C009 – Mana Cultivation

FlyingPirateCat

[Solstreus Magic Academy - Library 1F]

The time it took Hecate to finish reading the books wasn't too long.

That was because unlike Natives, Players had the privilege of having a game system assistance and did not need to study books manually.

Players only need to turn the page once and watch for a while, then the content of that page will be recorded and they can be save that record to their pod. And then, any skills or spells in the book will be filtered by the game system for Players to learn.

The time it takes for each page to be recorded is based on the respective Player's INT stat.

The higher their INT, the shorter the time it will take to record a book. Hecate, who currently had 221+78 INT, only took less than 1 second to record a page, and finished the book in a few minutes. If other Players, especially those with low INT did it, it would likely take them several minutes to just record 1 page, and hours to finish a book.

As for the real content itself, Hecate doesn't care too much, as those books were written in Neberl language. Although there were some clever Players who tried to decode this language into Japanese, translating it was too much of a hassle.

Ultimately, the books are from a game and the content is fictional, so there is no need to think too much about it.

♠♠♠

The contents of the book will take up the space in the pod in the form of a lossless 3D document format.

This is the standard VR-book format created by Gaia Corporation and has been acknowledged worldwide. This format saves every detail of the book, such as the texture of the paper, the author's handwriting, stains, even the smell on each page, while preserving the search function readability.

Hence, the file size of each book will be somewhat large.

Since it was a VR-book, naturally Players can materialize the book in other VR-space besides this game, or using Holo-projector in real life and read at their leisure. Though in the latter case, sensory information will be lost.

However, with such a large file size and the time required to record the book, not many Players are interested in recording books, especially for those using Basic and Standard Pods that have smaller storage space. It also took into account the factor that the books were unreadable, as these books were written in Neberl language, not Japanese or English.

Most of them only read books to learn the spells or techniques contained inside, and rarely bothered to save the record.

But that reasoning doesn't apply to Hecate which uses an executive-type pod.

Her pods have a massive 1 EB (Exabytes) of storage space and there's still plenty of free space, not to mention hundreds of EB of cloud storage, exclusive to executives. Storing hundreds of VR-books wasn't a problem for her.

As for why she kept those VR books, of course to sell them to the guild for profit.

The information inside the books in this game has a counterfeit protection, so it won't show in the screenshot or streaming. Also, trying to share it outside of the game is prohibited and may result in a violation of the terms. Therefore, exchanging those information can only be done within the game.

Naturally Hecate would take some GCP as fees for those who wanted to read her books in the guild. Fortunately, the guild interface has a function about trading information, and unlike items, information can be traded as much as possible as long as the files are not deleted.

♠♠♠

A few minutes later.

When the recording process was finished, there were already a few notifications that she set aside.

It was too much of a hassle to click confirm so Hecate had set the option to automatically carve any newly discovered spells.

The spells from the Basic Spell Introduction books were derivatives of the tier 1 spells Hecate learned 2 years ago when she first became a Mage. At that time, she learned the original spells from a tome-type weapon called Beginner Mage Tome, distributed by the Mage Association in the Rosenheim Kingdom.

Hecate wasn't too surprised that Gemmerio Empire had more version of those spells than Rosenheim Kingdom. After all, the scale of the empire was much larger than the kingdom.

"If I guess right, Economized means less MP used but lower output, while Enhanced is the opposite."

She calmly analyzed the meaning of these spells from their name.

It was a straight meaning so she didn't take much time to figure it out. Most likely, the economized version is aimed at people with low MP, and the enhanced version is aimed at people who pursue perfection, even if it means using more MP.

Then, from her Skill Tree, she found that those spells were grouped to their originals and not treated as a separate spells. Perhaps this was because the essence of these spells was actually the same. This meant that if she invested SP into the spell Firebolt, then she could also use the other versions without difficulty.

"This enhanced version seems good to me, but in the end I have to invest SP to use it, right?"

Unfortunately, this one is a miss.

Hecate didn't want to use her SP to learn those spells, because it would overlap with the spells she got from her equipment. Ultimately, her current build was centered on her equipment and not her Skill Tree.

And suddenly, her focus shifted as she scrolled through the notifications to the earliest entry.

