He managed to find a public toilet before leaving the temple altogether and arrived back at the library just as evening came while feeling relatively fresh and rested. He told the woman behind the desk that he wanted to do some research on magic and after a few questions from her to help narrow things down more he was sitting at table once more with a stack of books. This time he looked across his selection and decided to try and go through them in certain order. He started with the one he figured he would need to memorize the least since he was only trying to get a little out of it, more specifically he wanted to try and learn dark magic without spending skill points since he was fairly certain that it counted as a racial skill. He also briefly checked on the other types but soon closed the book and put it to the side. Realizing that learning more magic types after dark would take up more slots he decided to go ask if the librarian could find and bring him a book on how learning skills worked. He clarified that he wanted more skills than he could take and wanted to learn how to deal with it which she agreed that there were a few books that she could think of that would likely help. As she went to go find said books, he went back to his spot to continue with his original stack.

Reading up on mana manipulation turned out to be a huge help. There were several ways he could train up both his mana manipulation and meditation at the same time. It also explained a little bit about putting mana into things and although it wasn't stated outright it did seem like his main theory on why blood became harder to control with mana in it was right. Improving his mana manipulation, and especially evolving it, would make it end up working better in the way he had originally thought but it would take a while before it was at that point. There were also some points and tips on using the skill with circles, arias, signs, and magic in general. He even reread several parts to make sure he understood things as much as possible and decided to try and put as much of it into practice as he could later.

Unfortunately he couldn't find a whole lot on blood magic. The only real mention of it he found was a small passage near the end of one of the books stating that blood magic was tied with mind magic as some of the most forbidden forms of magic and he realized that is wasn't likely that he would be able to find anything about it soon. He gave a deep sigh and decided to instead go back through the books and try to learn some spells with similarly close things. He mostly checked through spells that did things with water and mud and was about halfway through one of the several spells he had decided to try out when he realized that he didn't have anything to use o copy it down for later. He quickly decided that going any further was pointless for the moment and set the book aside for later.

The books that had been placed nearby about skills turned out to be pretty worthwhile. He was mostly skimming through them to find the information he wanted but he managed to pick up a few interesting things in addition. Skills used in contention with one another, for instance, advanced quicker. Using a spell would obviously help someone get better with that magic but continuously using a spell against someone or something that has resistance to that spell type would push all of the skills involved up in levels much quicker. For some of the more masochistically minded magic users, they would even use their spells on themselves to constantly boost their magic skills and their resistance skills.

There was also some advice on how to get good side evolutions and combinations along with some lists of the more common ones. Along with all of that was also some more in-depth knowledge on what skills were and how they worked. There was one line that summed it up quite nicely for him: "Up to tier 3, skills are nothing more than simple boosts to what anyone could do naturally." In other words, anyone could technically use just about any kind of magic as long as they knew what they were doing and skills just made everything easier. When he thought about it, it actually made sense that way. Even though a lot of what that particular book had in it could have been called common sense or simple deductions, it was still nice having it spelled out for him and he considered having gone through it to have been a treasure added to his knowledge.

The last book on skills finally wrote out the main points he was looking for along with some additional knowledge that made him fix up his status window almost immediately. There were seven known tiers of skills but not all skills had all seven tiers. Tiers 1-3 were considered the basic tiers, 4-6 the advanced tiers, and 7 the ultimate tier. Advancing a tier required evolving the skill which meant bringing a skill up to its maximum level, which was usually 20, and then spending an amount of skill points equal to double its level times the tier plus 5. If a skill was denied or removed then it remained in what the book called 'the possibility pool' where its tier remained the same but its level was dropped to 0. It could be added again at any point but because of its awkward level would provide no benefits until it was level 1 once again. The status screen could be customized to show the level 0 skills available as well as the tiers of all skills. Once he finished reading that he did just as it said.

