Chapter 88 - Hope For The Future

Hearing his question, Miss Feng immediately answered: "Perhaps they used some sort of ability that they never disclosed to the government or the hunter association to escape the pursuit of those forces of that other world's Empire...? But who knows because the survivor never mention how he did so. In any case, no one really knew how he survived their pursuit, nor did they pursue the matter due to how unstable that survivor's mental state was at the time."

"However, even though, his comrades had lost their lives in order to obtain this 'cursed book', he called it, nobody seemed to know how to open the black book either. Which then led to some claiming that it was nothing but a piece of wood that was carved to look like a book due to how solid the black book was." Miss Feng said. 

"What?! How could something like that be made out of a piece of wood?" Randy said with a dazed expression; however, he was only putting on an act at this point.

At this moment, he silently thought to himself while maintaining the same expression, 'Well, even I would have assumed that this was a piece of wood if I hadn't already discerned the true value of this mysterious black book. Too bad though, now it is going to be mine; there's no way I am going to tell anyone about its true value.' 

At this point, Miss Feng responded to him: "That's right, even after he recounted and explained the origin of the mysterious black book, no one believed him and so, having no choice, he begrudgingly pawned off the book to our company for a cheap price since the government did not want to purchase a useless book and he also needed money so badly at the time." 

"So your company decided to buy the book off him, but why? Didn't you say that it was deemed as useless by everyone?" Randy asked in puzzlement. 

Hearing this question, Miss Feng had a helpless expression and then said: "The thing is, the head of our Mystic Company was instantly intrigued when he heard about the origin story of the 'mysterious' black book, so he decided to buy it off him to study and perhaps identify its properties in hopes of using that to open the black book."

"However, even he failed to identify the black book's properties after trying for so long using various artifacts that could appraise items. As you already know, after awakening, each individual would receive their very own system and each system had an appraisal function which was pretty useful as we could easily identify most items using this function of the system. Nevertheless, not all things could be identified by the system's appraisal function as there were cases where the system could not identify an item, and thus, during those times, we had no choice but to rely on some rare artifacts for such cases." Miss Feng said and then paused for a bit. 

"…I think I heard about that before, so what happened?" Randy mused for a bit and then agreed with her before urging her to continue.

Miss Feng pointed her finger at the floating black book and then said: "This black book was among the few cases where the system could not identify the origin or the properties of. As always, the system would say something along the lines, 'unauthorized access to information or You have not met the minimum requirement in terms of power level to learn about such information' regarding said items. And it was always frustrating when that happens because that would mean nobody could figure out the uses of the item which in turn makes it useless." 

At this point, Miss Feng could not help but sigh as she said this, seemingly recalling something.

Randy had no idea what she was thinking of at this moment, however, he continued to wait for her to continue with her story. 

Although, none of these matters to him, however, at this moment in time, he could not let an opportunity to learn more about their world slip past him. 

To the current him, who had awakened his ability, that would be too stupid if he did. 

After all, obtaining information was the most important thing in this current world. Even if the information was nonessential at the moment just by hearing it, you might be pleasantly shocked in the future when it proves to be useful in an unexpected situation. 

Well, at least, that was what his friend, Jiang Chen constantly said to him, so he had also ended up somehow adopting that mindset, and thus, he patiently waited for a few moments until Miss Feng started speaking again.

"Anyway, after hearing that kind of message from the system, everyone was shocked by this. After all, our boss was not weak, and thus, one could only imagine how much stronger one needed to be in order to get access to the information regarding the black book. Because of this, the boss had no choice but to give up in the end." Miss Feng concluded with this explanation. 

"So well, do you now understand, about why nobody would spend their money on this black book?" Miss Feng said and then continued: "I'll have you know that the only reason why it was even on display in this shop was that our boss, with his enigmatic behavior, believed that since the black book existed then that means that there would eventually be someone out there who could someday open it. And with that thought, he asked for this black book to be kept in this branch of all the many branch shops throughout the districts; in other words, it was simply a coincidence that this book ended up here in the first place, and even so, no matter where it had ended up, it would be the same as it would not even sell. That was because every time one hears about the black book's background, they immediately lose interest in the book."

After he carefully listened to this long narration from Miss Feng, Randy immediately fell into thought for a brief moment. 

A few moments later, he suddenly recalled the information that he had previously read from his system's display and the other version that he had just heard from Miss Feng's story, and after pondering the difference for a bit, he could not come up with a proper conclusion for now.

Nevertheless, after hearing this story, he was more determined to purchase this book now more than ever. 

At this point, Randy abruptly reached out his hand to touch the floating black book to confirm the descriptions of the black book once again.

And after confirming that it was indeed like he had seen before, he inwardly nodded in satisfaction and then silently thought to himself.

'Sure enough, this book is a treasure that is probably, no it is without a doubt a priceless treasure, but it seems like no one could recognize its true value except for my upgraded system. Hehe… now that I have found this book, there is no need to be polite about it because it is now mine for the taking. Although I wish that I could simply copy the contents using my system's record function, however, that seemed to be impossible at the moment, so I will need to buy and keep it for now.. Essentially, there is still hope for the future.'