Chapter 65. Learning magic
POV: Merry Paper
It's been a month since I've been in this bizarre world and I have to say that I have mixed feelings.
On Earth, I like to read a lot of fantasy novels, especially the ones where people are reincarnated in another world. And my shock when I first got here was off the charts, I was so happy that I didn't know what to do at the moment.
It was a little different than I expected, the world was truly different from whatever I knew about fantasy.
The first night was scary but also started a fire in me, I like to have a weapon in my hands and actually use it.
I like the fact that I have a System, even if it limits me more unlike other novels I read.
I'm also a little ashamed to admit, but when I found out that I'm the Hero of this world, I was beyond happy.
I know the trope is so overused that the new heroes have to be either mistreated, tricked, or even forced to be in this role.
But I'm a sucker for old stories where I take a sword slay a dragon and save a princess, which in my case will be a prince, but I'll worry about that later.
Unfortunately, my dreams were a little crushed when my senior Trader told me it's not that fantasy-like.
We are in a different world, but this one is based on a game, and usually, those have a different set of rules and storylines.
I can save helpless people, but usually, the hero of the story is a glorified mailman.
Not so much fun.
I asked him about this world, about the adventures he went through to see if I could see a pattern, maybe this could be a romance story.
And he talked a lot about the world, but a little about what adventures he went through.
But the little stuff he told me was entering enough for me that I wanted to go and explore the world now.
This world is weird but has great potential. It doesn't have elves or dwarves as different races, instead, it has what he calls villagers, but it's best to say, normal people.
I can easily recognize one of them by their big nose and big head, but otherwise, you can communicate normally with them.
We share the same system but we have something extra than the average villager.
We have more space in our inventory, we can brake and place three times faster than them, we have four skills while they have three, and while we have access to all of them at once, a normal villager can have access to two skills in one lifetime.
The people like my new friend Undying are apparently from a different dimension, where everywhere is lava and anything can kill you if you're not careful.
But they look very different from the average villager, they have smaller noses, but still visible.
I'm also curious about Trader himself. I'm not going to lie, I'm a little disappointed that I'm not the first person to be transferred in this world, but I think it's for the best.
This world is a game he knows about after all, and even if it's a little different than what he remembers, he's likely an overpowered character who's isolated himself in the mountains because he doesn't want to deal with the rules of society.
Nobody knows he's here, except for a few select people, and if a foolish nobel makes the mistake of angering him, he'll unleash hell upon this world.
So it's a good thing that my first teacher is someone who knows forbidden knowledge about the world and doesn't mind sharing it with me.
The combat in this world it's also fun, and the enchantments on my weapons also add to that feeling.
What's not so fun about that is learning the actual enchantments.
Sure I got into a college that requires me to memorize pages upon pages of financial data. But learning how to write it's something I did not expect to be so hard.
I specifically chose this skill so I don't have to craft the same stuff hours upon hours only to see some numbers go up.
Instead, now I have to write the same character hours upon hours and my numbers won't even go up. What a fun challenge I choose for myself.
But it doesn't matter anymore, because I've memorized everything I could and today I will start enchanting.
Finally, I'll see that magic happen right in front of my eyes once again, but this time, I'll be the one to do the honors.
I looked around the enchanting room, the place I spent most of my time in the past month.
It's greatly changed from the first time Trader put the enchanting table down.
The floor had a simple design of wood, stone brick, and blue carpet, the walls were made of blue-colored wood with bookshelves on all sides.
Surprisingly the books on the shelves were already written, and we can't read what it says, and from what Traders says it's because all the floating transparent letters came from those books.
Unfortunately, we can't erase the writing in the books to have an infinite amount of them, but we can use the bookshelves to store normal books, it would just lose its effectiveness for the enchanting table.
The ceiling was all just different models of brick stones and blue lanterns as a light source.
I left the room, past the two storage areas, past the tunnels that lead to an underground farm, and stayed in front of a wooden door.
I took a deep breath and held it in before opening the door and quickly passed it remembering to close it behind me.
A wave of water washed over me as the door was closed, before I could even get used to the new sensation, bubbles attacked me from underneath, lifting me up slowly before gaining more and more speed as the tunnel came to an abrupt end throwing me out on the air, but with practiced movement I landed safely on solid ground.
I finally let my breath out, it wasn't for a long time but it always felt like an eternity.
Right beside the hole in the ground, there were four magma blocks in a square shape, where I lay down and waited for my clothes to dry.
