ALL NOVEL Chapter 39: Study Time
When Maria saw the notifications, she was immediately elated.
"Yay!"
She quickly pressed on the [YES] and her [Basic Language Mastery] was upgraded to [Advance Language Mastery]
[Advance Language Mastery (0/10,000)
Rank: E
Complete understanding of common demonic language and elementary understanding of all other languages, able to read 3-line incantations and write language functions and structures
Upgradeable: Linguistics E
Requirement met: Advanced Language Master S]
When Maria saw the [Linguistics] skill being the upgradeable skill after [Advanced Language Mastery], she immediately began to tear up.
She looked up at Zelundo who was next to her with tear-filled eyes. Zelundo only smirked playfully and patted her head lightly.
"YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO CONSOLE ME!"
"Ahahahaha~ you're one interesting little missy! Go on, start reading those books!"
*DING* [Zelundo has tasked you with reading the library's books!]
[Quest Received: Study Time
Read every book inside of the library. While this quest is active, proficiency and EXP gained from reading is doubled.
Time Limit: 29 Days
Penalty: -100 FAV with Zelundo
Rewards: +1000 FAV with Zelundo, +100 REP, +50 INT, [Book Keeping], 100,000 EXP]
"Uhh..."
"Hey, you get some benefits if you're able to completely understand those books! Now hurry up and get started! Try and get the [Linguistics] skill before the month has ended, okay?"
"A MONTH?!"
"Hey, that's the shortest time you could take to learn [Linguistics]! No slacking off now, hurry up and begin reading!"
"Nooooo!!!"
As Maria's despaired ridden voice echoed throughout the library, Hella had just come out of the Magic Tower with a light gait in her steps.
She had finally one upped the stupid Arch Mage geezer in the tower and they agreed to a bet that he would teach Maria about [Magic Comprehension] and [Magic Deduction] if she could learn both [Linguistics] and [Book Keeping] from Zelundo before a month had passed.
"Hehe, just you wait you stupid geezer. Our Lady Envoy will be able to learn those skills with time to spare! A million gold, a favor, plus that 5 century-old wine are in the bag, OHOHOHOHO~!" Hella roared in laughter. It was a good thing no one was there to witness her out of character moment, she quickly cleared her throat in embarrassment and skipped happily back to the Dark God's Temple.
******
3 in-game weeks had passed since Maria was given the [Study Time] quest and she was floating through the air while reading a book at her leisure. The players who had come to the library to receive a different quest had grown used to seeing the girl floating through the air while reading a book.
It was a unique sight, but it was welcomed since she also sometimes helped players search for the specific book that they needed to complete the quest they got from the library's receptionist. Players even began calling her the Library's Angel.
"It's almost been a month...just a little bit more..." Maria said as she finished reading another book.
If Maria knew this was how long it would take to learn a skill, she wouldn't have bothered asking Hella and coming over to the library to learn anything.
What she didn't know however, that there was a simpler way to learn the skill. All she needed to do was complete the library receptionist's chain quest and acquire the [Linguistic] skill book from that.
However, the process of learning the skill which granted bonus stat points to a player's stats was left out. So in a way, Maria had stumbled upon the greatest method of learning skills, which was the manual, hardworking way.
The process of learning skills in Unitale was divided into 3, creating the skill through repeated usage or understanding, acquiring it from a skill book, and learning it through mentorship.
Maria has already experienced 2 of these methods and now she was going through the hardships of the third method.
It was time consuming, but the rewards brought by the process of learning the skill in this way were abundant. Just from finishing [Zelundo's Basic Language Materials], Maria had gained 10 INT.
So if she finished reading more books, then the stat bonuses she would gain would be enormous, of course, it wasn't like every book she read gave her stat points, only a select few did.
From a gamer's perspective, all that hard work was worth it. It was just like grinding for experience points, but instead this was for grinding stat points. Every addition to one's stats was a big boon.
This was especially so since Unitale heavily relied on stats and currently, the only known way to gain stat points was through leveling up, fulfilling special quests and objectives that rewarded Free Stat Points.
