Apparently, today’s book wasn’t as disused as the last two, and this one was only a couple of minutes' walk from the reference desk. Considering yesterday’s stabbing incident, I preferred being on the main level with plenty of people around. I wasn’t sure I was even willing to go into a sub-basement alone again. It was possible that would change once I had a core and some actual abilities. For that matter, what was the distinction between magic versus an ability? I had seen them referred to in different ways throughout my reading. Were they essentially the same thing but slightly categorized differently? Another day, another pile of questions was added to the list. I would have to start a physical one at this point, or I would likely forget some of the smaller ones.
Did I really need to make a physical list if I had constant access to the System interface? Ignoring my reading for the moment, I pulled up the System Menu. “Can I create a to-do list that I can look up on the interface menu somehow?” I asked the system, unsure of how to phrase it properly.
“Yes, Dave, I will add the notes tab to your main menu. Is there anything else you need?” As the system voice returned the answer, I saw a new menu titled Notes appear at the top right of the menu overlay. As I was already deep into my reading, I decided I’d finish that first before trying to populate a to-do list.
Sitting on the table in front of me was the External Core Materials book the System had assigned as my quest, as well as several other books on rudimentary core construction. I planned to thumb through them once I finished off this book. If I was going to create my own special core, I wanted to at least know the usual way most people went about it. Stumbling around blindly seemed like a great way to get myself killed, especially considering the amount of energy that a core was capable of channeling.
Apparently, it was possible to influence the affinities of your core by using the right materials. For the most part, affinities tended to come from your own personality, but by burning through items attuned in different ways, someone could override that. To make it reliable, it required higher-grade items, mana orbs, or something called extracted cores. This was the first reference I had seen to the latter things, and the book didn’t have any description of them. Most of the book was dedicated to a series of calculations on how to lay out materials to give the best chance to create the core you wanted. It looked incredibly similar to stoichiometry. Did that mean affinities operated similarly to elements, and it was just a matter of balancing how they formed their bonds in order to get a stable reaction?
For some reason, that realization hammered home a thought that had been nagging at the periphery of my brain since we arrived on this planet. Why was all the information seemingly contained in textbooks and oral knowledge? Everyone had access to an integrated supercomputer that was somehow involved in all aspects of daily life, so why wasn’t there a collective source of information that came with it? Was there something like a Wikipedia, and I just hadn’t come across it yet? I pulled up my Notes and added the line: Ask about a resource similar to Wikipedia or something like the Internet in general.
I moved over to the quest menu and found that I had completed my reading assignment for the day. As well as something called Books, Books, Books, Internet? So my own curiosity was now triggering quests? That was interesting. I didn’t know what it meant, but it was exciting nonetheless. The reward, though, that really made me wonder what I had started down with this train of thought. All it said was, “Yes, curious, isn’t it?” along with a single point of experience.
I selected my other completed quest and was met with a pop-up that said, “Reward Delayed Until Level 10”. Wasn’t that when Elody said I would unlock my System storage? That meant I probably wasn’t able to access my physical rewards until I had that feature unlocked. I gained the usual single point of experience and returned to the quest screen to read off the new quests. There were two this time. One below the Books, Books, Books, Internet? quest: A Series of Tubes. I selected it, curious on what potential reward it had, but the description and reward sections just said had a single word in each: classified. That was different. I added it to my notes to check over later.
The other was the new entry to my reading chain of quests. I had to go find another Karlinovo book about orb socketing interlinks. And that was how I spent the rest of my day, reading book after book that showed up as a new quest after I completed the last one. I had two goals for the day: hit level two before dinner and see if I can’t get my reading comprehension back to where it had been in college. I wasn’t entirely sure if I had managed the second one, but thanks to the quest system, I knew when the first goal was approaching.
