Maria: Ughh, what happened?

She had woken up with a headache, and her body felt incredibly weak. The last thing she remembered was using tornado, a skill that costs almost a quarter of her mana pool to cast and used all of her remaining mana in that fight.

Maria: "I must have fainted after losing all of my mana. Did I defeat the boss or was I saved?"

She was currently lying on her bed in her room, so she decided to check if anyone was around, but she found no one. Not until someone opened the door to her room and Nicholas entered her room with a tray of food and drinks in it.

Nicholas: "Oh, you're awake. I thought you might be hungry if you woke up, so I warmed up some food and brought you some." He noticed her eyes were already open, so he decided to talk first.

Maria: "You shouldn't have too, master; I am just a little bit tired, nothi-

*grumble* *grumble*"

Maria: "UUUUUuuu." Maria felt embarrassed about saying that, so she didn't continue what she was about to say and averted her gaze off of Nicholas. More importantly, she felt more angry at her stomach for reacting to the aroma of the food Nicholas had brought her.

Nicholas took the tray of food on his hands and brought it down to the nightstand beside Maria's bed.

Nicholas: "Here, I warmed up some soup and meat. Get up; you still haven't had dinner."

Maria followed Nicholas's instructions and got up from her bed. She sat up straight and leaned her back on the bed frame. Seeing this, Nicholas picked up the bowl of soup and scooped a spoonful from it.

Maria: "You don't have to master... I can probably do it myself; I'm just a little weak." Feeling shy that her master is feeding her, she tried to get the bowl from Nicholas.

Nicholas: "Ahhh." He insisted by shaking his head and taking the bowl farther away from her.

Maria: "uuuuu."

She succumbed to Nicholas's insistence and began to open her mouth and put the spoon in her mouth.

Nicholas: "How was it?" he asked.

Maria: "Mmmm, delicious. Thanks, Master." She replied

Nicholas: "No, I mean your body. Are you okay?" He smirked at Maria's answer, clearly teasing him.

Maria: "..."

Maria didn't reply clearly embarrassed to Nicholas's reply. The room went silent after that, so Nicholas had to break the ice.

Nicholas: "You did it."

Maria: "What? Really?"

Nicholas: "Yep," he flicked her forehead and said

Nicholas: "But don't be cocky; you barely defeated the boss with that final attack of yours. I expected that you should have handled it fairly well if you didn't insist on fighting only using martial art. This types of battles are not spars you can just try again if you lose. Remember that."

Maria: "Yes... I'll take note of it, Master. I really made a lot of mistakes today; in hindsight, I really should have fought that much better than my current performance."

Nicholas: "Good, it's not bad to make mistakes, but it is important to learn something from them. Ahhhh."

Nicholas continued to feed Maria since she was still physically weak and needed help to eat.

Maria: "Did you change my clothes, Master?"

She finally asked it since she finally realized that she was in different clothing and she is currently wearing her nightgown.

Nicholas: "Clarice did that; don't worry."

Maria: "Thanks... for taking care of me, master. I'm not worthy of making you worry."

*Flick*

Nicholas: "Idiot. Don't ever say that." Nicholas flicked Maria's head after saying that.

Stolen novel; please report.

---

At night, after Maria defeated the mutant boar boss at the toxic marsh

Nicholas returned to his own room after taking care of Maria and waiting for her to fall asleep, which she went to immediately since she was still quite tired from the earlier battle. He is now currently at his desk again after a long time, and on his hand is a bulky book. It has a dilapidated cover, indicating the deterioration it has received through time.

He promised to himself that he would read this book earlier, but since he got swamped with dungeons and other businesses, he only had time to read through it now.

The book was the one his father helped him get from the church's library. This book, according to his intelligence, was a collection of stories and legends the world had. The intel didn't provide which is factual and which is not since it was a composition of different tales around the word, but it should be safe to assume that most stories about his book should be exaggerated or misconstrued in some way by the writer.

He quickly browsed the content of the book to see if there was any relevant information about the history of this world. Page by page, he quickly turned sheets of paper carefully since it was quite fragile. He flipped through and passed through many legends, heroes, and even tales about the rise and fall of kingdoms.

