BXBX NOVEL Chapter 133: Forbidden Library.
The same happened to Felix, but he blinked his eyes as the passive skill Equanimity came into effect.
"Ugh....that\'s some troublesome door."
He muttered and quickly pushed the door open, stepping in as he felt a kind of silence and serenity that almost stopped his process of thought.
\'What\'s wrong with this place? Everything seems so.....strange?\'
But that thought didn\'t last long as Felix looked forward and became stunned when he witnessed the interior of the forbidden library.
\'What the hell happened here!!??\'
Felix had stepped into the library, expecting to find rows of orderly shelves filled with ancient books and arcane knowledge.
But instead, he was greeted by a scene of utter chaos.
Long, dark shelves stretched as far as the eye could see, but they were all in disarray as the shelves were fallen on top of each other.
Books, both old and new, lay scattered haphazardly across the floor, some still resting on the shelves while most were randomly thrown on the floor.
It was as if a battle had torn through the library, leaving behind a tangled mess of literature and confusion.
Yet, strangely, there are no signs of destruction or debris – only the overwhelming sense of disorder.
"Sigh, why can\'t anything in this castle be normal..."
Felix muttered while looking around in confusion to find someone in this library for help.
On the right side of the door, there was a counter, which he approached even though there was nobody present there.
Searching around, he found a person sleeping inside the counter area with a book covering their face.
Seeing the person sleeping soundly, he didn\'t want to disturb them, so he instead used his skill on the counter.
\'Flashback.\'
A few seconds later, Felix came to know where to find the books regarding combat and battles, which he needed, to broaden his horizon regarding the power scale of this world.
Turning around, he faced the chaotic library and wondered where to find the combat section he had heard of.
With no other choice, Felix stepped forward, crossing the tumbled-down shelves and making his way deeper into the forbidden library, while minding his legs to not step on any of the books.
\'Who knows.....there may be a cursed tome lying around somewhere...\'
After some minutes of searching through the various broken sections of the library, he came across a board that read \'Cultivation Archives\'.
"I guess this is it...."
Though he reached the place, Felix could only sigh looking at the board which had fallen on the ground, with books of all kinds thrown beside it.
Picking up a random book near the board, Felix read its title.
"Fred\'s Monster Culinary?"
He swiftly put the book back into its place and rubbed his head in exhaustion.
"This is gonna be tough."
Looking around all the books with their covers closed and opened, suddenly, his eyes lit up as he got an idea for finding the book he needed.
\'Inspect!\'
Felix turned on his skill, and one by one, all the books in his sight displayed their names and information.
\'Structure of a Goblin.\'
\'Tale of the Adventures.\'
\'The Dungeon Guide.\'
\'Martial Disciplines.\'
\'Sacred Rituals.\'
\'Spells and Swords.\'
Now, instead of picking up the books and reading their names, Felix only needed to glance over and he\'d get to know which book was which.
\'Let\'s choose these two for now.\'
He bent down and picked the book with titles \'Martial Disciplines\' and \'Spells and Swords\'.
Sitting on a shelf that was completely lying on the floor, Felix opened the books and started reading them.
After a few minutes, he sighed and stopped.
"This is taking too much time. It\'ll be better if I create a skill for reading fast even though I\'ve been keen on saving the skill points."
Placing the books aside, Felix closed his eyes and started thinking of a suitable skill with features which would help him with his current dilemma.
After some time of careful calculations for making a cheap yet useful skill, he opened his eyes and called out to the system.
"Create this skill."
[Affirmative.]
[Processing the skill\'s power scale....grading the skill....estimating the possible points required.....skill successfully moduled.]
[Ding!]
[Skill Name: Enhanced Brain
Description:
•This skill gives the user strong memory power and allows them to process information at an accelerated rate and comprehend complex concepts with ease.
•It can quickly analyze texts, extract key information, and make connections between ideas, making them adept at absorbing vast amounts of knowledge in a short amount of time.
Cost: 120 skill points]
[Do you wish to use 120 skill points and create the skill \'Enhanced Brain\'?]
