In the days since the meeting, Ben could feel the tension in the village lessen. It wasn’t gone, but he no longer had the immediate fear that things might turn violent when he left and he was able to focus on teaching them what he could, with the day prior focusing on getting a group of magic users to learn the finer points of enchanting, as well as explaining how it could be used with connect when they’d get it.

That in particular seemed to capture their curiosities, understanding that it was a way to use the skill gifted by a god, and a part of him considered teaching it to the others as well. An entire village of enchanters sounded like an excellent time to him, but he decided to leave considering that for later in the end and used the day for other projects, bringing Thera with him far away from the village as he did.

“Did we really need to go so far for this?” She asked him. “Flying out for half an hour is a lot of distance.”

“What can I say, Greed got me worried with what he was saying about trying it out in the city. I don’t want to risk leveling the village we just worked so hard on.”

“If that’s a real concern then you shouldn’t be opening it at all!”

“Relax, I was told it’s a repository of knowledge so it will be fine.”

Probably. He kept to himself as she lowered the stone platform she’d been carrying them on to the ground in a distant part of the untamed lands as Ben took a seat and reached into his bag, pulling out the mythic artifact he’d gained after finishing the trial. The archive.

He took a moment to admire it, dense enchantments covering the form of a book in a way he was annoyed to know he couldn’t replicate but was still able to get lost in the beauty of them. As much as he personally hated the god who’d made it, he couldn’t deny the skill of the work.

He felt like he could have looked at the cover alone for hours, but he could do that anywhere. They’d gone so far for a single purpose, so without any more hesitation he gave in and opened it.

“...”

“You think something’s supposed to happen?” Thera asked him as she stared over his shoulder, seeing nothing but blank pages.

“I mean, since it’s a book I kind of figured there’d be something in it, but in the end this is a magic item so I should probably treat it like one.”

Hoping for something a little more interesting, he ran his mana through it as he would for any other enchanted tool, and in an instant he found himself somewhere else.

Calling it a plain white room wouldn’t be correct, it was more of a void. Lacking any distinction between floor and sky, the same as his god’s realm, it looked like it stretched on forever with only two distinct features. A small shelf of books a little way off, with a table closer to him in front of it with two books on it, as well as what he took to be a fancy pen of sorts.

“Alright, I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this.”

He no longer had the archive in his hands which left the uncomfortable issue of how he was going to get back, but he tried to ignore that in favour of exploring for the time being, hoping he’d figure that bit out as he learned just what the archive was for.

Starting with what was closest to him he went to the table and picked up the first book, planning to flip through it but experiencing something completely different as he opened the first page. For only a second it was blank, nothing to be seen until he felt something examining him in turn, a prickly feeling in his mind that made him jump as the page changed to a picture from his memories of the first time he’d made a resistance brace.

His curiosity peaked, he flipped through to the next page finding it contained an image of him refining the process, as well as the one after that, and continuing on from there until it got to the most recent one he’d made for Thera that was finally able to control her charm.

“Interesting, but not super helpful,” He muttered. He understood what it all was because they were scenes from his memory, but as a bunch of still images they wouldn’t give much context if anyone else looked at it. “So why did it start with that then? And is there more?”

He flipped to the next page, finding a picture that made him want to close up the book in annoyance. It was a scene from the trial, right as he managed to awaken his enchanting when he’d been attempting to modify the enchantments on it to keep the timer from moving. Even if it had been a point that had let him get some significant growth in the way he used his magic, it was far from a happy memory for him, with the next few pages being how he refined the process, followed by nothing. The book had taken those two things from his mind, and he had no idea why.

Do they have anything in common? The second is related to Galwax but the first isn’t so it can’t be that. Is there anything else about them that’s meaningful? I mean, I guess the braces were my first big discovery and how to use the different enchanting systems together was my most recent, but… actually, could that be it?

Everything he’d made other than those two things had been plenty impressive, but he wasn’t sure if he’d figured out anything other than those two things that anyone else could have achieved, or at least nothing as significant. That wasn’t to say that the rest of his items were underwhelming, just that they were things that would be easy for anyone to manage if they had the right skills and knowledge. Creating the braces and merging three distinct enchanting systems felt different.

Okay, I think I’m on the right track, but then why is it just being recorded in a series of pictures? What’s the point?

That was a question without an immediate answer, so instead of lingering on it he moved on to the next book, this time finding it truly empty, not being filled in as he looked.

“Okay, empty book and a pen beside it, this at least seems easy enough.”

He grabbed the pen and found two buttons on it so he pressed one down, intending to write a note on it to see if it had any effect, only for a completely different effect to be displayed. As he moved the pen through the air a line was formed at the end of it, both hovering in the air, as well as appearing on the blank page he was on and he felt his eyes light up as the connection was made.

“Oh this is fun.”

