After four hours of searching I finally found three books that would be the basic foundation of my shadow arsenal, it only took two hours for creation magic as their books were mostly design blueprints and materials that benefit the design as well as upgrade them, wind was actually the hardest. Six hours and countless books later I had all nine books sitting in front of me, I found the more streamlined the books name the better the actual technique was.
Slayer's Bow, Shoes of Neptune, and Hell's Gauntlets were my creation blueprints, all three of them talked in length about runecrafting too which were ways to make the mana flow into them to provide a buff to the user when charged. Each one had a basic, advanced, and mastery runic set that would allow you to charge the item up to a certain extent.
Slayer's bow made it so the strength required to pull back the string was increased the more mana put into it, it was simple but also made the bow deadlier than most firearms. The design of it was simple too, the basic ingredients for the weapon were actually easy to get a hold of, later upgrades to it were far outside the scope of what I could gather right now.
Shoes of Neptune allowed one's movements to pretty much be weightless, boosting that when used to their fullest potential they could be used to walk on water. The shoes were made from feathers and other hallowed out pieces and were by far the hardest to craft of the three items.
Hell's gauntlets were a strength enhancing item and was usually used for people when they wanted to punch something to death, but the lack of metal along the fingers made them ideal for an archer. When combined with the bow I hoped that it would have devastating results, also the way the runes worked on the gauntlets it didn't enhance the gauntlets themselves but instead increased the power of your own arms. I had heard that constant enhancements to the body over a long period of time actually enhanced the body.
Wind techniques were a lot simpler, one of them was Feather Fall which would allow me to reduce the impact of a fall to the bare minimum. Wind Wall which helped against ranged attacks by creating a barrier of air. The last one would enhance my arrows exponentially if I can aim perfectly which was Wind Tunnels. It created a pathway between me and a target where wind would increase the speed and power of a projectile rather than slow it down.
Shadow was the one who broke my rule from earlier Erase Presence, Shadow Dodge, and The Lacerating Dagger of Blood. The last one made me shake my head based on its name, but it actually made the target's wound constantly bleed using small dagger-like projections constantly shred the hole within their bodies. It wasn't enough damage to make the wound bigger but it was just enough to help them bleed to death. Erase Presence was pretty self explanatory, but it solidified shadows around you to soften all the sounds and smells your body made. Shadow Dodge created an illusion through the manipulation of lights and shadows to make an image of you overtop your own but could do independent actions when ordered to confuse the enemy.
I had also found out from Erase Presence that some spells could evolve, the known evolution for Erase Presence was Shadow Arsenal which could create small items or add a corrosive effect to your weapons. The items were temporary but they didn't require any materials to make, it could be created as long as there was a shadow nearby. They also were highly fragile, usually one time use items like daggers or lockpicks were created with them. Trap disabling with them would mean I didn't have to bring a lot of tools with me for the job.
Popping a small pill into my mouth, I looked over the book in my hands that I was memorizing as it was much simpler than any of the techniques. It was a body refinement skill that many people didn't take a passing glance at because it required one to suffer the corrosive abilities of shadow for a very long time to make your body and bones more flexible. Snake's Blessing, probably one of the more painful methods of body refinement but my pain tolerance was something that even most frontline fighters couldn't compare to.
The final stage of it made all bodily fluids except your reproductive ones acidic which reminded me of some of the creatures that I had raised later on in the game. Saliva, tears, blood, everything would have a corrosive property to it. The attack against Mikie would have been much more effective if I had the corrosive properties in my spit.
Putting away the body refining technique now that I had made sure that the memory was added to its own book in the expansive library. I created an exclusive bookshelf for it called Techniques, before leaving both libraries.
On my way out the man looked at the books with a curious raised brow, he hadn't expected me to gravitate towards ranged attacks. Not many people used them since they required much more training to use and was most of the time useless in arena combat since most people have movement techniques to close gaps.
Arena combat was one of the easiest ways to test your skills, and was usually done in a one on one fashion. In arena combat I had a few tricks to make sure that I'd be able to keep a distance between me and the attacker, but they would need to be tested out. The faction usually focused on honor during combat, so many fighting styles were looked down upon.
This was the major flaw of this fortress was its belief that there was such thing as honor during a fight or in war. They had been lead astray before, following for traps and ambushes that should have been easy to avoid.
The librarian threw me a leather bag as I was picking the books up, "Next time remember to bring a bag, you don't want to be showing off every skill you have to the world now do you? Also a cloak, if there were more people around the library today I'm sure someone would have seen you go to the various bookshelves."
My eyes widened, I hadn't thought of those possibilities. I felt embarrassed that I'd miss such a big detail. After gathering the books, I stayed for a bit just talking to the librarian. Finding out both of us were alchemists we hit it off pretty well, both of us learning a lot from each other much to the librarian's surprise.
"Till next time Toby. I'd love to hear your insights on using pills over using Elixirs." Toby smiled at me affectionately before offering his daughter off as a bride for the fourth time. As his daughter was reaching her hundreds I denied once more.