CH189

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this. When he’d managed to find the guild in question he’d been immediately impressed by the size, but had assumed the actual amount of books available would have been smaller than that of the craftsman guild given how broad the information that could be found there was.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. Three floors and a basement were almost entirely devoted to books, making this the largest library he’d seen in this world or his last. Not only that, but while he’d been asking the same questions about buying copies of the books he’d asked at the craftsman’s guild, he’d been informed that there was a selection of restricted books as well, containing forbidden information that only a select few were allowed access to.

He immediately wanted to see if revealing himself as the queen’s future son-in-law was enough to get him said access before he decided better of it. No need to do anything that might cause him problems farther in the future and there was already more than enough to keep himself occupied, with sections conveniently divided by their type of magic, and a non-magic section as well where he went first.

The mages guild seemed to be devoted to not just magic, but tangentially related scholarly pursuits as well, meaning books on both skills and jobs. Flipping through books on the latter first, he was able to confirm there was no information available on the kin job, but strangely enough also nothing to be found for heretic either. He could only assume that that one was being specifically hidden, presumably because both gods and the average mortal wouldn’t want someone taking it, but the fact he couldn’t learn more was a bother. It was a shame since Myriad hadn’t let him know anything about it beyond the fact that it would help raise his sacrilege level, but it was still far from a priority job-wise.

As for skills, information became harder to acquire as well, at least for the ones he was curious about reading up on. Once again there was no information for sacrilege, presumably for the same reason there was nothing for heretic, but both complex mind and absorption resistance were only in books that covered rare skills, meaning there was little information on them aside from the obvious.

At least for the newer of the two, it looked like he was able to get something beyond what the name implied. It seemed that each level of it would make it five percent harder for his mana or vitality to be drained, meaning he could just do a little math to figure out how to remake his ring instead of needing to worry about trial and error.

Once that bit of curiosity was out of the way he moved on to magics. While his god was doing his best to educate him on the way his people approached the subject and he was able to learn the more standard approach from the people in his life and the few books in the adventurers guild archives, he still felt he was lacking on the subject and was eager to fill that knowledge the best he could.

He moved from shelf to shelf of the affinitied magics as the hours slowly passed, recording the names of books that went over the broadest of spells to those that covered a far more unique approach to using a given affinity, as well as books that discussed specialized forms of a given magic such as prophecy or purification before moving onto ones that looked at combined magics like decay or explosion magic.

For good measure, he made sure to pick up books discussing the awakened version of each affinity, as well as one on soul magic to satisfy his curiosity on the topic. While he would have happily grabbed books on the other tier three magics as well he ran into the problem that there weren’t any. He couldn’t be sure if it was due to them being hidden or simply the fact that there hadn’t been nearly as many tier three mages for the other affinities compared to soul magic, but whatever the case he simply moved on to the non-affinitied shelves.

It was there he got his best surprise of the day. More enchanting books, some of which he hadn’t seen in the craftsman guild. He knew that it was technically considered a magic, but he hadn’t considered the fact he might find anything on it there. In his mind he always considered it to be a tool to enhance items, but there were surely plenty of enchanters that considered themselves mages first and would submit their research to this guild over the other one, meaning he had even more books to dive into.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

By the time he had his list the guild was preparing to close down as he put in his order for books. Even more than at the craftsman’s guild, he found close to four hundred he wanted to bring back with him. It wasn’t like he expected to read them all cover to cover any time soon, but they would be helpful as references should he ever need them.

Really though, I really should try and pick up the speed reading skill. My speed is already pretty fast thanks to my other mind skills, but I’m sure it would synergize real well. Of course, maybe I should hold off until I get the fractured mind user job for the experience, I guess it will all depend on what options are available after I complete my current one.

Once he got back for the day Ben went to meet with the barrier master Furela to get the sixth level of the skill placed on a ring for him to make use of before making his way to the dining room to eat with everyone and discuss the events of the day. It seemed that Thera had indeed successfully made up with Lux, easing everyone’s minds in the process and leaving them in good cheer.