Chapter 183: Compendiums (2) [Bonus]

[Bonus Chapter thanks to castle from ChronoTitan <3]

The first page of the Reality Compendium reflected Jaxir’s face for several seconds. Then, the image broke apart, spreading across the paper like ripples after a stone hits water.

Lines of gold came up beneath it and joined into a dense magic circle, and another status screen unfolded over the open book.

Jaxir shifted his grip and started reading.

Name: Reality Compendium

Grade: Legendary

[Constructed illusions may be stored within the Compendium and deployed at a later time.]

[Stored illusions may be elevated by one standard upon deployment, up to the Sovereign standard.]

[Contains the Mage Conjurer God’s teachings on Projection, illusion construction, and the creation of illusion worlds.]

His eyes slowed over the last two lines, then went back up to the part about elevating illusions by an entire standard.

A Common illusion stored inside the book could come out with the strength and substance of an Elite one. An Elite illusion could be pushed up to the Mage standard, and so on, all the way until Sovereign became the ceiling.

What would a Sovereign-level illusion even look like? Jaxir had no idea. Considering what he had just fought, though, he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out from the wrong side.

What interested him more was the bit about illusion worlds. That sounded a lot more involved than making someone see a second copy of him standing two meters to the left.

From the sound of it, entire fabricated environments could be prepared ahead of time and stored in the Compendium’s pages. As such, Jaxir wouldn’t need to build anything complicated in the middle of a fight.

If he had enough time to design an illusion properly, he could carry a fake battlefield around with him and drop someone straight into it whenever he wanted.

Jaxir grinned as he imagined what that could turn into with enough practice.

An enemy could think the ground beneath them had vanished. They could see attacks coming from directions that didn’t exist, or waste precious seconds fighting someone who wasn’t even standing where they thought he was.

Projection already made a temporary copy that mimicked a Conjurer’s next Ability from another position. Compared to that, stretching the same principle into a complete false reality suddenly didn’t feel like much of a leap.

There was one fairly obvious problem, though.

"How the hell am I supposed to make one?"

Jaxir was a Hex Mage, not a Conjurer. There was no convenient Projection Ability sitting in his Ability list for the book to enhance.

A Legendary Compendium that could store incredible illusions didn’t do him much good if his contribution was drawing a stick figure on the floor and hoping the enemy played along.

He frowned and took a closer look at the golden circle beneath the status screen. The lines weren’t just decoration.

By now, Jaxir had seen enough magic circles to recognize controlled mana flowing through one. However, the structure in front of him was far beyond anything he could reproduce from memory.

Smaller circles were nested inside larger ones, each section guiding mana into the next, until the whole pattern looked like a lesson written in the language of mana.

Jaxir pushed a bit of mana into the page. The first section lit up on its own, slowing the flow enough for him to follow along.

’Nice.’

The Compendium didn’t only empower illusions someone already knew how to make. It taught the Projection principles needed to make them in the first place, starting from simpler magic circles and building up toward the far more elaborate structures stored deeper in the book.

He hadn’t noticed the same depth in the Beast Taming Compendium, but that was because he’d barely bothered looking past the obvious abilities. Now, he understood why the three books together counted as a God’s Legacy.

Jaxir set the Reality Compendium down beside him and pulled the second book closer, a faint excitement already building before he’d even opened the cover.

Nick had already explained how absurdly rare Vestigem Smiths were among players. An entire province might only have 3 to 5 worth talking about, and the best of them usually got snapped up by major guilds almost immediately.

If this book could give Jaxir even the start of a path toward doing what they did, the value of this whole quest would change all over again.

He opened it.

Name: Construct Compendium

Grade: Legendary

[Created magical Constructs may be stored within the Compendium and deployed at a later time.]

[Stored Constructs may be elevated by one standard upon deployment, up to the Sovereign standard.]

[Contains the Mage Conjurer God’s teachings on Construct creation, autonomous magical structures, and mana-forged mechanisms.]

Jaxir’s gaze stayed on the last line.

At L1, Construct itself was simple enough. It created a stationary magical object that automatically attacked enemies within range.

The Compendium, however, was clearly taking that foundation much further. It could store finished Constructs the same way the Reality Compendium stored illusions, then push them a full standard above what Jaxir had actually made once they were deployed.

More importantly, the pages beneath the status screen were already filling up with magic circles.

Jaxir leaned closer.

At the end of the day, Vestigem Cards were magical mechanisms. That stayed true even if the Chance Corporation had built a whole technological language around their circuits and turned them into something the modern world could manufacture.

His parents’ memories had already given him flashes of how those circuits behaved. On top of that, Encore had let him feel more of their internal structure than most players ever would.

If Construct could teach him how to make stable magical mechanisms directly out of mana, then there had to be some overlap. At least, that was what Jaxir was hoping.

He pushed mana into the first lesson, and the page unfolded into a three-dimensional magic circle above the book.

Rings rotated through one another while smaller symbols locked into place, and Jaxir followed the structure with growing concentration as mana gathered at its center.

Something transparent slowly started to take shape.

Jaxir’s excitement tripped over itself.

A barrel formed first. Then came a rectangular body, a grip, and what looked suspiciously like an ammunition feed, all made entirely out of mana.

The finished Construct hovered in the middle of the magic circle and swiveled a few degrees, as though it was looking for a target.

Jaxir stared at it.

It looked exactly like a machine gun.

His lip twitched as he looked from the floating gun to the Legendary book that had supposedly belonged to one of the great Mage Gods.

There wasn’t a Vestigem Card circuit anywhere in sight. No template, no card-shaped construct, nothing even remotely connected to the crafting system he’d been hoping to find...

The first lesson was apparently teaching him how to summon a magical turret.

Jaxir stared at it for a few more seconds.

"You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. Where is my lesson on drawing Vestigem Cards?!"