Episode 2
Episode 2: If Only I Had Time to Study (1)
The librarian of the Starting Village library, Libra.
As a librarian, she always did her best.
Although there had been a few more players for some weeks a year ago, it was now a library visited by only a handful of village elders.
But before she knew it, there was one man who sat at the same time, in the same seat, every single day.
None other than the player Gyeongjun.
Usually, the other players would say things like:
『What, my stats aren’t going up?』
『If that’s the case, why’d they even bother making a library?』
『The frozen north, the history of the Chuberian Kingdom… What’s the point of reading this stuff if stats don’t go up? I’d rather hunt during that time.』
They would show these reactions and disappear in no time.
Only that player called Gyeongjun remained until the end, reading books.
Or he would somehow get his hands on paper and pencils and keep scribbling something down.
Every day at the same time.
Every day in the same seat.
She truly thought he was a strange player.
He was always at that time, in that seat, racking his brains and groaning, muttering that he couldn’t solve the problem, or asking who the hell wrote this kind of solution for him to understand.
Though the library was always empty, as the librarian, Gyeongjun was also a somewhat troublesome guest to her.
Libra had thought that he, at least, was not a bad player.
Since she was a librarian without much to do anyway, and she had also groaned while struggling to study basic magic theory herself.
Moreover, while players who treated NPCs merely as tools for giving quests were rampant, someone like him was a mild case, comparatively.
But today, Libra judged that he had crossed the line.
Gyeongjun had been studying when—
“Aha! I realized it! So this is what acids and bases are! Timo, then what happens with this?”
Gyeongjun turned his head to the side and asked.
Beside him was empty air. Nothing at all.
“Yeah, yeah. Aha, so that’s how it is. Wow. Seriously, Timo, you explain things so well. The hologram explanation is totally killer too. It sticks right in since you show me with pictures.”
Despite there being nothing there, Gyeongjun nodded his head as if he had really heard an explanation.
“Let me write this down before I forget what I just heard. First, H2O+Cl2 is…….”
When Gyeongjun picked up his pencil again, he suddenly grabbed his head and cried out in pain.
“Urgh, the headache again…! Alright, let’s look at it in a bit. I’ll write down what you just explained for now……!”
Even so, Gyeongjun didn’t stop his pencil and kept writing something down.
It seemed to go quiet for a moment, but—
“Oh! My mana’s full again? Summon Timo! Timo, so this time, there’s this problem…….”
Gyeongjun began talking to himself at the empty air once more.
Seeing that, Libra couldn’t help but think this:
The player Gyeongjun had suddenly gone crazy.
‘What on earth is that?!’
Normally, he would just get slightly irritated that he couldn’t solve problems, but starting one day, he began talking to the empty air and chaos ensued.
And it always started with him saying his mana was full and ended with him grabbing his temples, complaining of a headache.
No, it didn’t end there.
Holding his aching head, he would somehow scribble something on paper, then a short while later talk to the empty air again, and again complain of a headache…….
Anyway, an endless repetition of this.
‘He must be cursed by the Demon God! There’s no way he would act like that otherwise……!’
It had already been a week of that now.
There was no way he would act like that in his right mind without having received some kind of curse.
Libra could only watch Gyeongjun while trembling, when a thought suddenly flashed past her.
‘Wait, hold on… Now that I think about it, Korea? Didn’t they say the otherworlders called Korean players are a bit off their rocker? Could he be Korean……?’
Libra recalled a reason slightly more plausible than a Demon God’s curse.
Carefully, she recalled the stories she had heard from neighbors and villagers once more.
‘That’s right! He must be Korean! They said the guy who came to the library the other day saying he would become a book-eating mage and tore up and ate books was Korean too! These crazy Koreans!’
In the end, Libra couldn’t help but reach this pitiful conclusion.
“Heh, I’m starting to get used to mana exhaustion too. Ow, ow, my head…… Then, reviewing again, according to the Arrhenius definition, an acid dissolves in water to produce H+ ions…….”
And yet, even amidst all this, Gyeongjun was merely continuing to study.
* * *
Gyeongjun wasn’t crazy, nor was Libra seeing things.
