After a quick, magical cleaning and a change of clothes, Taylor descended into the living room to find a priest in basic white robes admiring the shelf of household gods. There were a dozen that his servants prayed to daily, gods of little things like hospitality, cooking, cider-making, small repairs, and other domains that intersected in a household.

The priest was not alone. An armored paladin burdened a chair in the sitting room, and two squires stood in the small foyer in case of trouble. The other boarders had either left for work or were in their rooms, avoiding the armed presence in the common areas of the house.

"Father Rasmusen, I am Taylor." He showed his dominant hand, palm up, and the priest did the same.

"I am pleased to meet the Divine Envoy in the peace offered through the Giving Goddess."

The paladin was less reserved. She stood up and shook his hand hard enough to crush it, while balancing a saucer and teacup in her other hand. "You're still in one piece. Well done."

"Back at you, Briallen. Catch any evil-doers lately?"

"A fair few. Today's an escort mission, but they didn't tell me where we were going. The church is still keeping your identity on a need-to-know."

"I appreciate the effort, for as long as it lasts. So," Taylor turned to the priest, "to what do I owe today's honor?"

"Promises, Your Grace. I have brought the remainder of the books you were promised. Some of them are not for general use, and His Holiness asks that you treat their contents with discretion. His Holiness says you will know which ones he means."

Taylor checked his quest in his class system.

A Boon Of Books: 30 Remaining; 30 Compiled; 126 Received

"I understand and respect the pontiff's concern. Do you or your people need anything before we begin? This could take a while to get through." He had to scan at least the table of contents of each book for it to count as received. With some books, he had to verify that the indexed spells actually existed in the text. It was the gods' way of ensuring the church didn't try to cheat by sending him abridged versions.

"Your servants have made us quite comfortable." Rasmusen glanced at the plate of miniature scones, honeyed butter, clotted cream, and little pots of jams from Wokehaad Farm. Cook's scones were first-rate, but she didn't make them every day. These were still hot, and Taylor had to resist the urge to grab a few for himself. He was about to handle precious books and didn't want to stain the pages.

Rasmusen produced two boxes from his personal inventory and removed their lids to reveal the promised thirty volumes. From the smell of fresh ink, they were newly copied, with pages bound in stitches, but lacking covers. The first shipment of sixty volumes had been used copies of foundational texts that arrived through the regular post. The second shipment was composed of new printed volumes and had arrived by messenger. These books had been copied especially for him using a Scholar's Legible Hand skill. Taylor didn't mind their partially-bound state, as it gave him a chance to choose his own covers. Would he make them all the same, or differentiate them in some way? Should he make the covers plain, or advertise the books' worth with rare and beautiful materials? Those were problems for another day.

"Let's get started." For the next hour, his quest counter steadily clicked up toward 156 completed volumes. At this level, the books were relatively small. Most contained the theory and practice for a single spell, with variations and ritualized versions for multiple casters. Most had equivalent magic circles. In truth, he had most of the spells already, or similar ones elsewhere in his growing library, but the variations and theories looked interesting enough that he had to constantly remind himself that now wasn't the time to read them from front to back.

Rasmusen visibly relaxed when Taylor's class accepted the last volume and marked the quest as complete. To Taylor's surprise, he received "minor experience gains" even though he was the one who had given the quest. He hoped his counterparty, His Holiness Laurence VI, Pontiff of the Church of the Giving Goddess, would receive more experience for completing the quest than Taylor had.

After he transferred both boxes of books to his satchel and helped himself to scones, Taylor took a closer look at the priest. He was very young to be given such an important assignment, probably in his early twenties. There was something familiar about his nose, though it took a moment to place where he had seen it before. It was the same as His Holiness and High Bishop Yaonoch. The man across from him was likely an imperial child, sent into the church to keep it firmly in the hands of the empire.

Which might be perfect, actually.

"The quest is done, so let's drop the formalities, all right? Briallen, what's the news from Grisham's Wall? I mean the real news. The papers say things are under control, but troop movements say otherwise." Midway was a military town, with facilities for training recruits and a garrison of IEF soldiers. Troop movements that were officially secret were public knowledge to the soldiers' families.

"Not well, from what I've heard."

"Paladin…," warned the priest.

"He might be able to help! You want to help, don't you, Taylor?"

"Depending on the nature of the problem." He shrugged, but mainly to hide his own excitement. Thanks to his numerous contacts in the spirit realm, he knew far more than he was telling.

"The corruption in Restoration is spreading. It doesn't usually extend more than a few miles from a vent, so the hope is that a lot more vents have opened up. Otherwise, we're dealing with a massive, super-corrupting vent. The truth is, nobody knows what this means, and it's been difficult to get scouts into the interior to investigate."

Stolen story; please report.

"Because mana beasts are stronger on corrupted ground," he finished for her. "The deeper into corrupted territory the scouts go, the worse the monsters become."

"There are a lot of third-tier beasts in Restoration. It's been an awfully quick evolution. You can nearly see the corruption from Grisham's Wall. People are worried the wall won't hold."

