Akashic Tome

Time: 08:00:01, 15/3/302

Promptly at 8 AM, I awoke from my slumber. Now with a clear directive, I had a reason to actually have a routine rather than wake up whenever I felt like. Of course, I had to see if my auto-translate skill actually worked in the first place, but if it did, I'd have my work cut out ahead of me.

Man, this HUD is nice. Being able to tell the time and all…

Once I had the will to roll out of my bed, Sakura, my new pet fox, followed suit. I opened the bedroom door and the smell of Lilith's freshly cooked breakfast filled my nostrils. Once I had sat down at the table, Lilith plated the quiche and placed it in front of me. The aromatic scents of the food were heavenly.

Apparently, my parents had already left to go and do something, so I was the only one eating right now. Lilith had already eaten with my parents, it seemed like. As I was eating, I split off a chunk of quiche and gave it to Sakura who happily chomped down on my fingers.

"OWW" I yelped, startled.

I turned down to Sakura, and scolded her, saying "You can't be chomping down on my hands!"

I swore I saw a smug expression on that damned Sakurai's face.

You did that on purpose, didn't you.

When I looked up, I saw Lilith smiling at me. Almost as if she was making fun of me in her head. Who knows? I probably would too if I were her. I meekly smiled back at her and got up from the table. I was still pretty short, so it was rather hard trying to get up and down from the chairs.

After breakfast, I went into the other room away from Lilith to see if I could decode the Akashic Tome. I unlatched the cover and opened it to the first page. To my surprise, I still couldn't read the characters per sé, but I could understand the meanings behind the words. Of course, it was ideal or perfect, but it was more than enough to understand what the author was trying to tell.

As Sakura snuggled up against my back, pretty much as a free backrest, I flipped the page.

Written By: ————

It seemed as if the characters representing the author's name had almost completely deteriorated, making it impossible to read. I flipped the page once more to a seemingly unfinished table of contents. Actually, there was only one entry, labeled Introduction & Prerequisites.

I flipped the page once more to the first chapter and began reading.

Let's see, Let's see…

According to the Akashic Tome, most magic is broken up into different subsets or trees. Each specialization is based on a natural element, and each has strengths and weaknesses in each other. This part seemed like your typical magical introduction. The wording was also rather matter-of-fact, so I assumed that the author just kind of assumed whoever was reading this would already know this stuff. Almost like skipping the prologue, which I know most of you readers do.

One thing that did interest me, however, was that modifiers weren't explained, nor even mentioned. Maybe that is something only I can see? Or, does anyone have access to a status panel like I do? Thinking back, I had never actually seen anyone open their own.

Is this like some sort of special thing that only I could access?

Because I had no real way of confirming this any time soon, I just flipped the yellowed page. Skimming the introduction, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In fact, this just looked like the introduction page to a wiki page. Even the formatting was reminiscent of someone who tried too hard to make a wiki page look fantastical.

Once I had finished reading the basic introduction, I started on the prerequisites. There was one thing on that page.

Get Elite II Mana Manipulation.

Sweet. That makes my life easy. But for literally anyone else, that would just kind of, well, give up. Especially after all that time trying to translate the language it was written in. I would definitely throw in the towel if I didn't have either auto-translate or Elite II mana manipulation.

I flipped the page only to find a yellowed blank page. And another one. And another one. I flipped through a couple more only to find once white now yellow blankness. Somewhat upset, I closed the book and stretched my back. It had become my habit before I died to stretch out my lower back, and it carried over into this world. I loved that crunching of joints popping, allowing for a release of built up pressure in my lower back.

As that pressure was released from my back, I had a brilliant idea. I should try and release some of the "pressure" or magic on that book and see what happens. I reopened the book and placed my hand on top of the page. I closed my eyes and imagined a warm substance oozing from my hands onto the page. When I opened my eyes, the oozing liquid I had imagined quickly melted into the page and turned into a shiny ink. Once it had settled, the ink darkened into a midnight black, contrasting the previous pearlescent white; the color of my mana.

Once the runes had been totally set in the pages, I started reading the first chapter. It seemed as if each chapter was sequentially encoded. I'd have to read each chapter, in order, one by one.

