprising display of determination. Normally, Hooch went along with the flow or his whims. This was an almost disturbing amount of willpower.

"No. I want meet Mephisto!" Hooch asserted. Timothy sighed.

The three librarians sat around the arena floor. Timothy was reading a book on blood magic, Hooch was snoring, and Viktor was practicing his draconic. Viktor checked his pocket watch, which he'd purchased from the caravan, and saw that the time was just a few minutes shy of midnight. He stood, then, adjusting his clothing. A cleansing spell cast a moment later and a passive wind spell he sent circling around himself to give his cloak a billowing effect, and he was presentable. He stood close to the center of the arena, waiting.

Midnight came.

Midnight went.

Minutes past, and Viktor gave up waiting.

"I guess he's coming later? Not worth sitting here," he said, turning to walk back towards the stairs. Suddenly, a blast of frigid cold hit his back, and he sighed in exasperation.

"Meeeeeerryyy Christmassssss, HO HO HO" Mephistopheles' voice rang out behind him. "Or are you a Hanukah kinda guy? Maybe... Kwanzaa? Anyways..." The archfiend trailed off before clapping his hands, another blast of cold blowing Viktor and the other librarians' hair back as they turned to look at him. Mephistopheles reached into a pocket of his suit, an electric blue accented with crimson, and pulled out a glowing orb that pulsated gently with soft light.

As soon as Viktor saw it, it was over. His mouth dried out and his heart started beating rapidly. It felt like, he imagined, very intense withdrawal symptoms for a drug addict. He knew it was his soulheart, and he knew that he needed it. Had he not forced himself through intense mental training for the past year, he would have folded right then and there and begged Mephistopheles for his soul back.

Now, he just stood there with a smug look on his face.

"How long does this process take?" He asked calmly. Mephistopheles looked at him, his face gradually growing more and more irritated until it broke out into a huge grin.

"Kid, you crack me up. Remember? I'm the one that let you see souls and evaluate people's true emotions. I know what a detached soul is like to someone. I know you need this thing like a fish needs water right now." He tilted his head. "Admirable attempt, though. If I couldn't detect the moisture leaving your mouth... or, you know, didn't have millennia of experience with this kinda thing... I might've been fooled." It was at this point that he seemed to notice Timothy and Hooch.

"Hey there kiddos, you must be my boy's friends," He greeted them. Timothy couldn't respond for a moment, his teeth chattering as he curled up on the ground shivering. Hooch waved back, seemingly unaffected by the cold despite his lips turning blue.

"Hi," Hooch said. Mephistopheles raised an eyebrow.

"Real brain trust, that one. But back to you, 'Vik'. This process should take... I don't know... less than a second?" He said, suddenly releasing the orb. The orb slammed back into his chest and he collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath.

"Hey, let him go!" Timothy cried out, briefly overcoming his incoming hypothermia to stick up for Viktor. Mephistopheles waved aside his concerns.

"Relax, stickbug, I'm outta here anyways. I get a headache hanging around this area too much, even when I'm on official business," He feigned cradling his head. He winked at the librarians and turned, a portal ringed with blue flames appearing in front of him. He stepped into it, ignoring the thrashing Viktor on the ground, and vanished.

Meanwhile, Viktor clutched at his body, clawing at his clothing. His whole body was on fire, in the most excruciating pain and pleasure he'd ever been in in his life. If it had been pain, he might've been able to handle it. The pleasure was what was killing him. It was like the most monumentally fabulous drug high an individual could obtain. In an instant, he became intensely aware of just what he was missing out on for the past year. He hadn't noticed it, thankfully, the pain of his loss dulled somehow by his own lack of awareness.

As quickly as it appeared, the sensation faded to a manageable level. Viktor stood on shaky legs, a triumphant smile curving his lips upward. He walked over to Timothy, helping the slighter man up onto his feet with glee. He spun around in a circle, arms splayed out.

"Holy SHIT this feels incredible. Is this what you guys have been feeling all the time?" Viktor laughed maniacally. Timothy and Hooch looked at him, confused.

"What are you talking about?" Timothy asked. Viktor's excitement faded a little, as did the feeling of his soul being newly reattached to his body.