Looking at these notifications, Hecate's eyes glittered with excitement.

Basic Mana Control and Basic Mana Cultivation, never heard about it. But from the name, it could be assumed that they were both important skills. Most likely, studying these two skills was the proper basic curriculum for Natives to become Mage. It was just Players who uses defiant way to skip the process and quickly reach the result.

The first skill could be ignored because it seemed that the Precision Mana Control she had learned through Mysticallurgy was actually better. What she was paying attention to was the second skill.

"Basic Mana Cultivation... This actually can increase my maximum MP!"

Hecate let out a grin.

Having more MP is always good for a caster, because it means she can cast more spells. In addition, the total MP is also one of the biggest factors that affect Mana Explosion damage.

For more fabulous explosion, this skill must be learned!

She then click out the details of the method, and quickly summarized the content in her mind.

In short, she had to control her internal mana to flow within her magic circuit in a certain cyclical path, while also creating imaginary organs in several places to help her body absorb the mana in the surrounding air.

The first part of the exercise wasn't too difficult, Hecate just needed to control the mana to flow according to the instruction. It was short and completed within 10 seconds.

She repeated the cycle for another 9 times before she received a notification.

Hecate nodded with satisfaction when she saw the notification.

Just in case, she checked the library window and clicked on a few books, most notably Intermediate Spell Introduction Vol 1-5, as well as Advanced Spell Introduction Vol 1-5. Hecate caught the flying ten books and read them immediately.

But as expected, you can't just fly into the sky in one step.

Other than some tier 2 and tier 3 derived spells, there was nothing to gain from these books yet. It seemed she had to raise her Basic Mana Cultivation to Lv10 first before moving on to the next step.

At least, the information from these books has been recorded and can be read back at any time.

But suddenly she had a thought.

'Since there's a way to increase max MP, that means there's also a way to increase max HP out there!'

She immediately checked the library window again, and couldn't help but be baffled when she saw the long list of books. There were over 18 million books on the list and she didn't know what to look for. Even if she had Player privileges, reading all those books might take several years to complete.

And so, she went to the librarian again and asked.

"Excuse me, is there any recommended method to increase HP that can be learned?"

"Hmm, I don't know about this. How about trying to take a look at the Warrior training methods?"

"Thank you."

Following that suggestion, Hecate searched and found many books on Warrior-related training. She clicked and summoned about 15 books but unfortunately, none of them suited her.

It seemed that the crucial problem was because of the Jobclass. Maybe this aura thing that used by Warriors doesn't go well with Mage's magic circuit, so it will cause conflict in the body.

"Oh well, if it doesn't work then so be it."

Hecate wasn't too disappointed with this result, as it was just a sudden idea. But then, she had another inspiration on her mind. Unlike the game avatar Hecate, the real body Yasaka Ruri in real world is that of a muggle.

Then, can Ruri practice this method in real life?

Looking at the contents of the breathing method, although she did not understand the language, the pictures clearly depicted the breathing posture, the special way of inhaling and exhaling, while doing some taichi-like exercises.

Seems believable.

However, this method is ultimately just a game method, and is only made to be believable for a more immersive gaming experience. Whether this method can be applied in reality, is not necessarily true.

But since Ruri could materialize items from the game inventory, maybe...

"Let's try it later at night."

She closed the book and contemplated.

Confirmation on this matter can be postponed later. Right now, she still had the objective of gathering information about Artificer and Runemaster first.

Thus, Hecate looked at the library window once more, and clicked another two books.

FlyingPirateCat

Backstory

Only the touched part will be recorded as the paper texture, the non-touched part will be smooth.

The system can also record the "taste" of the book if the Player eats the book after the recording is finished. This is especially useful if the book is made of food, such as biscuits, chocolate... or meat. No need to eat everything on the book, but if that's the case, only the eaten part will be recorded.

The recorded book will not lost upon eating, also, eating a materialized book can't increase satiety in the game.

Ruri can't materialize the recorded books as objects in the real world, because they weren't in the inventory.

— Basic = 50-100 TB

— Standard = 100-400 TB

— Premium = 1-4 PB

— Executive = 1 EB