It was simply that Timo was invisible to Libra.
Meanwhile, to Gyeongjun, who could see Timo, he was merely learning through studying.
A pitiful situation brought about merely by the difference in their positions.
Of course, what Libra couldn’t see wasn’t limited to Timo alone.
.
.
.
[Through continuous studying, Intelligence has increased by 1.]
[Through continuous mana consumption, Mana has increased by 1.]
[Through continuous studying, Intelligence has increased by 1.]
Countless messages piled up in Gyeongjun’s status window log.
They were all messages about his Intelligence and Mana increasing.
When Gyeongjun studied, turning his head this way and that, his Intelligence rose.
When he summoned Timo and listened to explanations until he suffered mana exhaustion, his Mana rose.
An infinite repetition of this.
In the meantime, Intelligence and Mana kept accumulating in Gyeongjun’s stat window.
Of course, Gyeongjun was so focused on studying that he pushed the status window to the side without properly checking it.
“Wow, but seriously, Timo, you’re awesome. How do you even catch errors in the reference book?”
“Yeah, that running machine or whatever. Anyway, so I’m not wrong about this, I got it right, right?”
Timo not only explained the solutions but also checked wrong answers and even caught errors in the book itself!
Moreover, the explanations weren’t just verbal but accompanied by holographic images made of mana, so the explanations stuck in his head the moment he heard them.
Not even any teacher in Gangnam could do it like this.
Of course, Gyeongjun came from a poor family, so he had never taken classes at a Gangnam academy.
‘As expected, they say you should find a teacher first when learning anything. In martial arts novels and shounen manga, the protagonist always had a teacher by their side when getting stronger.’
It was when Gyeongjun was very satisfied with Timo’s functions and scribbling with his pencil.
[Satiety has reached 0%.]
[If food is not consumed, stats will decrease by the negative value of Satiety.]
[If Satiety reaches -100%, you will die.]
“Ah, satiety. I should go to Bread and ask for some bread that’s about to expire again.”
“Yeah, hard bread. People don’t buy it much, so it’s always left over. So I take what would be thrown away and eat it instead.”
For that reason, Gyeongjun tried to leave the library.
“Libra. Please give me my pass.”
It was a library where you handed your pass to the librarian when entering and received it back when leaving.
But Libra the librarian didn’t hand over the pass immediately like before.
Something was a bit strange.
For some reason, an expression of extreme fear.
“Um, are you alright now……?”
“What? Alright?”
“Ah, that’s right. I get it. So for the past week, I must have looked like I was talking to myself the whole time?”
“H-hiiik……! W-who on earth are you talking to?! What on earth do you see?!”
The librarian shuffled backward while seated, terrified.
“D-Demon God! It’s definitely the Demon God’s curse! We must go to the church right now and call a priest……!”
“Then I’ll just take my pass.”
“Uwaaaaah……!”
Without paying much heed to the librarian, Gyeongjun found his pass on the librarian’s desk.
At that moment, a single book caught his eye.
The title of that book was…….
“……You Too Can Become an Archmage! Basic Magic Theory?”
Flip. Flip.
Gyeongjun became a bit interested and turned through a few pages of the book the librarian had been reading.
『Chapter 1. On the History of Mana.』
『The second archmage, Doltian, who inherited the will of the first archmage, Demotos. He claimed that mana existed as “mana particles” that could no longer be divided.』
Gyeongjun nodded as he read the sentence.
Even though it was his first time seeing the content, for some reason, it was incredibly easy to understand.
Growing more interested, Gyeongjun began reading down to the next line.
『However, it was later revealed by the experimental mage Thomson through the mana wave experiment that mana, that is, mana particles, were composed of a mana fixed nucleus and mana carriers. These two possessed a mutually attractive nature……(omitted)……』
The more he read, the more confused Gyeongjun became.
It was absolutely not because the content was difficult.
Rather, he was surprised because it entered his head as if he had learned it somewhere before.
“What the…… Why do I understand this so well?”
A sense of déjà vu.
In French, déjà vu.
