Chanting the mantra a few times, I fell into a deep meditation. Normally, whenever I cultivate the way my mother taught me, I feel hundreds of specks of ki float around me. But while repeating this mantra, I feel a clear divide on the ki around me.
A small part of the ki starts to call me, and is directed towards me. Absorbing this earth ki, accumulating a bunch of it after some hours, I mix it with my previous mixed essence liquefied ki, turning it slowly into an earth essence ki.
After the ten hours passed I only managed to make a small part of the ki change, but if i keep this pace, in one month or two, thanks to the abundance of ki in this layer, I‘ll manage to change all my ki into earth essence ki.
Making my way towards the Array Hall, I remember Herbos' explanation on how this hall works.
This place is more of a library than a teaching hall. and on one side is a Questions Wall. A place where people can place an open letter asking for whatever question they want an answer, and anyone can just write down the answer.
Entering the first out of seven floors of this giant building, that even someone as high as me can comfortably fit in the corridors and look for books, I look at the thousands of books.
Searching in these small but normal sized books for most, for a place to start, I finally found a book titled ‘The Book of Runes - A Guide to Start Understanding Runes’, and started reading.
After reading dozens of books for hours, I start to notice that none of the books have deep information about runes and arrays.
Probably the knowledge in this first floor is limited for some reason.
Finding the stairs to the second floor, I see an extremely old man on a rocking chair, moving slowly while reading a book.
The wrinkles on his face shows his age, but the brightness in his eyes are sharper than some youths.
“Excuse me elder, can i ask you some questions?” I Say softly with a smile.
The elder takes his eyes off the book, and inspect my body. His eyes stop on my flame armor array on my knees and chest scales, taking some seconds to look at them, then continue towards my face.
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“Ask away.” He says shortly.
“I've been reading here for some hours, but couldn't find any deep books about arrays and runes, only entry level ones. Where can I find better ones?” I ask.
“This is the first floor, there's no full knowledge book here, only the resumes and entry level knowledge. For better ones you need to go to the upper floors. The higher the floor, the stronger the knowledge.” The elder explains.
“Oh great, I'll go to the second floor, then.” I say as I start walking towards the stairs.
“Ten contribution points for each hour.” Says the elder, as soon as I try to get to the stairs.
“Oh, sorry, I didn't know.” I say as I go back to looking at the elder. “How do I get these contribution points?”
“By doing chores to the sect. At the foot of the sect is a mission hall, just go there and find a mission for you.” The elder explais.
“Thank you elder. By the way, do you know where I can find more runes? I want to grow my repertoire.” I ask the elder.
“The intermediary runes are only on the third floor and above, these are a collection of some initial runes on the first floor.” Says the elder, as he makes a book fly through the library and land on his hand.
After the elder flips through its pages for a bit, he hands me the book. The title on the cover read “Compendium of Initial Runes”.
Thanking the elder, I leave him alone in his rocking chair, and find a good place to sit and start reading.
This compendium has three thousand pages, with the explanation and uses of a rune on one page, and the rune itself on the other page.
It takes me two days to finally be sure that I've memorized every rune in the book.
The book had fifteen hundred runes, expanding by several times my collection of runes.
I can't wait to go back and make some new arrays.
Getting back to my room, I use all my willpower to not sleep before taking a bath.
Making my way down the mountain the next morning, walking past hundreds of student dorms, then continuing down towards the foot of the mountain, I found a small town, with some dozen buildings and a giant main square, surrounded by stores of various kinds.
In the center of the square is a small wooden pagoda, with its exterior and interior sides filled with thousands of small papers.
Getting close and inspecting the papers, I notice that they all have instructions and a price.
“1 sect point for the poisonous gland of a Red Back Snake.”
“15 sect points for the whole body of an adult male Wooden Bear.”
Each of them is a mission. Looking around for a few minutes I found a good one.
“10 sect points for helping protect a small farm from birds for a week.”
Tearing the paper from the wall, I knock on the open wall of the pagoda, and wait for someone to come out.
The ten meters high pagoda is not enough to fit my body, so i have to wait outside.
Knocking on the door again after some seconds, I lower my head to look inside the seven meters high door, and say loudly. “Excuse me, is anyone here?”
Seated behind a counter is a black robed middle aged man. With black skin and gray clothes.
As he looks at my face, that when compared to his two meters tall body is enormous, his eyes show a look of understanding, and he exits the building.
“I did not know we had a durkan in our sect. I am the outer sect elder Mi, I presume you are here to get a mission.” Says the elder, after inspecting my body.
“Yes elder, this one.” I say as I hand him the paper.
“Okay, here is the resume of what you will need to do, and how to contact the person who posted the request.” Says the elder after giving me a small scroll with the rest of the information.