The Insider System

Chapter 44: Self Study

Lake had just gotten done looking at the last part of his room; it was a set of doors Lake guessed these led to where his servants slept. But all this and he had only killed an hour, not wanting to waste anymore time, Lake dressed himself completely. He was going to go to the library that was supposedly the next floor down.

Lake guessed this was going to be his mornings from now on, maybe he could use this time everyday to study. Next time he saw Joy he would ask if he could go into the dungeon for a few hours but he was sure she was asleep right now so he would have to ask her to switch up her schedule.

Stepping into the hallway, Lake started to go towards the staircase. Lake saw some disheveled person going the opposite direction. Lake guessed she had been up all night and was just now coming home to go to sleep. Lake figured this was one of his three neighbors. Lake decided to not bother her because she looked tired, so he just nodded at her.

"Are you the new person? What was your name again, um?" Lake guessed she was still fine enough for a conversation. "I'm Lake." After he said this Lake saw the confusion leave her face. "That's right. I'm Nia. Where are you going?" Lake hadn't been expecting her to ask him this so he answered right away without thinking.

"To the library. I don't sleep very much so I figured I'd go and look around at what kind of books there are." Lake felt this was a good way to kill a few hours because the last time he read a book it had taken over an hour. "You've already slept?" Lake nodded. "Ok, I'll see you tomorrow." Nia waved bye so Lake followed suit.

Getting to the stairs, Lake started to head down and a few minutes later he pushed the door of the library open. Looking in Lake was blown away at how many books there were and if Lake recalled what Lucas had said this was just the beginner library. Lake bet he couldn't read all these books even if he tried.

Walking over to the closest bookshelf Lake started to read the titles. Quickly scanning them all Lake found they all had names pertaining to alchemy, and while some of them sounded interesting Lake wanted to know more about magic. Lake continued to do this moving shelf by shelf until finally he found a section that held books about elements.

It wasn't exactly what Lake wanted but it was close enough. Grabbing a book that seemed to be about all the elements. Lake walked to a table and sat down flipping through the book, Lake found as many different elements as he could. He wanted a complete list so he could pick the ones he wanted to focus on.

Getting to the back of the book Lake got to a section labeled New Elements. This part of the book was much shorter than the rest and Lake wondered if it was even up to date, did someone come and add to every book when there was a new god? Lake went past the page that was about darkness because he was already a Dark mage.

"Metal is considered an Extreme element because it is just an upgraded version of earth with all the same principles just pushed to the Extreme." This was what Lake wanted to see; earlier he had seen Earth in the normal part of the book, and had just gone right past it but Metal sounded way better to him.

What Lake wanted to know was if it still had the same unlock conditions could he just gather Metal mana out of the air like he could with most elements or did he have to pull it from the ground. He would have to try it later because he assumed he wasn't allowed to practice in the library. It seemed to be a common rule in most libraries that you had to be quiet.

Moving to the next element Lake saw it was Ice. He had actually heard of Ice before the Temple Head had mentioned it to him when she was telling how new elements came about. Lake wasn't too interested in Ice so he went ahead and skipped it. "Life Magic is an offshoot of the Holy element that keeps most of Holy Magic's healing abilities but loses its ability to be used to negate curses."

Lake wondered why someone would weaken an element then use it to ascend wouldn't you want to make it stronger. Lake got up and went looking for a book about Life Magic. He was hoping there was some reason someone would do this. Finding a book that went into detail about the Life element Lake quickly read a few passages.

He found that it wasn't necessarily a weakness because while curses were weak to holy magic the opposite was also true. Life magic didn't have a weakness when it was first created since it didn't react with curse magic it was able to heal the body around the curse. This all changed though when death magic was created by the Demon Lord.

Reading more about death magic Lake found it wasnt its own element just an application of Unholy magic death magic was related to Unholy magic the way Life and Holy were. The only difference was death didn't have its own god; they were just spells Unholy mages could learn to counter Life magic.

Lake had to say the more he learned about the Demon Lord the more he found him kind of amazing. It was almost like he was single handedly fighting every god and somehow it seemed he was slowly winning. Lake wondered what the Demon Lord's backstory was; he seemed to really hate some of the gods.

This made Lake kind of want to meet him. Lake just wanted to know what kind of guy he was. Lake felt like he had to be some cult leader that would also match with what he knew about him having really high Charisma. That was what people always said about cult leaders back on earth that they were able to hypnotize people by just talking to them. The only difference was it was true in this case.

This was making Lake want to learn Unholy magic again but instead of making up his mind right away Lake got up and grabbed a book on Unholy Magic. Lake was starting to think Unholy Magic seemed to be the strongest. The Demon Lord had already killed the Holy Goddess, so its only weakness was already dealt with.

The Demon Lord had also taken control of the Dark element so Lake bet there were probably combination jobs that needed both elements. This was fully a guess, but if it was right Lake would be able to take advantage of this. Lake wondered if this was what the job Joy mentioned that could control undead was.

Opening the book Lake found the first page was just a warning about how it was dangerous to specialize in Unholy Magic and how if you became too good at it the Demon Lord would come and try to recruit you. Lake skipped this; he was already aware of all this. The main reason Lake was reading this book was because Lake wanted to see if curses were Unholy magic.

He found it hard to believe that curses weren't around before the Demon Lord. Getting to a section about curses, Lake read it. "Unholy Curses are particularly ruthless, without the intervention of Holy magic the lethality is the highest of any magic. That sadly is not the only thing you have to worry about when it comes to Unholy Curses, control Curses have become more and more prevalent."

The fact that this specified Unholy Curses made Lake think he was right about curses being around before the Demon Lord. Lake also found this book was probably written by someone who did not like Unholy magic; this book was filled with criticism and back handed compliments. Lake found this funny; he bet this was written during the Mage guilds collapse.

Unholy Magic was one of the causes of the collapse and you could feel the hate the author held towards the Demon Lord. Lake could picture what this place had been like during the collapse. On earth scientists used research papers to debate, but Lake bet it would be much more violent if those same scientists could use magic.

"There you are." Lake looked up to see Solomon had just come into the library. "I came to get you for morning study but your servants said you weren't there." Lake had completely forgotten about Solomon coming to get him. "Sorry about that, I woke up kind of early, and didn't want to waste too much time waiting for everyone else."

Lake could tell Solomon wasn't actually mad so he didn't put too much effort into his apology. "That's fine I'm just surprised to see you already here. I was actually expecting to find you in Master Lucas's office. I just looked in here to be sure, before I walked all the way down there." Lake bet Solomon would have been more mad if he had to walk all the way to Lucas's office to find him.

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