Chương 398: (391) 6.5. Bringing Her into the Shop

"Oh, you finally remembered me, huh? Took you long enough." Vin rolled his eyes as Alka twisted and hurled one of her Slayers over her shoulder, sending the screaming man flying through the air before he was caught by Trod and his powerfully built arms. The large orc set the man down gently, before slowly running him through what he could have done better.

"In my defense, I had to run around looking for missing Earthers," Vin argued, taking a good look at Alka's golem body as she walked over to him. Normally, she looked like a dark knight, the darthsteel plating covering her entire form doing wonders to hide the fact that she was an animated golem with a soul bound to it rather than just a knight in heavy armor. But at the moment… Alka looked as though she'd been hurled into a magical woodchipper.

Her body was covered in heavy gashes that had torn straight through her darthsteel plating and done even more damage to the unique material making up the librarian's golems. They'd thought the white, marble-like material was all but unbreakable, but as it turned out, its near-indestructibility was at least semi-magical in nature. And the ranker king's blade that he'd wielded during the recent battle cut through magic like a knife through butter.

"It doesn't actually hurt, right?" Vin asked, wincing as the thought struck him. He knew from Alka's own mouth that she didn't really feel anything more than pressure in her new body, but when magic got involved, there was no telling what might happen. He wouldn't put it past the ranker king to have a magic sword that didn't just cut through other magics but also inflicted pain upon those who were struck.

"Nah, no pain. It's just annoying really," Alka admitted, swinging her arms a bit and poking a finger into one of the gashes that bit deep into her torso.

"I need to be careful sparring with the Slayers so that they don't get caught on any of these jagged edges and slice something off. I don't suppose you were stopping by to help me get back to the library for a repair job?"

"In fact, that's exactly why I'm stopping by," Vin admitted.

"Is now a good time? There's no telling how long it's going to take her to patch you up. The last time it took two full days."

"Eh, that was her making some big modification to how the mana gem in the back of my head functioned. This time she just needs to mend some holes. I doubt it will take that long. But either way, now is as good a time as any. One sec." Turning back to the others, Alka's voice suddenly grew ten times louder as it blasted out from the space around her head.

"Old Guard, fall in!" Four Slayers all but appeared out of nowhere as they dropped whatever they were doing and sprinted over to them. Unsurprisingly, Tiffany was the first to arrive, reaching them before Alka had even finished speaking. The once-short woman now stood at an astonishing eight feet tall, which wasn't all that surprising seeing as from the waist down, her body was that of a giant spider.

Her six black, orb-like eyes and spider fangs sticking out of the sides of her mouth probably would have terrified any ill-prepared observer, but Vin had spent plenty of time around the meriders at this point and was more than used to them. The remaining three members of the Old Guard reached them soon after, and Vin nodded as he recognized Tall Phil, getting a smile back in return. Tall Phil was the Slayers' defensive specialist.

While most of the people who signed up to put themselves through the grueling torture that was Alka's Slayer training in the hopes of earning the class seemed to focus on offense and becoming terrifying warriors, Tall Phil stood out to him due to that fact that he was far more interested in turning himself into an immovable wall designed to protect all those behind him.

The man was rarely seen separated from his large great shield, and Vin had personally witnessed him use his powerful skills to stop giant, rampaging monsters dead in their tracks. It pained him a bit to admit he couldn't even remember the names of the other two members of the Old Guard, but that was life. They were clearly both impressive warriors to have survived this long with how frequently they threw themselves straight into the thick of things, but neither had left an impression on him.

"I'm going to be gone for a few hours, maybe a few days," Alka told them once they'd assembled, shrugging as though the length of time was indifferent.

"Keep running the New Guard through the paces. Once I get back, we'll get started on whipping the hopefuls from wave six into shape. We lost a lot of Slayers during the last battle, so we can use as many new warriors as we can get."

"Not like that's going to stop you from cutting half of them in the first thirty minutes," Tiffany joked, grinning as Alka's glowing eyes narrowed at her. Back when the merider had still been human, she'd actually been cut from the Slayers during that initial testing, but had refused to go home. She'd impressed Alka by completely ignoring her orders and sticking things out through the rest of training, and had ended up becoming one of the strongest Slayers in the entire town.

"If they try their hardest, they won't get cut in the first place," Alka said simply, turning Tiffany's grin into a pained wince.

"Anyway, keep things secure while I'm gone. Don't let Trod eat anyone."

"Slayer!" the four of them said, snapping crisp salutes toward her before turning and going back to training. Vin could only shake his head as he and Alka began walking toward the dungeon.

"That's a bit mean-spirited for a joke, don't you think?"

"…Joke?" Once they reached the Underside, and Alka had finally convinced him that yes she was joking and Trod hadn't done much more than lick his lips hungrily while staring at some of the larger Earthers, Vin stopped just long enough to leave Lumel a note in the usual spot explaining where he was heading off to.

"The others aren't coming with?" Alka asked as they continued on.

"After we finished up gathering the missing Earthers, everyone split up to do their own things," Vin explained.

"Scule went to check on Bill and make sure the alchemist was okay after all the fighting, Shia wanted to double check that the epic monster remains had been received by Erik, and Lumel… was actually sort of cagey about what she was doing. Knowing her, it probably involves studying spatial magic somewhere."

"Cagey? That's not really Lumel's style," Alka pointed out, her eyes flaring in mirth.

"Think she's hiding something from you?" Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"I highly doubt it," Vin said, the memory of dream-Lumel getting down on one knee and proposing to him flashing through his mind and causing him to shudder. His dream journey with Fred had been filled with quite a lot of unexpected dreams, such as a walking, talking Reginald, or Alice trying to attack him with a sentient bear trap. But the twist of Lumel proposing to him when he'd expected dream-her to break up with him had really caught him off guard.

