Chapter 25

As Einar arrived at the library, he went straight to the librarian to show her the token he got from Steve. He did not waste any time, as he needed the technique as fast as possible.

The librarian looked at the token "Come with me!" She said as she went towards the stairs leading up. "I will say this just in case! you can only borrow one book from the first floor, and it has to be returned in 2 months, understood?" She said in a stern voice while looking at Einar.

"Understood!" Einar answered straight away and walked upstairs.

The librarian just looked at Einars back with indifference, before she went back to her desk at the entrance to the library.

Einar had learned quite a bit from the classes he went to. He learned that the library had 7 floors in total, each floor representing the ranks of the skills in them.

This meant that the school had in total 7 different skill ranks, while each rank had 3 sub-ranks.

The 6 different ranks the school had were: Normal, strengthened, amplified, exceptional, legendary, mysterious, and mythic. these skills all had three sub-ranks, which were low-, mid-, and high-tier.

The lowest floor of the library, which all students had access to, were all normal skills. Normal skills were called normal, since all they did, was to take advantage of the strength you already had, and use it in a certain field. The higher tier a normal skill was in, the more it took advantage of the user's body though,

On the first floor, where Einar was now, the skills were all ranked strengthened from low- to high-tier.

Strengthened skills and techniques were a little better than normal rank skills, as they also took the potential of the user's body, but it strengthened the skill or technique a little.

The higher you get in the ranks, the higher the spells will be strengthened.

When you get to the exceptional rank, some of the skills also have an attribute. This meant that you might get fire, water, earth, and so on attributes on your skills. This is not something Einar can think about right now anyway, so he does not feel like thinking that far ahead, right now he just needs a technique.

The first floor looked exactly like the ground floor, just a bit smaller as there were fewer books. There were still massive bookshelves all around him, with countless skills and techniques on them. If he was not in a hurry, he would probably have lost himself in finding many books.

Right now though, he went straight to the aisle with swordsman skills and techniques.

He looked through the books for hours, without finding anything he was really caught by. He was looking for a technique that was decent in a prolonged fight, but it should not be focused on overpowering his opponent. He wanted something that could control the flow of a battle.

After a few hours, Einar had finally found a sword technique that was to his liking. There was a little problem with it though since it was not a complete technique.

the swords style was called 'Flowing sword' and the description said it was best suited for fast-paced battlers, who want to end fights with them in control.

There were only two pages though before what looked like 10 pages had been torn out. The two first pages had two stances on them, which was one which was a breathing technique, while the other was for defense.

Einar had no idea why there would be a breathing technique in the sword technique, so he decided to read through it, to see if he understood.

Not long after, he was shocked to discover that this breathing technique was to circulate mana through your body, to strengthen it in battle. This was not something that a low-ranked skill like this should be able to do.

Einar thought about it for a few seconds, before he thought that it might be because basically the whole book was missing. It was basically a technique that was impossible to practice.

Einar chose the book despite that, since the breathing technique was valuable, and the stance he was able to practice, was the defensive one, which was what he needed the most.

He went down to the librarian and showed her the book he decided on.

The librarian looked at Einar in shock "You sure you want ... This?"

"Yes!" Einar replied immediately.

"It is definitely a strong technique, but it is far from complete!" The librarian said. "It would have been ranked much higher if it was complete, use it well!" She continued, as she handed the book to Einar.

Einar took the book "I will! see you later!" He said as he ran for the training field. He wanted to practice the new technique as soon as possible.

At the training field though, there was almost no room, as all the mages were training for the tournament.

He found a small empty spot by the boulder he had used for training before. He sat down on the ground and took out the book. He ignored the breathing technique for now, as he went straight to the defense stance.

The stance had a set of 9 moves, which was meant to defend against any situation.

He read how to do each stance, which did not seem too difficult, other than you had to be quite flexible.

He started moving according to what the book told him to do, but to his surprise, he was already having trouble on the third move, and as he made it to the fifth move, he had to stop. To top it off, it was not only hard on his body, but something also felt off.

The book said it should feel like he was moving smoothly through the air, without feeling any resistance from the surroundings at all.

'I just need to practice!' Einar thought to himself, as he started to move once again.

He still had the same problem, but it felt a little less painful for the body. All he could do was keep training. Nothing would help more than training.

He kept going at it for many hours, and people had started to leave the training ground by now since it was afternoon now.

Einar was still moving around according to the book, but he had not made as much progress as he wanted. He could still not go any further than the fifth move. Everything up to there was going smoothly though.

It felt a little off still, but his body moved according to what the book said, and it felt like he was moving through the clouds, without any trouble.

After giving it a few more tries, he decided to call it quits, since he didn't make any more progress anyway. It was also time to go to the alchemy class.