Hedonia is an institute for research, so James couldn't really go around bothering the mages to teach him stuff. They were busy theorizing, experimenting, pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

Well, all right, that was a lie. The truth is that most people at Hedonia are pretty nice and they would be happy to teach James. But he didn't like inconveniencing people and asking for favors. He was the type of guy that would rather go hungry than ask somebody for food.

That was his personality, and it wouldn't change easily. Luckily, Hedonia is also a treasure trove for people that like to teach themselves. There are hundreds of pocket dimensions serving as libraries, full of books and scrolls and anything one would need in order to expand their knowledge.

There are also many books on the Aetherweb, but physical tomes have special effects that you won’t get access to just by reading the book on an Aetherphone or tablet. Books in this world have various inscriptions, notes, enchantments from the authors that have many useful effects.

For example, sometimes spells have an accompanying enchantment that send your mind into the tome, where you can be taught by a powerful strand of mana left by the author, imbued with his consciousness.

These effects can’t even be replicated by making a copy of the book, it takes a lot of mana and effort from the author to create the enchantments.

There are many other useful effects that books have, so James's lazy bones won’t be able to just lie in his bed all day, browsing the web and learning magic without moving a muscle. He’ll have to actually go out and get books.

“Aren’t you guys busy?” Helios and Lunaris came over unexpectedly. James told them he was planning on taking advantage of his Jack of all trades passive to build a large arsenal of skills, so they offered to help.

“Nah, nobody at Hedonia is forced to work. It’s true that everybody is obsessed with researching and training, but we understand the value of leisure as well. Burning yourself out will just lead to losing out in the long term. So sometimes people don’t work and take it easy even for months at a time. Of course, I sneak in some training even when I’m relaxing.” Immediately after Helios finished talking, he started doing squats.

“Well, the threat of the Darkness is enough to keep people motivated. But researching the arcane isn’t something you can always force, relaxing and letting the mind think about other things is ironically a great way to make progress.” Lunaris said with a smile.

“All right, thanks for the help then!” James preferred going at it solo, but he couldn’t reject Helios and Lunaris, they’ve been so nice to him. And he did want to be good friends with them, so he thought he should just let go of his old way of doing things and be more outgoing. It was time for James to grow up and know when to ask for help, and to accept help when it's offered.

“I’ve been thinking of acquiring skills related to the Darkness, since I have an affinity for it.”

“Hmm. The Darkness is related to many schools of magic. Despite its corrupting influence, even things like healing are somewhat related to the Darkness. Nowadays we’ve come to accept that in order to progress our research into the arcane, we must move past our prejudices towards the Darkness. It's necessary in every school of magic. As such, we embrace a holistic approach to magic, where the Darkness is an essential part of everything. Balance is key though.” Lunaris said dutifully, but James didn’t really understand what she was getting at.

“In other words, she means that Darkness isn’t something you study in and of itself, there’s no school of magic dedicated purely to the Darkness. But every school of magic studies the Darkness in their own way.” Sensing James's befuddlement, Helios clarified while still doing squats.

“Oh, I think I get it. So there are no pure darkness spells?” James asked innocently.

Helios and Lunaris both looked at each other. Helios stopped doing squats and answered. “There are, but you must remember that the Darkness is a corrupting force. Using a bit of it in a very controlled manner can greatly enhance other schools of magic. But pure darkness is just chaos, a force that accelerates entropy to a chaotic level, leaving nothing behind but irreparable destruction.”

“This is why it’s called the Darkness.” Lunaris said in a solemn tone. “The parts of this world that have been taken over by the Darkness are literally covered in darkness, black as far as eye can see. The land, the sky, every particle is corrupted by an excess of the Darkness element. And we haven’t found a way to repair even an inch of it.”

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“Aye, that’s a way you can be of help to this world. Your half-demon soul can expand our understanding of the Darkness, which may lead to new insights that could eliminate the corruption from our world. Or so we hope, at least. There's no rush though, just focus on getting strong.” Helios flexed and then went back to doing squats cheerfully, as if he wasn’t talking about something very serious just moments ago.

