Omni-Mastery

'Almost done…'

Reaching the last page of the manual in my hand, I put it back on the shelf as I picked the one that was exactly next to it and opened it before I started flipping through it.

Judging from Blade's strange stare as I just read every book my hands came upon, it was obvious that he found what I was doing quite bizarre. After all, when it came to choosing 'Elemental Control' manuals, having too many didn't mean anything as one could only train one of them, so it was natural that the sight of me using my photographic memory to memorize all the books in the secret library didn't make sense at all.

In fact, if I didn't already prove myself to be above the point of doing that, I believe Blade would already have had doubts about whether I was planning on stealing them to sell for later. Although no authentic practitioners would buy knowledge without an equally authentic source, some of the 'loners' that roamed the world of sects probably wouldn't mind that.

Naturally, the reason I did that wasn't to flex my photographic memory or anything of that sort, I was simply interested in something more meaningful.

Of course, part of it was my 'more knowledge is better' obsession, but the main reason was that I planned to experiment if I could develop my own 'Elemental Control' method using these books I read as the basis.

As these manuals were unlike tomes and simply lacked any hint of mentality left within it, learning and initiating 'Elemental Control' was in the core of it still self-practice, so while I didn't could myself as good as the old elemental researchers who spent years of research to create these manuals, I at least trusted in my ability to mimic and extrapolate to attempt such a feat.

Obviously, all of this was just theoretical and I could only know whether it's possible or not once I attempt, which is why my next destination was the Green Earth Village.

Other than delivering the good news to the village head regarding the resolve of his life-long regret, the calming atmosphere of the village was just perfect for going into seclusion both for the sake of researching and coming up with an optimal distribution for the stat points that I had still yet to use…

In the case that I'm simply met with failure, I would just take it that I asked for too much and pick the most suitable manual from the ones I memorized instead, which still made it a valid enough reason to put effort towards what I was doing at the moment. 

After that would be achieved, I would have nothing left on my to-do list other than searching for a way out of the domain.

"You sure seem to be quite serious about making a choice…"

Blade said half-jokingly as I was finally walking towards the third and last bookshelf, which made quite sense considering that there was really no need to go through the whole manual to know if it was suitable or not, so I could only give a wry smile and also give a half-joking reply.

"Well, my master did say-"

However, before I could continue what I had to say in mind, the twitch that took over my right arm earlier seemed to have come back and this time, it was quite powerful!

'Does this have something to do with the slumbering dragon…?'

As I stood in front of the bookshelf, my arm kept slightly moving and twitching like it had a pulse of its own!

"Are you okay…?"

Ignoring Blade's question as I was trying to figure out what was happening exactly, I tore off the leather armor off my arm as I inspected the dragon tattoo…

'This is really getting weird…"

The cause of the weird pulse was undeniably the tattoo that now looked like it was growing real out of my skin, it seemed like it was somehow struggling to get out, but that hardly made any sense.

Normally, the pseudo sky dragon should be able to come out and go in as he liked to, but it seemed that the negative effect of the base incident has caused him to be unable to leave his slumber, Yet… for some reason it wanted to get out at this moment.

Unable to figure out what was the actual cause of that might be, I could only try and look around using my 'Eye of Knowledge' to see if I could pick up anything special that might be behind this, but my arm suddenly stopped moving my index finger struggled to point at a certain book within the bookshelf!

I immediately hurried to take it out using my other hand to check out what made this ordinary-looking book so special for it to make a dragon act that way.

As soon as I opened it up using my right hand which had started to finally calm out, it started getting worked up once again as it started flipping the pages without allowing me to even read anything…

My eyes slightly hurt as I tried to catch the blurred words, but suddenly my right hand's fingers that were flipping pages like crazy finally stopped.

The first thing that came to sight was a half-torn page that seemed to be out of place, it was also… covered in some sort of green liquid... 

'Wait a sec…'

Why would a book that was supposedly stored here for a while have such a fresh-looking green liquid in the middle of it?! It looked as if it was just spilled into the torn page!

It was somehow only covering the torn page without wetting the other parts, this situation was obviously unnatural!

However, once again, before I was even able to think of assumptions as to what might have caused this, my whole arm was automatically covered in dragon skin and my palm seemed to have formed a mouth-like slit as a… tongue came out of it and started licking the torn page…

[ You have absorbed the Blood Essence Extract of a member of your sub-race, the 'Green Dragon'... ]

[ 'Omni-Mastery' is automatically activated! ]