Act 1-12: Attribute-less Magic

―7673 years after the start of the game.

When I had just started reading the grimoire, I had to drink elixir every five minutes due to extreme headache.

As I continued reading, I acquired a skill whose function I couldn’t understand. It was called 【Magic Poison Resistance】. However, after I got that skill, the pain I experienced when reading the grimoire decreased a lot. This increased my reading efficiency by miles. In the end, I acquired 【Magic Poisoning Invalid】. Now, I could read the grimoire just fine without experiencing a headache again.

Although the grimoire’s letters were nothing more than incomprehensible symbols in my eyes, translating them was not a big deal for me. After all, one of the treasure boxes I found in the dungeon contained magic letters’ translations.

After understanding the contents of the grimoire, I found an extremely important fact, a fact that I couldn’t use normal magic.

At this point, I had a general understanding of attribute magic. This attribute of magic was what is generally known as “magic.”

It was composed of general attribute magic and special attribute magic.

The general attribute magic was composed of four basic elements, namely fire, water, wind, and earth; besides them, there were four advanced elements: ice, thunder, light, and darkness. All of them made eight attributes in total. “Special attribute” was a term used for anything outside of those eight elements.

This attribute magic couldn’t be acquired unless one had a certain amount of talent. This included the talent to make a contract with a grimoire. The so-called talent mentioned here was apparently unrelated to a gift or a skill. If one couldn’t form a pact with a grimoire, they wouldn’t be able to acquire the magic in that grimoire no matter how hard they trained.

Consequently, I, who had no redeeming talent, couldn’t form a contract with any of those grimoires. This might make one wonder whether I had spent the last sixty years in vain or not.

There was actually another kind of magic called attribute-less magic. To put it simply, this magic aimed for a certain effect by applying mana in one’s body or something else. Since one only needed to control their mana, it didn’t require any particular talent. In short, it was the most suitable magic for me.

At this point, the books I had acquired from the treasure box weren’t just grimoires. The total number of books I had collected had until now surpassed tens of thousands. And this included books of various fields outside of magic. As a result of carefully reading all those books in the last sixty years, I found that attribute-less magic was extremely inefficient.

I noticed this when I read a book containing medical knowledge.

The human body is composed of countless tiny cells. The gathering of those small cells is called a tissue, and the gathering of those tissues is an organ. Each organ had its own function. These organs I mentioned were none other than human internal organs. The grimoire of 【Super-Physical Strengthening】 and 【Super-Fast Recovery】, attribute-less magic, was loading several tissues with mana. Ideally, with loading one mana per cell, their effect would quite literally shoot through the roof. However, this requires precise control of mana. In addition, as long as I master control of mana, I should be able to gain my first long-range attack too.

The effort I had to put in to achieve that goal simply couldn’t be compared to before. It was far more steep and difficult since I had no target of comparison.

「This is it. This is what I’m looking for! ANOTHER GOAAAAAAAAAAAAL!! I CAN STILL BECOME STRONGER!!」

Thus, my mana manipulation training began along with a strange yet delighted laugh.