Ch. 7.0

-Part 1-

Due to the nature of your race you have inherited the power and wisdom along with tireless strength a common trait among dragons.

-So this is why my base stats are so high. Wow, I expected some benefits for being part dragon but nothing like this!

A smile started to form which soon broke out into laughter.

Just a few levels below the library the library clerk/librarian looked up from his work when he heard the sudden outburst of laughter. His librarian instincts kicked in urging him to go tell the stranger to be quiet, but as he remembered the intimidating eyes that the stranger had he shuddered and sat back down while continuing his work hoping that the laughter would stop.

As the laughter subsided Alexander went back to the books not wanting to waste precious time. With his Bookworm skill he read books after books, while at the same time recording any information he found useful and he also kept a mental note of any information he found to be interesting.

Many books later he raised his Bookworm skill to beginner level 5. He ignored the message and the occasional notice that his intelligence had went up. Thanks to the modified capsule he didn’t have to log out of the game and thanks to his endless stamina, a gift from his dragon race he could continue to read without being fatigued. However, he still had to take care of a pressing issue like every other player. With a growl from his stomach he noticed that his satiety bar was falling dangerously low.

“Inventory Window”

A screen popped up displaying one canteen filled with water and 10 pieces of rye bread.

After taking out the canteen and one piece of rye bread he slowly took his time letting the small bites he took out of the rock hard bread to soften up with his saliva. After eating his satiety bar went up and he no longer felt hungry.

That experience reminded Alexander to check the status of his satiety bar from then on. He didn’t want to find out what would happen if he let it run empty. After putting the canteen back in his inventory he closed the screen and begins to continue reading what seems to be an endless amount of books. Two straight weeks passed by in game and Alexander during that time from dawn to dusk to dawn again and to dusk again kept reading and reading till the point that there was no book on the shelves in every level of the library. Seeing that he had finished it was time for him to move on.

The library clerk was deeply engrossed in the book he was reading when he heard a voice.

“Hey, thanks again for letting me read here. There were a lot of interesting books but since I finished them all I’ll be leaving now.”

As the stranger exited the library the librarian not believing what he had just heard quickly went up the stairs only to have his jaws drop at the site.

Mountains of books could be seen everywhere. There was virtually no spot left free. Quickly running up the flight of stairs to the next level the librarian’s face paled at what he saw. At every level of the library the librarians face got paler and paler until he got onto the 4th level. At that point he simply fell to the ground on his knees and started to cry since every level was in the same mess as the first.

Later that day many noobs started to flock to the library. There was a rumor of a new quest for beginners with a decent amount of pay. The new quest looked like this.

-Restore the Library to its Former Glories-

Due to an untidy librarian all the books

Need to be organized.

Unfortunately for the librarian because there were too many books to organize many of the players gave up on the quest. Because the library was not organized in time the reputation of the librarian plummeted and he was soon replaced by another librarian.

And so the former librarian went off to look for work and somehow ended up in a pastry shop.

That however is another story for another time.

As Alexander exited the library heading to his next destination, oblivious to the librarian’s fate a shadow emerged from behind one of the many mountains of books. The shadow took the shape of a person. The shadow let out a small chuckle as it looked out from the windows of the library, watching with amusement at Alexander running off into the distance.

As he ran Alexander decided to cast one of the many spells he read about.

It was a simple spell that could increase the movement speed of its target.

However no matter how many times he spoke the incantations the spell wouldn’t activate.

Since his character already had a high agility stat Alexander waved the issue aside promising to himself to look into the matter later.

Soon with the help of the map he took a screen shot of when he first started he arrived at his next destination.

The Training Halls.

Alexander stood in front of the huge facility admiring the rows of scarecrows just waiting to receive a beating. With a grin he thought to himself

-Reading and learning new things is always useful and at times fun, but come on I’m a soldier. Spending all that time not moving is giving me an itch.

With that thought in mind he quickly took off running straight past the Instructor of the training hall.

Glaring fiercely at the approaching figure the instructor started to say something to me.

“Young adventure, I presu-”

However I just ran passed him straight towards the pile of wooden weapons.

“Well good day to you to! Hmph.”

After grabbing a wooden sword to my liking I quickly went to the furthest end and proceeded to attacking the scarecrow. After a few warm up strikes I decided to practice a few things I read about. Taking a stance that I saw illustrated in some of the many books about swordsmanship I read(since the army didn't train us in how to use a sword) I performed a series of quick attacks letting the momentum of the previous attack carry onto the next attack making each blow stronger than the last.

Pow-pow-pow-Slash-Slash-pow-stab-pow-pow-slash-pow-slash-pow!

