Chapter 7: 1.2

Luckily the library was free to use and easy to find.  The staff working there were both kind and polite and helped him to find books on every subject he asked about.  The library itself was two stories tall and went several floors underground.  The main floor was the only place that felt even slightly open by having desks and chairs for people to study while under the watchful eyes of the staff behind the counter.  The rest of the library was filled with shelves of books so close together that there was barely enough room to fit a large person in between the rows.  With the staff's help he soon had several stacks of books filling the table he was sitting at.  He moved them around slightly to make some space in front of him and began with the first book he could easily grab.

He continued reading late into the night as he tried to learn what he could about everything.  He read books on skills, levels, layers, classes, species, races, clans, and history.  Apparently, much like in his past life, he found history slightly boring as he was awakened by a staff member gently shaking his shoulder after he had fallen asleep with his head in the middle of a history book.  He apologized to the staff member and asked if he could have a few of the books left on the table for him to return to.  The man gave him a curious look so he explained that he wouldn't to go grab a quick bite to eat before returning and doing some more reading.  The librarian smiled at him and told him that he would, unfortunately, have to just check out what books he wanted to read or remember the books and get them again when he came back.

He was a little disappointed but agreed that it was a good way to have the library work since there was no guarantee that he would actually return from their point of view.  He thanked the librarian for his time and asked if he should help with putting the books back before being told to just go home and sleep.  He smiled faintly back and left the library.

The night sky was quite a sight, with all of the stars shining quite brightly in the night sky and the moon fully visible even in whatever phase it was currently in with only a sliver of it glowing.  He wasn't entirely sure how the phases of the moon worked here so he couldn't say that it was the same as what he somewhat remembered.  With his night vision he was able to see around him quite clearly so he turned and began heading on his way out of town.  There was no gate or anything he had to pass nor any people around to question why he was out and alone in the middle of the night so he just continued walked while lost in his thoughts.

He couldn't remember every detail of everything he had read but he had learned enough things to feel like he had a better idea of what to do for now.  First was about this world.  The layers that everyone kept talking about were essentially different phases or floors of the world.  Salients were supposed to level up and make achievements on each layer before moving to the next.  Each layer had a requirement to reach it and once the requirements were met could be journeyed to by any one of several access points across a nearby layer.  That was how it worked for salients, at least.  He hadn't fully checked on how it was different for residents but he knew there were residents on most layers, too.  Each layer was the size of an entire world by itself having their own oceans, continents, and sometimes even unique biomes.  The requirement to go to the second layer was only having a minimum level of ten.

This first layer was one of the most peaceful and the system kept it that way by putting in various protections for both salients and residents while keeping the levels and tiers of the various creatures around relatively low.  It was, in pretty much all ways, the final tutorial stage for new salients.  Few things were truly dangerous on this layer and as long as a salient had not yet passed the tutorial by going to the second layer at least once then there wasn't even a real need to fear death since they would essentially just respawn back at the temple.  Based on that and his racial ability to feed on fresh blood, he decided that he should try and see how he handled himself alone for a little while.  

There were other reasons to go out like this as well.  There was a skill that he wanted to get and he needed the points to do that since trying to train into it was considered incredibly difficult.  He also knew he was going to need to learn how to fight and survive.  The memory of failing the arena tutorial was still slightly haunting and while he had essentially unlimited lives for now to figure things out, death would be permanent once he moved on.  Then there were his skills, traits, and abilities to play around with.  He already knew that it was likely a very bad idea for anyone to know about his blood domain and magic due to what he had been told and their descriptions, which meant it was also probably a bad idea to let his species be easily discovered.  Unfortunately, even though he had plans to try and deal with that, those plans were going to take a lot of time and work so he would need to be able to deal with whatever came his way as best he could until then.

Skills, as he had read, gained experience separately from species and class levels.  Skills had 20 levels and most had at least one or two evolutions, with experience towards their levels being added every time they were used but evolutions only available by spending skill points.  Evolutions came in three categories: Linear, Side, and Combined.  Linear evolutions were pure upgrades to a skill, allowing it to be used in the same way as before but with more added on.  Side evolutions were skills that evolved to be more specialized and became much stronger in their specialization at the cost of reducing or losing the other aspects.  Fortunately, salients could pick up skills that they had already evolved if they wanted to.  Then there were the combinations, allowing multiple skills to be combined into one and freeing up slots.  Combined skills were often listed with similar or same names but did not always do the same things since they could only do what had been combined to create them.  They were also more difficult to level and sometimes there was a little bit of loss towards the previous skills. 

