Glenn tightened his tie, before traversing the Workshop hallways.
"Quick stop by the Library, then I'll go check with the Magi Brotherhood," The young man muttered, orienting himself in the labyrinth that was the Workshop's hallways. After a quick twists and turns, he arrived at his destination. He passed the threshold directly, knocking someone's shoulder on the way. He sighed through his teeth, already knowing who that someone was going to be. Why was Fate so hellbent on bullying him?
"...I swear, I'm going to rip your—" An annoyed woman's voice exploded at the young man before suddenly disappearing like a mirage. Glenn turned his head slowly, smiling contently while fueling his left hand with Mana. Milena was standing there with a face red with rage, her lips moving without any sound getting out of her throat.
"It seems like the Silence curse is working perfectly. Excellent," Glenn commented with a satisfied face, before going on his way inside the Library, ignoring the angry woman. He felt Mana surge violently from behind his back but only reacted by snapping his fingers together. A cut-down swear echoed in the room, followed by dozens of angry "shush!".
'You even used the snapping fingers? How ~cool, Glenn,' Diamanes commented inside his host's mind with the most wry tone he could use. Glenn couldn't even answer back that the entity talked again with a serious voice.
'Actually, Glenn. I think you have a talent,' He took a pause, making the young man curious despite himself, 'The talent to be the most ridiculous person to watch!' The entity exploded in a burst of mocking laughter, making Glenn think back to the finger snap. His cheeks blushed red, and the only solution he found to get back at Diamanes was to go read some damned books.
'Why do I need to embarrass myself?' He thought with shame while taking one book after the other, quickly moving past each bookshelve. He was about done when he slipped over a book, almost making the entire pile he gathered fall on the ground. He caught himself in extremis and looked back in spite at the book he tripped over. His swears remained stuck in his throat when he noticed the author's name: Exan.
He had looked through most of the Library, and could only find the three same copies of the same books: the 7th Edition of the Magiconomicon, the Bestiary, the 4th Edition of Munirp's Populations, and finally, Munirp and its Legends. He had tried hard, for sure, to find more books that Exan had written, but he never managed to. It was as if those were the only books this fellow Earthling had written, but Glenn knew it was impossible from the entries in English.
So that's why he was quite shocked, to say the least when he found by inadvertence this thin, dusty book. The young man slowly placed his pile of books on a nearby desk and came back to pick it up. He blew on the cover, making a huge cloud of dust rise in the air.
"Cough, cough, damn be the dust, cough..." After surviving this epic fight with his worst enemy, Glenn glanced at the title of the book: "Body Enhancements for Noobs, 1st Edition".
Glenn blinked, before rubbing his eyes.
"No way this guy introduced the word noob to this world, right?" He muttered while sitting down at the desk he decided to occupy. As always, there was a short entry at the beginning of the book, written in English.
"So, huh, I don't know where to begin with. My name is Exan, but before, it was Adam. Adam Darlroot. I was previously living on Earth, as you probably were. Because there is only one way you can read this, and that's if you are from Earth as well, right? Well, you also need to know English, but come on, even my French cousin could learn it, you probably did as well!"
Glenn smiled, before wondering where Exan, no, Adam, was from. He kept on reading, his eyes following the lines carefully. It probably was the longest entry to date.
"This is the first book I'm going to write, and surely not the last. I've thought a long way about how I could contact any other Earthlings from up here, and since no social media or anything similar already exists, I decided to write books! Well, it's mostly translation, since everything here is written in this shitty, old-ass language that is the Primal. Instead of looking noble, they look fucking stupid when they use it, I swear. Anyway, I'm gonna write everything in Common Tongue and spread it as much as possible. Knowledge circulates quickly in the Lower Circles, but it moves around even faster here. I don't know if this book and the ones that follow will be up for long. Shit, it's already been eighteen damned years! I had to re-learn how to walk, run, and all that shit! Fuck whoever put me in this trash body, who can't even learn Mana, and fuck my family!"
The young man leaned back, surprised by the sudden outburst. It was hard to imagine the seemingly wise and knowledgeable Exan as a raging teenager.
