The library Kai ended up finding was much grander than he'd expected. From the outside, it looked like a large colosseum, and on the inside, it was expectedly covered to the brim with reading spaces, large tables and shelves upon shelves of books and scrolls. However, what surprised Kai were the various spaces in the middle of the first floor, filled with people working on crafting projects, brewing potions, embroidering detailed art and much more. And all that was merely on the first floor of the multi story-building. The library wasn't just a public place to read, but to improve a vast variety of skills.
Having stared in wonder for a good while, Kai headed towards who he figured to be a librarian, before greeting the white haired woman.
"How may I help you, Mr. Kai? Are you researching skills or something else, reading for pleasure or do you wish to book a practice space?" The librarian asked.
"Researching skills would be great, healing skills in particular. I am a Wanderer, looking to permanently stay in this world, so I would like to learn everything I should know before moving in here."
"You've come to the right place, then. We have hundreds of books and scrolls on how people learned their skills, some of them are even epic in rarity. Unfortunately when someone stumbles on a skill beyond that, they usually keep it to themselves. But I'm sure we can find you a nice healing skill." The librarian said. "Are you looking to be a doctor or a healer?"
"What's the difference?"
"Doctors use things such as medicine, and medical knowledge to heal injuries. There are skills that increase the effectiveness of their treatments, allowing them to quickly and efficiently treat many patients all day. Healers use their mana to quickly heal injuries, though what and how many injuries they can heal is much more limited by their skill."
"In that case, becoming a healer is preferable."
"To most it is. In that case, follow me." The old woman led Kai to a section on the first floor, "In this area we keep our skill books, we add anything we learn on skills to them. I suggest quickly scanning through a few of them to see if anything catches your interest. The books on healing skills are in that corner, feel free to look around the library for anything else that might catch your interest."
Kai was quickly left alone to look at the books. Two long shelves entirely covered in books from 'Alowe's Guide to Ranged Combat' to 'Better Sight, Better Mind, by Kale Kutro'. And in the corner the librarian had pointed out, at least a dozen books resided, each with some variety of the word 'heal' in their titles. If guild's wanted healers, shouldn't there be a bunch of people with healing skills from libraries? Kai thought. Only it didn't matter, being able to heal would be useful no matter what.
Kai picked up a random book from the corner, and opened its index.
'A Progressive Path to Rare Healing, From Cuts to Broken Bones.
1: Base skills: pages 5-29
* Healing palms (uncommon), page 6
* Sticky glue (uncommon), page 8
* Mineral knowledge (uncommon), page 11
* Farsight (common), page 15
* Translucent sight (rare), page 24
2: Merged skills: pages 30 - 37:
* Stonemelt (uncommon), page 31
* Piercing sight (rare), page 34
* Mending palm (uncommon), page 35
3: Mending sight (rare), page 38'
It was not what Kai had expected. He'd thought the book would've had multiple rare Healing skills, instead it had just one, and way too much sight skills. Even so, Kai decided to skim through the book, it was only 41 pages total, it wouldn't even take too long. Besides, Kai would have all the time in the world.
As it turned out, the entire book was instructions on how one could build a good healing skill, from multiple easy to learn skills. Healing palm could be learned by spreading healing salves on one's palms, before rubbing the hands at an injury. Sticky glue by gluing things together. Translucent sight, by placing an object in front of one eye, and not the other. Sticky glue and mineral knowledge could be merged together into the stonemelt skill, which allowed one to merge various minerals together. That then could be merged with healing palm to get the mend skill, which allowed one to heal broken bones with a touch. Finally, merging piercing sight with mending palm, resulted in the Mending sight skill, which allowed one to heal internal and external injuries by simply looking at the injuries.
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It was a treasure-trove of information, giving instructions on multiple useful skills. One just needed three free skill slots to be able to make the healing skill, and since everyone had a total of only eight skill slots, it might explain why guild's didn't have as many healers as they'd like. That, or maybe people just didn't think of going to a library to study, in a game.
