Sneaking Into The Library

It was an eerily quiet night after Sethos' birthday. The only sounds that could be heard the chirping of crickets and the swooshes of the wind. After making sure that the chatterbox Myra was asleep, Sethos slowly stood up from his crib, mustered all his strength to climb over the bars, and plopped on the floor with a small thud. 

Aware of the noise he made, Sethos quickly crawled to a corner and peeked at Myra who was still sleeping soundly like a baby. He let out a sigh.

'This may be more difficult than imagined. Even if I get past Myra, who knows what people I would encounter when I leave my room.' 

'But am I to give up now? If I don't dare to take risks, I would never be able to achieve anything, let alone my goal of becoming the strongest.'

Sethos pondered for a while, and decided that no matter who or what obstacle awaits him, he would still continue forward despite the challenges. The was his first step forward to achieve what he desired. 

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Sethos went to the corner and grabbed a large stool, then he placed it next to the door and proceeded to climb up and twist the doorknob which was too high for the short him to reach right now. And after a small clack, he was able to walk out through the small gap between the two doors. What awaited him was a super long hallway which seemed to be never-ending no matter how you looked at it. 

'Wow, I've never imagined this mansion be this gigantic, and this isn't even the main building!' Sethos admired the tall ceilings and the smoothly layered tiles. 

'If I walked to the main building using normal methods, I probably wouldn't be able to reach anywhere in an hour. Luckily, the skills from my past life could be put into use right now.' 

Sethos activated the Rank I stealth skill 'Hide', which allowed him to conceal his presence from other similarly and lower ranked people. However, martial artists of a higher rank would still be able to sense him. 

'Throughout my entire stay here, I've never heard anybody mention anything about martial arts or ki. Everything was about magic, magic, and magic. If my hypothesis is correct, since nobody here utilises ki, no one would be able to sense my ki concealment technique. I should be safe for now.' Sethos thought to himself.

'Even if something goes wrong, I could use the Feather Cloud Footwork Technique to escape and return to my bedroom.'

Sethos activated the Myriad Jade Steps, the footwork he learned from the Jade Sword Sect back when he was a spy. This technique was extremely diverse and could even be used by a Rank I martial artist like him, and the good part about it was that it doesn't expend that much ki. The other techniques such as the Feather Cloud Footwork Technique were generally better than the Myriad Jade Steps, but they use up too much ki in the aperture, which Rank Is did not have enough of. 

After a few minutes, Sethos finally made it to the main building of the Silvermoon Estate. 

'Whew, this place indeed is huge. It's a relief that the library is in the main building and not in any other places, otherwise I wouldn't even know where to begin searching.'

'Earlier in the morning, my mother mentioned that the library was on the second floor, so I should find a way to head up there.' 

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*yawns*

"James, when are we getting off work?"

"Mason, don't be lazy, we literally just started our night shift. Imagine if our employer sees you like this, you'd probably get your legs cut off!"

"Oh don't scare me, James. You know nobody comes to the library late at night. Besides, this is the library in the main building, nobody would dare to intrude into the Silvermoon Estate!"

"I really don't know what to do with you sometimes. I know you're my friend, but you should at least pretend to be working." 

"Don't be such a klutz, humph!"

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'Phew, I finally snuck into the library! Good thing those two guards weren't paying attention, otherwise I might've gotten caught.'

Sethos looked at his surroundings, and the only thing that he could see were books, books, and books. The bookshelves looked tall enough to reach the heavens, and a massive chandelier hung from the centre of the dome-like ceiling. Under it, there were a few advanced mechanisms that looked like touch screens from the modern world.

'The library of the Silvermoon House sure lives up to its name.' Sethos thought.

'Goodness, with this big of a library, it would take forever to search for what I want. The only technique in my knowledge that could locate specific objects is called 'One With The World'. But I can't use it until I reach Rank III.'

'Guess I need to look at each book one by one. If I run out of time, I could just return next time.'

As someone who was born in the martial world, Se-hun had zero knowledge regarding technology and mechanisms. He did not even consider to touch the mechanisms in the middle of the library since 'not touching mysterious objects' was a rule that was ingrained in his mind long ago as someone who was a former spy. Se-hun had to learn this the hard way through a mission in which he almost lost his dominant arm due to him touching mysterious objects out of sheer curiosity. 

Sethos spent three hours looking for a book that was suitable for him. In the end, he finally found a book titled 'How to Activate a Mana Heart Without Outside Interference'. According to the book, mages nowadays usually have a reliable guardian or master to help them activate their mana hearts, and this was usually a fast process as teachers would insert their own mana into their students' hearts and forcefully activate it. 

However, during the ancient era, those who became mages had to go through a tedious process of absorbing mana from the atmosphere. The time taken to do that was incredibly long, usually around half a year, and those with low aptitude had even slower progresses. Most of the time, they couldn't even become proper mages as they couldn't change the atmospheric mana into their own, and died as a result. Not to mention, back then, only those who were born into a mage family could wield magic. This was due to a specific gene that only mages had, and those without it could never cast any type of magic in their entire lives. There were some exceptions where a mage was born in a non-mage family due to mutations or other special circumstances, but those were one in a trillion. 

Nowadays, due to mages' bloodlines dwindling and becoming more impure, a lot of people had absolutely no aptitude for magic. To continue the legacy of mages, a man named Leon Valorhart invented the method of activating a mana heart by force. At that time, his invention threw the world into a storm, and Leon became famous overnight as even those without aptitudes could now become mages with this newfound method. For a while, Leon was praised as the saviour of mages, and was even hailed as a saint by the commoners who originally had no ability to learn magic. Even nowadays, everybody praised him as a great scholar whose ideas could change the world. And from then on, this method was passed down from generations to generations in order to raise countless numbers of mages.

'The original method to activate a mana heart is difficult indeed. I have to first absorb enough mana in the atmosphere and convert it into my own mana, then I have to slowly allow the mana to seep into my heart and let the it regulate itself.'

'Though there aren't many steps, each step definitely requires a lot of time and concentration. One wrong move and I might find myself back in the reincarnation cycle again.' 

Sethos carefully pondered about the contents of the book, and after making sure he memorised the crucial parts, he placed the book back into the shelf, sneaked past the guards, and dashed back to his bedroom.