Eldritch Creature's Guide



After looting the ship of the Ox Head Pirates and getting the proof of their successful hunt for the captain of the Ox Head Pirates, Samiel ordered Captain Alvar to sink the ship of the Ox Head Pirates because there was nothing else they could do about it.

After the ship was sunk, Samiel departed to his chambers to count the gains and check on the Magic Tomes he obtained from the Ox Head Pirates because Juulius brought him more than a hundred Magic Tomes from the ship.

If he had to guess, the Ox Head Pirates must have robbed somebody who was transporting them for business purposes, so they were pretty lucky. It was possible that they managed to catch the ship of some merchant that was transporting them or some collector.

Magic Tomes were rare merchandise and they sold well for high prices, especially in the Tower or more developed civilizations. They were the basis for the magical education for all Paths of Magic, so there was a constant need for more and more of them.

Not to mention, he saw that there were even a few Grimoires among the books he got, which piqued his curiosity over the matter because Grimoires were peerless treasures among the magic-related literature.

Each Grimoire was sentient and contained profound mysteries of the Arcane. It was not an easy matter to get their hands on them and yet the lowly pirate group managed to get their hands on several of them.

After he arrived at his chambers, he told Yvraine that he didn't wish to be disturbed, to which she put Juulius in front of his door to prevent anyone from disturbing him. Meanwhile, the Silvermoon Princess went to the deck of the ship to find someone to exchange notes about swordsmanship.

Samiel then activated several protective wards around his chambers in case the Grimoires proved to be aggressive... some of the older and more powerful ones could wreak quite a havoc if they wished so.

When they were activated, he took out more than a hundred old-looking books from the Dimensional Ring given to him by Juulius as he started going through each one of them.

For him, he was looking for something useful, powerful Spells that could actually boost his combat prowess or unique types of Magic.

After reading them superficially, he concluded that most of the Magic Tomes were only basic ones; many of them were of Elemental Magic and of only basic elements at that, not even advanced ones.

But even that was something.

On the bright side, there were a few Magic Tomes on the Conceptual Magic, mainly for Enchanting, which was an area of Magic unknown to Samiel, so he decided to keep them for further study.

The rest of the Magic Tomes would give either to Juulius or Yvraine based on their needs because some of the Tomes he obtained were really old, at least several tens of Epochs and had some powerful Spells.

Now the only thing that remained were the Grimoires.

Five of them, which was high number, considering that they were right now on the Lower Floors of the Tower.

Among the five of them, there were only two that caught his attention at first glance...

One of them was a very creepy-looking book with countless Thorns over it, with the title Thorn Curse. Despite its scary appearance and it was a relatively simple type of Magic... called Mystic Artes.

Mystic Artes belonged to one of the non-standard Magic Types because they were rare, not very spread and only a few people knew how to use them and understand them enough to use them.

And the Thorn Curse was the Mystic Arte that revolved around the creation and manipulation of Thorns. This was the first Mystic Arte that Samiel encountered in his life, because they were too rare, too rare.

The fascinating thing about the Thorns was that they could act as Anti-Magic and even Anti-Energy Techniques, drain various types of Energies and were extremely versatile in their usage.

Aside from Mana, to use this concrete Mystic Arte, one needed to use his own Negative Emotions to fuel the "Curse" aspect of it, which made it very different from the standard Magic, due to which it was categorized as Mystic Arte.

"Fascinating... this would be totally worth learning... but I wonder how they got their hands on something like this."

Samie pondered over the matter because this was certainly not a thing that should appear here.

Either it was only luck on the side of the Ox Head Pirates or a deliberate act from the third party, which didn't know that the Ox Head Pirates were annihilated and their Grimoire fell into his hands.

For Samiel, it didn't really matter because he would keep the thing whatever happened; at worse, he could act like a proper young master and call his Elders if someone too powerful appeared to take the Grimoire from his hands.

After he put away the Thorn Curse Grimoire, he took a look at the second Grimoire that caught his attention because it radiated a feeling that was repulsive to him; every cell in his very own being was crawling with utter disgust as he looked at that book.

That one had some sort of "Light" or "Divine" feeling around it, in a way that he felt only once in his whole life when he killed the Paladin of the Most Holy Paladin Order of the Silver Crusade of Divine Light on the 8th Floor.

It was weaker bit than "His" Light and Holy Power so, Samiel assumed that this must be the Divine Grimoire of one "His" Avatars or Incarnations.

Divine Grimoires were like ordinary Grimoires, but they were different in several aspects.

The first one was that their sentience was many times stronger and they built an "Ego". Having an Ego was much more dangerous than just ordinary sentience because it made the Divine Grimoire many times more dangerous as it was capable of autonomous action.

The second one was that they contained part of the Divine Will of their creator and their creator was always the God to whom the Divine Grimoire was dedicated and who power the Divine Grimoire was borrowing.

The third was that, contrary to the typical Grimoires, which contained Magic, the Divine Grimoire contained Divine Spells of a particular God or aspects related to that specific Deity.

'Maybe this is the fabled luck of the story protagonists...'

Samiel thought jokingly as he carefully eyed the Divine Grimopire, very, very unsure about what to do with it. Certainly, he wouldn't even dream of touching the book with his bare hands because the book would probably try to obliterate him for sure.