"I guess I should help out, then. I don't want any more of my neighbors shipping out and not returning."

Briallen beamed at a disgruntled Rasmusen while Taylor dug around in his satchel, pretending to look for an item he had directly at hand. "It's in here somewhere…"

He pulled out a long hollow tube, capped at both ends. "This should help. Take a look."

After a few seconds of fumbling with the unfamiliar container, Rasmusen uncapped one end and found a sheet of rolled fabric inside. Removed and unfurled, it bore a magic circle, but not like any he or Briallen had ever seen before. Some parts were familiar, especially the section for Purification, but the majority of it was alien. He laid it out on the floor, a four-foot by four-foot square of unidentifiable black material embroidered with strange glyphs in differently-colored metal thread.

"Is all this embroidery mana-tempered?"

"Of course."

"What's this black cloth?" The priest explored the base material with his fingers.

"It's called carbon fiber. It's made from the same stuff that charcoal is made of, but in a vastly different form. It's sturdy stuff."

"What does the circle do?"

"It purifies large areas of land, at a few thousand times the efficiency of the standard circle."

"That's not possible?" Rasmusen didn't sound very sure of himself.

"Please go on," goaded Briallen over a scone. "You know you want to."

Taylor grinned and gave her a slight bow. "Thank you, Miss Paladin. There are two reasons why the current Purification methodology is so poor. The first is concentration of effect. You will notice that this circle focuses its effect in a sixty-degree arc. The reason is that corruption resists being purified, but once you overcome that resistance, it doesn't take much more mana to get the job done. The usual method ends up spending most of its power overcoming the resistance, and leaves little else for doing the actual purifying. It's why, half the time, purification fails to work. I'm honestly concerned that nobody figured it out before now."

Taylor paused while the priest took refuge in note-taking. He understood the instinct: for some people, writing things down made them easier to process, especially when they were being told something new.

"And what are all these symbols?" He indicated the majority of the diagram. The words were angular and flowing with tall, curved ascenders and descenders.

"The solution to the other ninety-nine percent of the problem. It's a system for manipulating mana attributes."

Rasmusen understood with a gasp. Attempting to use any magic with the wrong attribute of mana was extremely difficult, but mainly because it was so inefficient. Purification magic required divine mana, which was vanishingly rare. If there were any users of divine mana currently living, other than Taylor and a small stable or oracles, then the church was keeping them a secret.

If mana of any attribute could be changed to any other attribute, that opened up so many possibilities. Among them, the chance to purify territory mile by mile, instead of foot by foot.

"Now listen up. There's a section for each of the most common attributes of mana: earth, fire, and so on. Put a mana stone there, and the circle will drain it, convert it to divine mana, and purify anything in front of the diagram. If you have practitioners with the Mana Handling skill, they can power the circle directly. But please don't let a magician try to power the circle themselves if they don't have Mana Sense and Mana Handling. The circle will drain them dry and possibly kill them.

"And this little circle right here," Taylor bent down and pointed, "is for mana crystals. It's very effective, if somewhat expensive."

The priest disappeared into his notes for a few minutes, giving Taylor time to enjoy Cook's scones. Eventually, the man came up for air.

"Where did you learn this system?"

"I didn't. I invented it."

Rasmusen went very still for several seconds. He didn't even breathe. The only reason Taylor knew he was still alive was that his eyes blinked.

"You invented it?"

"I invented it. Made it up. Planned and implemented. Constructed. Brought forth into the world by my own hand." He slathered a generous gob of butter onto the still-warm scone and bit into it. "I done it," he said with his mouth full.

"Are you some kind of dark lord?"

The half-scone in Taylor's hand dropped onto his plate and scattered crumbs. Rasmusen's eyes bulged as he realized his mistake. The boy had just handed him a tool for purification, embroidered in what looked to be mana-tempered mithril, silver, and orichalcum, and in return had been accused of being a dark lord. So the priest should not have been so shocked when his party found themselves on the house's front porch in drizzling rain, with the tube in his hand and a manual in his pocket. The door slammed in their collective faces.

The time from insult to expulsion was less than ten seconds.

Briallen hummed. "He didn't like that. I know you weren't serious, but maybe it was in poor taste?"

"I think, perhaps…"

The door opened again, and the house's cook pushed a large wooden platter of fresh scones into a squire's hands. They smelled of butter, lemon, and berries. "Do come again," she said sweetly, and shut the door.

"At least the servants are more forgiving," said the priest. He was rooted to the spot, unsure. Should he knock and offer an apology? Try to explain himself? Demand the respect due to a messenger of the church? But how could he demand anything after receiving such a gift? He couldn't give it back, not when it was needed so badly at the front lines.

Before Rasmusen could decide, the door popped open again. Taylor was in front of them. Rasmusen tried to seize the chance to apologize, but…

"Oh good, you're still here." The masked envoy plucked hot scones from the tray with quick fingers and stuffed them into his pockets, six in all. "Now you can leave!"

The door slammed shut.

Briallen helped herself to a scone. "We should go, before he comes back and takes the rest."

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