Chương 38: Limitless Path Chapter Thirty-Eight

Getting off the elevator, she again proceeded to lead Blood around for another five minutes, trying to find the library. It was nice to get some idea of how the structure of the floors was laid out, but she didn't really know what rooms were what, not being able to read the plaques on the walls. After some fumbling, she came to a long hallway that only had a couple doors on one side. Attempting one of these doors brought success, a soft chime sounding as the door opened to what had to be the library.

The room was somewhat large, taking up maybe a fifth of the total area of the second floor, situated at the front of the building. It was a real library, somewhat to Beth's surprise, actually containing shelves. The shelves didn't just contain books, however, but also crystals, scrolls, and strange looking cubes. The room also contained several groupings of tables and chairs, as well as several desks that had what appeared to be computers hooked up to them.

Beth began to wander around the room, Blood following along and sniffing things curiously. She soon realized she had a problem, as everything in the room was in a language she was not capable of reading. She frowned as she picked up a book with a black binding, the cover having two lines of script in a strange language in gold at the top. She opened the book and found the white pages to be full of printed black script in a small font, the language entirely foreign." Jarmak's Journey.

Not what I would pick for a first read," intoned the somewhat familiar voice of Lyrissa, causing Beth to jump and slam the book closed. She turned with a quick twist, glaring at the Vampyr while flushing slightly.

"It was not my first pick," she replied somewhat testily.

"I can't read anything in here, so I was just looking to see if I recognized the language."

"Ah, ahem, apologies," Lyrissa replied with a light cough.

"I forgot; you still only know this native tongue. Come with me," she motioned to Beth, then walked back down the row they were in and took a right. After walking past a handful of rows, she turned and led Beth and Blood down an aisle where the shelves were mainly filled with crystals. Two-thirds of the way down the aisle she stopped, picking up a crystal and passing it to Beth. Beth held it in her right hand and merely raised her eyebrow in response.

"It's a language crystal. They can imprint most of a language, including various different meanings, background on structure and evolution, and so on," seeing Beth continue to look at her with a raised eyebrow, she frowned and said grumpily, "Just try it." Beth figured she might as well and held the crystal up to her forehead. There was a brief flash in her vision and for a minute all kinds of ideas about words, phrases, terminology, speech, sentence structure, and more seemed to seep into her brain.

Once the process was finished, she felt instinctively that it would be alright to withdraw the crystal. She made to hand it back to Lyrissa, but the woman just gestured, indicating Blood. Beth raised her other eyebrow but turned and held the crystal against Blood's forehead. After a little over a minute, Blood reached up with her right paw and pushed Beth's arm back, seeming to indicate that she was done with the crystal.

"Now I'll take that back," said Lyrissa, holding out her hand. Beth passed the crystal back to her, and she put it back on a small holder on the shelf.

"Now you should be able to get through about eighty percent or so of what's in here. And most of the basics you can find on the Net."

"Eighty percent? What's the other twenty then?" Beth asked, lowering one of her two raised brows.

"Very impressive facial muscular control. I wonder if your other muscular control is as refined?" Lyrissa replied with a throaty giggle. Beth flushed in response but didn't reply, keeping up the arched eyebrow.

"To answer the question, there are a good number of random assorted works in here in languages other than Standard. We do have some crystals for them," she pre-empted the question she could see on Beth's tongue, "but not all of them. You should also rest for at least a day if not longer between learning languages, particularly at your level. It'll overstress your brain if you're not careful," she continued, wagging a finger at Beth.

"Alright, I got it. I'll look around some more. Is there some kind of sorting system here?" she asked.

"There is. There are a couple tablets at the small counter area at the front of the room that have listings of everything that's here in the general members area. The ends of the shelves have notation on them that is used to organize everything. Just come down to the front desk and ask if you have questions," Lyrissa explained.

"Alright, will do. Anything else I should be aware of?" Beth asked.

"No, not in particular. Just be careful on the Net, though I don't really think I have to give you the online safety talk, do I?" Lyrissa replied, smirking slightly.

"No, no, no. That's alright; I totally have it from here," Beth said, raising both hands and taking a step back.

