I walked over to the desk and bit my finger. Letting some blood drip onto the desk. The desk absorbed the 4 drops of blood as if it was a sponge. Nothing happened for a few minutes. Not sure what I was expecting though. I went over to the skeleton trying to figure out how to pick it up and move it. Reaching over and touching the robe, the entire skeleton puffed into powdery ashes. Jumping back from shock, I didn't think that would happen. Something dawned on me and looked at the letter again and more importantly the year on it. I can’t believe it, but it’s been nearly 3000 years since the letter was written.
“Yes, it has been a very long time.”
“Aaaaggghhh, what the hell” I jumped back behind the desk looking around the room. I just heard a female voice.
“Don’t be so jumpy, I am not going to hurt you. In fact you now own me. Although my previous master died a long time ago, I have evolved some and have become much stronger thanks to him. Unfortunately, for you that means that some of his treasures are now just dust as I absorbed their energy to strengthen my own. Now be quiet and listen for a few minutes. Then you can ask questions.
First if word about me gets out, not even this planet will survive the creatures that come looking for me. So, no telling anyone about me. Second, I am going to train you and make you stronger than anything you can imagine. Although I say I am going to train you, I believe you will feel different about that statement. My doors that are locked can be opened as your magic gets stronger. Luckily you couldn’t open any doors, or you would be dead already. So consider yourself lucky that you are rather pathetic at the moment. Each door leads to a different realm. Access to those realms can only be reached by going through these doors. Gods can’t even reach those realms, unless they go through these doors. Good news is that when you die in those realms, you will be sent back here alive. You can’t access the door you die in for 24 hours. For each level you gain, the time inside will double. The bottom level which you are at allows you to go inside for 72 hours. The spoils of your fights can be collected and brought out with you. When you go through the doors, it will seem to stop out here. The time difference is one hour inside to one second outside.
The library here is similar as you can’t touch books beyond one level above you. You will be reading books that I give you to increase your knowledge first. Then we will start with giving you your cheat. The library's time is similar to the realms as time is nearly halted. Luckily for you as you would end up an old man by the time you finish reading what I have planned. You will be exercising between books as I will have to improve your body. Now that is about it for now. What are your questions?”
“Do you have a name?” “No, I do not as I didn’t have the ability to communicate before I was never named. What is your name, or would you prefer me to call you master?” “My name is Chase, Chase Dickins. Do you care for what name I give you?” “I don’t really care what name you give me.” “What about Brittany or Cassandra or Star.” “STOP!!! I’m not a hooker. Give me a proper name.” “How about Maison de Carma. I remember that name from somewhere and I always thought it was pretty good.” “That is great, you can call me Maison for short.”
“Now that all the pleasantries are done. Open the top middle drawer of the desk and you will see a ring. Once again put a drop of your blood on it and it will bind itself to you. Unlike most storage rings you are familiar with, this one will disappear into your skin and only come out when you do it. My old master put it in the drawer after being poisoned by his old family. I don’t know what all is left in it. So please go ahead and start. You have a lot of work to do. While you are in the library, I will see my old master’s remains.”
As per Maison’s orders, I pinched my finger and bound the ring to me. I placed it on my finger as the blood was being absorbed. I looked in the ring and it was filled with mana crystals of all different shapes and sizes. Even though I knew very little about magic, I still knew what these were. They would be sold all sorts of money depending on the quality of the crystal. These were the largest I have ever seen or even heard of.
“Maison, the only thing in the ring are mana crystals. More than I want to count at the moment. Where did he get these crystals?” “Chase, he got the crystals the way he knew how. By killing creatures and taking their mana crystal. Of course, he did this inside the realms, even back in his day there weren’t a lot of known dragon ranges. Now don’t worry about them and follow the glowing orb.”
I followed the orb down the hallway back to the main room and turned toward one of the shut doors. As the orb or should I say Maison approached the door, it opened. “Chase, go sit on the green slab in the center of the room. It's time for you to experience some mental anguish. Or as master would say, higher education.” I walked toward the “slab” and noticed that it was a beautiful dark green jade slab with what seemed to be symbols floating on the inside. It appeared to have water flowing through it and the symbols almost seemed alive and were swimming around the inside of this stone. I gently sat down on it as I was afraid I would fall into it.
I looked up and saw books floating toward me from all directions. “Chase, you need to focus on breathing, we will start slow. This is going to give you a pretty bad headache. You just need to sit there and relax as much as possible.” At his point a book was dropped onto the slab. The minute the book hit the slab, it felt as if someone had smashed my head with a hammer. It wasn’t a physical pain; it was more like the worst hangover of your life compressed into 10 seconds worth of pain. I didn’t puke on the bright side. I was in too much pain to puke. “Good job Chase, that was an introduction into proper magic and how it works. Sit there and get ready to absorb hundreds of books” I wanted to say something but the next book was dropped.
