Yup, you guessed it. I died. No, I'm not joking around. I burned up from the inside out thanks to the overwhelming power of the trinket I'd picked up without preparing to attune to its enchantment. It's what usually happened when one attempted to read a grimoire that wasn't exactly meant for them. And yes, it did call to me, but that didn't mean the Elemental King of Fire's symbol of power picked me right out of the gate. It tested me, and I failed the test spectacularly.
As for Liara, I could only imagine what sort of frigid doom befell her, but the she-elf's screams of pain hounded me past my death. Darkness took me, and I strayed from thought and time. No afterlife. Just inky blackness and the stars wheeling overhead while the pang of guilt I felt at Liara's death made my temporary stay in the void feel even longer than usual. Death's hold eventually weakened though, and I felt life in me again.
"Liara~~a!"
I woke up inside my room in the tower screaming in remembered pain.
"You're having a nightmare again, aren't you?" asked a voice that was like honey being poured into my ears.
I turned my head to the door and found her leaning against the doorframe. She looked okay. No sheet of frost coating her body or frozen tears marking a frightened face that knew its death was coming.
"Y-yeah…"
I looked away in embarrassment.
It wasn't always like this, but some deaths stuck with me long after I experienced them. Not just because of their extremely violent endings, but mostly because I'd dragged someone to their graves with me.
Luckily for Liara, she would never have to know about how she'd just died. And, with Extra Life's experience giving me newfound wisdom, she would never have to die that way again. It was a promise I engraved in my soul when I got up from my bed on shaky legs.
"Must have been a terrible dream," Liara noted.
"Just the usual dragons eating me whole and demons enslaving my soul kind of nightmare," I shrugged.
I noticed the smirk on Liara's face.
"What?"
I didn't mean to sound annoyed, but the aftereffects of my recent death still clung to me and made me slightly more irritable than usual.
"You called out my name," she pointed out.
"Really?" I feigned ignorance while I put on my blue aviator jacket. "Didn't notice…"
"Uhuh…"
Her smirk was growing.
"Look, you wanna keep giving me sass, or do you want me to show you what's next on our chain of power-up quests?"
With a knowing, teasing look, Liara said, "Lead the way."
My mood got considerably better after breakfast. A plate of mouthwatering sausages, a perfectly fluffy cheese omelet, and a glass of apple juice had remarkable curative effects for people who'd just experienced death.
"That's the right stuff." I leaned against my chair feeling immensely satisfied. "Sprite chefs are the best."
"Are you done stuffing your face, or would you like a second helping of food that'll make you too fat for future adventures?" Liara asked.
She'd barely touched her dryad's salad, which I couldn't blame her for. Ugh, rabbit food.
"Cool your unicorns… it's going to be a long day of raiding," I countered.
Our second chance to raid the secrets of the Academy's Great Library started pretty much the same way with Liara explaining its interiors to me while we hung outside its front doors. Our experiences inside the library turned out a little differently though.
Yes, the first stack was still filled with red cloaks. Although there was a minor aberration during this run too. A blue cloak I'd never met before—a tall elf with long, pale blonde hair and a pretty boy face like one might find on the cover of a Realmsflix poster—was sitting in the middle of a gathering of red cloaks who were all engrossed in whatever it was the elf was discussing with them. Some of these red cloaks were even laughing as if he'd just told them a funny joke.
Liara stiffened at my side as soon as she noticed this new aberration to the timeline though.
"What's he doing back on campus so soon?" she asked under her breath.
The elf's pointy ears perked up, and he stopped speaking as his gaze drifted to the first stack's entrance where we were. Pale gray eyes just like Liara's widened at the sight of her.
"You know him?" I asked.
"Not really," she replied icily.
The elf waved to her, but Liara ignored him. She chose instead to grab my arm and drag me toward the arched hallway leading up to the second stack while the female red cloaks surrounding the pretty boy elf sent icy glares at Liara's back.
"Wait, hold on"—I gently pulled her hand off me—"I'll be right back…"
Liara looked uncomfortable but she didn't stop me. "Hurry it up, Wisdom."
