CHAPTER 2: RECORD

Soren's eyes darted across the serene meadow. Silence prevailed all around him as the winds howled a somber melody. It had been a few minutes, but the eerie laughter he had heard had yet to return. With his back reeking of sweat, he looked back down at the opened tome in his hands and sighed.

"Could this book have something to do with this?" He remembered that the laughter had only come to him mere moments after opening it.

He cast his vision back onto the 'Status' page. Other than the mention of his supposed 'Soul Weapon' being related in some way to the ritual he had cast, he was much more curious about the only title currently under his possession. The brief description it offered for [Traveler] almost immediately confirmed his suspicions. The forest he was currently in was not a place on Earth at all. He had somehow been magically transported into a new world. A world that seemed to enjoy frightening him with creepy laughter.

He shook his head and chuckled. All around him, the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle and jasmine flowers swam happily in the air. Despite the eye-catching elegance of the forest, his heart only felt the opposite. The twisted tree lines reflected in his eyes looked more like a cage than it did a natural habitat, and the distant mushrooms emitted a fuzzy glow, which he assumed to be clouds of spores. Whether they were poisonous or not was not something he was eager to test.

If he wanted to survive in this half-sinister, half-jolly environment, he would need more than just wits. He needed a way to defend himself from the countless potential dangers lurking within this 'Enchanted Forest.' Fortunately, he already had an idea regarding this. The 'Status' page not only displayed information about his titles but also a section labeled 'Skills.' It wasn't hard for him to assume what these were as an avid player of video games.

According to the book, he currently possessed two skills, [Record] and [Eyes of the Fairy]. When he first read over their descriptions, he couldn't help being disappointed. Neither of them offered any way for him to defend himself. [Record] apparently allowed him to chronicle information—whatever that meant. As for this supposed eye ability, three words made up its entire description…

"See the unseen..." He muttered to himself. What exactly did the 'unseen' even mean? Did it allow him to see invisible things? Or could it hint at the fact that there was some sort of hidden reality that everyone was oblivious to? Either way, the only thing he could realistically think to use it for was to scout potential dangers. If there were any hidden enemies around him, this ability could somehow help in detecting them; at least that's how he assumed the ability to work. He had no way to test it.

He had tried reciting the name of the skills out loud, as well as in his own head, but neither of these methods magically worked to activate them. If what the book was displaying had any ounce of truth to it, the skills he supposedly possessed needed to have some sort of condition or rule for their activation; conditions he had no knowledge of.

He held his chin tightly, "Could me being a scribe have anything to do with it?" Scribes, as he knows them, were tasked with writing information. They were known as record-keepers in olden times.

Suddenly, a thought entered his mind. If his vocation was called 'Scribe', did that not hint at the fact that the book wanted him to be a record-keeper? His Soul Weapon itself was called 'The Records' for a reason. A faint smile littered his lips. Maybe I need to add information or knowledge to the book... This was all going by the assumption that the book itself was the Soul Weapon. Nowhere in the status page did it ever declare itself as such.

Just as he was about to think of ways to add information to the book, it suddenly began to glow. Soren's eyes widened as he stared at the status page and the rest of the tome, blanketed with golden light in absolute disbelief. The edges of the pages shimmered, as if they had been transformed into flames, yet their original shape remained the same. Even though Soren was holding the book tightly, the incorporeal flames did not burn him. He could feel warmth softly entering into his palms; it was akin to holding a cup of hot chocolate on a winter day.

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Suddenly, without a breath of wind or the touch of a hand, the pages began to turn. They fluttered softly, as if they were embraced by an unseen force. Then, without giving Soren a chance to react, they picked up speed, flipping rapidly through what looked to be numerous empty chapters. It seemed as if the entirety of the book was empty except for the first page, which held his status information. The air around the book shimmered in a subtle glow, and the soft rustling of the pages seemed to whisper to its purpose: It had acknowledged his desire to [Record] knowledge into its pages.

I see... The way to activate my skills isn't through some sort of voice command. I needed to think about what I want to use them for…

The pages continued to turn for a few more seconds before stopping. The moment the tome landed on this peculiar page, a pitch-black fountain pen magically manifested itself above the book, levitating in the air. A cloud of fog surrounded its form, only to disappear from wherever it had come from. Soren blinked a few times at this development. Is this how the [Record] skill works? I am supposed to use this pen to write down information in the book?

He hesitantly inched his hand closer and grabbed it. However, no matter how he tried, the fountain pen would not move. Even when he put all the force in his arm into the task, the pen did not budge a single bit away from its stationary, levitating position. Relaxing his grip, he rubbed his temples and frowned.

"How am I supposed to write with it if I can't even move it?" Nothing was ever straightforward with this supposed 'Soul Weapon.'

He then thought of something. If his skills needed him to think about activating them, then could the same be said with using them? According to the description, [Record] allows him to chronicle the surrounding information. If he couldn't 'chronicle' things using the pen, then maybe all he needed to do was to learn about the subject matter he wanted to [Record].

The only way to know would be to test it. Soren looked around him. The small, enclosed meadow he found himself in had nothing of importance. Other than the faint, cyan grass and the distant tree line surrounding him from all sides, there weren't any landmarks for him to investigate and report on.

Wait a second... plants! I can try to investigate the grass and those weird trees!

He quickly dropped to his knees. With a bit of force, he pulled a few weeds of grass from the ground and examined them closely. Their faint cyan color dimmed slightly the closer you looked to their roots. Their stems were a slightly brighter hue than the rest of the leaves. From what he could remember of his biology class, plants tended to have a green color to their leaves due to a chemical within their cells that was responsible for their ability to absorb sunlight. Since the grass in this forest was cyan instead, it had to mean that the chemical responsible for their pigmentation was different.

He held his chin, "Do they not need sunlight then? What do they use for energy?"

He moved the grass to his nose. The aroma it released was almost identical to that of ordinary grass. Although he knew he needed to investigate things and chronicle them as knowledge inside his 'Soul Weapon', he didn't know how exactly to do that. Therefore, the only logical conclusion he could come up with was to analyze the subject matter using his five senses and see if maybe that could work. After all, he wasn't a biology major or a botanist. He followed up with this idea by finally doing a taste test, which resulted in him gagging and spitting it back out.

Frowning deeply, he glanced over at the tome. Surprisingly, a reaction did take place. The levitating fountain pen moved on its own and began writing elegantly onto the glowing page. The strokes of ink resembled that of radiant light piercing through the parchment.

Soren's eyes widened; none of the symbols resembled any language that he was familiar with. The fountain pen was producing writing in a completely unfamiliar language. He could only describe the 'glyphs' as blocky structures reminiscent of Mandarin characters. However, the arcane energies emanating from them were unmistakable. There was an ominous sensation building within his heart the more he tried to pry into their secrets with his eyes.

Suddenly, the pen stopped and returned to its freely levitating state. Soren smiled and brushed his lengthy hair back. "It seems that it worked. The Records can only store information that I have learned or analyzed myself. But how much of this information is even truthful? I only made inferences, so would wrong information also be chronicled?