Chapter 49 - A System?

Seeing Michael losing consciousness and was about to fall onto the floor Shin who was momentarily stunned moved and caught him. Shin looked at the now sleeping Michael and an excited smile arose from his face.

'I wasn't wrong, it looks like this guy is going to be a fun playmate. Right now he's just a little rough around the edges but after he's able to properly control and manifest his inner energy he would become someone worth fighting.'

Shin placed Michael at the side and gave back the book as promised. He then looked at Michae's classmates and spoke to them.

"Hey what's this guy's name?" Shin pointed at the unconscious Michael. The group of students could not answer immediately as they were afraid to even breathe the same air as Shin.

"Are you people deaf? I asked you, people, a question, so how about answering it?" Shin was getting a bit impatient as some of his inner energy started leaking out of him. The students immediately panicked and one of them finally answered him.

"He's Michael." When he got the answer he wanted, Shin stopped emitting that menacing aura of his and smiled.

"I see, so his name is Michael, I will remember that name. You people once he wakes up tell him this for me. That punch of his was pretty good. I'll wait for the day he and I can actually have a proper fight."

After saying what he wanted to say Shin didn't even bother to hear if Michael's classmates understood what he said and simply left the classroom.

...

It was already after lunch and Loki didn't bother eating as he was engrossed in his reading. Since no one was coming to the library his reading was unhindered. In fact for the entirety of the day, only his sister came to visit the library and it was only to check up on him.

Loki who was simply reading a book could feel mana surging from the book into him. Just reading the grimoire was boosting his mana. What should have been days of training was down within seconds.

Loki was nearing the end of reading the Unknown history of Sorcery and he found it truly intriguing. The book tells a tale of the same history as what is written in other books, but this time there were mages behind the scenes.

The book itself was barely a grimoire as though there was only some mention of spells and how to use them, like the create water spell, but overall it was just a book that recounts a different history than what was written in other history books. The only other thing that makes it a passable grimoire was the boost Loki was getting just from reading it. Aside from that, it was actually a pretty interesting read.

The mages described in the book were amazing people that used magic for just about everything. Unlike in Loki's old world, the mages in this world had no specializations and were all over the place.

On the other hand, those that could not use magic were looked down upon. Yet near the end of the book, those without magic created a country based on science, making what most mages do obsolete.

There was also mention that nearing the end of the 12th century, mages were becoming harder and harder to come by. No one knows why but for some reason the majority of the mages started weakening during this period. Still even at the end before they disappeared from the annals of history, the mages were a force to be reckoned with.

The last written record of any mage being sighted was in the battle of twin peaks, where a single mage annihilated the armies of two fighting nations. The two armies combined consisted of five hundred thousand men. At the end of the book, the writer wrote a question.

'If mages truly walked among us, where are they now and what will they do next?' The moment Loki finished reading, he heard a ringing sound in his head.

'Confirmation of host, download complete. Do you wish to activate the system, Y/N?'

A window with words appeared before Loki which surprised him. After calming down a bit he noticed that the window with words on it was being powered by the mana within the library. As Loki continued to look at the floating words and the question that was in front of him, he remembered the books his younger brother liked to read.

Those books were filled with people that transmigrated into another world, just like him. Most of them acquire cheats upon transfer, ranging from a wise old man hidden within a ring, having a talent or weapon bestowed by God, and the greatest cheat of them all was the system.

'I see so this is supposed to be my cheat...' Loki then raised his hands and pressed on the floating window in front of him. What he pressed was the N button. The moment he pressed on it, another window appeared.

'Are you sure, you don't want to activate the system? Y/N?' Loki pressed Y without any hesitation. Another window appeared.

'Are you truly sure? Y/N?'' Loki was starting to get irritated but he continued to press on the Y button. After that different windows kept on popping out asking him if he really didn't want to activate the system. Despite it being persistent Loki kept on denying it.

Loki didn't really want to rely on external factors such as a system bestowed by an unknown entity to get stronger, since it was possible that he might lose access to the system later on making him vulnerable. Unlike the protagonists in the stories Liam likes, he didn't really need a system to get stronger. The only true way for him was to get stronger under his own efforts. Not to mention the way the system bonds with its host sound like a contract with a devil.

After continuously denying the system to activate, a voice that sounded very similar to his sister from his old world spoke to him.

"What are you doing?! Why do you keep on pressing the wrong button?! Don't you understand what a system is? Aren't you excited to have a system like the ones you read in novels, a system that would help you grow into a powerful existence?"