Chapter 775: Scavenging Complete, Fighting Repeatedly After Repeated Failures

Watching her, Xia Duo suddenly smiled. At some point, a layer of crimson had crept onto Niya's cheeks, and even the tips of her ears were red.

"When did you wake up?" Xia Duo asked.

But Niya did not answer, still pretending to be asleep. Seeing this, Xia Duo did not tease her further but got up himself. By the time he finished washing up, he found that Niya was already dressed and sitting in the living room.

"I'm going to see my teacher later; you go to the Library by yourself first. We'll meet at the reserved conference room at noon. Beilaila and the others might arrive early."

Niya spoke with calm composure, showing none of the shyness from just a moment ago.

Xia Duo sat down next to her naturally, but when their bodies brushed against each other, he still clearly felt Niya's tension.

He was actually a bit nervous himself, but his skin was thick enough that it wasn't easy to tell. He still spoke to Niya in his usual tone:

"Mm, I've already looked through most of the public library over there. If nothing goes wrong, I should be able to finish the internal library by the morning."

"That's good."

Once the conversation had started, the two chatted as they usually did, headed out, and only separated after having breakfast at the restaurant.

……

Approaching noon, Xia Duo withdrew his gaze from the rows of bookshelves with slight disappointment. There were still many books here, but there weren't many left that he could read.

They were either priced outrageously, making it unacceptable for him even to borrow them once, or restricted by Permission Level, the kind he couldn't read even if he had the money.

However, the harvest over these two days had already been immense; the few that slipped through the net were barely acceptable.

Looking at quantity alone, the Giles Tower public library had the most, but after deducting duplicate copies, there were only about a thousand different sets of books.

And the internal library had far fewer; not only were there fewer duplicates, but the total number of different books was also lower. Xia Duo made a rough calculation: there were only 300-plus different sets of books here in total.

Moreover, most of these books were not from the modern era; the recent ones were from over a decade ago, and the old ones were far too old, some dating back hundreds of years.

Clearly, unless Giles Tower had not acquired any new books in recent years, there must be a library even more internal than the internal one.

According to "little spy" Niya, her teacher's Private Library was even richer than this so-called internal library, but Niya could only occasionally obtain specific books from the Princess's private library.

She could not view them at will, let alone bring others there.

Combined with the words Fielder left in the Fielder Spellbook about Morien Tower and Jilan Tower jointly working on some Great Plan, who knew if Giles Tower, also one of the Seven Towers, might have a similar plan!

Xia Duo had read so many books and had seen almost none directly related to Plane Exploration. The basic materials about Plane Scholars that Niya had previously brought back to the Tower of Time were nowhere to be seen here.

If there wasn't a more internal library, Xia Duo would never believe it.

Actually, the Tower of Time was the same; besides the public Library, Niya also had a private library inherited from her father.

In addition to those, there were several secret rooms not reflected on the construction blueprints of the Tower of Time, containing treasures and books left behind by the first lord, the Great Arcanist Saville.

Xia Duo had only heard Niya mention this; he himself had never been inside and did not know what secret treasures were there.

……

Leaving the Library, Xia Duo walked slowly toward the agreed-upon meeting place while organizing in his mind the books he had flipped through over the past two days.

These thousand-plus sets of books seemed like a lot, but there wasn't much truly meaningful content; most of them were travelogues, diaries, or biographical textual information.

These might broaden one's knowledge and horizons, but that wasn't Xia Duo's main goal; he was here to obtain more data related to Magic.

If one were to make a rough estimate with concrete numbers, less than one-tenth of the content in these thousand-plus sets of books was directly related to Magic.

They must be reorganized!

Otherwise, not to mention how long it would take to transcribe these thousand-plus sets of books, it would be extremely troublesome to search for scattered bits and pieces of magical Knowledge when needing to trace back memories later.

……

Before long, Xia Duo arrived at the conference room Niya had reserved in advance. Niya hadn't arrived yet, but Beilaila was already there; he didn't know how long she had been waiting.

"Mage Beilaila, long time no see!"

"Mage Xia Duo, long time no see!"

In fact, the two had communicated not long ago, but it was still different from being face-to-face. "Mage Beilaila, I must thank you for contacting those Sevonton Chamber of Commerce for me last time; otherwise, those 1,000-plus new residents wouldn't belong to Daxia Territory."

"Mage Xia Duo is too polite. I just mentioned it in passing. Their ships were empty anyway, and who would refuse the chance to earn a little extra money?" Beilaila said modestly.

That might be what she said, but Xia Duo knew this wasn't just a matter of money. Transporting over 1,000 people by ship for nearly 3 months involved no small amount of risk and trouble. There were many ways to make money; why use such a thankless method?

It was either an offer of a price that couldn't be refused, the possession of power and influence that couldn't be refused, or a favor.

Regardless of which it was, Xia Duo had to accept Beilaila's favor.

However, after the Drow War ended and Netheril and Cormanthor resumed trade, if Beilaila wanted to expand her family business into Cormanthor, she would also need Savile Territory to act as a go-between. There would be plenty of opportunities to return the favor then.

The two soon began chatting about the theme of this exchange meeting, which inevitably touched upon Beilaila's failure to advance as an Arcanist. It was only then that Xia Duo learned this was actually Beilaila's second failure.

Failing repeatedly, fighting repeatedly—truly, the wealthy have no humanity!

"I don't know what problems you encountered when advancing, Beilaila. If it's convenient, you can speak about it so we can discuss it; consider it the exchange meeting starting early."

Xia Duo himself had succeeded in advancing on his first try. Even though he had performed a rehearsal beforehand, he had successfully created Arcane Fire during the rehearsal, only lacking the integration with his will.

He found it truly hard to understand how someone could fail twice in a row. It was like a math problem where the answer was unique and certain; knowing the solution process, one still got it wrong, and got it wrong twice in a row!

This was truly baffling!

……

"There is nothing inconvenient about it!"

Beilaila hesitated for a moment before stating the problem. "Both of my failures were caused by the Spell going out of control during the process of creating Arcane Fire, and both occurred while weaving the Magic Net String of the Second Layer of the Magic Weave."

After speaking, Beilaila took a Spell Notes from her Dimensional Bag and handed it to Xia Duo. "This is the advancement Spell of the Xiboden Family."

Advancement Spell?

Xia Duo took the notes and opened them. Wasn't this just the 【Arcane Fire Blueprint】! A Spell specifically used to create 【Arcane Fire】, but this Spell of Beilaila's still had obvious differences from the one Xia Duo used himself.

The difference was that in many places, it had undergone so-called "simplification"!