The Insider System

Chapter 31: Book Learning

Lake grabbed 3 books to start with. He felt there was no way he would understand much from them though, he didn't even understand one of the titles, "Mass coalescence?" If this was for beginners what was he?

Lake decided to start with the book called, Magic for doers. He considered himself to be a doer so he bet this was the right one for him. "Gather the element then filter it through your senses. This will allow you to split it into its principles and express it in different ways. Stripping some and adding others is the essence of spell crafting."

Lake started to blow a raspberry, but stopped when some spit hit the book; he could tell it was hand written and he didn't want to get in trouble. Moving on to a book called Grasp Light Lake was hoping to compare the information in the two, so he could figure out what the hell any of these words meant in this situation.

"To grasp light already goes against its principles, so you added this quality to make your first spell." This made some sense to Lake. He felt he knew what it was saying, you had to make it do something it shouldn't be able to usually, and this made it possible to make something like light into a solid wall. He had added something that would usually be found in something solid like earth.

"Is this what the temple head meant when she said I would be good at Earth magic? I have already started to grasp what it takes to make something solid." Lake thought back to when he had casted his first spell he had been trying to make a shield out of darkness, something that didn't really even exist; it was just the absence of light, but at the same time it was an element.

Thinking about this made his head start to spin. He bet this was a good time to open Mass Coalescence. "The elements are in a balanced state when you find them, and naturally cancel each other out. When you gather mana you pull the elements out of balance, and use the chaos to shape your spells. The gods do this on a much grander scale; the absence of one affects more than we can even comprehend; it changes the balance of the reality we are subjected to." Lake guessed this was talking about the mixture he pulled light and dark mana out of when he had been fighting Nelg, and how there was less holy mana now that the goddess was dead.

Lake was done with these three books He hadn't read them completely he just looked through them for stuff he could understand and it had still taken a few hours. Lake planned to take a break for a while and come back later to read a few new books. Getting up to put the books away he saw books with titles he was interested. He hadn't understood them earlier, but now he was tempted to go ahead and look through them. What was a few more hours? It's not like he actually had something to do.

"Flipped principles of Darkness and Light." This big book looked like it might answer some of his questions about darkness. "What makes Dark different from other elements with a flipped principle like cold fire is that someone was able to rise to godhood while championing it. When a God or Goddess rises a new element or law is introduced to the natural mana found in the world. Before The Goddess of darkness rose to power Darkness was called dark light it was nothing but light magic with its Brightness principle flipped, but now that there's a Dark Goddess it's its own element with spells and jobs of its own. The same can be done with other elements like fire or water. The goddess of ice is a prime example; before her rise there was no distinction between ice and water magic."

Lake found this interesting; he wondered if the Demon Lord was like the Goddess of ice and was ascending to godhood, or maybe he already had, and that was why Unholy mana was being spread throughout the world. "So the Brightness principle is all that separates Light and Dark from one another." Thinking back to when he had used them they had acted almost exactly the same, the only difference was the color, even their two spells were almost exactly the same.

"So is it the god that makes the jobs and spells?" Flipping through the book Lake wasn't able to find the answer he needed so he stood up, and looked through the books to find one about the gods or jobs. He ended up finding something different. "Advanced Light applications: Dark Light."

It wasn't in the beginners section, but he wanted to see if this book talked about the rise of the Dark Goddess any or if Dark light was still a thing after her rise. Or better yet why not ask The temple head it would probably be faster than trying to read through this book. The last one had taken almost two hours and it had been in the beginners section. Putting the book back Lake walked over to the Librarian and asked how to get to the lobby.

Finding his way to the staircase he had walked down on his first day, Lake was back to the garden he saw when he first got here. He saw the temple head standing in almost the same spot. Walking over to her he asked, "Is dark light exactly the same as the Dark element?"

The temple head shook her head. "No, the dark element was born from Dark light, this is dark light." The temple head lifted her hand and Lake saw a gray light in her hand. It looked almost the same as Dark mana but it gave him a different feel. dark light still felt like light mana while dark felt like the opposite of light mana. "The difference is the god the mana came from with dark light you take Light mana from the God of Light and change it slightly to cast certain spells. Dark mana comes from the Dark goddess, so you don't have to change anything and it has its own spells."

"So, is the Demon Lord a God?"

"He's as strong as one but the gods are keeping him from ascending. He sees this world as a prison. As long as he's held here the only world he affects is this one. When or if he ascends he'll become the Unholy god, and his influence will start to spread to other worlds." So Gods have access to different worlds. "Are the gods the same in every world or are there different ones?"