“Even if you could handle using pure Darkness spells because of your half-demon soul, you must promise to never do it. Pure Darkness spells can cause irreparable corruption both to you, the target and even the land around it. It devastates anything around it.” Lunaris then smiled and patted James’ head yet again. She must have like how his bald head feels to the touch, she had been doing that a lot. "Now that you know, I'm sure you'll never use pure darkness."

“How about we pick a school of magic you like and go from there? What’s your favorite type of magic?” Lunaris asked while continuing the head patting.

“Earth magic has been very useful so far, you could even say it saved my life. But I’d like something with more potential. Is there time magic in this world, or maybe space magic? Oh, mind magic! Those sound overpowered and cool.”

“Yeah, that’s the spirit! Go big or go home, am I right?” Helios then started patting James on the shoulder. Helios liked that go-getter attitude.

James was now standing there awkwardly, being patted on his head and on his shoulder.

“Unfortunately, those schools of magic are way beyond your level for now. You haven’t even had your first awakening yet. You can’t learn them anytime soon, you need a lot more mana and a much higher intelligence stat.” Lunaris told James.

“What’s an awakening?” James hadn’t heard that term yet.

“As you level up, a lot more systems open up if you unlock their requirements. An awakening is a new system which grants some powers specific to the person. Don’t worry about it for now though, just focus on leveling up and learning skills.”

“In that case, let’s just find a good book for each major school of magic that I can learn right now!”

With Helios’ and Lunaris’ help, James had collected a dozen books. He’d have a lot of studying to do, but it was probably wiser to study for a while than to recklessly fight monsters anyway.

The three took it easy and hung out for the rest of the day. They went rat riding. Because rats were considered to be a beautiful species, flying on a rat was a beloved past-time at Hedonia.

The three of them even entered an amateur race with the rats they rented, but none of them won. You can't beat people with their own rat mount with a rented rat, that's common sense. People take pride in their rats.

But they had fun, which is all that really matters.

James was bothered by the rat smell that was left on him after riding it, but Helios and Lunaris told him it's a great honor to smell of rat, apparently they enjoy your company if they share their scent with you. His cat tattoo felt itchy though. When will that cat reveal itself anyway?

James felt pretty good. His friends showed him that life at Hedonia could be quite relaxing. Although he felt a bit guilty about relaxing while the threat of the Darkness existed, burning out wouldn't do anybody any good either. Relaxing days are a necessary part of progress after all.

After a good night’s rest, James began studying. With the help of Lunaris’ sweets and their special effects, his impatience and laziness was in check and he could actually focus on studying.

By learning from the books and a little bit of practice, he could build a broad repertoire of spells for any situation.

But Cadmus’ warning kept ringing through his head. His innate skill even had “master of none” in the name. The very name was a warning.

His innate skill really did show his true colors. He had already made this mistake, instead of being happy with earth magic and continuing down that path, he wanted to branch out and learn other stuff. This innate skill could soon turn into a double-edged sword if he wasn't careful.

But for now, a large arsenal of spells wouldn't hurt. Once he gets to experience as many spells as possible, he’ll be able to choose which ones he wants to truly master. Perhaps after this awakening thing that Lunaris mentioned.

This time, James spent a month learning from the books and practicing what he had learnt. He now had a wide range of tools to deal with any situation.

But he didn’t really have any truly powerful way of beating his enemies. Fireballs and eye gouging aren't exactly extraordinary weapons.

That’s when he had a realization. With his jack of all trades skill, he was able to learn a lot of different spells very quickly. He was too focused on how that would help him grow more powerful, while ignoring how these skills would help him get richer.

He already realized how important money would be, but he hadn’t realized that he may have a way to make a lot of money already.

He had his memories of another world too, and now he has access to so many types of magic. That’s something valuable, and when you can produce something valuable that other people want, that’s when you can rake in the money.

James decided he would spend the following days making a lot of money. Because life is just that easy, right? All it takes to become rich is to want it.

The optimist and the pessimist inside James were fighting. On one hand, he's in a magical new world full of loot to be discovered, how hard could it be to make money? On the other hand, when do things go as planned in life? If it were that easy, everybody would rich.

While Hedonia was not a utopia yet, nobody went hungry and you could receive plenty of help from the community.

But increasing your personal power costs a lot of resources, which aren't just handed out to you.

James knew he had to do something drastic, something big. The big bucks don't come by doing ordinary things.