Zorian did, and promptly found himself leafing through pages of hand-written notes and complicated diagrams. It was a journal of some sort. That’s why the book had no title or markings. A research journal of some mage, if he had to guess.
“What is this?” he asked, giving Gurey a suspicious look.
“A sample,” Gurey said with a grin. “As I said, I know it would be foolish of you to do something like this for money — well, for the sums I am able to pay you, at least — so I came up with something that will hopefully be more attractive to you. Feel free to peruse that thing at your leisure and then come see me in my store tomorrow to give me an answer. Just remember, there is more where that came from!”
Gurey then immediately left, leaving Zorian alone with the mysterious journal/thing. Curious, he opened the book at the beginning so he could see if it perhaps had a title written on the first page. The first few pages were blank, but he did reach the title page in the end.
‘Breaking and bypassing wards and other magical defenses,’ it said. ‘By Aldwin Rofoltin.’
Rofoltin? That would be Gurey’s deceased business partner, wouldn’t it? Intrigued, Zorian sat down on the edge of his bed and began to read.
Having read through Rofoltin’s book, Zorian had to admit he was feeling a little… underwhelmed? It wasn’t a bad book by any means, but by the way Gurey had presented it, he’d expected more. As it was, the most useful thing he found inside was the step-by-step instruction of how to build your very own magic-analysis goggles, complete with a spell formula blueprint. That was convenient, as he had been meaning to build one of those for a while now and there were no publically available creation manuals on the topic that he could find — the spell formula blueprint alone probably saved him a restart-worth of work.
Other than that, there was little of real use in there… but perhaps that was what Gurey had been aiming for. It was a sample, as he said, meant to entice Zorian into cooperation by alluding to the possibility of granting Zorian access to the rest of Rofoltin’s books. If Gurey’s old partner had 5 other books like that, and each one had just one useful thing like the goggle thing, that was a couple of months of saved time right there. And if Gurey was keeping the good stuff for the end like Zorian suspected… tempting. Far more tempting than he’d thought this would be.
Shaking his head at his own greed, he locked his room behind him and set off in the direction of Gurey’s shop. He would have to check with the man what exactly he expected of him, but… chances were he was going to say yes. In truth, this sort of thing wasn’t that far off from what he had been planning to do on his own at some point. Chances were that he was going to have to learn how to break into people’s homes and spy on mages sooner or later — gathering information about the time loop, Red Robe and soul magic was bound to require it at some point. At least this way he would get some guidance from someone who’d done it before, get a chance to practice his skills on what was probably a far less difficult target, and get paid for it to boot.
Realizing he was in no hurry to actually confront Gurey, Zorian eventually slowed down and decided to take the scenic route to the place. He idly observed the people and buildings as he wandered the town, suddenly aware that he knew very little about the place, despite living in it for a while now. He had been so busy with other things that actually exploring Knyazov Dveri sort of slipped his mind. He didn’t even peruse the town’s Dungeon access, though that one was intentional — he had decided to hold back on doing that until he had a chance to judge how much of his time and attention his other tasks in this restart would take, and ultimately decided to leave that for some other restart. The Dungeon wasn’t going anywhere. In any case, now that he had taken the time to explore the town a little, he could say with some certainty that he hadn’t missed much. He had already visited most of the shops to determine what the best price for the ingredients he was gathering was, and aside from that the town was fairly average. It was similar to Cyoria in the sense that it was clearly a city that had experienced rapid growth in recent times — the old core of the city was easily recognizable by the single-story buildings painted in the traditional yellow color that usually signified Eldemar’s native architecture, while subsequent layers radiating from it had newer, multi-story buildings. Other than that, he hadn’t noticed anything particularly noteworthy, though he would have to set aside some days for exploration just to be certain.
Finally, he reached the building that proudly proclaimed it housed a business establishment known as Cwili and Rofoltin Equipment and walked inside. The little bell attached to the door rang out as Zorian entered, notifying Gurey of his arrival — a solution surprisingly devoid of magic, for a magic store — and the portly man soon poked his head from the back room he was currently in to see what he was dealing with. His eyes lit up immediately when he recognized Zorian.
“I’ll be with you in a second!” the man yelled before getting back to whatever he was working on in the back. Zorian took the chance to study the shop a bit while he waited.
Just like the first time he had been here, he was once again struck by how diverse the products sold by Gurey’s store were: he offered everything from wilderness-appropriate attire to the various magic items, potions, survival guides, dried herbs and other magical materials used by alchemists and artificers, and so on. And actually, it was even more impressive than it first appeared — Zorian knew from his previous talks with the man that Gurey actually offered a great deal more than what was displayed at the shelves of his store, so long as the customer seeking them was properly vouched for or knew how to ask the right questions.
Gurey once told a story about a customer who tried to buy the decorative potted plants he strategically placed around the shop to liven up the place, and while Zorian understood Gurey’s mirth at the incident, he also understood how someone might have decided they were for sale. With all the other things Gurey was selling, it really wouldn’t have surprised Zorian to find out that he dealt in potted plants as well.
“Ah, Zorian, my friend…” said Gurey, walking out from the back and approaching him. “Did you read it? An interesting book, isn’t it?” he prodded.
“It was… somewhat useful,” said Zorian noncommittally. “Not much on its own, but if there really are a couple more where that came from, it might actually be worthwhile for me to work with you on your… problem.”
Gurey frowned, apparently expecting him to be more impressed with his partner’s work. He opened his mouth to speak, but Zorian interrupted him.
“Before we discuss this any further, I’d prefer if we move to somewhere more private. Do you have a room I could set up some basic privacy wards in?”
“I have better,” Gurey said smugly, quickly shaking off his previous disappointment. “I have a room with privacy wards already present… and not just the basic ones, either. Follow me.”
He led Zorian to a small, inconspicuous room with a single desk and two chairs… a room whose walls, floor and ceiling were full of magical glyphs and geometric shapes made out of crystalized mana. Gurey placed his hand on one of the circles and the whole complicated spell formula pulsed twice in bright blue light before becoming seemingly inert. Zorian wasn’t fooled though — those pulses signified the more mana-intensive portions of the ward scheme becoming active. Much like many powerful warding schemes, the one he was looking at had two modes — the normal, mana-conserving one that could be powered indefinitely from its mana source and the advanced, super-charged one that burned through mana faster than the ambient mana levels could provide it with but was far more effective for the time it was active.