The tome that Lucas received from Venion was filled with magical spells that he could use. Every spell had certain runes attached to it. Furthermore, every element had its dedicated runes making a giant catalog of things to memorize. The tome wasn't only filled with magical jargon, but it also held a lot of information about the monsters in the area.
All the written spells were a decently sized string of difficult-to-read runes. Venion said that you could replace the runes with other ones to see the effect. You could combine runes of different elementals into a single string, to make a fire that also has the cutting properties of wind and so on. Lucas didn't test a whole lot with that since he first needed to learn the runes before experimenting with them.
Lucas recognized the giant from his village, apparently, it was called a hobgoblin. The other monsters that he saw during the night of the Scarlet Moon were also in that tome. Every monster had its own little description with a few lines of advice when encountering said monster. What they were strong and weak against, how to avoid them, and so on were also written on the pages.
While reading about the monster, Lucas thought he would start to get scared again from remembering that traumatic event.
'We lost everything back then, our friends, our home, our family...Is there even a point to continuing on?'
'Yes, I do think there's a reason to continue on with this.'
'Why? We have absolutely nothing right now, we survived for so long, but for what? Now we're even shackled down to this dumbass baron!'
'Yes, that's correct, a risky decision with reason, we didn't have much of a choice. I do wonder why you're asking about our reason to live, didn't we both want a single thing after that night? The power to never suffer from such a thing again? The power to destroy or save anything? The might that could rule the world?! Isn't that why we live?! Why we came up with such a scheme to continue on this bloody path that won't let us be?! Do you really want to die in a ditch somewhere!? Let us grow! Let us see what this world has to offer! Let us destroy any who are in our path! Let's reveal this world for what it truly is!!!'
There wasn't an audible silence since everything was taking place in his mind, but the conversation did stop for a moment.
'I guess you do have a point, the Scarlet Night will happen again no matter what, a crazed mage could go on a rampage and slaughter everyone, a natural disaster could happen and swallow every life whole. If we want to live in this world without worrying about the constant threat of death there's only one thing we can do.'
'Exactly, we need to be determined, steadfast if we want to live in this world. We need to figure out why the Scarlet Moon appears, what causes it and why, that can be our goal for now.'
'Agreed, although I don't think that will happen very soon, let's first deal with the situation at hand.'
'Yes, we still have to deal with them don't we.', and a smile bloomed, normally it was the more negative side that smiled while dealing with the murder of others, but this time the remembrance of the Night put his other part into chaos. They both needed each other, one had to be kept out of the dark while the other needed to be wary of the light, they needed to work together in order to reach their end goal.
All the information about the monsters stuck in his mind like glue. Not because he got help as he got with the dark magic. He simply remembered every detail about the monsters out of curiosity
With magic, he did get help in some sort of way. Light and dark magic were easily remembered because of his core. The other elements took a lot longer to memorize, but he had enough time to study them in detail. There were for every element three sets of runes, and a beginner one. The beginner rune and the first two sets he could learn and use. The last set of runes had a warning about the usage, he was cautioned that he needed to be a first circle mage.
The tome also mentioned that the field of magic was enormous, there was magical Forgemastering, necromancy, poison, curses, and much more. Once he realized he had so many options to choose from, he was ecstatic. 'Looks like we'll be busy in the future.'
When it came to the spells themselves it was somewhat simple. Runes take energy out of the core, the higher level the rune was, the more energy it would normally take. There are a few exceptions, but that was the general trend.
Every spell in the tome was formed with runes from a certain set, but it is possible to combine them to create new spells. The problem was that if even a single rune was misplaced it could result in an explosion. So, it was more important to figure out the meaning behind the rune than just memorizing it. If you wanted to create your own powerful spells you needed to experiment a lot, especially since there were so many different runes. Combining runes from different elements was also possible, but Lucas didn't touch on that subject yet. He was planning to spend some time on that after he escaped.