More mysteries

The two split the untitled books in half and started reading. Savine slowed down her reading pace somewhat, but it was still terribly quick.

"This is an epic about a hero, Arcfall. I'll read it just in case."

"…This one is about an older method to cast magic. It all sounds outdated."

"…This one is about magic as well. It focuses on cult-like rituals that revolve around sacrifices."

"…This is a memoir of a duke… Tistletale? From four centuries ago. I'll read this."

"This is the... Oh, this is a governing book from three centuries ago. I'll keep it."

"Uh, this one is about history… but it's about the development of magic. Can I keep this?"

"…"

"Mister?"

"I'll read it first to see if it's okay."

"Alright."

Savine gave the book to the Sovereign and picked up another one.

Half an hour later, they were finished with sorting the hundred untitled books. Of them, Savine only found two that were actually about history. Sadly, one was on the development of magic, that was being read by the Sovereign, the other was on the history of the Sovereignty.

There were a dozen books about random topics written in the old times, but Savine wasn't very confident that they would have anything worth reading.

"I'll start with the history of the Sovereignty. Mister, after you've finished reading that book, please tell me if I can read it."

"Alright."

Savine skipped past the introductions and started reading properly, word by word. Though she could flip through the book's pages at abnormal speeds, only getting the gist of the text, she didn't want to do that in front of the Sovereign.

In the first place, speed-reading wasn't reading every word one by one. It was looking at a paragraph and guessing its meaning from the words you could recognize. After reading so many things, Savine's brain became an expert at it. Now, she could glance at a page and understand what the general gist of it was.

But even reading word by word, Savine was quick. She was finished with the book in two hours.

She put it down after a couple of hours and sighed. There was nothing noteworthy in the book. It was mostly public knowledge, things regarding the division into 30 duchies by the original Sovereign. The only thing it added was the names and titles of the people present.

Aside from learning that the Fest duchy's people were pretty since the beginning and that the Fest ducal family was once frequently married into the royal family, Savine learned nothing more.

"I've finished reading this, but there's nothing on the history of the world here."

"Are you that uninterested in the history of your country?" the Sovereign asked, eyes still on the book of magic.

Savine shook her head slightly.

"I'd love to say that I've been made numb to it by my father's endless retellings of the Sovereignty's history, but truth be told, I've never been into the topic that deeply."

The Sovereign chuckled.

"What about the Magicracy's history?"

"I know little about my birthplace, but I do know it's a land ruled by hypocritical tyrants. I believe it's only a matter of time before they meet their demise."

"Really? Who do you think smite out their judgement?"

Savine smiled.

"God, perhaps."

The Sovereign smiled wryly, eyeing Savine's priest garbs.

"Here. I've read half of it and I couldn't find anything worth hiding. It's all relatively easy things to find. As for the content, they're more akin to myths, anyway. Who can tell how we first learned to use magic?"

"Thank you, mister," Savine said, receiving the book.

Without further words, Savine read the book.

[For thousands of years, humanity suffered endlessly from mana fevers, not knowing the gift it bore. They only knew that it was a sickness that could only be cured by being in contact with the Divine Tree.]

The beginning was as Savine imagined. At first, humans wouldn't really know how to use their mana. But of course, they weren't fools. They would try anything to reduce their fevers and one of them would realize that touching the Wisdom Tree would help with the symptoms.

[But humanity was always curious. One boy named Khalul was adamant that there was more to the fevers and the Divine Trees. Relentlessly, he conducted various experiments on the Divine Tree, not even sure what he was trying to uncover. The mild ones called him a fool, while the more pious ones wanted him dead for defiling the Divine Tree.]

The next few paragraphs were a small biography of Khalul, about how he overcame all sorts of obstacles to luckily stumble upon the method of taming one's mana by using a part of the Wisdom Tree.

Savine skipped the dramatics and reached the part about how he became the Great Sage, unmatched by all, and taking 8 disciples under his wing. They conquered the known world, and Khalul tasked each of his disciples with the protection of a Divine Tree.

'I guess the eight disciples founded their own countries afterwards…'

[While the Great Sage was alive, there was none to match him and his Eight Chosen Disciples. Even when Khalul died, there was none that could match the Eight. But of course, it was impossible for the Eight to be on good terms with each other forever.]

'Yep.'

The next part of the story was rather cliché, with the eight disciples founding their own countries and training their own mages, while tensions rose.

But there was something rather interesting in the mix.

[None can tell what the original reason the eight disciples broke down their friendships was. Perhaps they were simply flawed with greed and jealousy, like the rest of us, and wanted to stand supreme in the world.

[But if there was a logical reason for the First Magic War they've started, it must've been the difference in ideology they all had. And that difference in ideology originally stemmed from the difference in the way they cast their spells.]

'This is obviously an illogical thing.'

Since Khalul was the first to use magic, his disciples should unconditionally use the method he did. There wouldn't be any chance for different casting methods to develop.

'But it's also important to see what the different methods are,' Savine thought and read on.

[Though the people love to say that the casting methods for all eight disciples were different and that some of them were lost to the ages, from the beginning there were only five diverging paths: Magic of Understanding, Magic of Will, Sacred Magic, Hex Magic, and finally, Magic of the Body.]

'...'

She read further on and realized that the book was definitely serious about what it had just written down.

'I fucking hate this dog world.'

She took a deep sigh and forcibly stopped herself from questioning the anomaly. Since it was like this, she could only deal with it.