>Let's haul these back to a table and get to looking over them.
> You start walking back through the aisles, with Koakuma trailing behind on the book cart. After a while of wandering around, you end up back at the main entrance of the library and a little ways away from it, where there is a table waiting for you to sit at. You take a seat and put items on the table, while Koakuma hovers near you.
> The first book is definitely a history book, while the scroll appears to be an instructional text.
> You start off with the first book. It's practically falling apart, a testament to its age and how little it seems to have been used. It was written in 1920, a year you do not recognize, but looking through the table of contents you spot a name you recognize among the list of places discussed in the book: Gensokyo. You flip to the section dedicated to it and begin to read.
> Gensokyo was formed in 1885 by humans and reinforced by youkai, which you think is equivalent to year 0. Apparently, of the few hundred who were involved in its creation, only a few survived the process. The book mentions that while the Boundary they used was the most advanced at the time, it was also very dangerous to form. It does not go into detail. The book uses jargon like "Maiden Barriers" and "Dimensional Enclave" which, again, it does not go into detail about. You suspect it's because this is a history book, and not a magic book. A list of the survivors and the deceased are provided, although the book provides a disclaimer saying that they were unable to name everyone who was involved; therefore, the list is lacking. The only names you recognize are Yukari and Ran. Under the deceased section, you find someone with your last name: Hakurei Hiro.
> The book goes on to say that Gensokyo was its own pocket dimension by this point, but the Boundary was erected to reinforce it, keep it safe and allow youkai to thrive as humanity embraced technology, blah, blah, blah...You may not know how the Boundary works, but you definitely already know why it's there in the first place.
> Next, you open up the scroll. As expected, it's a magic scroll. It's clearly meant for advanced magicians, because you hardly recognize any of these words. Annotations have been made in a language you do not recognize, but you suspect that it's Patchouli's handwriting. This is her library, after all. The scroll goes into depth about different types of shield spells, protective spells, and segues into making enclosed spaces and boundaries. There are warnings about about how dangerous this is and how few groups of people--never an individual--can pull this off successfully. It starts talking about different types of boundaries, and how they are made. There are boundaries that separate a small area or an object from reality, boundaries that seal things away, and protective boundaries.
> At some point it stops talking about the "how" and goes into the "what" and "perhaps" of these subjects, and this is where the annotations and doodles stop. The jargon you encountered in the history book shows up, and you finally understand what it means. A Dimensional Enclave is a dimension in a dimension, and a Tethered Enclave is one that still has connections to the dimension it's in. A Maiden Barrier is one of the types of boundaries described. It is hailed as one of the most modern, efficient boundaries, but the least of many evils. All of the boundaries described in here require some kind of sacrifice, ranging from disastrous to gruesome to kind of acceptable but only having a slim chance of succeeding.
> The Maiden Barrier is described as one that was invented by humans and thrives on contracting souls of humans or youkai with human blood: as long as the human is alive, the Boundary is alive. If one falls, so does the other. The soul acts as a source of energy, and the Boundary as a source of power. To the readers, it suggests contracting entire families or bloodlines to ensure that it will stay up longer. Gensokyo is cited as the only successful example of this type of Boundary. A few basic mechanics are provided for this, but it is all in magician jargon that you have no hopes of comprehending.
> _
