3 Chapter 3: Long Live Books!

When Villin woke up he was well-rested. This was quite surprising since the clock showed he had only slept for six hours and the sun had yet to rise.

He hesitated for a minute or so before leaving the bed, letting his emotions return. This hesitation made him realize a problem. The bed was very much addicting. Even though he didn't know the dead parents very well, the bloody scene he saw that night was embedded deep into his mind. Sometimes his mind would wander and he would rewatch that terrible scene causing him to feel terrible for a while.

And so, he decided not to sleep in that enchanted bed again, even though the sleep was peaceful he didn't want to risk growing truly addicted.

With this thought in mind, he looked around the house to see if he could find Silver. Yet even after checking every room twice, she was nowhere to be seen. It seemed she had to leave extremely early and so he would have the house to himself.

Villin had no hesitation in his steps as he quickly made his way toward the study, he sat on the rather large chair and put the books he had been given the previous day on the table.

Before he opened it, however, he closed his eyes and thought back to what happened in the sea of clouds and the advantages he held.

The first thing he had wanted to check was his supposedly good looks but yesterday he didn't see any mirrors in the house so he'd put that on pause for now. The only other perk he could properly check was photographic memory, and so he opened one of the books before him at a random point, looked at the page for a few seconds, and closed it again.

When he closed his eyes and thought back to it he could see the page in its entirety as if he was looking at it. He could even read the page he had been looking at in his mind.

Villin let out a sigh of relief. He wanted to make sure everything worked properly and it would seem that it had!

The first book he opened was 'Basic rules in the Magus World' and he soon started reading. The book was obviously meant for kids as it was written in extremely basic language and many things having to do with crime and the like seemed to be sugarcoated. In this way, it was said that if you showed magic to a mortal without permission you would have to take a little trip to the Palace. The Palace was the top magic authority on the central continent.

The world he was in currently had three different continents, each of these had their own mortal rulers and hidden magical societies. He was residing in the central continent, close to what was said to be the number one school for aspiring Magus.

Villin managed to get through 'Basic rules in the Magus World' really quickly. The book didn't have many pages to begin with and the language used was extremely simple and so by the time he finished the eighty-page book only an half an hour had passed.

Once he finished reading it he sat back in contemplation, a serious look on his face. Even though this was a basic book intended to explain basic rules and etiquette to kids, it was full of oddities. The book went against itself a multitude of times. One page they would state that all magus should be treated with the respect you yourself wish to be treated with while another one would say that if someone from a noble family were to seek trouble with you you should follow their commands.

There were many other oddities within the book but Villin decided to let it be for the time being, he'd see how things were actually like when he got to the Academy.

The second book he read was 'A guide to Magus Society' he picked this one since he figured this might bring a more realistic image of any potential class divide, and it delivered.

The book was written by a mage who hadn't had a mortal in the family for centuries and so they were very proud. He didn't at all try to hide their disdain for mortals and those with mortal families either when it was brought up in the book. But overall the book truly was quite useful. It gave him some information on bloodlines and types of magic, giving him a great deal of information.

A bloodline was something often held in noble families. It is originally gotten when a powerful Magus succeeds in merging a beasts bloodline in their own or when they have offspring with a powerful beast that has succeeded in morphing into human form, something that was a clear display of power.

Villin felt a bit weirded out by this but the noble author seemed to really take pride in the fact that he had a bit of bloodline coming from an 'Adarna'. Some sort of magical bird that held healing powers among other things. Thanks to the bit of healing power he had, his wounds would automatically start healing.

As for types of magic, there were a few things that were explained. Firstly there were wands, these were the main tool to help use magic within the academy. It allowed a spell's effect to be concentrated in a single point and the better wands could also store a few spells allowing you to use them instantly. Other then this there were also the staffs that were often used in the east and the hand gestures that were used in the west but there wasn't much info on either of these.

What was mentioned however was that every magus would have to learn bare-handed magic. You couldn't be called a Magus if all your powers disappeared as soon as you were disarmed.

Then there were also the crafting disciplines. The main ones in the central continent were pill-making, magic arrays, and enchantments.

Finishing the book Villin once more was in deep contemplation, this time it had still taken him no more than an hour despite the more difficult language. He suspected this might have to do with the 'Great Comprehension' perk he had chosen.

A few more hours passed as Villin read the rest of the books Silver had given him. Even though there was some useful information in there, most of it was already mentioned in one of the previous two books he read.

Once he finished these books he wasn't sure what he should do next. There were plenty of books in this room but he wasn't entirely sure if it was morally right to start reading Silver's books without asking.

After a bit, he couldn't hold himself back anymore as he started browsing the titles of the books in the study. He was happy to see they were properly categorized. There were five main sections in the study. The first section held everything history related. The second section was full of political books, the third was considerably smaller and held everything mortal-related. The fourth section was the biggest containing a bunch on books about the magic, it was when he got to the fifth section, which was also considerably smaller, that he didn't really know what he was looking at.

The books here were extremely thick and seemed to be made out of some sort of metal. A single book was easily fifty centimeters thick, furthermore, every book was exactly equal in size. Villin curiously took one of the books before putting it on the table on the study. The book was in a sleek black and the title was put on the cover in large red letters. It read 'Spell blueprint: Vanishing object'. Having his curiosity fully peaked by the metal cover and odd title Villin opened the book only to find out it only had a single page, each of the sides of this page was over twenty centimeters thick, made fully out of the unidentified metal.

With a frown on his face, Villin fully opened the book, wanting to read what is inside of it. Yet just as he opened it a light blue object seemed to appear before him. Villin jumped back instantly, falling off the chair before realizing what happened.

It wasn't that an object had appeared out of mid-air, it was that an image had jumped out of the book. When he stood up and approached the desk again he could see the floating patters. There were about a hundred dots with varying brightnesses and distances between each other in a 3D circle. A dozen of these were connected by a thin line while about a fifth of them had a small name below them such as 'fa' or hu', some of these even came up on multiple of the different dots.

Bewildered Villin studied the dots as well as the line that connected some of them but he simply couldn't see any proper pattern. After spending some time on this he simply closed the book and put it back into the shelve.

Without the ability to use magic, looking at some random circle with a line in it didn't seem like a good way to spend time, even if he knew it was a spell blueprint, it wasn't really useful to him at the moment.

And so he started from the very left and grabbed some history-related books. Specifically those of the last hundred years. It wasn't long before he was lost in the books.