I turn on my heel and float deeper into the atrium, missing the devastation on Timothy's face.
"What are you two doing back here? I'm quite busy, you know, renovations and all." I say.
"Is that what you call rebuilding from the ground up?" William asks rhetorically while looking around at my modifications before answering my question, "We came with goodies for you."
The atrium now has rows of braziers hanging from iron chains on the ceiling. Wall sconces dot the walls between alcoves containing suits of armor. Gargoyles watch the room from above, perched on recessed ledges. The floor alternates between black and grey marble tiles in a checkerboard pattern. A long, blood-red rug stretches from the entryway to the main hall.
"Oh goodies, I love goodies." I turn back to William as he pulls off his pack and opens it to reveal the books inside.
"The books on magic, as promised, and plenty of writing materials," William says as he pulls them out and sets them on the floor like offerings to an evil deity.
"Sweet, I can now write my diary where Bart can't just read it with a voice command." I eye the blank journals longingly, "... eh, I mean write super important stuff like your first aid manual. Yeah, the second thing. I don't keep a diary, I don't know what you're talking about. Shut up."
William listens to me ramble, bemused. He clearly has a younger sister. Timothy is just staring blankly into space. I don't know what's up with him today.
I levitate the books and materials and shout behind me as I walk away, "Well, hurry up and follow me, slow pokes. You're lucky the guest parlor is finished."
The guest parlor is furnished like a study. Shelves full of books, skulls, and odd artifacts line the walls. A cozy fireplace sits on one wall while comfy sofas and armchairs face each other in the center of the room. Ornate chandeliers hang from the ceiling.
You may be wondering, if this amazing ghost can create a whole library out of nothing, why does she even need writing materials? Well, the truth is, this is all fake. As solid and real as everything appears within my haunt, outside the haunt, it will just disappear. At best, you might find yourself carrying a random stone from the original ruin.
Besides, these books are all blank. Well, except that row of books there. They contain an amazing series of young adult werewolf and vampire novels. No, my unfinished castle, which will be fit for Lord Dracula himself, is not in any way the result of me rotting my brain on those books.
"Well, mi casa es su casa, take a load off, boys, it's going to take me a little bit to prepare the manual for you."
My intentional use of a language not from this world spooks the boys a bit. I don't think I could've gotten better reactions if I started speaking Latin in reverse while levitating and turning my head around 180 degrees.
Now, do I handwrite this thing? That seems like it would take forever. What if I levitate the ink and press it into a shape before sending it to a page? Somewhat like a printing press, but spookier.
It works beautifully. The print and art are leagues above what I could've produced manually, and the efficiency is to die for. Die again? Eh, whatever.
The front cover contains "Early Medical Aid for Fools" in calligraphy with the image of a pain-relieving herb below. I almost put a medical cross on the cover as well before I remembered that symbol doesn't exist in this world. Instead, I make an image of a cartoon ghost.
The inside of the manual now contains text, diagrams, and images of various first aid techniques, herbs, and other useful materials. Fortunately, I took an outdoor survival course, and the herbs here appear to be the same; well, they look the same anyway. I even include a chapter on CPR.
Even with being able to ink the book similar to a printing press, it still takes about an hour to finish the process. William was entranced when I inked the first few pages, but now both boys are fast asleep on the sofas, snoring loudly.
Probably for the better that they sleep until morning before returning to town. I set the first aid manual down on the side table next to William, then grab my new books to probe their contents somewhere far away from Timothy's screech of the damned disguised as snoring.
The books are strange; the author seems to be doing more to draw attention to himself than the material he's writing about. The material is still great, but about a third of the books is just fluff about the author.
The first book is a brief overview of the 3 systems of magic. Both mana and qi can be slowly gathered and compressed into a person's own power. But it's slow, too slow, practitioners of both paths seek out other alternatives.
For mages, that shortcut is dungeons. Accumulations of magic that pool into a location for too long form pocket dimensions full of monsters. Mages will raid these pocket dimensions and slaughter the monsters. The mana left behind by the monsters as their bodies disperse is much easier to absorb than ambient mana.
For cultivators, the shortcut is treasure and techniques. The treasure is obtained from inheritances, slaughtering demons, or, my least favorite, refining special undead. Techniques typically come from large sects or families, but they can also come from inheritances or even be self-comprehended.
Spirit users are oddballs. Or at least the human ones are. They don't gain power. Their power is granted to them by their god and is fixed from the moment they are inducted into the faith. Power is seemingly arbitrary, but the clergy claim that it is faith-based. The evidence isn't in the clergy's favor. Some of the seemingly most devout are at the lowest rungs of power.
This, of course, is useless to me since my spirit is obviously evolving and my faith, if I ever had any, died somewhere in the void between worlds. The book did mention that certain undead and demons gain spiritual power differently, but it doesn't go into any detail.
There's one more path of power mentioned: body cultivation. But the author considers this a false path. Given that I don't have a body, I agree.
I turn my attention to the second book, "Magic is Elementary, my Dear." The title makes my skin crawl. I really hate this author, but I read it anyway. This book covers some of the deeper aspects of mana-based magic. When a mage reaches rank 1, they'll learn 1 or more paths.
Most of the time, these paths are elemental, such as the four basic elements: fire, earth, air, and water. They can also be compound elements like lightning or ice, or sub-elements like blood or metal. For the extremely talented, they can be advanced elements like light or dark. The truly unfortunate, according to the author, learn paths like swordsmanship. As much as I detest this author, I still find myself agreeing; what's the point of mana if you can't do magic?
When a person first learns a path, they'll also gain a skill in that path. Which brings us to the other benefit of dungeons, they don't just help a mage increase their mana, they also can drop magic equipment and skills.
Looks like I'll have to try these dungeons when I reach rank 1; maybe William's party will let me tag along.