Kai picked up a second book, this time instructions on how to connect four common skills at once for a decent uncommon healing skill. A third book had instructions on ten easy to learn common and uncommon healing skills, along with a mana aura skill, that could be merged together to form an inefficient, but versatile healing aura. One book explained how to create a healing variant of any element, suggesting the usage of a skill that conjured warm water. There was nothing as relaxing as 'a nice healing bath' according to it.
Once Kai had skimmed through all the healing skill books, he'd come to the decision that mending sight was the best healing skill out of them. Problem was, Kai already had six skills out of his eight maximum, and he wasn't sure if he just wanted to discard one of them. Even though his sewing skill, or pebble toss skills weren't exactly useful for him, Kai couldn't help but wonder if there was some nice way to merge them with other skills.
But having gone through the various books, Kai could clearly see that there was rhyme and logic to merging skills. Instead of beginning the process of building a healing skill for himself, Kai decided to do more research on how skills and their merging worked. It didn't take long to find a book explaining exactly that. It explained much, from what skill rarity meant—which essentially was a measurement for how capable or specialized a skill was, not how many people had said skill—to the different stages and known commonalities between them.
Skill merging itself was done through the interface, where one could merge up to twenty-five skills together at once, apparently some titles, or species had more than the eight skill slots available for humans, where the time it took to merge was determined by the amount of skills being merged, their rarities, and the stages the skills were at. The resulting skill was determined by the merged skills and their order, and would be around four levels lower than the average level and stage of the merged skills. It meant merging two skills at apprentice 5, or level 29, together, would result in a skill at apprentice 1. Though that did vary on how compatible the skills were.
To Kai, it seemed as if merging skills together was the way to power, though merging skills at random wouldn't result in anything good. He could only imagine merging a healing skill with a sight skill, instead of the other way around, to make a skill that grew eyeballs wherever the user touched.
But one thing was clear. Skills could do nearly anything, be extremely versatile, generally useful or great for exactly one purpose, though usually as one reached higher stages in their skill, they'd be able to do more things with it. There were mentions of a person with a sword skill at the 'maestro stage'—however many stages beyond novice that was, Kai didn't know—who was capable of cutting space itself to teleport anywhere he wished, without the use of mana.
However, skills weren't the only paths to power that existed. For example, the cooking skill in the novice stage made food prepared by the skills owner taste better, but one didn't need the skill in order to make food. There were tales of people capable of running faster without a running skill, than someone with one. The same applied to magical skills, one could brew potions, or cast spells without skills, if they had sufficient understanding. In ECLIPSE, there was unlimited potential for growth even without skills.
For the rest of the day, Kai spent his hours in the library reading on the various skills, doing his best to internalize the logic behind merging skills, along with going through the various combat and utility skills that could be useful for him. He theorized new skills that could be created by merging the skills he found in the books, his favorite being a passive aura that probably cleaned everything near him.
Skill gained: Skill lore (Legendary), Novice 1.
Kai's attention was immediately brought away from the book in his hands, to the notification that had appeared in his field of view. Having read the notification thrice in short succession, Kai slowly willed his index open, revealing his character sheet, where he could read the details of his new skill.
Skill: Skill lore (Legendary), Novice 1. You have 1n% more knowledge of the workings of skills, and a 0.5n% higher probability of knowing what skills will merge into, where n is skill level.
The skill wasn't much for the moment, but a skill that would allow him to make better skills? It very well might be the ticket to Kai's success.
Soon after receiving the skill, an announcement echoed through the library, informing everyone in it that it would soon close. Kai placed all the books he had sprawled around him back on their shelves, before heading beneath the dark sky. There wasn't much to do in the night, other than a few questionable or criminal activities, so with that thought, Kai decided to log out. It would be good to talk with his Dad, tell him everything, before the only way they could meet was inside a game.