Divine Celebrity 119 (Patreon)

Even as I walked away, I had a smile on my face. It had been fun to turn the supposedly boring approval session into something more. The accident was fun, but I had never expected that, despite her no-nonsense attitude, Coach Juana would dare to tease me like that. 

Of course, once she did, she found herself in a game she couldn’t handle, but that was a completely different issue. 

However, even as I entered my car, I didn’t have a destination in mind. I could go back to my room, but sleeping was not an option, not with the risk of the shadow assassins. It looked like they stopped coming, maybe the magic of my guide scared them from sending more … but I wasn’t willing to bet on that, not when a loss might actually cost my life. 

I could go back to study, or work on my web crawler, but at this point, there wasn’t exactly a huge benefit. I needed a much better computer, maybe even a standalone server, for it to work; and money wasn’t the only thing that prevented me. 

Dragging a huge server into my dorm room was hardly inconspicuous. 

So, I started driving around the campus, hoping that a little movement would give me inspiration, when I had a notification on my phone. A private alert from the security system of the stadium — a little benefit of my earlier hacking.  

Curious, I turned on the security feed, only to find a familiar face digging around the equipment room. Arthur, fumbled around in the equipment room. For a moment, I was almost certain that he was sabotaging, but then I noticed that he had his own jersey in hand. He was using some kind of brush to draw something with red ink. 

Though, I had a suspicion that it was not actually ink. 

Curious, I watched him as he occasionally referred to the papers in his hand as he slowly drew them, fully focused. I would have loved to read the content of those papers, but unfortunately, the camera wasn’t good enough to allow me to read, so I focused on other details. Like the fact that the papers he was using were crisp and white, and not the parchment I expected to see considering he was drawing magical symbols. 

Clearly, a printer was more useful than ancient scrolls. 

Though, even as I watched him, I was driving toward a different location. His room, which was, at this moment, conveniently empty. 

I parked the car a mile away, covered the rest of the distance by running, and sneaked into the dorm once more — which was considerably easier after my earlier scoping. Soon, I was in the basement, but not the server room. This time, my target was different. 

Sabotaging the fuse box took only seconds, and unhooking the emergency one took only a few seconds more — which disabled the security cameras. It was a bad idea to have reliable power for the security cameras, but since it was a dorm and not a bank, they clearly thought it was an acceptable trade-off. The cries of protest rose across the building as I dashed up, feeling confident as the security cameras were gone. 

There was a risk that Arthur had another security camera in his room not reliant on power, but it was a fair bet to take. Barely a minute later, I had already opened his door, and stepped inside. A quick glance around the room as I used my phone camera showed that there was a large, leather-bound book in a visible location. I reached with my middling senses, trying to sense if there was some kind of curse on the book. 

I didn’t feel anything, so I took it, but digging through his other stuff didn’t give me anything more. After digging around a bit more, I decided to disappear. Like every break-in, the rule was fast and loose. Pity I was unprepared to leave some kind of trojan on his computer. I was afraid of poking around with his laptop — which was currently turned off — because I didn’t know whether he was responsible for the security, or the ones that assigned him, and I didn’t want to risk alarming his headquarters. 

Still, I stopped at the fusebox, and turned on the power, not willing to leave any evidence of my sabotage before leaving. After another dash later, I was safely in my car, driving away… 

Of course, as I did so, I continued to check Arthur as he worked on his drawing, dedicated, until he completed a very complicated scheme on the inner part of his jersey, and moved on to the other parts of his gear. As I watched him draw one over his pads, the pattern he had drawn on the jersey radiated a glow, then slowly started to disappear. 

Fascinating. 

When he had finished and left the storage room — working only on his set — I was already stomping back to my room, with my little treasure in hand. “How do you do, buddy?” I said as I looked at my new pet, which was sleeping as he leaned against his little bowl. I topped it off with Recovery-Intent before I sat on my desk, and finally started examining the book I had pilfered from Arthur. 

At first glance, I could see that it was an interesting book. It was clearly old, but I was willing to guess that it was measured in centuries rather than millennia.  

“Let’s see what I have in here,” I said as I opened the leatherbound tome, and met with something much more fitting to be about magic. Thick pages yellowed with age, mysterious drawings, clearly written in hand. The book was written in multiple languages. Latin, I recognized immediately, and Greek letters were equally familiar. Some exploration showed that other sections were written in Sanskrit, Farsi, and a number of other languages. 

Though it was predominantly in Latin and Greek. 

“Fantastic,” I murmured as I decided to tackle the challenge. I didn’t know any of those languages, certainly, but my Traits helped. The bigger help was the internet, though I had to be careful in my search, cutting sections into smaller sections just to be safe. It was a long, thankless job, and my choppy approach hardly gave me a lot. 

Still, as the time to leave for the morning session approached — luckily at eight, as today there was no physical training, and just tactical to allow the players to recover — I started to get a rudimentary understanding of the text. Not a lot. 

The first thing I realized was the number of warnings about magical practitioners making mistakes to various detriments, ranging from madness to death — a great range of violent and explosive ones. The warnings were simple enough to decipher as they were open. Never dare to use Intent directly to avoid an explosive end. 

Of course, they didn’t call it Intent, but used various words. Mayeia, Divineia, magic, and a bunch of other words. There was a great discourse in the book about what to call it, though I lacked the proficiency in the language to decipher the nuances in it. I could only understand that the argument was between whether to call it magic or divinity — and a bunch of other terms with philological implications. 

As I dug, I met with several sacrificial rituals, including a lot of blood and entrails. Fortunately, none of those sacrificial rituals were actually about humans, and mostly targeted bulls and sheep — with occasional more exotic beasts like lions and tigers. The warnings about the risk of a poorly designed sacrificial ritual were clear, not that I really cared. I had already seen that there were other risks, in the form of cursed fires. 

Another interesting aspect was the mention of a lot of gods and demons, but considering my own experiences, that was not a shock. 

My real focus was all the runes and artifacts that were described to manipulate Intent — though they called it differently. There were some artifacts, and a lot of complicated runes to achieve that, each with several caveats about risks and dangers. I managed to piece together enough information to understand that it was about the risks implied in the content. 

About how Intent was dangerous, especially when it was polluted with strong emotions. No wonder they were able to easily use Chess to empower themselves, yet they were treating the football game as a huge challenge. 

A lot of fascinating stuff, I decided as I prepared for the meeting. I was about to leave the book behind, but after some consideration, I decided to lock it into the trunk of my car, which was safer than my dorm. 

And, after some more consideration, I decided to bring my new pet with me as well. It would be a nice red herring for Arthur and the mysterious organization behind him. 

With my tortoise in the back seat, I drove toward the stadium.