The Marie I know and love. No time is gone without a reminder that she’ll get me killed if I try to resist her will. How do I counter a magic nullifying space though? Can I eat it? Or resist it? Maybe if I go to my room, I’ll be able to find another jewel? Wait, I used all of them up already!

Do I just take from the ones in the other room? Or beg for some from Marie? I think the bandit thieve people from the slums had a bunch of stolen goods, right? I’m looking forward to tomorrows trip~

But for the time being, back to the library! No Lloyd this time, how nice. I’d rather not have people find out that I’m trying to find out more about monsters in order to learn about myself.

Browse, browse, browse, browse and? ‘Compendium of Monsters’.

I pull it out and take a seat. First problem – this is all handwritten. Was there a famous monster hunter here who took a record of these things? Cold sweat began to accumulate. Calming myself down, I started reading it.

‘All monsters originate from animals who go senseless from absorbing magic’. Well, this much I already know, but why do they become senseless? I was never big on reading previously so reading something like this was excruciating. I need pictures! After flipping pictures, I came across a few neat sketches of wolves. ‘In order to understand if this process could also be man-made, mages experimented on wild dogs. Within a short while, they evolved into wolf-like creatures with threatening crimson eyes’. Here I was thinking my eye colour was due to the bastard merchant’s crystal. The sketch turned what looked like a husky into a creature seven times its size with a spiky mane and larger claws. I flip a few more pages. A case of a pet dog evolving into a werewolf. ‘Reason: unknown’. How useless. Maybe there’ll be something on magic?

Oh, found it! ‘A monster’s source of strength is found in its core – a crystalized form of the previous animal’s heart. Unlike other creatures which seem to have a separate area for storing mana, for monsters it is in all parts of the body, but it’s solely limited to the ones originally gained in the evolution’. So, this is why I struggled so much when trying to use other magic!

*Yawn*

How long have I been reading for? I hope the thieves didn’t cash in all the jewellery stolen.