"Yes!"
[Ding!]
[Successfully created a new skill.]
\'I wonder how useful this skill is....\'
After the system announced the creation of the new skill, Felix picked up one of the two books and a minute later, he placed it back.
"That was.....quick.", he widened his eyes, shocked by the plentiful information that had suddenly appeared in his head and the buzzing feeling of wanting more.
He hurriedly picked the other book and finished reading it within a minute, as his brain made conjunctions and ideas with all the absorbed knowledge.
"I need more..."
Getting up, he started grabbing random books near him without a care for their content, and his mind seemed to have entered an epiphany state where only information could enter.
His reading time also started getting shorter and shorter from the initial minute, and after reading more than thirty books, he could now read a single book within twenty seconds.
A strange scene took place in the shambled and untended forbidden library of the Underworld; where a boy kneeling on the floor picked up books with both of his hands and glanced at them for a few seconds before picking the unread ones.
Anybody watching him would think he was searching for some good lines from a book he had forgotten, but the boy had just read and comprehended an entire book in that fleeting moment.
*****
A few hours later....
Felix had fallen on the floor just like the tons of books around him, his face pale and body sweating, but there was a strangely satisfied grin on his face.
"I don\'t know...haa....why, but that was..haa....extremely thrilling!", he muttered between his breaths.
Tired of reading almost five hundred books in one session, he closed his eyes and inclined his back on the mountain of books, going through and keeping all the new information in his mind in order.
\'Hmm....why don\'t we start with the book \'Fundamentals of Cultivation\'.\'
From what Felix had read through the books, he had come to a pretty good understanding of the different power levels and their abilities of this world.
The standard power levels of this world started from Rank 0 to all the way till Rank 9, after which he didn\'t find any information of.
Beings at Rank 0 were called as apprentice, from Rank 1 to Rank 3 were the Mortal Realm, Rank 4 to Rank 6 were the Transcendent Realm, while Rank 7 to Rank 9 were called as the Legend Realm.
Every rank had subranks in them; namely Early, Mid, Late and Peak.
For the first three Ranks, that is of the Mortal Relam, there wasn\'t much of a difference in the power between the subranks.
But at the Transcendent Realm and the Legend Realm, even a small variation in the power scale such as a subrank would greatly determine the fate of any battle.
However, the most important thing that determined the power of a being would be their race and their innate abilities.
For example, a Rank 4 Dragon with their innate ability of magic and might can easily subdue a dozens of Rank 4 Goblins, while humans with their high intelligence could similarly do the same with their various battle techniques.
Speaking about battle techniques in the human\'s realm, it was basically divided into three categories, the Aura Techniques, the Magic Techniques, and the Special Techniques.
Warriors could use the Aura Techniques, which included the breathing skill, the weapon mastery and the aura manual altogether.
Mages used the Magic Techniques, having their specific breathing techniques, spell chants and the mana cultivation manuals.
Meanwhile the Special Techniques were a rare type of abilities that only one among tens of thousands of people could have, either from birth or at a random point in their life.
But they could also be awakened from heritage, rituals, experiments or some extreme conditions.
It could be anything simple from enhanced eyesight to something great like telekinesis.
But one thing was for certain, people with Special Techniques were the most sought after in this world by various organisations and kingdoms.
\'This is more complicated than I thought....\'
Felix knit his brows as he went through the information of another book that he had read.
This book was titled \'Secrets of Warriors\', which contained the details of the Aura manifestation and controlling methods.
It was written that only a person with strong will and an undefeated mindset would be able to aweken the path to manifesting Aura, in which he could manipulate his own and the surrounding\'s energy as he wanted, but very few people would be able to achieve such a feat.
From another book of the experiences of a famous adventurer, he also understood the various knowledge about survival, fauna, hunting, geography and the general information of this world.
In the end, the more than 500 books had tremendously increased his knowledge of this world, including random topics like, \'The Reproduction of Monsters\', \'Building a Carriage\' and \'How to handle a dead body with magic\'.