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nNing followed and found that he was in a rather giant room that was filled to the brim with books and scrolls.

nA bright green-haired girl was working on something at one of the desks in the room and turned around when the two of them entered.

n”What are you studying?” the old woman asked.

n”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?”

n”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 some scrolls while the girl kept staring at Ning.

nThe girl was the same height as Ning, quite beautiful, and looked about the same age as he as well. She wore the uniform of the school, but there was also a golden star on her chest for some reason.

n”Isn’t he a student?” the girl asked. “Why did you make a student an assistant?”

n”He’s good, that’s why. Now stop asking questions and help me grab that scroll from up there,” the old woman said.

nThe 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 moment.

nShe went to help and Ning looked around.

nThe old woman brought back an arm full of scrolls and books and slammed it on the table.

n”Phew, I have so much to ask,” the old woman said.

nNing smiled, but his eyes kept moving towards the young lady who was still looking at him curiously.

n”Huh?” the old woman noticed and turned around. “Tessa, stop gawking and come learn something. Sigh, forgive my granddaughter. She didn’t expect you to be young.”

n”No, no, it’s alright,” Ning said and looked at the young girl. “Your name is Tessa? Hi, I am Ning.”

n”Hello,” the girl nodded slightly and came to sit next to her grandmother.

n”Ok, let’s see, let’s see… ah, this one.” The old woman selected a scroll and unfurled it.

nShe then opened a book and reached a page that had the breakdowns for the summoning circle drawn on that scroll.

nNing saw the name “Stripvine Lynx”. It was a Lynx with plant-based powers that would control and use plant-like attacks, but mostly vines.

n”Right, help me 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.”

nNing looked at the symbol and said, “That’s… neither,” Ning said.

n”Really?” the old woman asked.

n”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.

n”It doesn’t have to be that,” Ning said and pointed to the name of the beast. “Look, it’s a Lynx. Can you tell me anything about Lynxes that have to do with ribs?”

n”What do you want us to say? That they have ribs?” the girl, Tessa asked.

n”No, the numbers,” Ning said.

n”I… am not sure about that,” the old woman said while trying to think but the answer escaped her mind.

n”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.

nNing smiled. “There you go. That’s your answer,” he said while pointing to the symbol. “That means 26. It is to say that the animal has 26 ribs.”

n”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.”

nShe quickly flipped the page and pointed to another symbol. “What about this? Is this a number as well?” she asked.

n”That’s… a number yes. The number of claws hidden in each paw,” Ning said.

nThe old woman continuously flipped through the pages and arrived at different pages to ask Ning what the symbols were for.

nNing 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.

nThe grandmother and granddaughter pair reminded him of the time he made potions back in Vilmore and he just couldn’t help but give out everything.

nAfter the old woman was done with the Stripvine Lynx’s summoning circle, Ning assumed she would open up another one, but instead the woman tossed aside everything from the desk.

n”Here,” she handed Ning a new, empty book. “Write down the symbols for all the numbers you know. This will help us very much.”

nNing was surprised for a bit, but when he thought about it, that was probably much easier for the old woman to start with.

nInstead of trying to find information one by one, getting it all at once was much better in her eyes.

nNing thought of asking the system to do the work for him, but the woman then said, “Come, Tessa, we have much to learn.”𝐎𝒱𝐥xt.𝔠𝑜𝓂

nShe 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.

n”I don’t know if you know this or not, but for some reason, the summoning circle doesn’t use a base 10 system, and instead uses a base 8 system.”

n”Meaning 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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