"...I just want to go back. Fuck... Anyway, I decided that in between Earthlings, we need to stick together! Everything in there has been overly simplified so that it passes the censor. Fuck the royals, I swear... I still hid a little something that any fellow countryman, no, Earth-man should be able to recognize on page 25. Careful, though, because if someone sees you with that, they might misunderstand, haha!"
Glenn shook his head, baffled. He read the last line, finishing this long entry.
"And hopefully, see you soon! P.S: I like Exan better as a name, so at least there is that, lol"
The young man placed the book on the desk while rubbing his temples. He took a breath slowly, before opening the book to page 25, ignoring the rest. It opened with a depiction of a human's body, the exact copy of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci. But it seemed like something was missing... There were the four arms and the four legs, so from what he remembered, that was all...
"Is that what he was talking about...?" Glenn, of course, recognized the drawing but didn't instantly find the hidden thing in the pages.
'Of course, you're not going to find it right away! It's h.i.d.d.e.n., idiot!' interjected Diamanes, disturbing Glenn's concentration. The young man didn't respond to the entity, preferring to read the contents of the pages. The Vitruvian Man was used to represent the human body and explain the workings of the Mana that flowed through each human's veins. Whether you were mages, Aura practitioners, or even normal people, everyone has Mana in their system, regardless if they like it or not.
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If one used Mana by shaping Circles, they would be able to then produce spells by consuming them. In the process, the flow of Mana in their body getting repeatedly consumed would, little by little, make it super-human. Nothing insane like with an Aura practitioner, but still enough to mark the difference between, let's say a normal athlete and a Beginner Magi/Fourth Circle.
Glenn rubbed his chin, lost in thought. 'So whatever I do, I naturally get stronger over time by just practicing my spells? Isn't that...impossible?' The young man felt as if there was something wrong with that.
'If that was true, everyone would just need to practice the same spell over and over, and even a First-Circle could become Master Chief with relatively little effort.' The young man emitted doubts about the theory before Diamanes interrupted his thoughts once again.
'Just keep on reading! It's killing me how you're taking a break each time to think! Just read, damn it!' Glenn was startled by the sudden outburst and went back to reading the whole thing.
Exan then explained that there was a cap to increasing one's strength this way, but there were solutions to overcome those caps. It was hard, but necessary, since it was a wall that anyone needed to cross to reach higher realms, be it to go from Initiate to Magi, or from Knight to Grand Chevalier.
"So there is a wall to cross...It couldn't be that easy, after all," Glenn muttered, before getting yelled at again by Diamanes, who swore unspeakable words that would be impossible to transcribe.
One of the solutions to this problem was to become an Aura practitioner, but rare were the persons who could be a Mage and an Aura practitioner at the same time without risking death.
The second solution was to enhance the body through artificial means, drugging it so that it would ignore the caps naturally placed on it, and go over its limits. The issue with that was that the body would then become unstable, risking to destroy itself and, at best, become unable to use Mana forever. At worst, you would...disappear.
Glenn dismissed this option, looking through the remaining explanations.
The last one compared the human body to a vessel, and that if Mana was the liquid filling said vessel, the only way to allow more Mana in was to either compress it or enlarge the vessel. Glenn had a strange image of him being enormous, brimming to the brink with Mana, using insane spells while being unable to move. He quickly dismissed it and kept on reading.
Both of these things couldn't be done without the other. To compress Mana and transform it into a higher quality, you need a strong vessel, or body, that can circulate that Mana. But to have a body strong enough to be able to compress Mana, you needed to have it being already reinforced with Mana!
"...Why is it so damned complicated..." Glenn despaired, trying to make sense of it all.
The solution Exan presented to this paradox, was to enchant the human body, covering it with runes that could process the Mana in smaller quantities, enhancing the body slowly but surely. It was the basic foundation for anyone trying to reach a high realm of power, and the sooner you receive this enchantment, the sooner you rank up in power.
Glenn's eyes suddenly trembled when he saw a note written in English, that seemed to have remained after impression.
"That's a given, but every child of the Court has an enchantment. Every family has their own, of course, so no idea how they look, but everyone has it, that's for sure."
