Chapter 407: Ancient History

’~~ Alteration of the mind is another wicked trick of the Fell-Spawn, this author notes.

For many, this comes in the form of the transformation process. Once you have become one of them, your thinking is corrupted. Pure and Holy thoughts become wicked and Unholy, you crave the flesh or the souls of those you had once called friends or family.

The Fog-Dwellers are particularly deceptive, although such is to be expected after they formed a pact with the Trickster. They delight in illusions and misdirection, so beware their tricks on a foggy night. It is noted that ~~~~~

~~~ However worst of all, is the Sanguine Clan.

Able to Beguile a man with nary a glance, their control of the mind is near absolute, without the proper precautions taken of course.

Thankfully, such skills are held by the higher members of the Clan, those closest to the Purity of their Matriarch. To stumble across such a creature is unlikely, although certain to end in death.

However, if you are lucky enough, or perhaps unlucky enough, to find one that is young and untrained in the ways of mental domination, see Chapter 394 on methods of killing or shunning such creatures. Although Beware, if you employ these methods and do not ensure the kill, they will not make such a mistake for you, good sir.’

From there, the book’s contents devolved into meaningless squiggles once again, with breaks every few Chapters when it started to discuss topics relevant to the ’Sanguine Clan’ again.

Snapping the book closed, Belladonna returned all of the mind control material to the pile and retreated from her mindscape, leaving Aki to continue working diligently in her subconscious.

As soon as she returned to the real and physical Library, Belladonna instantly headed towards the front desk and asked for directions towards the real version of the squiggle filled book that she had read, as well as asking for any information on Mind Control magic that the Tower had on hand.

That got her a very strange and concerning look, as if she had just asked for Chloroform, a rag and a sack large enough to fit a grown adult.

It was an... understandable reaction now that she thought about it, as was the fact that it was heavily restricted and only available to the highest members of the Tower, along with many other types of restricted magic.

It was the type of thing you would usually only use for nefarious reasons. It was difficult to imagine any good or altruistic ways to use mind control, that couldn’t be solved in other ways. But the fact that the preventative measures were also restricted to the ’important’ members, was irritating.

It seems that even in a world like this, the powerful still held the best things for themselves and made sure no one use it against them while they used it on whomever they liked.

No matter the world, power always had the perfect way of corrupting people.

As for the Fell-Spawn book, it was curiously found in the ’Ancient History’ section. Thinking back on it, Belladonna hadn’t questioned that much when she had first found this book. She had been browsing and simply found it.

But now, it was strange. With the way that book talked of her race, or of any Fell-Spawn, one would expect people would look at her with fear, horror or at the very least suspicion.

From her friends, the trust could be expected, but from strangers? Would you trust a complete stranger that could alter your mind with just a look? Would you even be able to trust that the trust you felt in them was even your thought to begin with?

Many people wouldn’t even be able to trust those close to them, nevermind a stranger, so it was truly lucky that Belladonna’s friends didn’t think that way.

But with the types of people like ’LusciousLox’ out there in the world, fear of her kind would be perfectly natural and understandable.

So where was it? Why did no one seemingly care about her, or what she was? The Summon Examiner had nearly died from fright simply by being in the same room as the Shadow Demon Beans, yet had no issue at all standing a foot away from the blood sucking monster.

These were the thoughts that ran through Belladonna’s head as she once again skimmed through the book, taking a little more time to process the words so they got stored properly whilst still trying to quickly find something of value.

But aside from the passages she had read, there was not much on the subject of mind control. However she did find the way that the book was written to be beyond curious.

For instance, it made plenty of mention of them being ’Betrayers’, even going so far as to mentioning it in the title. However it was not mentioned why they were Betrayers, or who they were supposed to have betrayed.

It was left out not because it was forbidden knowledge, but because it was written with the assumption that the reader already knew. The same way that a writer describing the sun would not feel the need to tell the reader that it was a ball of gas so many light-years away.

It was expected that someone reading this already knew what a Fell-Spawn was and what they had done, and was simply looking for more information. In fact it went mostly into how to kill or spot them than any details of their lives, written from the perspective of a monster hunter studying his monster.

"Ancient History this time, Hmm?" The coy, playful voice of the winged Librarian came from beside her,

"You certainly do get around, don’t you? Oh, not like that though. However, I know some people whom that wouldn’t be a problem for." She giggled, giving Belladonna a suggestive look as she stopped beside her and started to transfer books from her floating cart and into their rightful place.

"I just thought I would get a refresher on the classics, Say... You don’t know who wrote this or how old it is, do you? It talks about some strange things that I’ve never heard about before." Belladonna said with a kind smile, holding the book out to the Librarian and ’accidentally’ brushing her hand against the Librarians in the process.

"Oh well I... This is an old piece. Honestly I don’t know why they have me put it here, this is mostly fairy tales at this point.

But if you are curious about the Author, you only need to look here." She said with a blush, flipping to the last page.

"It says here it was written by a young man named... Hornelius Thornswollup. My, what a mouthful." She giggled again.

Belladonna leaned in, focused entirely on the book and not concerning herself with how dangerously close her face was to the red hot, blushing Librarians.

"And does it say how long ago it was written?"

"Well I uh..." She stammered, before tracing her finger down the page.

"This is a first edition, written in the Twelfth year of the Moon. So just over a thousand years ago. It’s truly a wonderful find, I don’t know how the curator came across it. Not many of these books exist nowadays, you know."

"A thousand years..." Belladonna muttered to herself, as her eyes scanned the rest of the page, searching for anything else that might give her a hint.

In the very bottom corner of the page, there was a picture of a golden tree with swirling branches and long roots that looked incredibly familiar. So familiar, that a wide smile spread across Belladonna’s lips as she whipped her head towards the Librarian, their noses almost touching.

"Do you..."

"Y-yes?"

"Do you have any maps I could look at?"

"Oh... Um, Yes. Yes we do..." The Librarian answered, her face falling as she let out a gentle sigh of disappointment.