In this world, at least according to this book, magic had been imbued in all races from the beginning of time. But, due to some external factors, over time, magic potential became diluted. Basically, people weren't as powerful as they used to be. The book hadn't exactly explained why, but with the way it was written, it seemed like it would talk about this later.

The effects of the magic dilution could even be easily seen from when this book was written and now. Getting Elite II mana manipulation, judging by the way the prerequisite was written, wasn't too hard. At least, the reader needs no guidance. But today, someone with any Elite II skill is classified as special. Deriving that difference, plus the gripes the author already had about the dilution of magic, means that the gap from now and ancient times was extraordinary.

I guess that's what an overall peaceful world does.

Speaking of Elite II, the book finally laid out the different "tiers." Of course, there were common skills. Things that most people could do. The next main tier was "Rare." Rare skills were often upgraded versions of common skills, and of course they were rarer, as the name suggests. Though many rare skills were derivatives of common skills, there were some combat oriented skills that tended to not have a "parent" skill. Elite skills were divided up into two main sections for some reason; Elite I and Elite II. Many common skills were capped at Elite. As in, a common parent skill could eventually derive into an elite child skill. And Rare tended to max out at Elite II. Of course there were exceptions, like mana manipulation, but the general rule-of-thumb tended to be that a parent skill could have two "evolutions" before it maxxed out. However, marrying parent skills completely threw that idea out the window. A child of two parents often were stronger than single-parent counterparts.

After Elite came the much rarer, much more powerful skills. Legendary skills rarely had parents, and if they did, they would only be Elite II. Furthermore, most legendary skills had a marriage of two or sometimes three parent skills. On rare occasions, a fourth parent could be thrown into the mix, but after that, the law of diminishing returns kicked in heavily. Legendary skills could take out whole platoons of soldiers, and they were few and far between. Lastly, there is the mythical or ancient class of skills. In terms of power, they were unparalleled. Being the capstone of the typical skill ceiling, they could wipe out entire battalions. Mythical-class magic rarely had any parents, and were often the result of extra skills. They also required special prerequisites to unlock their full potential.

Speaking of extra skills, the main difference between them was that they were isolated. Being extra, they did not fall into any typical skill tree, and they often could not be parents of other skills. Extra skills also had a somewhat different evolution compared to the typical tier system. Some skills that were classified extra, however, had their own mini-tree similar to that of the normal system. Extra skills tended to rival Elite II or even Legendary skills in power. Some extra skills could also evolve into Ultimate Skills, which were as powerful as Mythical-class, and often had different properties compared to Mythical skills. Lastly, Unique skills were a class of their own. Evolving from Ultimate skills and often requiring a sacrifice, they were unmatched in power. Being unique, only one person could obtain it at a time. Meaning, if someone was alive with a unique skill, no one else in the world could have it. But if that person died, someone could obtain it later on.

There were three main ways of obtaining new skills. If there was a possibility and viable child skill, limit breaking was one way of upgrading skills. Limit-Broken skills had similar properties of their parents, but had boosted stats, and would be promoted up a tier. Often, the parent skill would be sacrificed in the process, but could easily be relearned. A Skill-Merge was the merging of two skills to create a new skill. The merged skills often had slightly longer casting times, but were more powerful due to the fact that using multiple attributes takes longer to form. Of course, the reason why skill-merged skills were more powerful was due to the same reason. The combination of two attributes synergized with each other to be a more devastating force. The final way to gain a new skill was just to obtain it in combat. These tended to be random-ish, as you could somewhat predict what you could obtain against the enemy you were fighting, but it didn't always happen. This mode was by far the least popular, as it was almost like a gacha game.

Other than basic skills, the main elemental attributes presided over most wielders. Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, and Lightning. These five formed a cycle, with each synergizing or countering other elements. Other notable trees included light (or holy) magic, and dark (or hell) magic, as well as spirit magic. Light and Dark obviously countered each other, and spirit magic, which used spirits instead of mana or magicae, was often separate and didn't have a cycle to follow. Weapon Arts and Artisan skills also had their own tree. Basic skills enveloped everything that was not combat oriented. Though each tree did have non-combat oriented skills, the overwhelming majority of these skills fell under the "Basic" tree. Foundational skills that every other tree used also fell under the basics, such as mana manipulation.