So absorbed into the task at hand Alexander continued to rain blows after blows on the scarecrow that soon started to bend with each and every strike.

After sometime a few windows popped up but Alexander waved them aside as he was enjoying the feeling of swinging a sword after being cooped up in the library for two weeks straight.

After letting loose another salvo of quick strikes, Alexander started experimenting based on what he learned from the books. He soon started matching his swings to the momentum of his body and the movement of his legs which gave the swings more force with less effort. Spinning his body, ducking his head he continued to attack the scarecrow with an imagination of fighting a monster!

The monster in his head was quick and it took everything he had to simply land in a few glancing blows. As time passed by the wooden sword became a blur as each attack flowed smoothly into the next. It was as if the wooden blade had suddenly come to life on its own!

Little did Alexander knew that he was using his Bookworm skill subconsciously as it had become a habit for him to activate the skill during the whole two weeks he spent at the library!

If he did check the pop up window he would have found out that he had uncovered a new effect of Bookworm. The new effect activated when he started incorporating the sword pattern and sword skills theories he read into use!

However it wasn’t just the Bookworm skill that elevated Alexander’s swordsmanship. It was the fact that he was a natural when it came to using melee weapons and it was noted several times from the military evaluators when he had to practice armed combat during the training camp. The combination of his innate natural abilities and the effects of the Bookworm skill evolved Alexander’s swordsmanship by leaps and bounds!

As Alexander kept attacking the poor scarecrow his wooden sword finally broke, unable to withstand the enormous force that kept increasing with each attack.

Fortunately for the scarecrow his stomach rumbled at that moment. If it hadn’t he would of simply proceeded to grabbing another wooden sword and starting all over again since due to his Dragon Stamina he felt no need to rest.

As he turned around ready to leave and find a spot to eat he stopped at the site in front of him.

“What? Why are there so many people?”

When he first arrived the training hall was virtually empty but now it was filled with hundreds of players. However what shocked him was why all these players simply stood there looking at him and not waving a sword around.

“Bro, did you see that?”

“Dude that was so unreal man. His skills are epic!”

“See? See? I told you he was a hottie. With those pointed ears he’s got to be an elf right?”

“Is that a skill? I’ve never seen anything like it. The attacks were just too fast!”

“Omg that elf guy, he’s so cute!”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Whoa it’s like I was watching a movie!”

“He seems really strong”

“But isn’t he wearing a beginner outfit?”

“Hey why don’t we invite him?”

…

From that one question a deep silence filled the area.

Not liking the hungry stares and the awkward silence after that statement he quickly acted. After regaining his composure Alexander looked up at the crowd again giving them a smile which made the girls look even more ahem* scarier since they were sizing him up as if he was dinner.

He then slowly held up his broken swords for the crowd to see. The crowd being curious stared intently at the broken sword and as his arms slowly went up and tossed the broken swords high into the air as if by instinct the crowds’ eyes followed the broken sword up into the air. When they finally looked back the swordsman was long gone.

Part 2

Today we find our protagonist wearing a hooded cloak entering a pastry shop.

Why is he wearing a hooded cloak you may ask?

Oh no reason really it’s just that he’s hiding from every player in the entire city trying to search for the beginner elf who is rumored to be an expert swordsman.

The players had mistaken our dear protagonist for an elf because the only distinctive features he had were his eyes and pointed ears. Oh and I also failed to mention previously about the fact that he is also a bishie (pretty boy) in real life. He doesn’t know it himself since he spent his entire life in the military but I’ll mention that detail if I ever do get around to making a background for him. Ahem* getting back to the story.

Due to these rumors of an elf master swordsman who also happens to be a bishie the entire city was in an uproar as players searched and chase our poor protagonist that didn’t want all this unnecessary attention.

Some players wanted to meet him because of his rumored swordsmanship and the rest (mostly female players) wanted to confirm whether this elf was truly a bishie as the rumor claimed.

As the doors swung open a little bell chimed as a way of stating that a customer has arrived.

Hearing the chime a man wearing thick glasses quickly stood up, placing the book he was just reading down on the counter.

“Welcome dear customer, what can I get for you today—oh. It’s you.”

Taking off his hooded cloak our protagonist walked towards the former librarian.

“Hey Al it’s nice to see you too.”

Alexander walked past the former librarian into the back.

However, our dear protagonist didn’t really pay any attention to the former librarian so it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t recognize him.

As Alexander walked by he noticed that his coworker always seemed to have a grumpy look on his face as he sat back down to read his book.

