11 Chapter 8
Harry had been pleasantly surprised by how good it felt to level up a skill, and it was that pleasant feeling that made him drift towards his next destination.
Well, that feeling and one other thing.
Those people…the three people he had encountered in front of a dying Gordon in that dream-like event that morning…they weren't normal. They had abilities and powers that defied belief, hiding from others and healing ungodly wounds almost as if they were performing miracles.
Almost as if they were performing magic.
He needed to know more about them, and in the process find out what in the world was trying to kill him. The image of the way Gordon lay crumpled on the ground in a pool of his own blood repeatedly flashed in front of his mind. Harry sure as all hell didn't want to end up like that.
But how was he supposed to ask anyone for help when no one would believe him? That left him with only one option. One place where, like Miss Roemmele had told him in that playground, in stories and myth he could perhaps find some truth.
And so off he went, to the London Library.
As he walked past the scowling librarian and into the chamber proper, he couldn't help but be intimidated by the sheer vastness of the knowledge contained in the rows upon rows of bookshelves that stood tall in front of him. Taking a deep breath, he told himself to relax.
'Even if I don't find many answers, at least I'm sure to get my INT leveled up a bit,' he thought.
The first few books he picked up were based on the last memory he had before blacking out. All he remembered was the blurry image of a stone with some strange markings on them, so he picked up three books from the Ancient Languages section and headed over to the reading tables with them.
Luckily, it didn't take him more than a couple more trips to the bookshelves to strike gold.
As Harry walked around the bookshelves to pick up his fourth batch of books, a strange, thin little book caught his eyes. On its spine were engraved symbols and squiggles that looked eerily similar to the ones he remembered on the stone. Frowning, he went over and looked at the spine of the book.
"Ancient Languages of the Rare Kind."
The book seemed to contain lots of knowledge about old languages like Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Latin, Sanskrit and even some Scandinavian runes. Harry sat down in the library with the book in front of him. He was pretty sure that reading the book would also help his INT along with helping solve the mystery of the stone. Taking Gordon's advice to heart, he started focusing on the book, hoping to build up his stats in the process. It was boring, and it was certainly not the best thing to do with this extremely rare Dursley free day, but it was what needed to happen.
It was difficult though. The words blurred and danced around on the page, and he could never really get them to focus in front of his eyes. Eventually, rather tired, he gave up on the reading for a while and started looking at pictures that were printed in the books.
But just then, he came upon a picture of an ancient Mesopotamian parchment filled with squiggly lines written on it. It seemed old, really old, and just as Harry was about to look away the words started to change and suddenly Harry could understand them.
He frowned, wondering if this was something related to Gamer's Mind. It hadn't mentioned being able to do anything with languages in its description though, so it seemed unlikely that it was the reason behind his sudden understanding of what the tablet seemed to call the Parseltongue, the language of snakes. It spoke of how it was once the language of gods and how it eventually came to be scorned by all of wizardkind.
'Wait a minute. Wizardkind?!' Harry thought disbelievingly. Was that what his Chemistry teacher was? A Wizard?
Was he a wizard too? It would certainly be a crazy theory, but no crazier than all that had happened to him throughout the last few days. Even the Shield of Lily description mentioned it. Maybe he had a connection with those myths he kept hearing about, and maybe it had something to do with magic!
Ping!
For thinking things through and arriving at a logical conclusion you gained +1 Wis!
Harry blinked and quickly wiped it away.
That was confirmation. He was either a wizard or related to one.
Harry quickly spent the next hour fully immersed in the book, trying to learn anything he could. He was thirsty for all knowledge that could be found in it, although it didn't make it any less funny to see what people thought the parseltongue parchments meant. Like the time they mistook the word 'castle' for some oddly flexible yoga position.
Soon, he got confirmation that his time was well spent, through a couple of notifications.
Ping!
By reading books about another language you have gained 1 Int!
Ping!
By reading a manuscript and understanding it completely you have gained two skills!
Language: Parseltongue, Lv-MAX
You have a perfect understanding of parseltongue.
Language: Modern English, Lv-2 (34%)
You have poor English reading skills, you can talk it, but can't walk it. Reading level-1
-60% misunderstanding what you read.
Harry scratched his head, this was a problem. While some sort of strange magic gave him a perfect understanding of this…Parseltongue, his English wasn't in that great of a shape. He could talk English just fine, but he had always had an issue with reading it. Books always got so blurry when he tried to read. Pictures were okay, but the text being all but a grey blob wasn't exactly conducive to a reading session. Whatever the reason behind it was, he needed to get better at English first before reading any book.
Harry quickly went over to the Basic English sections and took out easy books and began reading.
Grinding. That was what he was doing.
Focusing on leveling up a skill with all his effort and intent led to a quick increase in level growth, and as the blobs of grey slowly became more and more focused and eventually morphed into letters he could understand. After finishing his fourth English book of the day, Harry opened up his skill list and selected English.
Language: Modern English, Lv-2 (80%)
You have poor English reading skills, you can talk it, but can't walk it. Reading grade level-1
-60% misunderstanding what you read.
It was 34% before but it had grown to 80%. That meant it was working. Harry then quickly started to grind. He was being given a way to eliminate one of his greatest weaknesses on a day free of Dursleys and chores. He couldn't be happier to take the chance with all his might.
By mid-noon, Harry had progressed to reading Conan Doyle stories, which were notoriously long but seemed to have a knack for increasing his English Levels due to their smart writing.
Language: Modern English, Lv-5 (40%)
You have poor English reading skills, you can talk it, but can't walk it. Your reading is now better, grade level-4
-45% misunderstanding what you read.
Harry smiled and closed the last book he was reading. Other than the Dursleys, his messed up reading was one of the main reasons he was always merely average in the class, and he was more than happy to be rid of it. As far as he could see, his understanding improved by a rate of 5%, meaning at level 14 or so he would finally be rid of his problem forever.
Soon after, Harry ended his grinding for the day and left, as the library was closing for lunchtime.
After spending some time ambling through the street, Harry saw a small garden snake slithering across the street as it angrily hissed at the pedestrians that kept almost trampling it. Except to Harry, it seemed as if the snake wasn't merely hissing.
It was speaking English. Some extremely vulgar English, but English nonetheless.
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