"The God of Light says he's not the only one, he isn't even the strongest God of Light, just the one that rules over this world. Most worlds have their own pantheons and different gods and elements reign supreme." Lake thought it was weird for a god to tell his own believers he wasn't the strongest maybe it wasn't something he could keep secret. Maybe people from other worlds could come here easily. "How many worlds are there, is it possible to go to them?"

"You can, but you have to become a demigod first. Once you become a demigod you can travel to a world to ascend to godhood or stay here and champion a new element." Lake guessed this was what Laka had been doing when the God of Light found him. "Are the gods the ones that make the jobs and spells for their element?"

"Yes, it's the power of the divines but I don't know how they do it. All I know is to make something strong they have to sacrifice something. Like the god of light did when he changed his jobs to get Exp for protecting Holy Magic users, he sacrificed one of his artifacts." Lake was starting to think maybe artifact was another word for world item, Mimi had mentioned artifacts as well. "What are artifacts? Are they the same as world items?"

"I've never heard the term world items but artifacts are usually something the gods used or made before they ascended. They are powerful items that let you use some of their divine power. It's also how most people become demigods. The items give them some of the gods power."

"What do you mean most? You don't need to use an artifact to become a demigod?"

"No, you can steal divinity, it's just very hard that's how the Demon Lord did it. He stole Divinity from the Dark goddess then using his divinity he corrupted one of the Holy goddesses Artifacts to create the Unholy element. Originally the Dark element wasn't considered evil, but now it's tied in with the unholy element created by the Demon Lord."

"How did he steal from a god? Was he just a regular human?" This was something Lake was all about, if he could copy the Demon Lord his path to Demigod was set. "Let me ask you something, what's your lowest stat?" Lake didn't understand why she had changed the subject but he was willing to play along.

"It's Charisma." She had clearly asked because she already knew the answer, because she said. "That's how it is for most people, there are a lot of people who never hit 10 in their whole life. It's very uncommon for there to be someone who's highest stat is Charisma, but that's how the Demon Lord was before he became a demigod by stealing divinity from the Dark Goddess. His Charisma was over 100, and he had been blessed with two different Legendary skills from that stat."

Lake could kind of see where this was going if Charisma did what he assumed. "No one knows exactly what the skills do, but they seem to allow him to charm anyone with lower Charisma than him. We don't know how he did it to the Dark Goddess; her stats should have been way higher than his at the time." It seemed he was slaking unknowingly; he hadn't even considered Charisma to be worth his time. If he focused on it in the future he could just tell people to give him their stuff and they would comply.

"Is she still under his control?" The Temple head shrugged, "No one has seen her, the only reason we still think she's alive is that the power of darkness has stayed the same. The only time it dipped was when he first took some of her divinity. My personal theory is the Demon Lord saw her as a threat or maybe the charm wasn't permanent so he sealed her away."

Lake heard the door open, looking Lake saw the man he had seen guarding the door when he first got here. He walked over to them, and handed the temple head a letter. "Temple head, the Alchemist guild just delivered this letter to the steps." The temple head ripped it open and read it. "The Alchemist guild paid your bounty. You're free to leave whenever you want. They have a cart waiting outside for you."

"Alright goodbye, thanks for the breakfast." Lake was happy to know he was free to go he didn't want to spend too much time here. When he was about to walk through the door he felt a reluctance to leave he could tell it wasn't actually him, it was the same as the feeling he had felt at breakfast when he had been talking to Mimi and Cas. It wasn't even just a feeling It was similar to intrusive thoughts, It was telling him what he was supposed to do with his time in this world how he could become the man at the top, and have everything if he would just help the Light Temple.

But Lake didn't like being told what to do, so he tried to leave again only to feel like someone was twisting his arm. "Ow. Are you serious?" Lake hadn't realized The Insider was able to actually affect him in any way, because up till now it seemed content on just watching this was only the third time he had felt something from it in any way. "Ok fine, I was going to do it anyway."

Lake turned around and said, "I'll be back in a few years after I've gotten stronger." Lake wanted to cringe, but the temple head seemed happy and so did The Insider. Lake guessed The Insider would make him keep his promise. Lake walked outside grabbed his sword the guard had taken from him, and got into the cart to see around 6 guards that were all wearing the same armor that Joy did. "Um, Joy are you here."

Lake saw one of them raise their hand. "I'm right here. Sorry the guild really needs to give us badges. Here, come sit right here next to me." Lake saw her try to make some room on the bench but in the end one of the other guards had to move down onto the floor. Lake stepped over the guy on the floor and sat down.