Zoe's favourite skill was an unusual one. Few people were ever concerned with it, fewer still were familiar enough to share such a personal piece of her soul. None ever expected it — even the ones who knew she had the skill.

  She had hundreds of skills at her fingertips. Could manipulate the many elements of the world on a whim. Reality shifted beneath the weight of her power. It was intoxicating at times, and even often easy to forget just how incredible the world she found herself in was.

  Yet her favourite wasn't any of those. It wasn't something active — and she didn't even find herself so enamoured with it because of what the skill itself did. Her favourite was Vampyric Immortality.

  The skill itself was wonderful, the first source of immortality she'd ever found. The additional stats she got from it were also quite nice to have. But for Zoe, it was the only means she had of tracking her age.

  At first, she hadn't appreciated it too much. She hadn't realized how great the skill was for that purpose. It gave her more stats, so she liked it, but keeping track of how old she was?

  Twenty year olds rarely forgot how old they were. Even at fifty, most people Zoe knew typically just remembered how old they were. It was a simple game of just counting your birthdays as you went, and remembering the last one.

  But when somebody was three hundred years old? That wasn't quite as simple. You could remember your birth year — that was simple enough. And then it was a simple process to determine one's age.

  Yet even that wouldn't work for Zoe. What good would it do to know she was born in the year 842 when she'd been whisked away to another world and the current year wasn't the same? The current year here on Abyllan changed depending on the country she was in at the time, many of them choosing to start from their countries formations. Or from some historic event that had occurred in their past.

  So for Zoe, the only way she could know her age was to look at her stat sheet and see her Vampyric Immortality level. That, plus however old she was when she first arrived on Abyllan, would be her age.

  And, much to her dismay, she couldn't remember her exact age when she arrived anymore. She'd long since forgotten that, even in her first few decades. Early twenties, she knew. Twenty two, maybe?

  What she did know, was that a few years missing weren't the end of the world. So she was 1202 instead of 1200. Or maybe just not even quite 1200 years old yet. It hardly mattered.

  And if she were being honest with herself, she'd begun thinking of herself as not quite being herself until she first arrived on Abyllan. Having a clear length of time that she'd spent in this world was almost more valuable to her than having her exact age, including the time she'd spent on that other strange world.

  Zoe wandered through the streets of Flester. Flester's Might now, but she wasn't here for the dungeon so it felt strange still referring to it as one.

  She was here for John. Or at least, to check if he was open. His shop stood even against the system's rampant powers, the black voids in his windows untouched by the system's magic. Somehow, he was greater than the system. Or maybe he'd just disconnected his shop from the space and the system didn't care about it.

  Whatever he did, however he did it, his shop still existed and was left in the very same state it was over a thousand years ago the last time Zoe had visited his shop. She checked back, every so often. More recently over the past hundred or so years as she struggled with her Enchanted Mirror's skill.

  None of the books Zoe had access to were any help with the process. Vibes and feelings, written by people who admitted having little success with soul magic. Zoe knew it existed — it had to, the system did it. Somebody, at some point, must have succeeded.

  Zoe had even met people who used magic that felt suspiciously similar. She'd encountered people who claimed to have met others who had mastered it. But for some reason, any information about it was just not accessible to her.

  Maybe if they were on better terms with the neighbouring kingdoms and had access to their royal libraries, she supposed. They weren't unfriendly, but secession was never seen as a friendly process. Necessary, sure. Respected. Maybe. But friendly? Never.

  Foizo had made clear they wanted to be their own country, with their own interests and their own rules. Not aligned or beholden to any other, but pushed forward on their own power, with their own people. Even if other countries respected the move — and most did in the end, there was hardly a clearer way to send the message that Foizo did not see themselves as being politically aligned with them.

  Resources were shared, food and luxury goods. Trade was great. But access to their private libraries full of their secrets? It would just never happen.

  John's Books however was something like a country all of its own. Full of knowledge taken from the furthers corners of the universe. And shared freely. Or at least, at the cost of a simple story.

  Zoe stood outside his shop, small pellets of water shooting out of her at the fire elementals that drifted too close. She stared into the abyss in his windows, the effect still incredible to her after all this time.

  And then the abyss vanished. The windows returned to their normal, translucent appearance. The bookstore visible behind them, rows and rows of dark, somewhat gaudy bookshelves filled with books. Stretching on far further than the small, plain building should be able to support.

  Behind the counter near the front of the store was a green monster Zoe hadn't seen in quite some time. A tentacled sphere-like creature with a passion for knowledge.

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  Zoe walked up to the door and pulled it open to walk inside. John looked up, his expressionless face filled with curiosity and interest.

  "Hey John," Zoe said. "How's it going?"

  "It 'ood," John said through some complicated web of mana that appeared in front of him.

  Zoe nodded. "Fair enough. Where you been? Your store's in the middle of a dungeon now, you know?"

  John's head tilted then shook.

  "You can use telepathy with me, you know. It's alright. I can handle it. Honestly, I'd prefer you did. Kinda interested in learning how to do it at some point." Zoe said.

  John nodded, and a pulse of mana shot out from him, settling in around Zoe's head. The mana exploded, reaching into the furthest expanses of her mind as it flooded her recent memories with information.

  Okay

  Zoe chuckled. All of that for a simple approval. "I'm looking for a book on soul stuff, I guess? I've got this skill called Enchanted Mirrors and I want to try to recreate it, but I've been trying for a while now and it still eludes me. Damn system just doesn't want to make the skill in front of me, and no amount of reverse engineering the skill has gotten me to a point where I feel confident in trying to create it in myself. Got anything that can help with that?"

