He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it hadn't been this. When he’d managed to find the guild in question he’d been immediately impressed by the size, but had assumed the actual amount of books available would have been smaller than that of the craftsman guild given how broad the information that could be found there was.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. Three floors and a basement were almost entirely devoted to books, making this the largest library he’d seen in this world or his last. Not only that, but while he’d been asking the same questions about buying copies of the books he’d asked at the craftsman’s guild, he’d been informed that there was a selection of restricted books as well, containing forbidden information that only a select few were allowed access to.
He immediately wanted to see if revealing himself as the queen's future son-in-law was enough to get him said access before he decided better of it. No need to do anything that might cause him problems farther in the future and there was already more than enough to keep himself occupied, with sections conveniently divided by their type of magic, and a non-magic section as well where he went first.
The mages guild seemed to be devoted to not just magic, but tangentially related scholarly pursuits as well, meaning books on both skills and jobs. Flipping through books on the latter first, he was able to confirm there was no information available on the kin job, but strangely enough also nothing to be found for heretic either. He could only assume that that one was being specifically hidden, presumably because both gods and the average mortal wouldn’t want someone taking it, but the fact he couldn’t learn more was a bother. It was a shame since Myriad hadn’t let him know anything about it beyond the fact that it would help raise his sacrilege level, but it was still far from a priority job-wise.
As for skills, information became harder to acquire as well, at least for the ones he was curious about reading up on. Once again there was no information for sacrilege, presumably for the same reason there was nothing for heretic, but both complex mind and absorption resistance were only in books that covered rare skills, meaning there was little information on them aside from the obvious.
At least for the newer of the two, it looked like he was able to get something beyond what the name implied. It seemed that each level of it would make it five percent harder for his mana or vitality to be drained, meaning he could just do a little math to figure out how to remake his ring instead of needing to worry about trial and error.
Once that bit of curiosity was out of the way he moved on to magics. While his god was doing his best to educate him on the way his people approached the subject and he was able to learn the more standard approach from the people in his life and the few books in the adventurers guild archives, he still felt he was lacking on the subject and was eager to fill that knowledge the best he could.
He moved from shelf to shelf of the affinitied magics as the hours slowly passed, recording the names of books that went over the broadest of spells to those that covered a far more unique approach to using a given affinity, as well as books that discussed specialized forms of a given magic such as prophecy or purification before moving onto ones that looked at combined magics like decay or explosion magic.
For good measure, he made sure to pick up books discussing the awakened version of each affinity, as well as one on soul magic to satisfy his curiosity on the topic. While he would have happily grabbed books on the other tier three magics as well he ran into the problem that there weren’t any. He couldn’t be sure if it was due to them being hidden or simply the fact that there hadn’t been nearly as many tier three mages for the other affinities compared to soul magic, but whatever the case he simply moved on to the non-affinitied shelves.
It was there he got his best surprise of the day. More enchanting books, some of which he hadn’t seen in the craftsman guild. He knew that it was technically considered a magic, but he hadn’t considered the fact he might find anything on it there. In his mind he always considered it to be a tool to enhance items, but there were surely plenty of enchanters that considered themselves mages first and would submit their research to this guild over the other one, meaning he had even more books to dive into.
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By the time he had his list the guild was preparing to close down as he put in his order for books. Even more than at the craftsman’s guild, he found close to four hundred he wanted to bring back with him. It wasn’t like he expected to read them all cover to cover any time soon, but they would be helpful as references should he ever need them.
Really though, I really should try and pick up the speed reading skill. My speed is already pretty fast thanks to my other mind skills, but I’m sure it would synergize real well. Of course, maybe I should hold off until I get the fractured mind user job for the experience, I guess it will all depend on what options are available after I complete my current one.
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Once he got back for the day Ben went to meet with the barrier master Furela to get the sixth level of the skill placed on a ring for him to make use of before making his way to the dining room to eat with everyone and discuss the events of the day. It seemed that Thera had indeed successfully made up with Lux, easing everyone's minds in the process and leaving them in good cheer.
While Abrus was still gone, out dealing with the other great spirits who’d had the nerve to say something like that within earshot of his daughter, that fact was glossed over as they all instead focused on what would come next for their time there, and before long they went to bed, with Ben following his friend to update the enchantment on her brace.
He could tell that both she and her mother were nervous about it. While as it currently stood, a person would only need to have a resistance of thirteen to handle her charm at a distance and twenty-three on contact, that was still a long way from ensuring she would be safe for an average person to be around, meaning that if the results were worse than expected after this than he’d need to find at least one new skill to attempt it on.
It’s going to be fine. I’ll be able to work with the fifth level of all three skills, meaning I have eighteen levels total to apply. So long as four levels really does translate to removing a single point of resistance then I’ll be able to get four points off, plus whatever dark resistance enhancement might be able to contribute. It will work.
Having finished pumping himself up he got to it, removing the old enchantment and creating a delicate weave of the new one, combining the full power of his dark resistance with the magic resistances so tightly bound to the skills he was using.
He knew that even if he succeeded it still wouldn’t be enough to get it to zero, but this was the most progress he could make now that he couldn’t increase the power of his resistances any more than where he was currently at, and as long as the queen was able to one day find people with skills at the ninth level for him and he continued to level up both his enchanting and connect, then the end of Thera’s charm was in sight.
The time passed as he pushed not just his enchanting and connect, but also his mind skills to ensure everything was perfect, quadruple checking his work as he went, and after a few short hours he was done.
“All finished?” Thera asked sleepily, alerting him to the fact that she was awake.
“Just did, sorry, did I wake you?”
“No, I think I was just feeling excited for how it turned out.”
“Well give me a few minutes and I’ll check.”
He quickly ran out to grab the passometer he’d packed, setting it up to check the range and feeling a grin spread on his face as he came back.
She knew it would be good news from his expression, but he handed it to her to get the final result before telling her.
“On contact, it’s down to needing a resistance of nineteen, and at a distance it’s nine.”
She almost thought she’d misheard him, but the happy look on his face wiped the thought from her mind. In just a year and a half, Ben had taken her charm from being something potentially devastating to every race on the planet to a level where not only her own people, but every dark affinitied race would be able to handle without issue so long as they didn’t touch her, and as he happily squeezed her hand, feeling overjoyed to have made so much progress she couldn’t ignore her heart pounding in excitement.