"I'm guessing it'll fade, but fuck this feels great. I could access mana before, but it didn't feel right. I had to actively sense it and direct it. Now I can just feel it all the time. I can also feel my body being stronger. I'm guessing maybe some slight ambient exposure to the hells?" Viktor mused. Only time would tell how strong he'd truly gotten. Hooch clapped his hands excitedly.

"Better breaker now!" He laughed. Viktor joined him, the high of his soul still leaving him walking on air.

Viktor used the podium to flip to a page with a troll to test himself against. Previously, they were a brutal fight for him. He won the match maybe six out of ten times, but he felt lighter on his feet now. Stronger. He placed the book back to summon the illusion, but nothing happened. He jabbed his finger at the page, attempting various things to make the illusion appear, but the book was totally inert. It was like when they'd had an adventurer want to learn how to fight a hydra and they'd had to continually resummon it for him.

"Guys, it looks like I'm no longer recognized as a librarian..." Viktor said softly. Timothy looked at him, smiling sadly.

"Then it appears your chapter here has come to an end, friend. Allow us to grant you this request as librarians of the library of Thoth..." Timothy said, and Hooch walked over and summoned the troll in the middle of the arena for him.

Viktor raced forward, feeling faster than ever before. The troll roared and lumbered forward, long green arms reaching forward for powerful strikes with its claws. Viktor ducked under its right arm, jumping up and launching a kick at its side as he passed. The troll lurched sideways under the impact, but seemed otherwise unaffected. It turned and swiped at him with more claws, and Viktor threw himself backwards into a roll to evade.

The troll jolted after him mercilessly, claws just inches away from where his face had been moments ago as he completed the roll back into an athletic stance and dodged to the side. He placed a hand out in front of him, a Flame Blast cast in less than a full second slamming into the troll at point blank range. The troll reared back, screaming, before fixing him with a murderous glare.

Viktor took the momentary reprieve to cast Earthen Skin. He would have cast Barkskin or Stoneskin, but he didn't have the spell catalysts required to perform them quickly. The handful of dust he'd grabbed off of the ground was enough of a catalyst for the easier spell to go off quickly. The troll shot a hand forward with a punch just as he completed the cast, the blow lifting him off his feet and throwing him almost all the way to the wall. The troll snarled and got down on all fours, bounding towards him.

Luckily, the walls were totally covered with the means by which he could defend himself. He snatched a glaive, one of his preferred weapons, from the rack and swept it upwards. Even with the heat of the moment, he couldn't help but marvel at how light it felt. It was a noticeable decrease in weight from even just a few days ago.

The slash brought the troll's advance to an abrupt stop as it dodged backwards and paced back and forth, eying him cruelly, waiting for an opening. He kept the glaive angled upward, ready to plant the haft in the ground like a boar spear if the troll charged. As he held it at bay, he cast.

Ice spread across the ground from Viktor to the troll. He glanced down to watch as the ice crept up its feet, and that was the moment the troll leapt forward. 900 pounds of green muscle and fury slammed into Viktor. He got the glaive up at the last moment, and the two of them rolled across the ground in a tangle of limbs. The temporary wounds caused by the illusions still hurt, and Viktor's right side was completely savaged.

He stood, completely ignoring the pain of his wounds, and set to work casting while the troll recovered from the glaive hanging out of its own side. Magma spread out in a field, and then a shield of force sprang up in a bubble around him. He needed the extra time afforded by the protection as the troll jumped forward again, its feet flaming even as it landed on magma. Its claws rained blows down on the force bubble, but it held for the time necessary.

Viktor finished the rather lengthy cast time of his most recently acquired spell and the world distorted in front of his hand. The distortion shot forward and Viktor let his bubble drop just in time, dodging backwards to avoid the claws that now came much closer to his body.

His spell, Vorpal Slash, shot forward. The spell took a lot out of him normally, and without the newly acquired mana reserves he had attained, there was no way he would have been able to cast it in combat after using other magic. The magical blade slashed through the troll, severing an arm and ripping a great gash in its side. The troll let out a final mix between a roar and a mewl, before collapsing into fragments and disappearing.

Viktor's wounds disappeared, and he sighed even as Hooch and Timothy clapped. Timothy noticed his reaction and stopped.

"What's wrong? You won, didn't you? That was a full blown forest troll! It'd take at least a Tier Three caster to do that reliably," Timothy said. Viktor shook his head.

