"...At last, I’ve found it."
Longjing Tea took a deep breath and carefully removed an extremely heavy book from the shelf... "On Decrees".
It really was an extremely heavy book.
Because its cover was not made of paper nor of cowhide...
But of three-millimeter-thick steel.
From the side, the shiny spine of the book was engraved with ornate letters, reminding Longjing Tea of stainless steel soap imprinted with brand names.
To call it a book was almost a misnomer; it was more like a small chest that could be opened horizontally.
But he had gotten used to it.
This was his fifth day at Heath Tower of Black.
When he had first arrived at Black Tower, as a transfer student with no foundation, he didn’t join the other students in class... At his age now, he didn’t want to sit in a classroom with fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds.
So, after sitting in his room for a day, he received a library pass from Salvatore, granting him permission to study on his own.
This allowed him entrance to the libraries on the fifth and sixth floors—Black Tower’s living area had a total of thirteen floors, with the bottom four floors being living quarters, dining areas, and fitness zones. From the fifth floor and up, each level contained libraries and classrooms with varying levels of access; the higher the floor, the higher the authority one needed.
With Longjing Tea’s current level of access, he could bring books from the fifth-floor library directly back to his dorm, but he had to read and take notes from books in the sixth-floor library on the sixth floor without removing them.
—And this was what Longjing Tea wanted.
He couldn’t run a dungeon at this time, so he could only do the "Eye of Secrecy"’s weekly and daily tasks:
[Copy three unlisted, valuable books (1/3), limit three times per week]
[Copy one spellbook (0/1), limited to once a day]
[Copy one book of mysterious knowledge (0/1), limited to once a day]
...Although called weekly and daily tasks, at Longjing Tea’s current "copying" speed, it essentially took him three days to copy a single book.
This "copying" was not literal hand copying—Longjing Tea couldn’t even write in the script of this world; he merely understood it through the system’s automatic translation.
The script of this world, in appearance, bore some resemblance to Latin, with its twists and turns. With the help of bidirectional translation, Longjing Tea could indeed write it, and unless it was a very complex long sentence, there were generally no difficulties... The main problem was his handwriting.
Having no experience writing these characters, even copying was a challenge, and it left Salvatore scrutinizing the text for quite a while before he gradually came to a complex, slow understanding of it.
After that, Longjing Tea didn’t really feel like writing anymore...
This "copying" was actually a universal skill—or rather, a life skill—of the Eye of Secrecy faction.
When Longjing Tea activated this skill and concentrated on reading, the text he had read and understood would be covered in a green base, the text he was currently reading and understanding would be highlighted in yellow, and the text he missed or grossly misunderstood would be marked in red.
Once a book had more than 95% green coverage, it could be input. The less red there was, the higher the reward.
At first, Longjing Tea treated this as an EXP-grinding skill, similar to "Mining" or "Disassembling," like functional key presses.
But after he had activated the skill and truly read a "valuable book" through the "copying" skill, Longjing Tea immediately realized the importance of this skill.
This function... could aid in learning!
With the "copying" function, it was as if he had a personal teacher by his side. It reminded him whether to keep reading, whether to go back and reread something, or whether he missed anything important.
Even though it didn’t directly enhance his memory, after Longjing Tea finished reading "Basic Curse Studies," he retained most of the knowledge in his mind.
Now, Longjing Tea planned to start on his daily tasks... trying to copy a spellbook.
All books on the fifth floor were "Introductions," "Preliminaries," "Reviews," along with some low-confidentiality books on history, mathematics, human physiology, and so on, many pages of which were illustrations... Seemingly just for laying the groundwork.
After Longjing Tea finished "Basic Curse Studies," he felt it was just like reading a collection of settings; nothing special really...
Regardless of what he read, it was still reading.
So why not prepare to try to understand and learn spells... while also completing his daily tasks.
By now, Longjing Tea’s apprentice wizard career had reached level seven.
He had two instant spell slots and one guided spell slot, but had only memorized "Prohibit Movement".
He now knew that to advance as an apprentice wizard, one needed to use two instant spells and two guided spells to form a cycle... Normally, building a cycle meant first writing papers, performing simulations, then having one’s mentor review it to ensure it could be used for self-protection before granting permission to advance.
And generally, the tighter and more powerful the self-protection cycle was, and the more practical it was, the higher the rating it received.
Longjing Tea, for one, lacked a mentor... and secondly, didn’t need one.
Although he wasn’t familiar with spells, he knew games very well.
He understood what role he played... and what kind of abilities other players needed.
—Control, augmentation, weakening.
Unlike the wizards...
From the very start, Longjing Tea had no intention of going solo.
How to enhance his cooperation with other players was the issue he considered.
This spell looked good.
[Emergency Evasion (Instant): Utter a decree that forces a target willing to obey your commands to immediately stop their current action and perform an emergency evasion. During the evasion, the caster’s perception attributes replace the target’s to determine success.]
Below the spell, there was a detailed explanation and specific applications provided.
In simple terms, it meant that if Longjing Tea noticed an ally was targeted by a hidden arrow and was completely unaware, he could use this spell to force the ally to dodge the attack he had seen—of course, the speed of the dodge depended on the target’s physical attributes, but the success in dodging which attacks depended on Longjing Tea’s own observations.
In another world, this was one of the three great divine moves of trainers: "Dodge quickly," "Hold on," "Get up."
...Such a powerful support spell, and it’s just an instant spell with a small consumption?
And the rating didn’t even seem that high.
Longjing Tea was taken aback.
Eventually, he came to a realization:
No wonder these wizards have no teammates.
They’re all set like orphans, without a strategy!