Name: -

ID(Hidden): 1095341C47-9

Sex: M

Age: 17

Lvl: 2

Exp: 6/9

SP: 2

Species: Cambion(T2)

Race: Etherai, Blood Demon

Role: N/A

Sta: 146.3/146.3

(Vig/2)

Sta Reg: 62.6/hr

(Dex/5)

Mana: 170.2/170.2

(Mag/2)

Mana Reg: 42.6/hr

(Mind/10 +50%+2%)

--- Vig Dex

Vit: 95.8

(94+2%)

Con: 104

(102+2%)

Str: 92.8

(91+2%) Fin: 101.4

(88+10+1.5+2%) Agi: 106.5

(93+10+1.5+2%) Spd: 105.5

(92+10+1.5+2%) Mnd Mag Int: 90.8

(89.1+2%) Wis: 97.9

(96+2%)

Will: 91.8

(90+2%)

For: 113.2

(95+10+5+1+2%) Pow: 111.1

(93+10+5+1+2%) Spi: 116.2

(98+10+5+1+2%) --- Class: N/A Lvl: 0 Exp: 0/0 Skills: 1. ---

Traits:

Angel Blood, Bidirectional Hearing, Blindsight(ground sense, hearing, water)(5 meters), Blood Domain, Blood Magic Affinity, Glossophobia, Bloodhound, Carnivorous, Curse Absorbent(blood), Dark Magic Affinity, Demon Blood, Dragon Blood, Endoskeleton, Farsight, Four-limbed(bipedal), Kinetic Vision, Night Vision, Nosocomephobia, Trypanophobia(minor)

Racial Skills:

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1. Blood Magic(T2) (2) 3. Detect Life(T1) (2) 2. Minor Regeneration(T2) (2) 4. Meditation(T1) (2) 5.

General Skills:

1. Identify(T1) (3) 4. 2. Magic Circle(T1) (2) 5. 3. Mana Manipulation(T1) (2) Ultimate Skills: Titles:

Abilities(Hidden):

Blood Manipulation, Draconic Might, Enduring Mana, Mana Burst, Unholy Intimidation

Potential Skills (Hidden):

The changes weren't massive but it was something that could help some day and it was better to have it and know then not. Other than the minor customizations he had just done there was something else that interested him. The slightly higher levels on his skills was nice to see but was expected, whereas the very minor boost in his intelligence score was not expected at all. He sat there and tried to think about where it had come from. It was only a 0.1 addition and barely affected anything but the big thing was that it had gone up at all. He soon came up with an idea that felt like it should be common sense and tried to work through it as slowly as possible to make sure he wasn't thinking of something stupid. In his past life where status hadn't been a thing, people got stronger by working out or smarter by learning stuff. Nobody had said that the same couldn't be applied to this life, right? So if he had been working hard recently to learn as much as he could and study then he was getting smarter and thus his intelligence score went up just a little.

If that was true then it might be an even better idea than he thought to try and work on himself and train. Of course, he didn't really want to ask anybody if that's how it worked since whether he was right or wrong he would probably look like an idiot to whoever he asked. For now he would experiment with it some more when he could and otherwise continue with his original plans. Feeling satisfied with what he had learned he decided to bring the one book he wanted to copy some spells from and see if the library could help him in any way.

It took a little discussion with the librarian and when he finally explained that the only real reason he didn't want to check out any books for now was because he didn't think he could keep them safe she finally relented and said that she would hold onto it behind the desk until noon for him. He offered her some money as thanks, which she politely declined, and headed back out to see if any stores were open this late at night. He breathed in deeply to enjoy the fresh night air and walked around the town for a while before concluding that he would have to wait until daylight hours to go to any of the stores.

Hanging his head a little he walked back out of the town and tried to find his sleeping tree again. As he walked he had a random thought. He was planning on finding the tree and doing only a little bit of practice before going to sleep so this might be the best time to give his draconic might ability a try. He was also curious if he could cancel it early and how, if he could, it would affect his cooldown punishment time. It took a little while of working at it before he finally managed to do it, which also resulted in him letting out something like a roar without meaning to, after which he tried to cancel it almost immediately. It was active for about half a second and he checked his status to see that his regeneration rates had indeed been dropped to a tenth of what they should be. He continued to look at it for a while and then decided to try and see if he could make the cooldown timer show up in that announcement bar he had at the bottom. After a little bit of messing with it and trying different ways of asking he was finally able to make it work and saw that he had about 4 hours of time left before he was recovered from using the skill. Some quick math told him that half a second was one eighth of the total time it should have been able to last for and his cooldown should have been a day so having a cooldown of a little over 3 hours matched with him using the ability for a little over half a second.

Happy that his little experiment worked but worried that someone or something might decide to investigate the source of the roaring noise, he picked up his pace and started jogging to try and find the approximate place he had been the night prior. It wasn't too much longer before he got to a spot that he thought looked about right, with the distance to the town also looking about the same as it had before. He turned off the path and walked into the trees to try and find that tree again. It didn't take nearly as long as he had planned on searching for it to find it. He silently berated himself for not prioritizing a blanket and figured he should work on his magic before climbing the tree and going to sleep. It only took about five seconds for him to realize that he didn't have any blood to work with at the moment, which temporarily depressed him. He considered just trying to go to sleep instead but right before he started climbing the tree he remembered some of the books.

