Ning entered the library and looked around. But before he could even see any part of the 2-story-tall library properly, the old woman dragged him off to a secluded section of the library and entered a room.
Ning followed and found that he was in a rather giant room that was filled to the brim with books and scrolls.
A bright green-haired girl was working on sothing at one of the desks in the room and turned around when the two of them entered.
"What are you studying?" the old woman asked.
"Just learning the… symbols for limbs of the… beasts," the girl's answer slowed down as she saw Ning and put on a confused look. "Who's he?"
"Didn't I tell you yesterday I had a new assistant? This is he," the old woman introduced. She went on to take off her coat and brought out so scrolls while the girl kept staring at Ning.
The girl was the sa height as Ning, quite beautiful, and looked about the sa age as he as well. She wore the uniform of the school, but there was also a golden star on her chest for so reason.
"Isn't he a student?" the girl asked. "Why did you make a student an assistant?"
"He's good, that's why. Now stop asking questions and help grab that scroll from up there," the old woman said.
The girl was still confused as to why such a young man would be an assistant, but she had no reason to question that at the mont.
She went to help and Ning looked around.
The old woman brought back an arm full of scrolls and books and slamd it on the table.
"Phew, I have so much to ask," the old woman said.
Ning smiled, but his eyes kept moving towards the young lady who was still looking at him curiously.
"Huh?" the old woman noticed and turned around. "Tessa, stop gawking and co learn sothing. Sigh, forgive my granddaughter. She didn't expect you to be young."
"No, no, it's alright," Ning said and looked at the young girl. "Your na is Tessa? Hi, I am Ning."
"Hello," the girl nodded slightly and ca to sit next to her grandmother.
"Ok, let's see, let's see… ah, this one." The old woman selected a scroll and unfurled it.
She then opened a book and reached a page that had the breakdowns for the summoning circle drawn on that scroll.
Ning saw the na "Stripvine Lynx". It was a Lynx with plant-based powers that would control and use plant-like attacks, but mostly vines.
"Right, help learn what this is," the old woman said while pointing to the symbol on the circle. "I say this is the backbone, but my granddaughter here thinks this is the spine, even though we also guessed that both of those are these other things. But if it's not either, then we are stumped."
Ning looked at the symbol and said, "That's… neither," Ning said.
"Really?" the old woman asked.
"Nonsense, it had to be either of those two. Given that it is available around ribs, it has to be a body part around that place. We crossed out heart and lungs, so it has to be the backbone or the spine," the girl said.
"It doesn't have to be that," Ning said and pointed to the na of the beast. "Look, it's a Lynx. Can you tell anything about Lynxes that have to do with ribs?"
"What do you want us to say? That they have ribs?" the girl, Tessa asked.
"No, the numbers," Ning said.
"I… am not sure about that," the old woman said while trying to think but the answer escaped her mind.
"26 right? I think they have 13 sets of ribs. Those are true for cats at least," the girl replied after a bit of thinking.
Ning smiled. "There you go. That's your answer," he said while pointing to the symbol. "That ans 26. It is to say that the animal has 26 ribs."
"This is a number?" the old woman looked at the symbol. "Right, I only know numbers from 1 through 10. I should have known this could be a number too."
She quickly flipped the page and pointed to another symbol. "What about this? Is this a number as well?" she asked.
"That's… a number yes. The number of claws hidden in each paw," Ning said.
The old woman continuously flipped through the pages and arrived at different pages to ask Ning what the symbols were for.
Ning had planned on hiding a bit of information to not have it seem like he knew everything. But seeing the old woman's enthusiasm, he couldn't hide anything.
The grandmother and granddaughter pair reminded him of the ti he made potions back in Vilmore and he just couldn't help but give out everything.
After the old woman was done with the Stripvine Lynx's summoning circle, Ning assud she would open up another one, but instead the woman tossed aside everything from the desk.
"Here," she handed Ning a new, empty book. "Write down the symbols for all the numbers you know. This will help us very much."
Ning was surprised for a bit, but when he thought about it, that was probably much easier for the old woman to start with.
Instead of trying to find information one by one, getting it all at once was much better in her eyes.
Ning thought of asking the system to do the work for him, but the woman then said, "Co, Tessa, we have much to learn."
She then brought two chairs next to him and sat down. Ning felt himself in an awkward position where he couldn't just have the system do the work, so he decided to teach them how it worked.
"I don't know if you know this or not, but for so reason, the summoning circle doesn't use a base 10 system, and instead uses a base 8 system."
"aning there are numbers from 0 to 7. As long as you know all these numbers, you can write any number you want. All you have to do is stack them."
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