VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 75: Sniffing out evil

"This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said we needed to track down the source of the corruption."

"Well, unless you have a ranger that you know or have skills that none of us know about, this is going to be the best way. Now shush and just appreciate the view." Lilith snapped back at Saige, who only let out an exasperated sigh as he followed her instructions and appreciated the view she was offering.

Since they didn’t have anyone with the right class or skills for real tracking, they had to rely on their own personal talents. If they had real life talents for tracking, that would have been best. Instead, what they had was a demon with a good nose.

Thus, they were following Lilith through the forests as she crawled about on all fours, sniffing at the ground as she followed the trail of malevolent energy left behind by the boar that had been tainted by the Sin Sucker.

It was far from dignified, nor was it the most effective as Lilith’s demonic heritage wasn’t perfectly aligned with the corrupted Sin Sucker, but it was unfortunately their best option.

Peeling his eyes away from the seductive demons... tail, which was swishing in the air and was tipped with an adorable heart, Saige looked towards his sister. Surprisingly, she was walking with her face stuck in a book, with the most perfect little kitty sitting on her shoulder while she muttered to herself.

Despite his love of everything cute, Saige restrained himself from reaching for the kitty. At least for the moment. He had already made that mistake and got scratched all up his arms the first moment he laid his eyes on it.

But Saige was no stranger to such feelings. Because his real body was a large, sometimes intimidating and scary individual, most of the time people assumed the scars on his hands were from fighting.

While that was true for a few, bare knuckle boxing a few times had split his knuckles in places. but the majority of them were from helping out stray cats. He knew that time, energy and plenty of treats was the perfect way to win over any cat.

When he looked at this hostile and aggressive fluff ball, all he saw was an affection bar just waiting to be filled and a reward of fluffy cuddles at the end of it.

"So what exactly are you doing?" Saige asked, before adding with a smirk, "It’s not like you to study for anything. It’s kinda creepy to see."

"Yeah well that’s because the school work was boring and the teachers were annoying. Plus I knew it all already." Belladonna said with a sarcastic smile, sticking her tongue out at him before going back to her work.

"What I am doing is trying to learn this spell."

Belladonna pulled a sheet of paper that had been resting loosely inside the book and showed it to Saige. He narrowed his eyes, inspecting it quickly.

It was a spell scroll, one for the spell Lightning Bolt. Scrolls were simple to use. Simply recite the incantation detailed on them, then the scroll would burst into flames and the spell would cast the next second.

They were good, not just because they didn’t need mana to cast, but because they could be used by any class. For instance, even if this spell seemed more geared towards a mage type, both Saige - who was a cleric focused on healing and buffs - and Lilith - who didn’t use magic at all - would be able to cast it without issue.

Saige had seen some being sold when he was waiting in the city for Belladonna, as well as seen a few players receiving them from boss drops. But he had yet to hear of anyone learning them, however just because he hadn’t heard of it didn’t mean he had any reason to doubt his sister.

Instead he nodded softly, gesturing for her to continue.

"Okay so basically, my class is focused on Glyph’s and Runes. It’s how I can do the fire thing." Belladonna explained, briefly pausing to show him the runes on her feet, before continuing,

"And I can use components to cast certain spells. This scroll, in essence, is a component. Someone imbued it with the right energies, writing most of the magic in Glyph’s and created the scroll using materials that could contain its power."

"So you’re trying to reverse engineer it. Figure out the magic pathways and components to cast it without the scroll." Saige finished her thought with a look of amazement on his face.

Belladonna snapped her fingers in confirmation and gave him a cocky, self assured smirk.

"If anyone can do it, It’s you Val! I mean uh... Belladonna." Lilith said with a laugh, briefly glancing over her shoulder before going back to her tracking efforts.

"Thanks Bloodhound."

"Hey, shouldn’t we be calling you that?" Lilith retorted with a smirk, forcing a laugh from Belladonna’s lips.

She really couldn’t defend against that one, so she went back to her work. With the notes in her journal, deciphering the runes was the easiest part. Of course that was easiest, relatively speaking.

It would probably take her over an hour to do it, and be sure of her results. The real issue was figuring out the right components for it.

It would have been far easier if she didn’t have to do it all in her head, and actually had a pen to write in the journal with. The last one didn’t need it, but this grimoire did and yet the idiotic wizard didn’t think to give her so much as a simple pencil. What was that all about?

As if responding to her thoughts, the grimoire rapidly flipped through its pages by itself until it landed on a page about the crystal she had earned. She had briefly glanced over it before carving her first runes, to understand how it worked. But as she looked closer, she couldn’t help but let out a soft and slightly guilty chuckle when she noticed a small note at the bottom of the page.

She took out the crystal and muttered, "Inkus" under her breath. A small trail of mana left her fingers and entered the crystal, which quickly expanded and morphed until she was holding a deep purple fountain pen with a crystalline nib.

’I’m sorry... I take back my complaints. Totally my fault...’

Once again the book responded to her thoughts, and she could almost swear there was a hint of sass as it whipped its pages back across to land back at the section she had been working from. As if the book itself was telling her to hurry up and fill it with some magic.