The young man felt almost as if life had cheated on him. Only then did he realize that, yes, life was unfair! He also realized that this was quite important information since every very high-ranking noble should have such enchantment on their bodies. That would allow him to recognize them in the future if he ever met any. He already had his hands full with that asshole Baron, anyway.
"Well, life always has been unfair, but please tell me why wasn't I born into a noble's family, huh? I'm asking you, Onnea!" He said under his breath, scowling with annoyance. A ray of light suddenly landed in his eyes, blinding him slightly. After cursing and making Diamanes puzzled, Glenn finished the page, taking notes of whatever he found confusing or seemed to have a hidden meaning, before leaning back on his chair tiredly.
He suddenly perked himself up, slapping his forehead.
"Shit, I was there for the damned rose tattoo! Why did I stray off like that? Damned you, Exan, no, Adam, whatever!" Glenn spat out in displeasure, his movements making the book in front of him slip from the desk and land on the ground. With a disgruntled noise, the young man leaned forward to pick the book up, when he realized what was missing from the Vitruvian Man's drawing!
There was no face!
Glenn placed the book on the desk, before grabbing his head with both his hands.
"How did I not realize that...But what does that mean? A missing face?" The young man's brain began fuming as he tried to find answers, his eyes frantically running on the page. What did he remember from his art lesson... Leonardo da Vinci had drawn this because he believed that everything connects to everything else.
"Shit, I only remember the damn quote, not the fucking meaning!" Glenn almost wanted to pull at his hair, but instead took a deep breath, plunging himself into a half-meditation state. His heart rate slowed down and his thoughts cleared out, as Diamanes' occasional disturbances disappeared.
"It was about the perfect proportions, how it's mathematics and all that... Jeez..." Glenn leaned his head back on the chair, closing his eyes. The image of a past him studying textbooks lazily appeared in his mind, replaying like a short movie. The image of the Vitruvian Man was there, on one of the pages of that horrible textbook, before disappearing with a quick change of pages.
Nonetheless, this short instant had allowed Glenn to finally understand. His eyes flashed open, and he bent down on the book, trying to get as close to the drawing as possible. His eyes stuck on the faceless head, he tried to imagine what it would look like with its face on. And then, he realized that the drawing of the face, if placed in the drawing of Exan's book, would create three hidden runes, which he didn't know the meaning of! He quickly wrote down on the paper he previously stole picked up, and pushed his notes down his dimensional bag.
He looked at the book, smiling widely as his confusion disappeared like a fog clearing up. He slipped his finger under a page, ready to flip it open when a fair, white hand snatched the book away from him. He stood up in indignation, ready to fire up the most furious insults he could muster. He had already recognized the white hand; it was that wretched Milena.
'The damned witch!' 'The damned witch!' Diamanes and Glenn exclaimed inside the latter's mind in unison, both rightfully annoyed and angry at the woman.
"Hey, give me that back, you bitch!" He held out his hand, trying to grab the book back, his sight stuck on the dusty cover when he saw the book crumble on itself. As if unable to bear its weight, it bent over again and again until becoming a small square the size of his nail, which quickly burned down with a flick of Milena's fingers.
Glenn was so shocked and dumbfounded he was momentarily out of words. He met Milena's gaze, ready to hurl the most horrible words he had ever pronounced, when he recognized the look in her eyes.
Mostly confusion, but also, fear.
"You...Where did you find that book?!?" She grabbed his tie, half-pulling him toward her over the desk and half-strangling him. The flow of Mana in the room became apparent with a sudden surge of her power, and Glenn felt an intense pressure fall on him as if trying to make him bend over.
"Not this time, witch!" He barely managed to say through his teeth, releasing his Mana in opposition, pushing back the lady, and regaining control of his tie. His left hand shone with a purple hue as an otherworldly cold began to emanate from it, while his now trusty axe had appeared into his right hand.
He was not getting bullied again. But against all of his previsions, the woman simply stepped back with a blank expression, frantically passing her hands on the back of her neck, before leaving the Library.
Glenn remained there for a few seconds, brimming with power until an audible click echoed in his mind.
Like the piece of a puzzle who finally found his place. And with the most shocked voice, Glenn blurted out:
"Wait...? Oh, shit...! OH SHIT!!!"