In an instant the artist in him took over as he passed far more time than he should have been drawing out a scene, choosing to represent the shop as he sketched it out in the air, making a 3d model that wasn’t presented as nicely in two dimensions in the book as it was in front of him but still got the idea across.

Once he was done he closed the cover, seeing what he’d drawn vanished, only to reappear as he opened it to the first page again, and disappearing as he flipped to the next.

He spent more time playing with that than the first book he’d gotten his hands on, learning that the second button acted as an eraser and that he could get eleven different colours from the pen depending on how much he clicked it, more than enough for him to have far too much fun with it until he finally put it down. He was sure if he didn’t stop he’d lose hours to the task, so instead he forced himself to move on, switching to the final thing, the shelf in front of him.

It was small but packed, a few dozens of books filling it, so he grabbed what he took to be the first of them, opening it up to see what was inside and briefly finding a picture, similar to the one that had appeared for him, though clearly of a member of Galwax’s race, before in a flash he was somewhere different again, seemingly trapped in the body of whatever the species was called with the human-like body and the head of a squid.

He couldn’t move the body to check his surroundings, instead being moved by it, only able to see what it chose to see with eyes radically different from his own, warping the way the world looked, at least from his point of view. From what he could tell though, the person he was trapped in was inside a canyon, a herd of gigantic, shark-like creatures flying through the sky towards him as Ben felt the tentacles that were a part of the person's face curl up as if they were his own.

It seemed like the body was in poor condition and Ben couldn’t help but feel a sense of fear as the monsters came down on them, only to be distracted by a sound. It wasn’t anything external though, that was obvious enough. What he was hearing was the man's thoughts in a language he couldn’t understand as he began to get an idea of what was happening and why the artifact was called the archive.

In what felt like the last moment, the person he was seeing through the eyes of raised a hand in the air and cast a spell, causing the herd of beasts coming to him to crash to the ground as he passed out, presumably from mana exhaustion, letting Ben leave the page of the book.

“Well, I guess that’s why this thing is called the archive, but more importantly, how did he do that?”

Putting two and two together, it seemed like the reason the first book took scenes from his memories was so they could be viewed by others later, but that just left the question of what he’d seen. It was some sort of spell, but he had no idea for which affinity or how it was done. Superficially, it seemed like it might be related to telekinesis, but that was a difficult magic to use effectively on a moving target. Even with Thera’s vast amount of mana, it was hard to use in a fight. He doubted that Galwax’s race had anywhere close to her, but then that just left how it was pulled off. His gut instinct was that it hadn’t been a non-affinitied magic. He had plenty of experience with that by this point and it wasn’t the same feeling he’d gotten. In some ways, it felt similar to what he felt from Thera when she used her earth magic while he connected to her, but that wasn’t quite right either.

With nothing else he could do he flipped to another page, then another and so on, seeing the days of this mystery man's life as he worked to refine the mystery spell. Each page it seemed he was better than the last, but each time he realized he was missing the most important part he needed. The context behind the spell that must have existed in the thoughts he was hearing. A context that could only be gained from a language he couldn’t speak and had no way to learn since the race as a whole was dead.

By the time he got to the second half of the book he stopped entering the recorded memories, instead finding pages and pages of notes in characters he couldn’t read that appeared in the air before him like the book he’d drawn on, but that was no help to him either. A dead language with a lost writing system couldn’t only give him so much.

Not letting himself be dejected despite the limited nature of what he could hope to learn, he put the book back where he found it and moved on to the next, finding a different mage in a different place than any he’d seen previously as they worked on and refined their own magic, seemingly more familiar than the first as it was used to raise a field of crops and pointed to the plant magic he was acquainted with before moving on to the next book and the next, until he had to admit the truth to himself. As interesting as the idea of trying to figure out the finer points of the spells each book held was, it was going to be a dead end.

After all, I can’t spend who knows how long trying to decipher an entire language, can I? There’s way more important stuff to do. I’ll flip through all of these eventually to see if anything interesting pops up that I can actually figure out, but for now the drawing feature is plenty to get some good use out of, even if it feels a little underwhelming for a mythic item. I guess all that’s left is- Ah, hopefully that.

He turned back to the first desk, hoping to find something he missed to tell him how to get out of there and immediately saw what he needed, or at least he hoped so. Behind where he first appeared was a doorway uncomfortable similar to those that connected sections of the trial and with no other option he walked through, finding himself back where he was when things started. Out in the woods, Thera in front of him with a look that quickly changed to relief.

“Gods, don’t scare me like that, I almost ripped it from your hands when you just zoned out for a minute. What happened?”

“Oh man, this thing is actually pretty cool. I mean, that shouldn’t be shocking but… Wait, what do you mean a minute?”

As far as he could tell he had interacted with it for around an hour while he experimented to try and figure it out, but as Thera told him it meant exactly what it sounded like he couldn’t help but view the archive with fresh eyes as he understood the implications. He’d gained an artifact with a massive time-dilation effect, and he was going to be sure it saw all kinds of use.