Chương 46: A Night of Precautions

Sir Deren and Steward Dalwin did not stay much longer after their inspection. With their tour complete and their opinions thoroughly delivered, they eventually departed together, leaving the library once more under Lira's control, or as much control as she could maintain while six footmen continued hauling decades of accumulated rubble. Not long after their departure, another man arrived.

He was thin, older, and narrow-shouldered, with a receding hairline and the permanently tired expression of someone not paid enough for his effort. He carried a wooden case filled with brushes, oils, cloths, and small tools, and introduced himself only as Collin before immediately setting himself to work on the reading tables. Lira quickly understood why Dalwin had summoned him specifically. The man was meticulous to a degree that bordered on obsession.

She wondered if Braka would not be better served working as his apprentice, before shaking her head. Celene would never allow one of her maids to work under a footman, especially one as pretty as Braka. The handyman began sanding, polishing, and carefully applying lacquer with such concentration that it was obvious he would not be finished any time soon. Lira spent the remaining hours of the afternoon organizing the geography section manually while keeping half an eye on the workers.

Without using magic, the process felt painfully slow. She was already spoiled by her spells. Still, with the footmen handling the heavier tasks, progress was visible everywhere. The corner piled with refuse was slowly being cleared. By the time the dinner bell rang through the castle, the footmen had completed most of their assigned labor and, one by one, filtered out of the library with tired groans and exaggerated complaints. Only Collin remained, still polishing.

Lira watched him from between two shelves as he leaned over a table with unwavering dedication. She frowned. That likely meant he would return tomorrow, and if that happened, the library would no longer be reliably empty. That was a problem. If a court wizard was truly coming to inspect the heating runes, then she could not afford to remain ignorant about mana detection any longer. Desperate times required desperate solutions. Lira was going to spend the night in the library.

Lira had learned early that researching magic was rarely straightforward. The most obvious magical texts had long since been picked clean from the library, likely removed decades ago by people far more competent or far more paranoid than the current administration... or maybe the books were simply too valuable to let rot here. Either way, her designated magical studies shelf remained embarrassingly empty, which was itself an answer of sorts. Still, magic touched too many disciplines to ever disappear completely.

With enough creativity and her divination spells, relevant knowledge could still be extracted. After Collin finally packed up his materials and left for the evening, Lira locked the main doors behind him and began her search.

"Ladar. Linasara. Oshkan. Cognar. Turat." Her awareness spread through the library once more. Her focus was narrow: magic detection, mana sensitivity, and artifact concealment.

"Yorad. Linasara. Kaldris." As the books gathered in front of her, she took a seat in the comfort of her alcove. The results were frustratingly scattered, with not a single dedicated text on the subject appearing.

Instead, she was forced to assemble knowledge from fragments: a philosophy text discussing the nature of mana and the soul, a military manual warning officers about enemy mages capable of tracking spell residue, a crafting treatise describing how magical artifacts interacted with ambient mana, a medical manuscript briefly referencing magical exhaustion and soul adaptation, and more along those lines. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Lira gathered them all.

With only candlelight illuminating her small workspace, occasionally, when a book seemed dense enough to justify the effort, she cast:"Pika. Linasara. Cognar. Coopar. Nagla." Knowledge flowed into her mind, filling her with understanding. As the hours passed, patterns eventually began to emerge. The first and perhaps most important realization was simple. Everyone possessed mana. It was not just mages or monsters... everyone.

Mana was apparently an innate part of the world itself, present in every living being and inanimate object in varying quantities. The difference between ordinary people and mages was not the existence of mana, but their awareness of it. That explained why she had felt something strange whenever handling magical primers, but neither Tessa nor Maren had reacted similarly. Having never interacted with magic, they lacked the sensitivity.

Lira, however, had a growing familiarity with it that it had sharpened her perception. The more one learned magic, the more attuned one became to mana itself as the soul adapted to the strain of spellcasting. Even still, that process was gradual. Cantrips and Tier One spells only caused minor changes to the caster. Someone with only low-level magical knowledge could still pass as an ordinary individual with slightly above-average mana density, a particularly healthy commoner, perhaps.

But beyond that, things changed. Tier Two and Tier Three magic caused far more dramatic adaptation. Such individuals apparently became noticeably distinct. And when it came to higher tiers of magic... well, the text started getting poetic. Lira did not like that at all. That meant magical growth would come with greater risk. Fortunately, she was still safely beneath that threshold... for now. The second discovery concerned ambient mana. Mana was not solely an internal affair.

It existed everywhere: in the air, in materials, in living things, and throughout the environment itself, and spellcasting drew from both personal reserves and surrounding mana. That was why simple cantrips barely strained her. Under normal conditions, the environment subsidized the cost. However, one book warned about casting in low mana density areas, as internal mana would have to shoulder a heavier burden. All of it was useful information, but that was not the alarming part.

Apparently, after casting a spell, ambient mana in the surrounding area became temporarily "tainted" with traces of the caster's personal mana signature. That was the foundation of magical tracking. A skilled mage could examine disturbed mana and identify recent magical activity. Usually, this residue stabilized after a few minutes, sometimes longer for stronger spells. Lira stared at that passage for a very long time. The short window of time meant nothing when spell modifiers like Moren. Past. existed.

She had absolutely no idea whether spells exploiting that interaction existed, but the possibility alone was enough to make her deeply uncomfortable. And she was not interested in discovering the answer once the wizard came to visit. Her course of action became obvious. No more spellcasting until after the inspection. If there were no visible disturbance, there would be no need for a deeper investigation. Additionally, the primers had to disappear immediately.

As magical artifacts, they would be far easier to detect than normal spell residue. She gathered every primer she owned and carried them upstairs. The highest floor of the library was still largely untouched. Dust thickened across abandoned rooms, furniture lay draped beneath sheets, and stacks of books were scattered everywhere. It was a perfect place to hide things. She distributed the primers across multiple rooms rather than storing them together.

A primer hidden alone among forgotten stacks was less suspicious than a concentrated magical cache. By the time she finished, as she turned to leave, something caught her eye. Her own footprints... clearly visible in the thick dust leading directly toward one of the hiding places. Lira froze. Then sighed. That had been almost stupid of her. She raised her hand instinctively to cast before remembering her own rule: no more spells. She paused again. Actually... one last exception.

The space was far enough from the main floor, and a visual clue was far more damning than a magical one.

"Pika. Terran. Frushum." The dust shifted subtly. Her footprints softened, blurred, then redistributed themselves until the surface appeared naturally undisturbed. Satisfied, she carefully covered her tracks all the way back down. Finally, there was one last problem she needed to address: Her alcove. Steward Dalwin had all but declared war on the tapestries. If workers came tomorrow to remove or replace them, her alcove would be exposed. So she decided to preemptively remove all three herself.

Then began the exhausting task of rearranging shelves. Without magic, it was miserable work. To hide the space concealing her alcove, she first had to empty three entire bookcases, then drag the shelves inch by inch across the stone flooring while trying not to collapse from fatigue. Then restock everything... again. Her back ached, her hands hurt, and her legs felt like wet paper. Still, by sheer stubbornness, she managed it.

By the time the final shelf was repositioned and her alcove was properly concealed behind a more natural arrangement of shelves, faint morning light had begun creeping through the windows. Lira stared at it in disbelief. She had worked through the entire night. Wonderful... absolutely wonderful. Too exhausted to even curse properly, she lowered herself onto one of the unfinished lacquered tables, intending only to rest her eyes for a moment. The next thing she knew, darkness claimed her completely.