Even though it was clearly his first time seeing the book, the content felt like something he had seen before, leaving Gyeongjun no choice but to be confused.
As he continued reading through the book like that.
He realized something.
“Isn’t this basically just Chemistry 1 with mana added to it?”
Just as someone who has read many novels can roughly picture how a story will unfold from the title and first two episodes alone.
Before Gyeongjun’s eyes now, the rest of the contents of 『You Too Can Become an Archmage! Basic Magic Theory』 was rapidly flashing past.
Despite this being his first time seeing this book.
And not long after, something else happened.
[You have partially understood Basic Magic Theory.]
[You have learned the normal skill 『Basic Magic Mastery』.]
[You have learned the normal skill 『Energy Bolt』.]
“Huh……?”
[You have learned two or more skills through studying.]
[Conditions have been satisfied.]
[The third Mythic Skill of 『Seeker of Infinite Knowledge』 has been unlocked.]
[You may use the Mythic Skill 『Dimensional Study Room』.]
Gyeongjun was bewildered.
* * *
The 10th Branch of The World’s monitoring team.
Gulp.
A sound of swallowing saliva was heard from Kim Buha’s throat.
The team leader beside him was the same.
“Dimensional Study Room, in the end, a player’s taken it…….”
Dimensional Study Room!
A skill unlocked upon changing class to Seeker of Infinite Knowledge and learning two or more skills through study.
It was a skill impossible to grasp from the name alone.
Was it a skill that created a study room in some pocket dimension?
Naturally, it was no such trivial skill.
“Buha. You know that, right? In physics, the word dimension includes not just space but time too.”
“I think…… I’ve heard of it before.”
The team leader added words to Kim Buha’s puzzled expression.
“That’s why they say the world isn’t just 3D but 4D. Three spatial dimensions plus one time dimension equals four dimensions.”
“Ah, so that’s why it’s called Dimensional Study Room.”
“Exactly. Not providing ‘space’ but providing ‘time.’ That’s the essence of Dimensional Study Room.”
It didn’t provide a space to study, but provided “time to study.”
That was the essence and the very nature of Dimensional Study Room.
Simply put, Dimensional Study Room adjusted the user’s perceived time.
Time in the game would pass faster than in reality.
“Dimensional Study Room is essentially the core skill of the Seeker of Infinite Knowledge. What is 1 hour to other players can be 2 hours, 3 hours to the Seeker of Infinite Knowledge.”
“He’s basically playing a completely different game by himself…….”
“Exactly. From now on, if that user Gyeongjun sets his mind to it, he can master swordsmanship or magic in an instant.”
When others study for one hour, someone studies for two.
When others game for ten hours, someone games for twenty hours.
But there is a limit here.
The limit of 24 hours in a day.
No matter how much time you invest or how hard you try, you cannot break the law of 24 hours in a day.
But it is different for Gyeongjun, the Seeker of Infinite Knowledge.
Even if others play for 24 hours a day, Gyeongjun can do 48 hours, 72 hours a day, both playing and studying.
On top of that, with 『Just a Rather Very Intelligent System』, Timo, who was no less than any star instructor in Gangnam!
Truly, if he just set his mind to it, whether Sword Saint or Archmage, anything was possible.
“Wow, if I could do that, I would have studied all day too. Then instead of being a junior employee here, I could be a team leader, no, an executive who orders team leaders around…… Heup!”
“What did you say, Kim Buha?”
“Ah, it’s nothing! Hahaha!”
“Goodness, you rascal. Anyway, from now on, raise Player Gyeongjun to priority monitoring target number one. Let me know if anything happens.”
“Yes, understood.”
Just what kind of revolution the Seeker of Infinite Knowledge would bring to The World.
Neither the team leader nor Kim Buha, indeed no one yet, knew.
At that moment, several notifications appeared on the monitoring screen.
[User Gyeongjun has increased intimacy with Libra by 1.]
[User Gyeongjun has increased intimacy with Libra by 2.]
[User Gyeongjun has increased intimacy with Libra.......]
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.
.
The reaction shown by the team leader and Kim Buha after seeing that was—
“That rigid Libra is making noise in the library……?!”