As the cube filled with mana, the symbols began to glow slightly brighter and the cube continued to accept mana. Felix poured almost his entire mana pool into the cube but it kept accepting more so he started to forcefully regenerate his own mana and continued to fill it. It took him thirty four hours for the cube to finally be full which Felix estimated to be about ten times his total mana pool. This time, once it was full, something odd happened.
[E - Arcane] Skill Test Cube: Mana Control
Congra
The screen Felix expected from The System was interrupted, it appeared incomplete then disappeared completely. A heavy object suddenly fell into Felix's lap, right below the cube. Felix waited a few moments to see if The System would provide a new screen but nothing happened.
Maybe it just chose yes for me?
Felix exited his meditation and found himself starving, exhausted and soaked as, apparently it had rained at some point in the past few days. The cube was exactly as he remembered it represented in his soul space, a sleek black cube with colorful symbols he didn't have any hope of deciphering on each side. It reminded Felix of a die.
Felix looked down and saw, in his lap, a leather bound book. It was almost too thick to grip and appeared to contained at least a thousand pages. It was bound in a dark crimson leather with complicated spell forms or enchantments drawn out in white on the front. There was also a deep blue metal that covered the corners and rivetted the binding together. It was almost half a meter in height making it one of the biggest books Felix had ever seen. The book was held shut with a single leather clasp across the center of it's height.
[? - ???] ??????
??? ??? ???.
Oh lovely, how incredibly useful. On a more serious note, The System is starting to freak me out a little. It seems that the omnipotent overlord of the multiverse is glitching out or encountered a bug.
Felix visually inspected the book further but couldn't find anything resembling text. He also had no hope of figuring out the complex drawing on the front, whatever it was. Felix tentatively opened the clasp which was not a buckle like he had expected. Instead he simply pulled on the binding and it released as if it was never attached to the front of the book at all. Felix very carefully pulled the front cover open to reveal a blank page.
He examined the page with his mana senses for a few moments then was about to flip to the next page when something began to appear. At first, an inky cloud appeared like someone had spilled a bottle over the page, then it slowly moved itself to form some sort of script. At least, Felix assumed it was script as it was inside of a book, it looked more like a series of randomly placed and somewhat interconnected drawings, like a spell diagram, but not quite.
Felix just looked at it, not sure what else to do for a few minutes until the text changed again. It continued to, Felix assumed, switch languages for almost ten minutes, getting progressively faster until it simply went blank. After a few seconds, the ink cloud reappeared and slowly morphed into the shape of a book. It was a simple book with no decorations. Next to it, a drawing of the unidentifiable book Felix was currently reading appeared. The drawings moved like a cartoon and the book Felix was holding appeared to eat the other one.
I know I scanned and memorized the books in my inventory, but I feel bad having them eaten to this random book. Maybe I can go buy some books from the library or marketplace.
Felix placed the cube in his inventory then stowed the book, except nothing happened. The cube disappeared into his inventory as expected but the book simply wouldn't.
It just gets keeps getting weirder. Well I don't really want to leave this thing lying around, guess it comes with me. I probably want to hide it under my cloak at least, I don't really want people to be identifying it.
Felix spent a few minutes tying the book to his chest using his bed sheet under the cloak. With the book tied as tightly as he could, he headed down to the Vault of Secrets. The book only moved minimally when he walked, but it was still very heavy so he didn't travel at his usual pace. It did create a slight bulge under his cloak, but it was billowing enough that it wasn't overly obvious. He made sure to equip and enable his mask then headed down.
Felix headed through the forest which reminded him of a well curated park back on earth, just with denser tree-top coverage. The ground was even covered in grass with oddly not a single fallen leaf in sight. Felix rounded the building and entered through the front door heading straight to a large index book. Previously, he was simply looking for the books so he could scan them then he would put them back, he didn't need to borrow the books at all. This time, he actually read through the introduction, instead of skipping over it.
Essentially, he could borrow or buy any book he wanted from the vault. Most people were restricted from certain sections, but Felix obviously held the highest level of permission. Not that it made any difference at the moment as those sections were completely empty. To borrow or buy a book, you simply transferred the cost of buying the book to the index node. If you returned the book, the majority of the value would be refunded, contingent on the quality of the returned book. The vault could also create any number of copies of any book but the cost was high and charged to the library itself. Once they existed, the copies could be bought or borrowed. Typically the cost of copying the book was close to the cost of outright buying a copy, which made sense.
Felix chose a handful of books to produce and buy copies of starting with a number of dictionaries from a multitude of languages on earth and others that had appeared. He also bought a number of novels as examples for the structure of sentences as well as customs. The books cost anywhere from a 100 to 1000 credits each and in total, he spent 20k credits. He stowed his purchases in his inventory then headed to check on one last thing before he headed back up the tower. In the index node he flipped to the section on classes being taught and found what he was looking for. He quickly flipped through a few screens, confirming things then left The Vault of Secrets.
He headed to his room on the top floor just below the roof and pulled out the unidentifiable book. He opened it up to about the middle then placed the first dictionary from his inventory on top of it. As he placed it down however, the books didn't collide at all, the dictionary simply disappeared into the pages of the magic book.
Really glad I didn't use the books in my inventory just yet.
He continued to feed books to the book until he had run out, then waited. Nothing happened after half an hour so he simply closed it and strapped it back to his chest.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Maybe it just needs some time? What the hell do I do in the mean time? I guess I can work on designing mana channels maybe. Honestly, this book is kind of just throwing me off a little. It caused The System to bug out multiple times and The System isn't or can't translate any of the languages it contains. Honestly, I'm not sure which of those is a scarier notion.