After all that technical jargon, however, I was feeling exhausted. As the time for lunch was rolling around, I closed the Akashic Tome, and stretched once again. Though my body didn't pop nearly as much as it used to, it felt great. Especially after educating myself on all that information. When I got up, I had accidentally somewhat frightened Sakura, who was sleeping on my left arm. I walked into the kitchen and saw Lilith cooking lunch, so I sat at the table and waited for her to place lunch in front of me.

"You've been really absorbed in that book, haven't you?" Lilith said, starting a conversation as she placed the food on the table.

I nodded in response and dug into lunch, which was a simple sandwich and fruit. Though simple, the seasonings she used made the meat pop in my mouth, allowing me to savor the pungent flavors. I tore off a small piece of meat for Sakura, and fed it to her. This time, she didn't bite my fingers, which was a start.

After polishing off my plate, I got up from the table and went back into my room to keep investigating the Akashic Tome.

^^^^^^^^^

After returning to my room, I reopened the book to find that all of the ink that was previously on the pages was gone. Just blank pages again. But this time, I knew exactly how to activate the ink. I once again imagined an oozing liquid dripping from my hand and reopened the book to find the ink setting again.

I flipped to the page I was on and kept reading onwards. The final thing that was a part of the first section were soft modifiers. In essence, they were modifiers that added buffs to your stats. Like a high level strength modifier will allow you to carry more things. Fairly simple stuff. And the book only devoted a paragraph or two explaining them. The only thing that surprised me was that there was no hard cap. Somebody could infinitely raise that level, but the soft cap tended to be around 300 at the time this Akashic Tome was written. So they probably got weaker since then.

Once I had finished this section, the next section appeared on the next pages. Apparently, this section was just attribute tests, allowing one to find out if they had the proper affinities to really use the element.

The attribute tests consisted of just a test spell, and however bright the light glowed on your palm could give you an accurate enough detail if you were powerful in that attribute or not. First up is water magic. According to the book, all I have to do is produce a small stream of water from my index finger. It should be no more than a finger's length and will glow based on affinity.

I held my index finger up and said Aquus. Almost immediately, a bright blue streak of water around 6 inches long appeared above my index finger. Looking at the diagram, it showed that I had a high affinity to water magic. I then moved on to wind magic and activated the spell using the word Aura. Again, a small shimmering silvery streak appeared above my index finger. I even felt the pressure of the wind blow on my face. According to the book, if a noticeable pressure change occurred, the wielder had an extremely high affinity to wind magic. Moving on to the Earth attribute, I mouthed the word Terra. A green shimmer appeared on my finger. Comparing it to the Akashic Tome, I had an above-average affinity for Earth magic, but it wasn't my strongest attribute.

Fire came next, and this time, as an experiment, I decided to just say the word in my head instead of mouthing it or saying it aloud. Flamma. Comparable to a torch welder, the flame dissipating from my hand was audible and hot. I decided to put out the flame quickly as I was worried that I may burn down the wooden cabin that I lived in. According to the book, I had the highest affinity possible for specialized fire magic. The last of the five main elements was lightning. Instead of using the word, I just imagine a small little lightning bolt emitting from my finger. In return, I got what looked like high voltage power lines arcing to the ground. Just on a slightly smaller scale. And the hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. Apparently, I had the perfect affinity for both fire and lightning magic, while my water and wind magic were still extremely high. Though my earth magic was the worst out of those five, it was still pretty above-average.

The other two attributes I could test were the light and dark affinities. When I said Lux, a bright yellow light shimmered above my finger. A sign of high affinity. When I said Umbra, a dark purple light faded across a seemingly darkened room. Apparently, I had a higher affinity for dark magic over light magic, though it was still rather strong. The other two main attributes were things I couldn't test, with those being weapon arts and artisan skills.

It seemed somewhat uncanny being able to use every main attribute so well. Apparently, having two or three attributes made you special, while having four or more was extremely rare. Having all seven was unheard of. There were only a handful of recorded individuals who actually did possess this, but most of their names were classified. The only nickname that wasn't scratched out was Black Viking.

Black Viking…Didn't Sakurai mention something about that? Like as an offhand comment, but I swear I remember something.

But, I wouldn't remember where I heard that name today. I was exhausted from that information overload. And I used some mana, though not as much as I had expected I'd use. I closed up the book and decided to take a nap.

I needed that rest…