"Yeah, maybe, but I still took lethal damage. Unless I said some serious medical casters and aid on hand, I'd have bled out in just a couple of minutes. I've got to get stronger," Viktor said, turning to walk back up to the rest of the library. "Come on, let's check out my affinities!" He called back.

Together, they retrieved the affinity gauge booklet and had him store his borrowed affinities back in soul storage space. Color bled onto the paper, and Viktor frowned at the results. He'd conducted no less than 30 affinity tests in the past year and had become quite familiar with the affinity reference. Here, though, he recognized only a few of the colors. The other interesting thing was that his soul seemed to possess higher quantities of affinity than many of the souls he had examined. This was doubly true for rare affinities. Ultimately, it didn't really matter too much to him, as he'd already collected a solid amount of rare affinities through his contracts.

It looked like he had a moderately high, around 15%, affinity for space magic. This was extremely high for a rare affinity like space magic. Had Viktor seen it on someone else, he'd have been ecstatic. On him, though, it was just confusing. It was accompanied by 9% affinity for something that Viktor referenced as fate, an absurdly high affinity for fire, absurd when accompanied by else anyways at 12%, a 4% affinity for time, an 8% affinity for mind, and an absolutely massive affinity for something called coldfire at 38%. While there might be many people who approached his numbers in sheer quantity of moderate affinities, he doubted there were more than a dozen on the whole planet with such high quantities in such rare affinities.

He shared the results with Timothy, whose mouth was open in shock.

"You traded for that many affinities?" He asked. Viktor shook his head.

"No, those are my natural affinities," Viktor clarified, and now Timothy shook his head.

"Jesus Christ-- not to say the Lord's name in vain... you know, now that we know he's real..." Timothy trailed off, losing his point in his hesitation to offend the almighty. Viktor smiled, amused.

"My one request of the librarians is to get me a spellbook for coldfire spells," Viktor said after an awkward pause, spurring the librarian into action.

Less than an hour later, Viktor stepped out of the library for the last time and joined the small troupe awaiting him. Zachary was present alongside the Ravenguard. Kate and Caden from Aurumal were joining, as was a ranger-type explorer named Daniel. Zachary greeted him familiarly, and Viktor clasped hands with each individual. He pulled out a map of the landscape and their charted path. The goal was to take advantage of the two months they had the Ravenguard for to show everyone just how lucrative traveling with Viktor could be.

"Alright, everyone. I've charted out a path that should take us by a number of high profile items and creatures on the way," Viktor explained. Daniel raised a hand tentatively.

"You don't need to raise a hand, Daniel," Viktor gently admonished him.

"It's polite in a group setting, in my opinion," Daniel rebutted, "Anyways, I'm just curious: why are we deliberately going out of our way to run afoul of these 'high profile creatures'? What kinds of creatures are we talking?"

Viktor nodded. "It's a good question to ask. Some of the creatures I'm looking for are trolls, a desert drake, a young dragon, an eyebeast, a snake thing called an Boutui, an aged leprechaun, something called a likho, a Tokoloshe, and a few other various creatures. We won't hit all of them on our journey, but I need some specific ones that are there. Mainly, I just want to talk to some of them. I'd prefer to do it with you all there... you know, in case they try to kill me..."

Daniel looked at him skeptically, and Viktor nodded with understanding.

"Hey, I get it. But other than the dragon, the drake, the eyebeast, the trolls, and the Boutui, most of these things aren't that dangerous. Besides, we'll be killing plenty of things filled with life energy," He put his hands up placatingly, and the other man finally relented, packing up their things and preparing for departure.

Viktor clapped his hands together once.

"Alright, let's get a move on, everyone. My scouts' most recent reports say that the locations I've charted us for are relatively untouched by humans. The ones that have been touched don't seem to have been picked over too well, so they shouldn't mess with our course too much. I've planned for every contingency I could think of, so do not worry. For whatever happens, I have a plan."

Viktor slid down the tunnel, his clothes tearing as his legs scraped against the stone. His head slammed into the stone, causing his vision to go blurry momentarily. He groaned in pain as he rolled to a stop against the cold, rocky floor. Zachary moaned next to him, clutching his side.

"Alright, what's the plan, Vik? Because so far, this has been a fucking mess," he said, chuckling.

Viktor had to speak loudly to avoid being drowned out by a roar on the other side of the slim tunnel their group had just tumbled down.

"This was not a part of any plan."