So this mentorship was an unexpectedly great find. It had to be mentioned that in order to be eligible to learn from a mentor, one needed a High Ranking NPC's recommendation and personal referral.
In order to get that, a player needed to have high favorability with a High Ranking NPC, something that Maria had already acquired so early in the game.
High Priestess Hella practically worshipped Maria for being the Dark God's Envoy. Her favorability with the NPC was already elevated to a high value and she was still earning more through interaction and by completing her quests.
For now, only Maria had learned about this mentorship function that the NPCs provided, but she didn't understand the significance of it yet.
******
"Hey Mary, let's go questing and hunting later~" Lizzy said while the girls were eating lunch in the school's cafeteria.
When Maria heard her, she couldn't help but cast Lizzy a sad look and say, "Sorry Liz, I can't...I'm stuck learning the [Linguistics] and [Book Keeping] skills at the library..."
"Huh? It's already been over a week and you still haven't learned it?!"
"...please don't remind me..." Maria replied in complete dejection.
Maria still hadn't earned enough proficiency to upgrade her skill to [Linguistics]. She was also only a couple of books away from completing [Study Time] and getting [Book Keeper] as well.
Even until now, Maria didn't understand what the [Book Keeping] skill was for, but since the requirement to finish the quest was to actually read ALL of the books inside the library, she could only continuing trudging forward.
She enjoyed reading the books, but whenever her friends talked about hunting and grinding their levels while at school, Maria couldn't help but feel dejected and left out. Her friends had already broken past level 50 and had already gone through their class advancement quests and upgraded their classes.
"Mary...what quest are you doing? Y'know, on the forums in the guide section, the [Linguistics] quest was fairly easy and you could practically complete it in 1 day!"
"Huh?"
Lizzy pulled out her phone and opened up the Unitale Forums. She opened up the player made guides and quickly found the [Librarian's Request] quest and showed it to Maria.
"Hm? I didn't know about this..."
"Really?"
Amanda looked at Maria and asked, "What quest are you doing right now? It's obviously not this, right?"
"Y-yeah...it's called [Study Time]..."
"[Study Time]? That's new, so who's the quest giver?"
"The Library's Director, the old geezer Zelundo!" Maria said in anger. "At first it wasn't [Study Time], instead it was something called [Learn How to Read 1], but that stupid, lying, oppressive—"
Amanda exclaimed when she heard Maria's words. "Library Director? No way! You normally wouldn't be able to meet him unless you have a high reputation and a huge amount of favorability with the Library's Receptionist!"
Maria tilted her head in confusion and said, "Really? But I met him right when I entered the library! Of course, Miss Hella was the one who brought him down to meet me and I just followed after him to the library's upper floors and he issued out a quest to me..."
"R-really? And the quest reward is [Linguistics], right?"
"Yeah, and something called [Book Keeping], not sure what that is...he also gave me the [Basic Language Mastery] which could upgrade to [Linguistics]...I just need a little bit more proficiency, but it took 3 in-game weeks just to get over 98,000 proficiency points, dammit!" Maria burst out in anger. She had been reading numerous books for the past week and hasn't been able to go out and grind some monsters.
Zelundo had basically locked her inside the library at this point. She kept complaining that it was imprisonment and a violation of human rights, but Zelundo scoffed at her and told her she wasn't even human to begin with so it didn't even matter!
By now, Maria had nearly read all the books inside the library, only a couple tens of books left before she finished the [Study Time] quest and maybe raise her [Advanced Language Mastery] to S rank. She did gain a whole bunch of INT and experience from finishing a book. The experience she gained had even leveled her up twice and her INT value had grown to an absurd amount.
However, Maria still hadn't opened her [Status] window so she didn't know of this just yet.
"I'll probably finish later today, so I'll contact you once I'm able to leave the library!"
"Okay, that's good. By the way, you should join our guild already! We finally pooled enough funds together and we successfully created our guild!"