I skirted the encirclement of red cloaks—with many of them whispering something crude they meant for me to hear—and then found Dess where I'd first met her near the back end of the first stack. She was just about to pull on the book that would send the entire collection of martial arts manuals on that burgeoned bookshelf crashing down on her when I yelled, "Wait!"
Dess glanced over her shoulder. "Y-yeah?"
"You pull on that book and you'll bring them all down on us," I explained. "Here—"
I reached up to her shelf and held the other books in the row together with my hands while prompting Dess to pull out the book she wanted. Thanks to my support, the martial arts manuals didn't fall and cause a mess on the floor, which meant Dess was free from getting reprimanded by the first stack's librarian, something I had felt kind of guilty for when I'd left her alone to deal with it during my last life.
"Shield Tactics for Dummies," I read out loud, causing Dess's face to flush with embarrassment.
"It's not for me… My friend—"
"Shieldmaiden's a tough specialization to train for." I cut her off as gently as I could while also pulling out the book that I'd given her in the previous run. "Here, your 'friend' might find this useful too."
I shoved Lagertha, The Last Shieldmaiden into Dess's hands, earning myself the same skeptical gaze she'd given me the first time we did this. As before, I gave her a quick explanation of its merits and secured myself some brownie points with the teenage fairy that I hoped would translate into future favors.
With my good deed for the day accomplished, I made my way back to Liara while pretending that I didn't see the pretty boy elf give me a curious look. Somehow, I felt like getting entangled with him might be a bad idea. And no, I wasn't being racist even though I had cause to be wary of bright elves. It was the way Liara reacted to seeing him that made me decide to follow her lead.
Anyway, we moved on to the second stack where we followed Divah's Peter Pan clues and found ourselves in the special section once more. I wowed Mistress Grimsever like I had the first time, retrieved the Lesser Key of Solomon lickety-split, and then repeated the steps that led me and Liara back into the Academy's Vault of Glass.
In this run, however, I made sure to let Liara know of the trap that would have set off her gold fever. This forewarning allowed us to pass by the many treasures of the vault without incident. Although that 'Sword of Damocles' was pretty insistent in its attempts to catch Liara's attention much like a certain elven aberration tried to do earlier.
We didn't go directly to the dais of the elemental kings like before though. Instead, I led Liara to a row of shelves that carried goodies that weren't grimoires but were no less as priceless as the repository of relics the Academy's custodians had left behind for us to plunder.
"They store materials in the Vault of Glass?" Liara asked curiously.
"These aren't just your run-of-the-mill mats." I plucked a glass case from the shelf in front of us and showed it to her. "Do you know what this is?"
The item inside the glass case was a flower as pretty as a blooming rose, but its blue petals glowed with the tell-tale signs of magic.
"It's elf's foil…" Liara's brow creased the longer she inspected the flower. "But it's been strengthened somehow… filled with more magical energy than a common elf's foil would have."
"This is a royal elf's foil," I revealed. "Elf's foil only grows where elven blood is spilled, and a royal elf's foil is a flower that stays in the earth hundreds of years longer than the common version, allowing it to soak up more of the latent magic dead elves leave behind."
I opened the case and took out the flower, prompting Liara to grab my forearm in alarm.
"Didn't you say we could only get one or two items from this place?" She couldn't help glancing left and then right as if reminding me of the many treasures stored in this vault. "Are you sure this flower's what you want?"
"I meant that for the grimoires." I gently shrugged her off and then pulled out another item from the shelf. "These mats are fair game… they're meant to be used."
Liara raised a skeptical eyebrow at me. "What do you mean?"
I stifled the shiver that came when I recalled the moment we'd died in this vault while reminding myself that it wasn't going to happen again. "…The grimoires we want are special, and we'll need to prepare our bodies first before we can attune to them. And these herbs and spices are here to help people do just that."
Liara's skeptical eyebrow didn't seem to want to go down. "How are herbs and spices going to help us attune to all-powerful ancient grimoires?"
"Herbs and spices?" It was my turn to raise an eyebrow at her. "This is the problem with people too focused on singular goals. Well, you're in for a treat, Liara."
I pulled another item from the shelf. It was a pouch of purple dust that glowed like a sea of stars.
Then I grinned at Liara while showing my ingredients off. "I'm about to show you the wonders of alchemy."