Read Karlinovo's Theories on Core Socket Interlink Read Karlinovo's Principles of Energy Novice Read Karlinovo's Principles of Energy Beginner Read Karlinovo's Principles of Energy Intermediate Read Karlinovo's Principles of Energy Proficient Read Karlinovo's Principles of Energy Expert Read Karlinovo: The History of a Troubled Mind by Gastronil Read Karlinovo: Genius or Mad Man? by Gastronil Read Revisiting Karlinovo's Theories by Gastronil Read Karlinovo's Final Experiment by Gastronil Read A Study of Souls & Cores by Doplingint
The last book, as suggested by the writer, necessitated my return to the sub-basement, but I didn’t stick around to read it down there. I quickly grabbed it and returned to the main floor to read in the comfort of a well-lit, safe space. I also planned to give it to Edoly to return once I finished it, but before that, I had more important things to check. Assuming that gave me the standard point of experience, I should have hit level two.
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Everything except the last quest had just given me an attribute point that, annoyingly, I still couldn’t use, as well as a single point of experience. The last gave me a new ability: Inner Soul Channel Awareness. The description said that if I focused on myself, I could see the channels my soul had created and how the energy pulsed across my body. I immediately understood why the System had given me that reward. It tied into everything I had read today. Cores interacted with a person’s soul, which allowed them to channel direct control over the mana orb they inserted. A core was constructed over the strongest concentration of soul energy with the socket directly on top of it, but as I learned from Karlinovo, if you wanted to add more than one socket, they had to be spread out so as not to interfere. That meant I would need to understand how and where my soul’s energy flowed through my body at any given time.
When I selected my status, I was greeted with a new pop-up.
Congratulations on reaching level 2, Dave.
You have gained 10 attribute points. Get to level 5 to distribute them.
Experience for next level 20/40
That was a little anticlimactic. While I had the level, there wasn’t anything I could actually do with it yet. Pushing for level five entered the forefront of my brain, I would have to if I wanted to further understand how the System interacted with my person. Furthermore, today’s reading had changed my thoughts from considering whether or not I should make my own special core to a debate of how to go about doing it, which meant I needed to see my attributes. One of the constant things Karlinovo had observed was that a higher will and constitution lead to better results. That said, the man had only ever successfully given a handful of people extra cores, and in his only attempt to push it beyond two, the experiment had ended in disaster.
Several of the books were written by Karlinovo’s assistant Gastronil. She had been the only survivor of the disaster, and considering an entire world had been destroyed by the attempt, I had no idea how she had managed to make it through. That wasn’t covered in any of the books I read, though I did now know the name of the event, and I supposed I could find some details on it another time: Karlinovo’s Folly. This was the biggest thing slowing me down on pursuing this path. How could I risk so many lives? Though I had no idea how to get access to the level of energy Karlinovo had used, it seemed unlikely I could replicate anything on the scale of his final attempt.
Another effect of my binge reading was that the new quest I received no longer required me to read a single specific book. Instead, it was a quest titled “New Reader,” and it just wanted me to read ten books. The reward was listed as Skill: Reading. When I read that, I naturally assumed skills were just another part of the System I hadn’t yet unlocked. The way my brain had moved to total acceptance of my new reality was fascinating and slightly out of character the more I dwelled on it. I had a feeling the System integration had some sort of calming effect on me, and I wasn’t sure how much I liked the idea of that. I knew that it was a potential reality I had to accept for now, though, and I filed it away as something to investigate later. I purposely did not make a note of it in the System itself. While it likely didn’t matter if the information existed in my brain or the System’s memory banks, I decided I would keep some things to myself, just in case.
That was a problem for future me, though. Currently, I was hungry, and had a standing dinner appointment with friends. I had good news to share and was looking forward to theirs as well. It surprised me how quickly my routine had shifted to find this new dinner important. I was sure that a therapist would say something along the lines that I was a man adrift in the ocean, clinging to anything I could to keep my head above water. That was also a problem for the future me, someone who had more free time to worry about the trauma of my new experiences. My stomach rumbled, pushing the future worries aside entirely in favor of something tasty.