A good example he had read about was the Tri-Magic skill that combined any three skills of magic types, such as dark magic or blood magic, and a usage type, such as aria, into one skill.  A good enough identification type skill could see what types of skills were in the combination skill but otherwise anyone who read across the status would only see Tri-Magic.  Although he wasn't entirely sure how combination skills would work when combining racial skills, class skills, and general skills together.  It wasn't exactly something he wanted to experiment with quite yet or if he could help it.

All in all, he decided to set some simple short term goals for himself.  Survive by living mostly outside of town for a while, work on leveling up and learning his skills, learn the ins and outs of his traits and abilities, learn how to fight better, level up his species as best he could, and head over to the library every once in a while to learn as much as he could.  He wanted to try and stick around to do all of this in safety for as long as possible but he remembered his mentor saying something about a week so he set the time limit for everything as five days.  The only thing he felt he should be extra careful about was avoiding his assigned mentor.  Hopefully she wouldn't care too much about him not being around as long as he made it to the second layer in time.

He looked back and realized that he had been walking for a decent distance since he left the town.  Hoping he was far enough away and in a direction that no group, especially his, would be headed this way for whatever training or leveling he turned and walked into the nearest set of trees and started looking for a comfortable place to get a few hours of sleep.  Eventually he found a tree with a wide and thick branch that was only a few meters off the ground that he thought would do perfectly well as a sleeping spot.  He climbed up and took off his backpack before putting his arms back through the straps with it on his chest so that he wouldn't accidentally drop it while he was asleep then worked himself into the most comfortable position he could and closed his eyes.

When he awoke the next morning to the cool breeze across his face, he realized how uncomfortable his sleeping spot had ended up being.  He knew he would likely do it again but resolved himself to find some blankest or something to make it slightly more comfortable next time.  He looked around and let his sleepy mind slowly catch up with his situation.  He wasn't sure if it was the week of no sleep finally catching up or something else but he felt strangely well rested even through the soreness.  He took a few moments to stretch out and put his backpack back on his back before hopping off the branch.  He was glad nobody was around to see him comically fall flat on his butt after the landing.

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He stood up and brushed himself off, realizing that there was going to be a slight problem with the plans he had made now that he had some sleep to clear his thoughts up.  While he took a moment to relieve his bladder using the tree's trunk as a target, he wondered if it would make any nearby creatures consider it his territory and then let that thought lead him into others.  He was going to need to bathe and he wasn't too keen on trying to do that in some river or something when he had no clue how people were going to be traveling around.  It probably wouldn't be a huge problem running into other mentored groups but he still wanted to avoid it as best he could just in case.  He let out a sigh as he realized that he couldn't just head back to town immediately and decided to head deeper into the trees while keeping track of the direction he had entered from.

He tried to move forward as stealthily as possible but assumed he wasn't succeeding very well due to the constant sounds of his steps on the ground and all the snapping twigs and branches.  Regardless of the noise he was making, he still managed to pick up a nearby creature with his Detect Life skill and began creeping closer in an even more careful manner.  As he rounded the tree between him and whatever he was sensing, he saw a large deer with massive antlers looking right back at him.  They both froze and stared at each other for a moment before the deer seemed to get enraged and lowered it's head as if it were going to charge.  He pulled his gun from its holster as quickly as he could and began firing as he tried to follow the ways he had been taught on how to shoot.

One shot slammed into the deer's leg as he was still adjusting his aim and the next two put holes into the deer's head.  He watched as the deer slumped down to the ground and let out a sigh of relief.  From this experience he could tell that he had quite a few things to work on.  He hadn't sensed nearly far enough away for one and knowing what he was sensing and where they were looking was another.  In addition to that he could tell that he needed a lot of practice with shooting still.  The bonus he had managed to achieve against the targets was in a controlled area with rifle for the most part, after all.  He concluded his thoughts and began reloading with mana bullets as he walked up to his kill.