He cleared away a small patch of dirt and began drawing a circle in it using a nearby stick. His goal was to try and start working towards gaining Dark Magic in his skills. He tried several times and only once did he see anything happen, which was only a slight darkening of the circle, so he took a last look at his stats to see that his mana was starting to get low and decided that he was tired enough to try and sleep. He wiped the dirt with his boot and climbed up to his sleeping branch, rearranged his backpack, settled down in as comfortable a position as he could, and closed his eyes to start meditating until he fell asleep.

He noticed that he was feeling a little more sluggish than he was used to and opened his status to see what was wrong. He felt like an idiot almost immediately. He had decided to run almost immediately after using an ability and giving himself a tenth of the regeneration rate and then had forgotten about it as soon as he had stopped looking at his status. Feeling satisfied that he had figured out what was wrong, he closed his eyes again and meditated until sleep took him.

When he woke up again he didn't feel nearly as bad as the last time. He stretched for a moment before putting his backpack on his back again and jumping down to the ground, without falling over this time. He gave his plans of the day some brief consideration and decided that he should go get some writing supplies and copy some spells down in the library before noon as well as see about getting some breakfast somewhere. He assumed but wasn't entirely sure if he could eat normal foods and figured it would be better to test now rather than later.

The way back to the town was surprisingly empty of people and it didn't take long to find a place that sold food since all he had to do was pay attention to his sense of smell. A small and simple bakery sold him a loaf of bread for his breakfast and he asked the elven resident behind the counter about where he could get writing supplies as he counted out the money for her. This was the first time he was using money so he was trying to pay attention to the general price of food while he noted the simple directions to the nearby general store. The bread cost him 14 coins, which he couldn't be sure how expensive that was, so he just made a mental note to remember it and left the bakery after a simple thanks to the elven woman and headed to the store while munching on the bread.

The good news was that the bread was edible and felt filling enough, while the bad news was that he was sure it was as delicious as it smelled but it just tasted plain and nearly tasteless to him. He assumed his trait was causing that and figured that he could consider it good news that he could at least eat some regular foods when needed. He shifted his focus to his current task and quickly entered the store, walked up to the man behind the counter, and asked for help in locating all of the items he was looking for. He needed a second shirt and pants, a blanket, a notebook or some paper, and a pencil. He was advised to go to a proper tailor for proper clothing but in the end he walked out with everything he thought he'd need for now stuffed in his backpack and 183 coins less.

A quick glance at the sky right before he entered the library told him that it should still be morning according to the sun's position. He found the same lady, much to his relief, sitting begging the counter in the library and gave her a friendly wave as a greeting to announce his return. Sure looked up and gave him a light smile as she pulled out the book she had kept under the counter for him and set it down for him to take. He gave a smile in return and bowed his head slightly in thanks before heading over to a table to start copying down the spells he wanted.

He started with the ones he thought would be most likely compatible with blood magic, focusing mostly on water magic spells, before moving over to copy down every dark magic spell in the book. He had to be very careful to copy each circle exactly as it was in the book which made it take a very long time, with each mistake having to be corrected and each spell he copied down having to be double checked and compared to what was in the book. He could only be grateful that he wasn't trying to copy all three methods of caring for each spell. It was when he had gotten about halfway through the dark magic spells that he received a notification.

Congratulations! You have gained the Drawing skill. Would you like to learn this skill? Yes/No

He paused in his copying work and thought about it for a little bit. He already knew he wanted his last racial skill to be Dark Magic and he was planning on buying some kind of status hiding skill for one of his general slots but he had assumed he would be trying to get some kind of accuracy skill for his last slot. Drawing could definitely help with learning, improving, and using magic, though, so he decided to choose yes for now and drop it later if he really needed to.

He noticed the difference as he continued his work of copying the circles over to his notebook. It wasn't a massive difference but the pencil moved more like he wanted it to and there were a markedly lesser amount of mistakes made. Unfortunately he ran out of notebook before he ran out of spells to copy but he felt content with what he had accomplished and brought the book up to the man who was now on library duty before leaving to go back near the tree he had claimed in order to spend some time practicing.