"I can never get used to this stupid water elevator Trader made. He had to cover the old entrance to make this new and 'cool' way to get to the secret base. He couldn't just use stairs like any normal person, it had to be a magical elevator that uses blocks from another dimension with gallons upon gallons of water. And I now have to lay down to dry my clothes, but also be careful not to put too much pressure on a block, otherwise I'll get burned."
This world is weird but also fun.
For the past month, I've seen a lot of this world, Trader had finished his underground and above-ground base, but it wasn't easy.
Especially for this water elevator, we had to go to a big Lake to get the necessary water, it was a week-long trip where I saw different kinds of biomes, the dangers of the night plus a lot of experience on what to do if I get lost in the woods.
The Nether was fun as well, we didn't stay a lot there, but it was as dangerous and hot as it was advertised. I can't believe Undying lived there her whole life, I hope I can meet her soon and ask her to teach me how to fight.
Trader knows how to fight, but I don't like his style. It's too... under the belt.
He uses potions whenever he can, builds a defense wall so I lose track of him then shoots me with his crossbow from the top of the structure.
It's very annoying to fight against him, and I haven't won once, but I'm sure I can if I get a good grip on that guy.
I just let out a sigh.
My clothes were dried so I got up and pressed a button on the wall.
Suddenly the sounds of pistons working broke the silence, and the wall before me split into two letting me enter the fortress.
I walked along the empty hallway while the walls closed behind me like it wasn't even there.
While annoying, it's always cool to see.
I looked around the fortress and finally found Trader in the Brewing room, where six brewing stands were almost always running with potions of any kind.
He sat on a chair while reading from a book without a worry in the world.
"Trader! I'm sick of doing the same pages for hours, I'm not in college anyone, I wanted to escape that reality when I came here, not getting back to it."
The book disappeared from his hand like magic, and with a big sigh, he looked at me.
"I guess I've done all I could already, let's get you some levels then."
A smile appeared on my face, finally, I'm going to enchant my own sword, I refused to use too many tools enchanted by Trader so it feels like I did it instead of relying only on him.
We got back to the underground base, but most of my excitement cooled off once I had to sit again on the magma blocks to dry my clothes.
"Stupid water elevator."
"Hey, I've worked so hard to build this, so we're going to use it."
I cursed under my breath hoping for him to hear me, but no reaction to my frustration.
Finally, we were in the enchanting room, this time Trader didn't hide the lapiz from me so I could put it on the enchanting table.
The book started to come to life, flipping pages at an unbelievable speed, and whenever it stopped, there were only unknown runes written on it.
"Well, you know the way, put the chosen page in a book and toss it to the enchanting table."
This was the moment I waited from the first time I saw it, but doubt started to creep on me.
What if I made a mistake, what if all the work I've been piling up for the past few weeks will lead only to wasted time?
I threw the book without looking at the results, I could hear a sound, not the sound of a book hitting the ground but of floating latter's getting cramped in one book.
"I did it! Trader I did it!"
"Of course you did it, you worked so hard for it, why wouldn't it work?"
He slowly clapped for a while then got closed to pick up the book from the ground.
"Sharpness 1, that's so like you to choose this. Well, you still have a lot of pages to go through so why not start the fun part of enchanting? After all, you worked all month for this."
I didn't say no to that, I put page after page on the enchanting table, and most of them worked while others didn't.
I'll have to look at them later to see what was the problem
Once I passed my first level I put another page in the empty book for higher gain in experience.
Slowly I was running out of normal books, but Trader had a solution for that as well.
Just grind the enchanting of the book, don't question the process just do what needs to be done.
I passed the second level, now I can put three pages, all the knowledge that I accumulated in the past month. It's not a lot from what Trader told me, but it's enough to get through the early levels.
The process took a while, I tried to look more closely at what was happening, why the enchanting table needed bookshelves to produce higher levels of enchanting, and why it used lapiz as its fuel.
And can I make an enchantment on my body if I understand what this whole process does to this world?
I didn't share my ideas with Trader, he's an honest guy who would share with me those secrets if they were any, so that means it's uncharted territory even for him.
But that doesn't mean it's a hopeless endeavor. Most fantasy books juggle around with the concept that you can use magic in an unconventional way if you think outside the box.
And I want to do that, I want to find something that even Trader doesn't know.
I want to prove that it wasn't wasted time when I read all those books.