"Just find me if you need anything," she replied, with a slightly playful accent on the word 'anything.'

"Don't worry Rissa, I will," Beth replied with a smirk herself, causing Lyrissa to pout before patting Beth and Blood on the head as she walked by. Beth returned to the front area of the library, making her way over to the counter. She found several of the tablets Lyrissa had mentioned sitting vertically on a stand that looked like it might be charging them. Beth grabbed one near the base and gently lifted, feeling and hearing a slight click, confirming her suspicions that the stand was a charger of some sort.

She looked at the tablet, noting how thin it was, and that it appeared to be made of a sleek black metal, polished to a glossy finish. There was basically no bezel at the left and right edges, and only a small one at the top and bottom, with three little buttons on the top left. Beth pushed the largest of these and the screen immediately came to life. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The default display of the screen was something very much like a standard menu that she was used to from her phone. With her newfound understanding of the Universal Standard Language, Beth was able to navigate this menu, selecting the option for the directory listing. A long list of items appeared on the screen, with a small menu at the top that also had a search box on the right side. Beth experimented for a moment, finding the screen responded to touch in a similar manner to her phone.

She then selected the search box and typed the name Combat and Magic Basics, in Standard, of course, and searched. The central section of the screen containing the list narrowed down to just one item, showing its location by shelf. Beth put the tablet down after memorizing the listing and strolled down to the end of the room until she found the proper aisle. Walking down the aisle, she found it was almost entirely printed books.

It really didn't look much different than a 'normal' library, the books being of all sizes and thicknesses, mixing both hardcover and paperback, as well as a few seemingly more esoteric bindings. Beth made her way down the aisle trailed by Blood and eventually found the section of shelves that should contain the book. It took a minute or so of looking up and down, scanning the whole set of floor-to-ceiling shelves before she managed to find the book.

She pulled the book out from its compatriots on the shelf, finding it to have a rather plain dark blue cover with white lettering on the spine and said cover. Having found what she needed, Beth made her way to one of the tables in the center area of the library. She set the daggers she had for Sabs down, finally freeing her left hand, and then sat at the table and went about opening the book she had selected. The book certainly wasn't a wonderful fantasy adventure, but Beth found it was surprisingly entertaining.

It broke down many of the basics, as its name implied, of the adventuring life, giving short but descriptive explanations of many things. It also included a handful of colorful anecdotes, among them one being a rather funny tale of the dangers of wanton casting of fire magic combined with the lack of foresight in preparing a spare set of pants. The book helped to fill in some gaps Beth had in her overall knowledge, including a breakdown of how beast and monster strength worked early on.

It seemed every ten levels was, essentially, a bracket of strength. On top of explaining the general strength of the brackets, there was a breakdown of experience gained in a general way. Fighting the same level or higher-level beasts became ever more rewarding as levels increased, but this was due to beasts becoming much stronger with level. Many Wayfarers that lacked the drive or the talent would spend months at higher levels grinding lower-level beasts to gain one or two levels themselves.

The book also contained a generalized explanation of coin drops from monsters. Beasts between level one and level ten would have about a ten percent chance of dropping a single copper coin. A beast between eleven and twenty would have about a fifty percent chance of a single copper. Between level twenty-one and level thirty a beast would always drop a single copper coin and no more. As to silver coins, only beasts level fifty-one and up would have a small chance of dropping one instead of several copper coins.

Based on her review of the strength of beasts, Beth had a new understanding of why so many would find difficulty in earning money, at least from slaying them. It seemed clearing dungeons could provide greater reward, as she had seen firsthand with her own rewards, but there were several problems with that. Dungeons were quite dangerous, and that was counting fighting through them as a party.

While they seemed to be fairly numerous as well, they were often located in the wilderness, surrounded both by the beasts they produced as well as various roaming wild beasts. Speaking of roaming wild beasts, it seemed that that was also a quite common occurrence, as many beasts would be spawned by concentrated ambient mana outside dungeons and begin to roam about. After reading the entire chapter and considering it, it seemed a likely explanation for the boars she had encountered.

