After receiving his new quests, Matt ran to work. While he was heading there, he realized something.

'I'm already halfway there, and it's only been a couple of minutes. I kinda forgot about my new speed. At this rate, I'm gonna be early.'

He remembered since yesterday he even got another agility point. So he was a little faster.

'I still can't get over how cool this system is.'

He arrived at the bookstore in only a few short minutes to see his boss wasn't waiting for him. He looked at the time.

[7:38 AM]

'Yeah, I'm way too early. I don't even know if she's here yet.'

He decided he might as well knock. After he did, he heard a noise from inside and his boss opened the door.

"Matt? You're earlier than yesterday?"

They both headed inside and she asked him to do the usual around the bookstore. After she left him on his own, he quickly went through the tasks, but something caught his attention.

'There are a few tasks she asked me to do that I haven't done before, but no quest showed up?'

She had asked him to organize the foreign languages section, which was something he had definitely never done before.

'The system did mention quests would be harder. I guess it won't activate anymore for small things.'

He felt like that was a good explanation, but he thought it could be good to ask [Help] later if he felt like it, but he didn't really care. After finishing everything the store owner had asked him to do, he decided it was time to try something.

'I should try to grab some books for my mind palace. I'll start with the one I didn't finish the other day.'

He headed over to the theoretical physics section and looked for the book from before. In a few seconds, he found it where he had left it.

[3 Controversial Quantum Theories]

He opened it up and wanted to test his theory from earlier. Instead of reading it, he just looked at each page briefly and then moved to the next.

He closed the book after a couple of minutes, having roughly scanned every page.

'Ok, now for the second part!'

He activated his mind palace skill and he was instantly transported to the grassy field where his home away from home was.

'Ok, where is that book?'

He went into the house and grabbed the book from the table, flipping to the last pages.

'It worked!?'

All of the pages were comprehensible. It didn't really make sense to him, since he didn't actually read them, he just looked at the page.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

'I guess all the words were in my view when I saw a page, but this is just OP!'

He realized this would be perfect for saving books to read later. It also helped that no time passed in his mental space, so he would have all the time in the world to read them.

'Can I even remember that many books? I guess if my intelligence keeps increasing, I'll probably be able to keep up.'

He put down the book and left his mental space. Looking around, he noticed there were way too many books. Just this section alone had probably hundreds.

'I guess I can just do it slowly. But I have to start somewhere.'

He picked up the next theoretical physics book and scanned the pages. He was a little faster this time as he got the hang of just making sure he saw the page, but not reading anything.

He closed the book, this time finishing saving it to his mind palace in only 2 minutes.

'Ok, not too bad, though this was a kinda short one. I guess I'll do this for a while?'

He realized he should get a few different subjects as well, so he went around the bookstore saving books into his mind. He saved a few science ones, like biology, physics, math, etc.

He then moved onto languages and saved one for about a dozen languages. After that, he went around randomly and saved any that he thought could be useful.

[Wilderness Survival for Idiots]

[Important Wars: A History]

[Political Impacts on Environmental Awareness]

He did this repeatedly until he had saved a decent amount of books into his mind palace. He felt a little bad, because he realized he could've bought the books, and it would support his boss.

But he didn't have the money anyway, so he tried to reassure himself that it didn't matter either way. It also wasn't stealing, he was just memorizing them basically and from the outside, it just looked like he was skimming or not reading it at all.

'Sorry boss, it's just so I can get stronger. I promise I'll pay you back later.'

He made a mental note that if he ever had money, he would buy some books from this place so that his conscience would be satisfied.

He noticed that even though he had gone through a ton of books, he never got a stat increase, but he knew it was because he wasn't actually reading them.

'Ok, that should be enough. I'll read them later since I'm a bit tired of seeing books right now.'

He told his boss that he was done and prepared to leave. As he left the bookstore, it was time to decide what he should do today.

'I have a bunch of new quests, but a lot of them are hard. Still, I think there are a few I could do.'

He pulled up the quest menu again so he could judge his options.

__________

||General||

Pay the rent [$223/800] [Reward: +Mystery Reward, +30xp]

Reach LVL 5 [2/5] [Reward: +10 Unassigned Stat Points, +1 Artifact]

Make a stranger believe you are a celebrity [Reward: Stat Unlock, +30xp]

Climb to the top of a tree [Reward: +1 STR, +1 AGI, +20xp]

Compete in an event and win [Reward: +1 All Stats, +75xp]

Intense Training: Do 100 Pushups, 100 Sit Ups, 100 Squats, and a 10 Mile Run [Timed] [0/100, 0/100, 0/100, 0/10] [Reward: +3 STR, +3 AGI, +50xp]

__________

'Honestly, the tree one might not be bad. But what kind of quest is that? Climb a tree?'

He sighed. It seemed kinda stupid, but it was probably the easiest one, besides the one where he needed to make something think he was a celebrity. But he was procrastinating that one because it would honestly be super embarrassing.

'Well, I guess I'll just go with the tree then.'

He decided on the quest and started looking around for a tree. But all he saw was concrete since he was in a city…