Chapter 182: Compendiums

Jaxir pressed [Yes] and waited for the cavern to shake, for space to fold, or for another ancient monster to crawl out of somewhere it had no business fitting.

Instead, golden light gathered above the pillar. It slowly condensed around a thick book wrapped from end to end in embroidered cloth, and the whole thing drifted down until it hovered within easy reach of his hands.

Jaxir stared at it for several seconds, then looked around the cavern with open suspicion. If anything, the lack of immediate violence worried him more than another boss fight would have.

"That’s it?"

He reached toward the book and stopped just short of touching it, giving the Mage Conjurer God one last chance to spring whatever ridiculous trap had surely been waiting for him.

Nothing happened.

So, he finally took hold of the tome and pulled it free of the golden light.

Name: Conjurer’s Compendium

Grade: Legendary

[Legacy of the Mage Conjurer God.]

[Contains the Beast Taming Compendium, Construct Compendium, and Reality Compendium.]

Jaxir’s eyebrows rose at the Grade. However, he barely had time to appreciate it before the golden cloth around the tome began unraveling on its own.

The material split into three streams that curled through the air, and the book inside went with them, its spine splitting cleanly into three smaller volumes without damaging a single page.

By the time the light settled, three Compendiums were floating in front of him. He understood the division almost right away.

Every Magic Path shared the same Root Abilities, but the Branches changed everything that came after. For Conjurers, those Branches started with Familiar, Construct, and Projection.

Familiar summoned a small, persistent magical entity that helped out in combat.

Construct created a stationary magical object that could attack nearby enemies.

As for Projection? It produced a temporary copy that could mimic the Conjurer’s next Ability from another position.

Looking at the three books hovering in front of him, Jaxir didn’t need much imagination to tell which Ability each one stood for.

The Beast Taming Compendium drifted closest. Its dark leather cover was marked with the golden outlines of several creatures surrounding a single open hand.

Jaxir caught it and opened the first page, expecting a mountain of Conjurer theory he wouldn’t understand. Instead, another status screen formed.

He shifted his weight onto his good leg and started reading.

Name: Beast Taming Compendium

Grade: Legendary

[Legacy corresponding to the Familiar Branch Ability.]

[Greatly lowers the difficulty of taming creatures above the user’s Level and allows compatible creatures to be bound within the Compendium’s pages.]

[Depth of comprehension determines the strength, talent, and number of creatures that may be successfully bound.]

[Perfect comprehension may allow creatures reaching the Sovereign standard to be bound.]

[Bestial Appraisal: Reveal the complete status of creatures within 30 Levels of the user.]

Jaxir reread the line about Sovereigns, then slowly looked over at the Black Gem Alpha.

The wolf looked back at him from across the cavern.

After what Jaxir had gone through against its ancestor, the idea of someone stuffing something of that standard into a book sounded completely absurd. It seemed that Legendary items were truly broken.

He didn’t know a whole lot about Conjurers. Though, Gavin, Nick, and the others had mentioned enough over time for Jaxir to understand just how unusual this Compendium was.

Taming even an ordinary creature above your own Level could turn into an entire undertaking. Finding a Conjurer walking around with an Elite Familiar was apparently rarer than finding another Archmage.

Once Familiars reached Mage standards and beyond, the difficulty shot up so sharply that most players would never see one outside of major guilds or factions.

A Grand Archmage-grade summon was something Jaxir had only ever heard people bring up as a joke. This Compendium, however, made Sovereign creatures a theoretical possibility, so long as its legacy was understood deeply enough.

Well, that didn’t mean he could walk outside tomorrow and start collecting ancient monsters like trading cards. The wording put most of the burden squarely on comprehension.

Even so, the ceiling was ridiculous. Someone dedicated to the Familiar path could probably build an entire career around this one book.

The spatial function made the whole thing a lot more practical, too. Bound beasts could stay inside the Compendium’s pages. Their owner wouldn’t have to drag them around the world or spend a fortune on specialized beast-holding bags.

Jaxir had seen enough of Divinity’s economy by now to know that anything involving spatial storage got expensive fast, especially when the thing being stored was alive, enormous, and capable of eating people.

The book solved that problem almost as an afterthought. That said, Bestial Appraisal interested him more.

Jaxir had already run into several creatures and players whose status information gave him nothing but question marks. In those cases, the only way to judge how dangerous they were was to wait and see what happened after they attacked him.

The Compendium would get rid of that problem for any beast within 30 Levels of him, and Jaxir couldn’t imagine needing much more range than that. If something was over 30 Levels above him, knowing the exact number attached to the monster killing him probably wouldn’t improve the experience.

"Very cool," Jaxir said, closing the Beast Taming Compendium and letting it float back beside the others. "Still not falling for that gotcha catch ’em all trap."

The Black Gem Alpha tilted its head.

Jaxir chuckled. He liked the wolf, and Niri had already proven he was perfectly capable of getting attached to things inside this game. But, building his entire fighting style around creatures doing the interesting parts for him sounded miserable.

He would much rather beat something himself. Even if that meant lying, cheating, baiting it into terrible decisions, or convincing it that it had already won right before everything exploded in its face.

Honestly, that last part was usually where things got fun.

His eyes moved to the second book.

The Construct Compendium had a much cleaner cover, golden geometric lines crossing over one another until they formed the outline of some strange mechanical structure.

Jaxir didn’t even need to touch it before his thoughts jumped back to the Ability it represented. Construct created stationary magical objects that could act independently once they were formed.

His heart gave a small jump. At the end of the day, Vestigem Cards were constructed magical objects, were they not?

Of course, the cards were far more complicated than anything a low-level Conjurer could make with Construct, especially when Divinity treated their circuits like a technology and magic system all their own. Still, the connection was enough to make Jaxir stare at the book for several seconds.

If the Construct Compendium taught someone how to build stable magical objects out of mana alone, then there was at least a chance its legacy could fill in the part of Vestigem Card creation he had been missing.

His parents’ memories already brushed against the edges of the subject. For the first time, he might have found something that could give those fragments some structure.

Then, Jaxir looked at the final book.

The Reality Compendium floated behind the others, and there was no picture on its cover at all. There was only a reflective surface, showing Jaxir standing right where the title should have been.

When he moved his head, the reflection stayed put for a fraction of a second before following.

His grin started spreading before he even touched it.

Conjurers really were annoyingly close to being jacks of all trades.

Familiar could turn them into beast tamers. Construct pushed them toward crafting and magical engineering. Projection let them make temporary copies that could mimic their next Ability from an entirely different position.

Push that last concept far enough, and the line between a projection and an illusion got very thin. Push it even farther, and Jaxir couldn’t help but wonder how much of what an enemy saw, heard, or sensed could be made completely false.

There were few things he enjoyed more than watching someone confidently react to the wrong information. He almost started to wonder if he had made a mistake choosing the Hex Path. Maybe he should have chosen the Conjurer Path instead?

His grin stretched from ear to ear as he reached past the other two books and pulled the Reality Compendium into his hands.

The Construct Compendium might eventually open a door toward making Vestigem Cards, and that alone made it almost impossible to ignore. However, the reflective cover in front of him promised an entirely different kind of fun.

Jaxir ran a thumb along its edge and opened the first page.

"Alright, show me how much about lying and tricks a Legendary item can teach me."