Tales and poems about great beasts capable of destroying swathes of land and cities in a single attack are also included as excerpts inside the book. He flipped through diligently through different titles in the stories and tales; the titles were creative and sometimes terrifying.

Nicholas: "The imagination of the people who wrote and compiled this was really creative." He couldn't help but comment on the titles of the stories he was reading.

After about an hour and 10 minutes of flipping through the fragile pages of the book, he landed on a story titled 'The Beginnings'. The story began at a time when there were tales about a mysterious continent called 'Bermishea'. It piqued his curiosity, so he decided to read through the short story; it was a tale in ancient times that the world consisted of 5 continents.

Nicholas: "Five continents?"

Each continent represents the territory in which the goddesses gave their blessings. The times were turbulent and monsters started appearing more frequently; the world is in chaos, and the goddesses are vying for the top positions. Churches are fighting for the glory of their goddess, and kingdoms are expanding their borders through violence and war.

Nicholas: "Hmmm..."

One goddess was, however, the weakest of the five goddesses, Gremory. But a sudden change occurred overnight; the definitively weakest of the goddesses provoked two of the strongest goddesses and fought the two at that time. The follower and church of that goddess spread the news that she can singlehandedly fight two goddesses at the same time and win.

She invited otherworlders in this world in exchange of powers beyond her capabilities; that is the reason why she had been able to fend off two of the stronger goddesses at the same time. The other goddess who found out about this betrayal decided to cease their fight and began to team up to fight the invasion caused by Gremory.

The war had ceased between humans, and new enemies had appeared out of nowhere; they were blood-red monsters who had the lust for slaughter; there are also long-eared giants who have some resemblance to humans; and there are armies of elementals who don't have physical bodies.

It was a living nightmare for the people living in the world at that time; losing in combat left and right drove them to their last leg. However, one fateful day at the peak of the battle between the humans and the monsters. A massive piece of land suddenly vanished after a shocking earthquake and highly blinding light occurred.

And like nothing happened, everything went back to normal. The monsters invading the world suddenly dissipated from thin air. Blood-red monsters were nowhere to be seen, giant elementals just ceased to exist, and terrifying giants just vanished into thin air.

It's like people around the world just woke up from their worst nightmare. But the thing is, it was reality. People around the world were left devastated and without closure, and the only thing that was left were the bloody battlefield traces on the survivors hearts and minds.

[Story Quest 02: Venturing to the Portals] - Completed

[Story Quest 03: The Welcome to the World of Asterik] - Completed

[The player took the first step in conquering and exploring these mysterious portals. Now it is time to take the next step, knowing the mysterious origin of such existence.

The best way of learning the origin of things is learning about their records and history. Gain more knowledge about this world and its cryptic history.]

[Quest]

[Learn more about the history of the world] [1/1]

[Reach Level 20] [1/1]

[Reward]

[System Update]

Nicholas was startled by the notification after reading the story about the continent, the goddesses, and a war. Reading it felt surreal, so he thought that this might be an exaggerated story due to the amount of gore inside of the story, and now that the quest was suddenly completed, he felt unbelievable.

Nicholas: "???"

He didn't know what to feel. After reading this part of the book, the system cleared the first requirement about learning more about the world. More questions popped up in his mind that needed answering, but he decided to contemplate it later since he wouldn't necessarily get the answers right away.

He then opened his system panel to check the system rewards. And this time it is a system update.

Nicholas: "What kind of update will this be? New features? Better quest? Better odds in Gacha?" He thought about the different possibilities about this update. And after thinking for a while, he shook his head. It is impossible to predict what will be coming after the system update; he just hoped that he could find a way to use the useless cards that the system keeps giving him as a reward.

Nicholas decided to claim the rewards now since he didn't have much to do with the system panel itself, just quests and some gacha if he wanted.

He wanted to go to sleep, but his mind was jolted awake by the story and notification he got, so he decided to take the book to his bed and continue reading until he got tired again.

He went to sleep after an hour of reading and woke up to a notification the very next day.

[Update Complete]