He'd discovered he still had a few hang-ups surrounding the concept of marriage in general, largely due to how much fighting his own parents had done growing up, but the dream had actually helped in that regard. Still, just because he realized he and Lumel weren't his father and mother, that didn't mean he wanted to rush into anything.

While the two of them were kindred spirits when it came to magic and he realized he could actually see something like that happening between the two of them down the line, he liked how things were at the moment. If it wasn't broken, no need to fix it, after all. With the lack of monsters in the dungeon connecting the Underside to the library fragment, the rest of their trip was rather uneventful.

It took them some time to cross the crater-marked land and reach the right spot, but as soon as they were in position, Vin cast Redirect Gravity, flipping the world on its head and shooting the two of them into the sky. Alka laughed as he killed the spell and the world flipped back to normal, before he caught them with a quick cast of Create Cloud.

"I keep meaning to ask why we don't just set up some sort of rope ladder so that we're not so reliant on your magic to get up here, but then I remember how much fun that spell is."

"The library is nearly a quarter mile straight up, and constantly drifting about," Vin pointed out as they walked over to the edge of the divine sanctum.

"Would a rope ladder even stretch down that far without snapping?" Vin didn't even pause at the familiar warning that they were about to enter a divine sanctum and lose access to their System interface, more than familiar with the notice by now. In typical fashion, as though she were capable of feeling her golems approach, the librarian was already waiting for them as they walked through the library's giant front door.

"Welcome back to my library," she said, her voice as blank and free of emotion as ever as she gestured to the large square before her.

"Step onto this device."

"Really? They have to go through all this every time we see you?" Alka asked, snorting as Vin motioned for her to be quiet before stepping onto the square. After a few seconds there was the usual flash of light, and he moved off.

"How are things going?" he asked, not wanting to jump straight into talking about how horrifically damaged they'd allowed the librarian's prized golem to become. As if she couldn't tell that just from one glance at Alka.

"Is Kym settling in alright?"

"The Advisor is in excellent condition," the librarian said, surprising Vin by actually answering his question.

"A third of his day is spent sleeping. A third is spent transcribing the books in his memory into physical copies for the library. A third is spent reading whatever he wishes to. According to him, he is happy."

"Well, that's good to hear!" Vin said, genuinely pleased to hear Kym was enjoying himself. The poor man had been dealt a pretty rough hand in life, being forced into a class he didn't even want in the first place and eventually being thrown into a top-secret prison filled with hardened criminals when all he wanted to do was spend his days reading.

"Anyway, so why we're here in the first place—""I got a little banged up," Alka admitted, stepping up and gesturing to her carved-up body.

"Any chance you can patch me up?" The librarian's piercing blue eyes glowed faintly as they swept over Alka, before returning to normal once more.

"I can restore you to your original state," she said, and Vin let out a sigh of relief.

"What brought about this level of damage? If it was something other than the eight materials I've already cataloged as being capable of harming my unique alloy, I wish to add them to my records."

"It was a magic sword," Vin admitted, casting Dimensional Sheath and pulling the ranker king's blade out of thin air. The sword didn't actually have any weight, and in truth, it didn't look much like a solid object at all. It was a flickering, pulsing crimson color, as if someone had taken the idea of a blood sword and manifested it into reality without giving it any true substance. Yet despite that, Alka's body was proof enough of just how well it cut.

"That is powerful magic indeed," the librarian said, her eyes glowing as she stared at the blade for a moment.

"It is beyond my immediate understanding, which means it was almost certainly created by someone else in their fourth prestige."

"Someone with a level of 80?" Vin asked, blinking as he stared down at the flickering blade. The ranker king had admitted himself that he'd been given the sword by the true ranker king in charge of their whole country, and Vin supposed it only made sense that person must have had some high-level mages working for them.

"Or higher," the librarian confirmed. Turning, she began to walk into the library, the edges of her long, white dress sliding along the ground behind her.

"It will take me a day to repair the damage that the sword inflicted. You are welcome to wait within my library if you follow the rules."

"Actually!" Vin called out, making the sword vanish once more as he hurried to catch up.

"While you're already messing with Alka's body… Is there any chance you could make it so spatial magic works on her? I know you designed the golems this way as a defensive measure to ensure they weren't stolen, but seeing as Alka is running around with us down on Edregon, it would make our lives a lot easier if she could be warped around."

"The unique alloy itself is resistant to spatial magics," the librarian stated, causing Vin to come up short.

"Wait, really? How come Mass Dimensional Shift works on me but not Alka? Half of my left arm is made of the stuff."

"It is a measure of magical density," the librarian explained.

"The concept of true immunity is an impossible goal. That is why I said it is resistant to spatial magics. The tier-4 spell is strong enough to overcome the resistance in your arm, but anything lower would not. As an example, if you tried casting the tier-3 spell Dimensional Shift on yourself, the spell would fail."

"It would?" Vin asked, taken aback by the sudden information. He'd nearly devoted a significant portion of time to learning that very same tier-3 spell and had been kicking himself ever since his time in the ranker king's prison that he hadn't bothered. Learning that he couldn't use the spell even if he learned it was both a tough pill to swallow, and a bit of a relief.

"Yes. Now, I wish to get started repairing your friend," the librarian said, motioning for him to head into the library proper.

"I recommend finding a good book and doing some reading. And refrain from attempting to access the restricted section. I may have a personal investment in your progress, but my lenience only stretches so far."