Chapter 281 281 Learning



Wolfe sat at the table in his room with a collection of books open in front of him and the damaged crystal that he had gained from the merchant's guard sitting in the middle.

That was his goal for the day, to learn what was in the crystal. It could be nothing useful, or a dry technical tome, or it could be a repertoire of spells. There was nothing on the outside to tell the crystals apart, so he just had to hope for the best and that the damaged part didn't cause the crystal to be unusable.

With the faintest hint of mana, Wolfe activated the crystal, sending a flood of information into his mind that took him a moment to even begin to sort.

[Welcome to the annals of the Carib Family's fourth branch descendants.] The crystal informed him, and Wolfe resigned himself to not gaining much of use from the historical records.

He didn't know much about the Magi lineages, but given the lack of pomposity and that they were the fourth branch, it didn't seem that they were very highly ranked or powerful.

[For the first time since our founding, the Fourth Branch has a Rank Three Patriarch. If he can make one more advancement before his time is up, our branch could finally be counted among the Noble Families.] The crystal continued.

That really wasn't promising, but if they taught him more about daily life, he might gain some real insights into how magic could properly be used for mundane and more frequently used applications.

[This is the journal of Ahab Carib, youngest son of the Patriarch and lover of women.]

The translation was jerky, perhaps due to the damage to the crystal, and it kept pausing, but Wolfe was smiling.

"Ahab Carib, I think we would have gotten along well if we had lived at the same time," Wolfe muttered as he carefully manipulated the spell on the crystal to repair the damage that had destabilized it.

The memory of the inscription was still in the crystal, and as Wolfe focused, it slowly began to rebuild the missing runes in the air where the crystal had broken away, allowing the memories to flow more freely.

[I will start at the beginning. I have only just learned to create complex arrays, but I feel that I have great potential. It is not yet my nineteenth birthday, and I have already finished the first year's studies. I am working ahead and hope to get a full year ahead by my twentieth birthday. That should be enough to impress even those Noble House brats at the Academies when I arrive.

But I digress. With only the Air and Lightning Elements to work with, I am still somewhat limited, but there is a chance that I will unlock more affinities as my power grows. Two Elements isn't great, even for a branch family like ours, but I learn fast, and my power is growing well.

Let me show you the room I have managed to create.]

A memory of all the spells which the young man had put on his room filled Wolfe's mind. They were all very simple but useful and mana efficient. The author of the crystal's record was a First Rank Magi, so he would have needed the efficiency to make all of the spells work, and the changes that he had made were enough to have Wolfe frantically scribbling inscriptions on his magical whiteboard.

He could use the crystal again if he forgot them, but once he had written them correctly, the Inheritance usually stored spells for Wolfe to recall easily. Surely Ahab should have had the same advantage, but it seemed like he had to modify these spells on his own, so they weren't in his Inheritance, just like they weren't in the one that Wolfe had received from the Lumix Family.I think you should take a look at

[Other than my room, I have come up with a few more useful spells to help me with my hobbies and endeavours.] The young Magi explained.

[Massage] was an air spell and quite self-explanatory, but [Stimulation] was an exquisitely created Lightning Magic inscription with uses from the lewd to the torturous. It would just lightly, or not so lightly, electrocute various nerves, and the creator had helpfully included a guide to use.

For a while, the young man just rambled about daily life, and while it was interesting, it wasn't what Wolfe had come searching for. Perhaps he had already gotten what he could out of the crystal, and the upgraded furniture spells were very good, even without considering the two unique spells that had been recorded.

Then, the tone of the crystal suddenly changed.

[I had forgotten about this old journal, but it will do for now. Much has changed since I was a young man, and if anyone finds this crystal, I hope they listen all the way through the early years of Saint Ahab to reach this point.

I never did get to use more than two Elements, but at Rank Eight, I can now create a Thunderstorm that blankets a continent, and none would question my right to be called a Saint.

There is neither the time nor the space in this crystal to include much, and the armies are bearing down on our location, so I must hide it quickly once my message is finished but know this, what we do, we do for the good of the world.]

A Rank Eight Magi? Now that was incredible. The amount of raw power that he must have wielded would have been incredible, and it was a shame that the war had ended the way that it did.

Wolfe thought that the message was finished, but there was more information tacked on at the end like they were an afterthought by the Saint, who just wanted whichever Magi found the crystal to learn a bit more about his life's passion and studies.

The first few minutes were dedicated entirely to the various ways to pleasure a woman with both the body and magic. It was an odd choice, which made Wolfe laugh out loud as he sat in his room with the crystal. The man must have been hundreds of years old by the time he recorded this, but his passions had never changed.

The last part of the information was much more valuable, though.

[For anyone listening, I will warn you of this. There is a reason that the Common and Noble Families are named as such, and it has to do with the nature of their lineage, not their personal skills or dedication.

A Noble Magi can raise their affinity with the Advanced Elements that they are born with to the Adept Rank with no issues, but all of us can only raise one other to that level every three Ranks that we obtain through our own hard work and talent.

I did not get my study of Air Magic to Adept until I was at Rank Six. My lineage would not allow it. But those bastard Noble Sons at the Academy had both their advanced Element and one other Element raised to Adept by the time we graduated from the Academy all those years ago.

So do not take it lightly, and think hard about whether you want to learn what I will teach you. For I have not only brought Lightning to the Adept level but to Expert, Master and Grandmaster as well. All that knowledge cannot fit in one crystal, but if you have the skill, today I can teach you the ways of an Adept Lightning User.]