Felix didn't have to decide as he was suddenly presented with a screen from The System.
Innate Ability
The System has identified your innate ability. Innate abilities are talents that are so unique they tend to only exist in a few people in the multiverse. Some appear in multiple people, others are completely unique to an individual. Innate abilities with no practical use or with negligible impact are typically left unidentified, this means they will not be represented on your status screen. They will however, remain a part of the individual.
Wizard
Ascendant Prodigy: Mana
You posses an unusually high capability with respect to mana as well as an usually high rate of growth. Your current capacity is unknown, the limit for your growth is unknown, the rate of your growth is unknown.
That's a lot of unknowns, and I guess it confirmed suspicions of mine, but it didn't really give me any new information. It is cool I guess. It would be even cooler if it doubled my intelligence or something like that.
Felix opened his status screen to see what had changed.
Name: Felix Kade FREE 0 Innate: Ascendant Prodigy: Mana (Wizard) STR 672 Class: [E - Common] Caster (Lvl 82) DEX 672 Race: [E - Common] Human (Lvl 87) AGI 672 Profession: [E - Special] Arcane Engineer (Lvl 92) PER 672 Health: 13425/13440 VIT 672 Mana: 2683/26880 INT 1344 Energy: 276/13440 END 672
Why the hell wasn't my level there before? It makes way more sense. Also what's with the double name thing? Is my innate called wizard or ascendant prodigy of mana? Also man I am really running on empty, I didn't feel that tired with so many things to do but now that I think about it, I think it's time I head to bed.
Felix laid down and fell asleep immediately as he clearly hadn't realized how exhausted he really was.
Felix had fallen asleep a couple hours after noon and woke up the next morning a couple hours before noon, sleeping around 20 hours. Considering he hadn't slept at all for almost four days, he slept about as long as he had expected. What he also expected, but wasn't ready for, was the immense hunger that woke him. He immediately devoured a dozen meals worth of cooked Parroukan from his inventory which satiated the pangs for the time being. He still craved food though so he decided he would go taste test some of the restaurants on the main street. He had one in particular right near the entrance that he was craving based on it's smell alone. He assumed it had a name, he just wasn't sure what it was and couldn't be bothered to check his map.
As soon as he was finished with his impromptu feast, wiped his hands on his shirt and channeled mana through to clean it, Felix felt something vibrating on his chest. He jumped back at first before he remembered that he had strapped a large unidentifiable and likely magical book to his chest. He untied the book and placed it on the bed in front of him. He carefully opened it to the first page, which was once again blank. A cloud of ink appeared and morphed into text, this time in a language Felix could read.
"Hello."
Do I write in it or do I speak to it? I don't want to write in it unless it tells me I can, guess I should ask?
Felix pulled out an enchanting quill from his inventory, his rare Parroukan feather one as he felt like the book deserved it. He held the tip of the inkless quill a few inches above the page and waited.
"Go ahead."
Felix wrote back, "Hello." Though he had no ink on his quill, the ink from within the book simply followed his tip like it was carbon paper.
"I take it you were the one who opened the cube?"
"Yes, I'm Felix."
"Hello Felix. Do you know what I am?"
"A book?"
"I see. Who helped you open the cube?"
"No one."
"Could you do me a favor, Felix?"
"Possibly?"
"Could you cast the following spell for me:" An overly complicated spell form morphed on to the next page from a cloud of ink.
"What does the spell do?" Felix asked.
"It's innocuous, I promise."
Felix had no intention of casting a spell he didn't understand from a magic book as he didn't really want to summon a demon or free an evil god or something. He examined the spell form though and realized it was really just an overly complicated light show. Every node was simply a light node with a slightly different color, there was no balancing ring around the outside and the connecting lines were very simple. Felix was confident that even if there was a hidden intention in the spell somewhere, it likely wouldn't translate when he formed it out of mana.
Felix began creating the spell in the air from mana piece by piece. While he didn't have to weave the whole thing, he did have to split it into individual parts then connect them together to construct it. When he was finished, he looked at it one last time then cast it as far away from himself as he could. He even cast a normal mana shield between himself and the spell to be certain. The spell was terribly inefficient so it did require a lot of mana, but Felix expected that. Once it was complete, the spell produced a random series of blinking lights that was sort of pretty.
He waited for a demon to appear but nothing happened. Felix shrugged and looked back to the pages of the book. All of the ink had disappeared replaced by a single line.
"Would you be willing to form a soul bond with me, Felix?"
"A what?"
"A soul bond is fairly self descriptive. For more context, our souls become bonded and we become connected. It is essentially the same thing you would do with a familiar or any soul based weapon or armor."
"Oh, I do have a skill to bond with a familiar, but why would I bond to something I know nothing about, how do I know you aren't trying to possess, kill or slowly corrupt me?"
"I would rather you not use that skill, instead let me create the bond. As for your concerns, totally valid. Best I can offer is my word."
"I don't think your word is enough for me, sorry."
"No not my word, my word. This is hard to convey, maybe conviction is better? Do you have any amount of control over your soul? or even just soul sight?"
"I think so, I've manipulated my own soul before and I can see it."
"That should be fine. I will open my soul to you as much as I can and you can read my intentions?, that's not quite right either. I'm not sure if you have a word that is a perfect translation. I'm not going to try and explain it right now, you should be able to get the picture, I hope."
"I'll give it a shot."
The book has a soul now, interesting. Worst case, if looking at it's soul is enough to harm me, I was screwed anyways. . . . . .