  John paused for a moment, and then the many books that sat on the shelves throughout the store lifted from where they were and floated back towards John. As they got to within about a meter of him, they vanished. New books appeared and drifted back out through the bookstore to repopulate the shelves.

  He gestured to the shelves nearest him with one of his many tentacles.

  "Thanks," Zoe said.

  The books Zoe found in John's shop were always fascinating. Some were pretty mundane — a few books listing enchanting classes that Zoe recognized or teaching Enchanting itself, but so many were unlike anything she'd seen at other libraries and stores. Books from other planets, maybe even other realms.

  Zoe paused. Did John have any books from her previous world? She couldn't remember any — she liked video games back then, maybe there was some book written about one of the games she played?

  "Hey John, you got any books on video games? Don't replace all the books though, just like..." Zoe gestured to a shelf on the other side of the store. "Those ones, I guess."

  Mana rushed into Zoe's head again, filling her recent memories with information.

  Video games?

  "Yeah, like from my home world. Earth, where I come from. I guess you might have forgotten who I am. I'm the half vampire, I stopped in here a few times about a thousand years ago before you vanished."

  Zoe's memory was filled with the memories of her earlier visits, the books she bought. The stories she told. John remembered them better than Zoe remembered almost anything, let alone something that long ago.

  "How do you remember stuff that well? I forget so much from back then." Zoe paused for a moment then nodded with realization. "Probably the mental magic stuff, huh? You just store your memories and poke through them later?"

  John nodded.

  "Makes sense. I should prioritize getting one of those then." Zoe thought to ask if John would teach her, but as soon as the thought came, it was forgotten. "Anyway, you got any books from my home world?"

  I did not visit your realm in my younger days. I have no books to sell you.

  The feeling was always strange, with John. She understood what he was saying, but they weren't quite the same as words. They were more like she thought them, herself. Sometimes the words came through in her own voice, sometimes in an alien voice that logically she knew she couldn't understand but somehow did anyway. Other times, the words were just a distant memory that bubbled to the surface.

  Zoe wondered if those differences had any meaning, or if they were just her brain trying to parse the information John gave it.

  "Fair enough then. Worth a try, I guess. I'll keep looking then, thanks." Zoe turned her attention back to the bookshelves.

  None of them stood out to her as an outright solution to her problem. There was no "Soul magic for silly gooses" book, no "Explicit instructions for stealing Enchanted Mirrors from the system" book. Not even a simple "How to create the system" book.

  But a few did touch on the topic. Zoe picked out one titled "Burgo's Burgeoning Book of Beauty", which focused largely on skills related to beauty. Most of which surprised Zoe. Frost was considered a skill for beauty, according to whoever Burgo was. But one of the chapters was titled "Inner Beauty" and seemed to address many of the issues Zoe was facing with Enchanted Mirrors.

  "I'll take this one, please. Still just one story?" Zoe place the book down on John's counter. He looked up at her and nodded.

  "Alright then," Zoe said. "Let's see. Hmm. One time when I was still a child, my mother decided to take me out to dinner. We went to a nice restaurant, I can't remember the name of it now. It was my first time going to a nice restaurant. Well, nice for us. I'd gone to fast food places before, diners. Places you just go and order your food then sit down wherever you want to. This was my first time going to a restaurant where you get shown your seat.

  "Well, I had wanted to be nice and helpful. So I went to a random table and started moving everything around on it. I set up the forks and knives on the table, got rid of these weird placards on it that were in the way and then sat down. A few minutes later, my mother shows up with this lady, I forget what they're called. The hostess I think? She looked horrified, my mum looked relieved to have found me.

  "Turns out, the placards on the table were for a reservation, and I had just messed up the table something fierce. Food safety and all that so this table they'd gone out of their way to clean up and prepare for these people who were now waiting at the entrance was messed up. They had to come out, change all the cutlery and replace all the napkins, wipe down the table again. All while these people who had a reservation were frustrated some kid had messed up their plans.

  "I don't remember what I ate at the time. But I think back on that memory now and then. I was embarrassed by it, at the time. Was for quite a few years after that. But it wasn't my fault, right? My mum should've kept an eye on me. The wait staff should have recognized a kid was walking around unsupervised. The people waiting shouldn't have been so upset, and the wait staff certainly shouldn't have let them be as rude as they were to a child. I was like eight years old.

  "But I was still embarrassed about it well into adulthood. Weird isn't it? How little things like that can affect us for so long? It's why I always try to acknowledge when people don't know things. Cause you don't know what you don't know. You can't. And a lot of the time when people do something wrong it's just because they didn't know it was wrong. It sucked at the time, but I think it was a valuable experience for me now. It helps me understand why people act the way they do sometimes a lot better. Anyway, that's my story."

  John nodded. "Tank you," he said through his stunted magic.

  "No, thank you John. I hope you're back for a while, be careful about all the fire elementals out there. Though I guess they won't pose much danger to you, will they?"

  John shook his head.

  Zoe chuckled. "Figures. Is that even your real level?" She gestured to the dark green numbers above his head. Just level fifty, with only a couple classes under his belt. Yet still beyond anything else she could be friendly with. She wondered how he'd fare against the dragon, for a moment.

  John nodded.

  "Makes you wonder what the point of Identify even is." Zoe shook her head. "Alright, I've got some reading to do. Good to see you again John."

  A vague sense of joy washed out from John as Zoe vanished, teleporting back to her cave on the side of the cliffs to read her new book.

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