Chapter 417: A Place To Die

Dorrik scratched his beard. "A Grimoire? Strange word, that. You say it’s a book?"

I smiled, "Well, calling it a book is like referring to the sun as a small ball of fire, but yes, they are in the same ballpark."

"Ah, so it’s not necessarily about the book; it is what it contains. Ah, you wield your power from a distance; now that is surprising, because your body is so powerful, I assumed you must be a creature that breaks mountains with your fist. Interesting, so what is in this book?"

∞

Before I mentioned the Grimoire, my mind had been in a whirlwind of activity.

Everything I know about Grimoires, I know from three sightings and one conversation, and the conversation happened while a Sovereign was setting fire to five hundred square miles of a demon god’s flesh and my soul was being ground into ash for the privilege of watching.

It was a good thing that Caldus wanted to take me as his student, so he told me the basics of what a Grimoire was.

A soul cannot hold a Law and think at the same time at maximum efficiency, especially when in combat. The operation of Laws was just too complex for any soul to manage.

So a Grimoire was a separate space built by a mage where thought does not take time. You can take a working apart, correct it, tear it down, build it again, and then carry it out whole. That is the whole of the mechanism, and it is why a Sovereign can decide, and the world complies; it was all because the complex manipulation behind that decision had been happening somewhere else... In essence, it meant that a Sovereign was nearly unbeatable, unless they were exhausted and their bag of tricks were finished.

Think about it: I cast a lightning spell, and the Grimoire of a Sovereign would respond perfectly, creating the perfect shield, and in my senses, this happened instantly, but the space inside the Grimoire was separate, and the rules were different.

But of course, this all depended on preparation, and a Sovereign would not be able to respond to any threat that they had no counter for, even if they were given infinite time to work on this threat.

A Grimoire is basically a super advanced magical workshop. Still, that was a very simplistic way to describe the greatest weapon of a mage.

Sovereign Caldus spent three thousand years furnishing his Grimoire, and it is the size of a small city; according to him, it woke up eight hundred years ago and gained sentience.

At the height of that battle, he opened it all the way, and an army came out, knights of flame on winged horses, in their tens of thousands.

I have had the time to think about that moment and understand that these creatures were not his summons; rather, they were something he made, slowly, in a place where there was essentially no time cost. So, the older a Sovereign was, the stronger they became, and since I don’t know if they even die from old age, every one of them was extremely dangerous.

This reframed the moment when I was splattered over the sea by an attack I could not identify. A Sovereign could simply store a crazy powerful spell inside their Grimoire, and release it instantaneously without any buildup.

It had been a foolish decision to stand close to them when I did not have a Grimoire, so it would be impossible for me to react to certain attacks from a Sovereign.

And the second thing, which I had observed during that fight, was that the Grimoire had spoken a Law in its own voice.

Flame is not extinguished by what it enters.

This suggested to me that the sentience of a Grimoire went very deep, and it was possible that this book had the Laws that it controlled; in essence, a Grimoire was like a smaller Sovereign, and any battle with a Sovereign was against two mages bound together.

I had only one Sovereign Tier skill at that time... I was nowhere near ready for that fight. Just getting more of my skills and spells to the Sovereign Tier would not be enough... I needed my own Grimoire.

∞

The months I spent in that darkness were not just to figure out how to manipulate the darkness and the earth to escape. Every time I sat in meditation and wrote in the journal I created, my thoughts always returned to the matter of the Grimoire.

In fact, one of the reasons I wanted to create something permanent was tied to the image of that Grimoire in my mind. So the question is not whether I will have one... it is what mine would be.

I had seen three Grimoires: the first came from the shadow of the Sovereign of the Stars, the second was from Seed, and the last was Caldus. I will never forget the way the Sovereign of the Stars had torn out the knowledge of the loop from my soul with that shadow grimoire, and Seed had done the same in a lesser manner, but it was with Sovereign Caldus that I was able to understand the way a Grimoire operated.

Caldus built a city of fire inside his Grimoire; for millennia, he must have created libraries, barracks, courts. And his laws were declarations, all built from a place where there was only fire.

Fire does not go out here... I still remembered his voice, and the sheer confidence that came from every word, and the world itself agreed with him.

Even though there was something about this Sovereign that creeped me out, I could not deny the air of kingship and authority that surrounded him.

Yet, I do not govern anything, and if I wanted a Grimoire, that is not what it would hold.

I have nine Lightning Law Shards, whereas I suspected others had just one... and I had comprehended one shard until it became a Law; technically, I had everything I needed to create my Grimoire.

My law was rather simple yet profound... my lightning does not travel to a destination because it has already arrived. I had imposed this law on the world, and it had accepted it, even though it fought against it.

And my entire life is a loop. I do not build over centuries. I get moments, days... four days, or nine, or a season if I am careful, like this present loop, and then I die and start again with nothing but what is in my head and my soul.

To me, my soul was the most important, not the state of my flesh. All my growth and progress are etched in my soul, and no matter what time I am dragged into, my soul never changes... that is the only advantage I have ever had.

So if I wanted to create a Grimoire, it could not be a city like Sovereign Caldus; no, a city is wrong for me. A library is wrong for me, too. I don’t need somewhere to keep things; things don’t survive my life. I need somewhere to rehearse... I needed time, more time.

If thought costs no time inside a Grimoire, then what I want is not a place to store a working... It is a place to die in.