She still would scout around to see if there was a boar dungeon or something else in the area, but it seemed likely the giant pigs were random spawns. Disappointing, but something to keep her eye out for from now on. One of the chapters almost at the end of the book that Beth found of great interest gave a basic detailing of skills. Well, at least, it went into some details of skills up until Gold rank.

Anything after that was apparently considered as more advanced materials and not included in a book just describing the basics. The most important thing the book pointed out was the limits to all skills, excepting weapon and crafting skills, in attaining a new grade early on. Ranking up to Silver required a certain amount of mana to be present in one's body for several reasons, including preventing a backlash to the user's physical body when using a higher grade of skill than Copper.

Just leveling Intelligence wouldn't overcome this limitation, as it directly involved overall mana capacity, which was much more influenced by levels, rebirths, and one's Mana Physique, assuming they had managed to construct it. Intelligence helped with mana control and output, while Wisdom helped with mana concentration and regeneration within the body.

Neither really helped very much with overall mana capacity, but were still very important in their own rights, even to Wayfarers focusing much more on what would be considered warrior-type builds. Rebirths and levels were the only ways to increase a person's overall mana capacity and density to any significant degree. This meant that climbing in strength in terms of levels and rebirths was the only way to increase mana to the point where the person could use Silver and, eventually, Gold-ranked skills.

Constructing a Mana Physique wasn't necessary to be able to upgrade skills to Gold, but Beth was able to deduce, based on the language, that it might be a requirement for Platinum-level skills. The other point of note in the skill section discussed learning skills. The subsection was a little broad and shallow, but Beth was sure she could find more in-depth information on the subject rather easily. Besides, weren't Baelvyr, Jaq, and even Tazeen supposed to be insanely strong?

They would likely know more than a thing or two about the topic. The main thing she took away from the section was that skills could be learned naturally, similarly to how she had managed to acquire the Swords skill just by killing a few enemies with a blade; or they could be learned through a variety of methods.

The way she had taught the others Regeneration based on her stronger Lordly Reconstruction was one such method, and the failure to pass on the actual skill resulted from her not having mastered it properly. The book detailed that most people would need to develop a skill to at least Gold rank, if not even higher, to be able to properly teach someone else the full version of the skill.

Skills could also be learned through a few other methods, including; memory crystals with the full formulae of the skill imprinted in them, being directly gifted to someone by the Path as a reward for several different conditions, and even developed by oneself naturally. If a skill was developed in the third way, it would fall into one of two general categories; Known Skills and Original Skills.

As Baelvyr had mentioned, there were limitless classes and skills throughout the universe, and many people would, over days and months and years of fighting, stumble upon the formulae and mana movements in the body necessary to use a skill. This random discovery would almost always be of a Known Skill, something that many others had already discovered and used. The other broad category of skills someone could learn themselves, Original Skills, was a little different.

It was almost impossible to stumble on a skill like this while fighting randomly. These skills were ones that either no one else had ever created or had not been used by anyone throughout the entire universe for centuries. Immense amounts of time and effort were typically needed to develop such a skill, though, once developed and trained sufficiently, it could be taught to others just as any of the more common skills in existence.

With how many skills there were already known about and used throughout the wider universe, discovering a brand-new skill through one's own effort was both exceedingly difficult and exceptionally rare, but did occur just often enough it was worth a quick mention in the beginner's guide. The possibilities that both mana and higher technology brought were truly endless, and one only had to deviate so far from what was standard to discover something new.

The last section of the book was something Beth skimmed briefly but did contain a single important thing that she added to her mental to-do list to ask Baelvyr or Jaq about later. It mentioned that items and natural treasures did have ranks and rarities, as well as the fact equipment could provide bonuses such as extra stat points. The big reveal to Beth was a brief excerpt about how standard Identify was, to put it bluntly, basically garbage as a skill.

Only by getting a more powerful and/or complex skill to replace it would Beth be able to see more detailed information about items. Beth was glad that upgrading her Intelligence and Wisdom did upgrade her memory and recall, as she felt like, before the change of the Integration, she would have had to take some rather copious notes on the contents of the book.

Fortunately for both her and her phone's already messy notes section, none of that would be necessary, as she retained an almost perfect recollection of such simple information.