The savage lands ruled by saurians surround the Eternal Light empire’s ten kingdoms. The monsters are split into four courts of fire, earth, water, and air, and they live in the lands called the Summersweald, Autumsweald, Wintersweald, and Springsweald.
— Excerpt from The Saurian Primer
Day 51, 10:20 AM
Oddly enough, my life hardly included any loops in the first fifty days in this world, only one, in fact. The class I had chosen to pursue was a timesink. Who would have guessed that being a scholar required one to invest time and effort?
That, plus the lack of magic I could use to speed up my reading, and the fixed amount of books I needed to read made scholar quite a chore, and a class I would never restart by entering it again.
At some point, I decided to push all my attributes to twenty-five before pursuing those I would need the most. The boost to intellect and wisdom sped up my reading a hair’s width, meaning next to none at all.
Social attributes seemed like a waste, but since I had decided to leverage Amicable’s boost to positive interactions, making myself more charismatic and noticeable should help me in the long run. That pursuit would cost me another fourteen attribute points, or the same number of levels, and some months, or moons as they called them here, once I could enter some easier to level classes.
Until then, I was locked up in the library, wrapping up my six hundredth book because the first one hundred didn’t count against the level up condition’s total.
I read The Discussion on Metallurgy’s conclusion, and the blue screen of death appeared before my eyes.
[You have read five hundred books.
You have leveled up.
Select a skill within sixty seconds or a random one will be assigned to you.
Initial Logical Deduction - Your deductive ability improves.
Initial Persuasion - Logical arguments you make are more impactful.]
Well, that was unexpected. Two decent skills, neither furthering my academic goal, appeared at the same time. Both were tempting. My mind was already sharp, but a skill building on top of that could do wonders for how quickly I could connect and infer things.
On the other hand, my social attributes were already far beyond what humans could achieve, nearly bordering magic. Pushing that edge further could prove a major boon.
Up until this world, which was imaginatively called the World by its locals, my body was a unique advantage which made me nearly undefeatable amongst humans, save for certain extraordinary circumstances. But here, in the Eternal Light empire, I was an ant. A knight of Ruby’s realm could probably stomp me like a gnat, a fifth realm one wouldn’t even notice crushing me.
So, having a silver tongue outweighed better deductive ability, despite how I felt about the subject. I made my choice and checked the next level up condition.
Write a book.
Well, that was simple and stupidly broad at the same time. Since I knew systems were made to be gamed, I went over to Ruby.
“Pardon me, Beautiful Miss,” I smiled as I entered the reception room, “do you have some paper and writing implements?”
She rolled her eyes at me, but handed me what I asked. After a flowery bow and some equally frilly words, I went back to the library beyond the unlabeled door.
I sat down behind the nearest desk and folded a piece of paper. On the front side I wrote, How to Write a Book by Dandelion Blackfist, then I turned the page and started.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Step one, have an idea. Step two, gather writing implements and medium, preferably paper. Step three, write the book.
I closed it and got a notification. Ha! Take that, fancy authors!
My new choice was between two familiar skills, Initial Calligraphy and Initial Arithmetics. I messed up. I could have gotten both of those with minimal effort and advanced them.
I guess I’m redoing this moment. The question was how far should I go? I went out with Ruby the day before yesterday, so I can turn back time to a day before this one at the earliest, and I didn’t mind repeating the two dozen joking words I had said a minute ago. On the flip side, I would save a day of reading, since I would choose different books.
I picked Initial Calligraphy, then spent fifteen minutes doing math problems to earn Initial Arithmetics. An irritating mistake, but that’s what Redo was for.
I checked my next level up condition - hold a lecture. Another easy one. Since I was redoing the run, I decided to ignore Ruby from that point on and headed for the keep, where I gathered six of my most unfortunate thugs, and held a class on basic math for half an hour. They had no idea what hit them, but I didn’t care.
The only important thing was the blue screen and its translucent letters notifying me of my success.
[You have held a lecture.
You have leveled up.
Select a skill within sixty seconds or a random one will be assigned to you.
Initial Photographic Memory - You may perfectly memorize a large number of scenes.
Initial Mnemonics - All aspects of your memory greatly improve.]
Mnemonics were a blessing and a curse, depending on how you looked at it. At the advanced tier you never forgot anything, after enough time, memories cluttered the mind. It was doubly horrible for me because of the redo loops.
Initial Photographic Memory, on the other hand, seemed like just the thing to help me pull off a bunch of shenanigans with, assuming I could exploit it properly. I picked it, and checked the level up condition, before abandoning the notion of advancing the class further.
I had to win a scholarly debate, but that meant interacting with Ruby in a void time, and I wasn’t going to do that. No, I holed myself up in the library for half a day, checking what photographic memory could do for me, and it proved awesome.
I could memorize three hundred scenes before new ones overwrote the old ones. First, I scanned a wide-open book, but then grew greedier, until it ended up with as many books as I could reasonably fit on a shelf, all open. A single glance at them with the intent of memorizing them, then I closed my eyes, and I could read any one of my choosing. The best I could achieve was forty-eight open tomes at the same time, then reading them one by one at my leisure.
The experiments were fun, and after two hours of messing around, I left the library, forty-eight new books stuck in my mind. I could walk and read at the same time. My reading speed halved, but I could pay attention to my surroundings as I processed the scenes from my memories, reading the books one at a time.
The first thing I did was locate a decent tailor, from whom I bought premade black pants, a dark-gray shirt, and a thick, black hooded cloak. All textile was made of cotton-like plant materials, which was natural since mammals and generally creatures with fur seemed rare in this part of the world.
Once everything was over, I decided to give the woman a visit in a non-scrapped timeline. Getting there, ordering things and getting measured hardly took an hour of my time, and the reward for my investment would be two comfortable sets of clothes overflowing with pockets.
With my suitably inconspicuous clothes, I did the only thing one could do cowled in a dark hood, and went to a seedy-looking tavern where I sat in the corner to listen to rumors. I was too early, but I drank my beer and just existed, watching the most notorious of alcoholics get hammered.
It took an embarrassing amount of time before I realized I was where the town’s guards gathered to waste their miserable earnings and not so miserable bribes. Men talked about crime, weird accidents, and side hustle opportunities.
It was all nonsense, really, but the trite chatter helped an idea form in my head. What if I visited places like this in my loops? I could hear crime stories and maybe help with some of them? While I wouldn’t have time for all of them, I could certainly prevent the worst as a masked vigilante or something.
They didn’t have bats in the Eternal Light empire, but I could go with a T-Rex costume. I chuckled as I visualized fighting crime in a T-Rex costume way more than the image deserved. When arm of the law falls short, T-Rex.
But in all seriousness, the idea wasn’t half bad.
I was locked in a small town at the edge of nowhere, but I would change that. I planned to climb to the top, and that meant cities, children or friends of important and powerful people suffering accidents, which I could prevent…
As the idea crystalized, I decided I needed to become the world’s greatest doctor while I was at it, then dropped the thought, since magical healing existed. I would naturally learn medicine, but wouldn’t travel under the guise of a doctor.
No, I needed to become a mageknight somehow. The books I had read so far claimed it was impossible before the sixth realm, but Initial Reference Checker felt like just the skill to help me get there.
