After spending a bit of time trying to get used to reading the enchanting book Villin put it down dejectedly and decided to have a quick look at the other books of the optional classes since he had to remember those too.
The second book he decided to check out was the one about pill-refining, he had to remember this book up to the nineteenth page. When he quickly looked over it Villin was positively surprised. Compared to the hidden meanings in the enchanting book, this one was surprisingly easy. The first fifteen pages had pictures in them of certain ingredients with the properties of each ingredient underneath. The sixteenth to the nineteenth page was filled with information about pill refining itself and how to take care of your cauldron. Overall it was pretty basic since remembering things such as ingredients’ properties was the easiest for him to do.
The final book he had to check was the one about magic arrays. The writing style of this book was very, very different from the other books as it soon became clear.
“Welcome to this humble Magus’ book about the art of creating magic arrays. Personally, I must admit I was against letting this be a course before the third year but alas, I still bring you this book.
Similar to enchanting at its core creating magic arrays is simply arranging runes and symbols in very specific locations to get the desired effects. The very school you should be sitting in has a massive magic array around it so powerful no one has been able to determine the school’s true location thus far.
I hope I shall be able to enlighten you all and allow a few of you to properly walk the path of a magic array creator.
Best Regards,
Piercevald
Magic Array Grandmaster”
This intro immediately captured Villin’s interest. Some of the books he had read thus far mentioned grandmasters. They existed for all three of the middle continent’s specialties. Enchanting, pill-making, and magic arrays and they held statuses above nearly all others.
When he flipped the first page he still felt rather calm. When he flipped the tenth page he was reading frantically and when he arrived at the twenty-sixth page his mouth was agape as he was staring at the book in wonder.
This book truly showed what a masterpiece was. It didn’t just explain what runes and order was required to make a magic array. Instead, it directly explained the theory between every line that had to be drawn. Whether it was to be used to gather magic, disperse it, bind the runes together, or anything else. When he was done with the required pages only two runes had been made while a basic magic array consisted of about a hundred runes and a few symbols.
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This didn’t just help with creating a magic array. If one understood everything within this book it would give them a massive advantage if they wanted to create their own magic arrays. Hell, it even helped in a major way with rune magic and enchanting.
The book was also clearly the biggest, being twice as big as the second-largest book which was the ‘magic history’ one and sported over a thousand pages in total.
After thinking about the contents of the book he had just read for a while he noticed a lot of time had already passed. Usually reading thirty or so pages would be done in no-time but now he noticed he had already been reading it for three hours, trying to comprehend everything he read at once.
He truly felt as if he had heavily underestimated this school. The enchanting book had secret meanings behind each word while the magic array book explained every stroke and the reason for each of them.
It was now that he realized it truly wasn’t normal. Either the group truly wasn’t supposed to finish the pages that had been stated in the two books properly or they weren’t supposed to come to the first few lessons. After all, he still remembered he got great comprehension and even the kind teacher earlier called him bright. There was no way that the other kids would be able to understand every of the mentioned strokes within five days or get the hidden meaning behind all the words on the enchanting book.
Right now it was about four o’clock and so he decided to go out and explore the school a bit. He went ahead and grabbed the map that was laying in his chest and looked at it. Other than the dormitories the entire first-grade wing was on the same floor. It was absolutely massive, and when he looked at the part showing the dormitories he realized how truly lucky he was. In total there were about eight-hundred people in class B. These would obviously be split up into groups to learn but the dormitories were all in the same hallway. He got lucky and got the thirteenth room but there were others that were in room eight-hundred. That meant they would have to walk three kilometers in the boring hallway in order to leave the dormitories.
He couldn’t help but feel bad for those people as he left the dormitories. There were a few locations he had to visit. After all, this was the place he would spend the following year, it was best if he knew the place at least a little.
His first location was the library, on the map there was a small blue shard next to its name but Villin wasn’t clear what that meant so he simply decided to go ahead and give it a visit.
The library was truly grand. From the entrance, Villin could see massive bookcases over twenty meters tall with moveable ladders so one could reach the books they wanted. From where he stood he could tell there were at least a dozen of these bookcases. As soon as he walked in he got approached by a contracted with a grey robe, showing the person was at least of some importance and weren’t treated as slaves.
“Hello sir, I haven’t seen you before. If you are new I should let you know that each hour in the library costs ten units of magic crystals. If you are unsure of the value of a certain magic crystal I can inform you.”
The man spoke politely and steadily as he looked Villin in the eye. His voice was clear and nice to listen to so Villin responded by taking out one of the fingernail-sized crystals and asked for its value.
“This magic crystal consists of ten point five units.” The man said simply with a smile.
Villin simply thanked him and went back to the hall. At least now he knew he had about thirty magic crystals on him. He also knew that its value wasn’t very high as he would only be able to go to the library for three hours using that.