There the store’s owner who simply went by Boss was preparing a new batch of pastries. Boss was actually the older brother of Allen or Al and when he got fired as a librarian he came to his older brother looking for a job. Without looking up from his work Boss he instructed Alexander to go out to the back. Behind the pastry store was a small yard surrounded by tall brick walls. There Alexander quickly chopped up fire wood that would be needed for the oven.

*Chop-chop-chop-chop!*

It wasn’t long before he chopped up enough firewood. After placing the stack of firewood next to oven with his work done for now Alexander quickly took out his wooden sword to attack the makeshift wooden dummy in the backyard. He didn’t know why Boss had a wooden training dummy but he was glad to have a private place to train for the training hall was a no go for him.

There were players constantly patrolling the training halls in search of him for they all wanted him to join either their parties or recruit him into their guilds that would soon be established later on.

A series of slash and jabs later Alexander was soon lost in his thoughts as he continued practicing.

-It’s been two weeks since I started working here. It was a good thing that I stole found this hooded cloak. And thanks to Boss I also learned the cooking skill and best of all I have my own private place to train.

What actually happened was that at some point Alexander managed to lose most of his pursuers. There was one player still chasing him so he quickly took him out and mugged kindly asked to borrow his hooded cloak and taking the silence as a yes he quickly took the item and disguised himself. After all that running his satiety bar dropped again and with no rye breads left to eat he wandered the streets following the smell of delicious foods, and this is how Alexander found the pastry shop where by pure coincidence the former librarian was working at.

Boss had hired his younger brother simply because they were family. However being a former librarian the younger brother was ahem* not suited towards physical work. So that was how Alexander was offered a job and after a long discussion they agreed that he will work without payment as long as he could eat some food and learn how to cook. When he went to the back and saw the wooden training dummy he also included free use of the dummy into the agreement.

-Whack-whack-slash-whack-whack-slash-

I continued my self-training exercise but my swings were half-hearted because something was really bothering me at that moment. The reason was because after some time Boss came outside to the backyard and while leaning on the wall next to the entrance he continued to watch me, intently staring at me swinging my sword for over 3 hours…

Normally I wouldn’t be bothered by having someone watching me train. But since Boss never bothered speaking to me unless it was necessary I was nervous at having him stare at me for 3 straight hours.

Without any warning Boss suddenly got off the wall he was leaning against and started to slowly walk towards me.

I stopped in mid-swing and watched him approach with my sword held in front of me. Just as I was about to swing my sword at him since he was getting uncomfortably closer I stopped myself when he reached into his pocket and took out an envelope. He gave the envelope to me, gesturing for me to open it since I just stood there and looked at him confused.

Opening the envelope inside was a folded letter that I took out and read.

Dear Alexander,

This letter will be presented to you after my former student deems that you have finally completed the basic training program. Do not be surprised for how I know your name or how this letter found you. I simply sent a letter to all my former students asking if they’ve seen an elf with superb swordsmanship. Imagine my surprise when I finally got word about you only to find that you were working at a pastry shop owned by one of my previous student! But I felt proud knowing you were devoted to the way of the sword since you continued to practice on your own. Congratulations on making it this far but never stop training for there are many more training programs out there. If you wish to become a proper warrior I will gladly recommend you to training in order to become a knight! Instead of a housewife spending the rest of their days standing in front of an oven! Ahem* no disrespect towards my former student if you happen to also be reading this.

Sincerely, Instructor Lancer

As I looked up after finishing my letter I heard two words from Boss.

“Your fired.”

“…What?”

“Like I said Your Fired.”

“I know what you said I want a damn explanation!”

“Look kid you work hard but you eat too much and you used too much of my ingredients for cooking and now I’m running low on supplies. Plus you shouldn’t waste your time being just a housewife. Your fired, get lost kid.”

Still in shock at how suddenly I lost my job over something that wasn't even my fault it took me a while after Boss booted me out of his shop before I started cursing and shouting profanities at him. This unfortunately attracted the attention of some nearby players who were still obsessed with trying to find me. Quickly equipping my hooded cloak I prepared to run.

However, just before Alexander took off he couldn’t help but notice that through the front of the pastry shop’s glass wall the face of the grumpy sales clerk with thick glasses was showing him the biggest, happiest smile he had ever seen.

Decided to not place any stat or skill charts since doing it every chapter is just well exhausting

Hope you liked it and I'm also hoping I don't have a bad sense of humor as I was trying to incorporate some comedy.

I would also like to give special thanks to fazwick for showing me how to strikethrough words. Which I've seen in the Necromance by Halosty ff (another good read)

Thanks for reading! {[999abo}]