While the respite had been brief, it had been quite refreshing. The goblin was reinvigorated and ready to move into another bout of research.

  While he loved his home, he would eventually need a method to leave it, especially if he were to get revenge against the goblin, nay, cretin.

  To do so, he would need to gain a fundamental understanding of the planes and how to travel them. However, pursuing the contents of a library that had grown to such a size had become incredibly infeasible.

  But with the usage of the soul clone technique, he had another idea. He visited the forge; inspiration for another construct had struck him. This one did not require much material or tinkering and he went straight to materializing it.

  A ball of iron formed before him; he made it quite large because he intended to inscribe several magic circles into it. First he inscribed the mana gathering symbol, as well as an observed magic circle. Next he put in a gravity-removing circle, along with a basic wind gust spell.

  The final touch, a couple telekinesis magic circles, is probably the most essential one. This spell circuit in particular was called mage hand. Something that allowed for someone to interact with something as if it were their own hands. He finally took one of his soul clones and pushed it into the iron sphere.

  First he tried to activate the anti-gravity magic; the ball floated upwards but was taking far too much mana for his liking. He then slapped his forehead; he could have at least hollowed the iron sphere first.

  He didn’t particularly feel like making a new one so he made a circular opening and scooped out what he could without damaging the integrity of the metal.

  This made a lot more surface area to work with; this gave him some ideas. If someone were to walk by the workshop, they would see the rear end of said goblin sticking out of the hole, while the front was busy at work carving some extra stuff within the sphere.

  He extricated himself and wiped the sweat off his brow. He then controlled the soul clone once more and the sphere rose; a bright light filled the center of the circle, he decided to add a light spell that would help Illuminate the rather dark dungeon. In fact, he had not intended it, but the construct looked rather like an eye, with the light as a pupil and the iron being the body of the eye.

  It was weird being limbless but the goblin put that aside and willed the gust spell to push him forward; however, the spell had a bit too much vigor as it ran straight into the wall and crumbled to pieces.

  “Let’s try that again.” The goblin shook his head and snapped, summoning another eye construct. He reinserted the soul clone and used less strength this time. He was easily able to move himself vertically and horizontally and even rotate.

  Next, he needed to test the main purpose of said construct. The eye construct floated to the table and the workshop, which was littered with various spell books. He selected one, and to the layman’s eye, it seemed to magically float up and in front of his vision. It then opened and the pages began to flip as he read through their contents.

  “Excellent,” the goblin smiled; his progress had astounded even him. The invisible magic hands felt like his own as he quickly flipped through every page of the book without damaging it.

  He pulled his focus away but discovered a new issue while the split soul was flipping through and reading the book. He did not retain any of the knowledge. The split soul was flipping through the book but not retaining any of the knowledge.

  It also wouldn’t help to use the observer rune on the mirror since he would just end up sitting there and reading through it. But also he couldn’t just manually control the eye all the time since that would take too much of his perception.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He began to consider what to do; he needed to observe but not control, but also receive the information. He tried to think of a solution but then finally came up with a wild idea.

  Could he carve and observer magic circle in his soul? The first question should not have been "could," but "how?" And whether he should. He had severed portions of his soul to make soul clones, which implied that it could be manipulated.

  He focused in on his own mind; he hadn’t really looked much at his own soul other than when he cut off pieces. It had a purple hue and was extremely bright, he had been nourishing his soul regularly with the leftover soul bits whenever he worked.

  The size of his soul had grown to something close to twice the size of the average humanoid soul, and it had greatly helped in maintaining control of the small army of the soul clones that he had created.

  He tried imagining creating patterns in his soul, but nothing happened. Perhaps he needs something more forceful. So he went to the soul-severing ritual circle. He started to invoke the ritual but instead of cutting off a portion of his soul, he used the sharp blade and began to inscribe the observer spell circle into his soul.

  The goblin had grown used to mutilating his soul, but this task took all of his focus. He winced as he carved each line and groove but eventually the magic circle took shape.

  Once completed, he stopped the ritual and collapsed to the ground. The process had been extremely painful, but now the originally untarnished orb that was his soul had markings covering about a third of it. He would have to make sure and not cut segments from there when making future soul clones.

  The only question that remained was, did it work? In theory he only needed to supply mana to said magic circle. He pushed the mana that saturated the space around his soul to the circuit, and it began to fill in grooves.

  The mana began to be consumed and the rune circuit began to glow. He redirected his attention to the eye construct and had the soul clone begin reading again; he then severed the connection but kept the observer rune in his soul running.

  The goblin saw every page in his mind like he held the book before him. Very good, he could now read without physically holding a book. Now to upscale the operation.

  Over the next few days Armand began to make several more of the eye constructs; he deemed them Readers. He began to attempt using said constructs to mass read the contents of the library. Initially he could only use one, but after several months he could operate a dozen of the eyes.

  On days devoted to research, he could easily read several hundred books, but during that time he could do little else. But while working on training, crafting, and dungeon expansion, he could still slowly read several books.

  He continued reading and reading. The contents of the library were slowly being conquered bit by bit. The months turned to years. Despite all of it, he still failed to find a way to enter the material world.

  Of course he tried some other methods; he tried sending a split soul out into the world through the gate but the gate would not open. He guesses the dungeon considered those clones as him.

  The closest thing he could find was descents. Decents being where gods penetrated the veil between the planes and the material world but he was not sure how or where to start.

  “You seem like you’re stumped…” Thoth commented on one particular day.

  “Indeed, I failed to find a way to return to the material plane despite reading through the entirety of the library.” The goblin lamented several years of work with no result.

  “Have you truly read all of them?” The demon said with a toying smile, hinting at something unsavory.

  “I’m pretty sure there is nothing pertinent in the works you are implying.” The goblin had made a restricted section of the library after the incident with the first intruder, and that other batch of adventures had not been much better.

  “What if there is something in there…” The demon whispered in his ear, but the goblin had long become accomplished in ignoring the creature.

  “I need more knowledge, but we have not had any more visitors.” Armand vocalized his desire. The demon leaned against the wall, with that evil grin on his face again.

  “Just bring some visitors.” Thoth casually suggested.

  “How so?” The goblin was becoming desperate enough to indulge the demon’s suggestions for the moment.

  “Well, did you know that there is generally a knowledge keeper in every plane?” The demon began to explain, “Why not use a planar summoning to bring them here and expand your library?”