He used his knife to make a cut on the neck of the deer and hesitantly put his mouth to it to suck up the blood.  It was actually a lot more filling and delicious than he expected.  After a few minutes he noticed that the blood was becoming less delicious and decided that he had probably had enough for now to call it a meal.  He used the knife to widen the wound further and started to work on his personal training.  The first thing he wanted to try and start working on was figuring out what all he could do with blood domain and blood manipulation.  He experimented around for a few minutes and found that his blood domain did help with range as well, which was one of his biggest questions from when he had read the description.  After having a little fin and playing around with the blood a little by having it move around him like he were a martial artist able to to control water, he finally decided to start working on using his skills.

From his classes at mage school he had learned that mana manipulation could help him to draw circles and attach his mana to things so his next thought was to see if he could put his mana into the blood and use his mana and blood manipulation simultaneously.  He pulled together the blood he was controlling at the moment to make a small sphere hovering over his palm.  It was a little off and showed that he definitely needed some practice but he chose not to pay attention to it too much at the moment.  He focused as hard as he could and tried to pour his mana into the blood ball.  It took a few tries and moving the blood so close to his hand that it was almost touching but eventually he managed to put some mana into the ball like he wanted.

The ball started to become more unsteady and difficult to control after that, however.  He eventually realized that he wasn't going to be able to keep control of it and stepped back as he let it fall to the ground in a splash.  He noticed some of it got on his pants and tried to use his manipulation to pull it all back of so they didn't get stained.  It was a partial success, with only a little bit left behind, and he considered it down enough that others wouldn't be able to tell unless they looked closely so he switched his thoughts over to trying to figure out why it had turned out the way it did.  He tried a few more times with the blood still coming out of the deer and finally concluded that he needed a higher mana manipulation skill.  It seemed that as soon as the mana he was infusing into the blood left his control was when the blood became harder to control.  Maybe mana that was no longer under his control, even if it came from him, wasn't considered his any longer or something.  It was the best he could come up with at the moment but he made a mental note to try and look it up in the future.

Figuring there wasn't a whole lot more he could do with that at the moment he moved on to trying his blood magic.  It didn't take long for him to realize that he was going to need to research some more spells and circles soon.  He made another mental note of that and continued with what he could remember.  The only thing he could really get to work, though, was a bloody needle shot that was similar to what he had done in the dungeon.  He had to cut into the deer a few more times to get to more blood but kept practicing with that for as long as he could.  He even started trying to use blood manipulation to help draw the circles and mana manipulation to charge and activate them, resulting in even more failures.  He figured that even though he was failing a lot that he was still getting some good practice in.  He was nowhere near the point where he could actually aim his spell, though.

After another hour or so of practicing he realized that he was running out of blood to practice with and decided to move on.  He felt a little bad about leaving the corpse there but hoped the forest would take care of it while he made a mental note to try and find out what he could do with the corpses of creature that he killed.  That thought made him decide that he should try and head back to the town instead of continuing his woodland journey so that he could take a bath and check out the library again.  It wasn't too difficult to find his way back and he realized that he had probably spent a little more time than he intended since the sun already nearing the horizon.  There was probably only a couple hours left of daylight.

He wasn't sure where he would be able to find a bathhouse or anything and he had no desire to check into an inn just to get a bath so he chose to head to the temple and see if either they had something or cold point him in the right direction.  He called out to the first priest he saw as he was approaching the building in the middle of the yard and asked where he could find a place to bathe for as cheap as possible.  The priest gave him a knowing smile and offered to show him the way to the communal baths of the temple.  He thanked the priest and followed him, deciding to use the chance to ask for some general information as well.  As he was led through the temple he managed to find out where several stores were as well as the general guild building for him to sell off the things he hunted or found.

He was told the rules of how the baths worked and gratefully entered to clean himself off.  The quick shower was nice, as was the feeling of grime on his body coming off before he even made it to the large bath.  It probably wasn't the best manners but he let himself drift off almost immediately upon entering the bath itself and he assumed that he had been there for at least an hour before a priest finally shook him awake to let him know that he should probably get out soon.  He apologized for his actions and thanked the man before getting out and drying himself off.  He made yet another mental note to make sure he tried to get at least one more change of clothes along with his blanket as he put his other clothes back on.  The good news was that his underwear seemed to live up to its name and be fresh and clean still.

 

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