'This is impossible' I thought, lying on my back on the floor of the optimized training zone, staring at the clouds covering the sun in the sky above me. 'How the hell did I manage to dodge the Aracna's attack?'
I had just suffered my seventh consecutive defeat, this time to a level 4 beastial.
[Activating skill Peer Beyond.
Answering the player's question...
Answer: The Aracna was weakened.]
I huffed.
"Well, that's obvious" I replied aloud as I sat up.
Since there didn't seem to be anything to feed on in the catacombs beneath the temple, the Aracna was possibly malnourished. Not to mention she had laid a huge number of eggs. That must certainly have weakened her.
Anyway, I had been very lucky.
'Enough of this torture' I thought as I got up from the floor. 'I'll continue my training another time.'
So, after spending two hours learning how the optimized training zone worked, doing a simple physical workout, and being harshly humbled by the simulations, I headed to the Temple of the Knowledge of Astar in the middle of the forest.
This time, I took a snack and three liters of water with me. The last time I went, the small water bottle I took didn't even last until the end of the first hour I was inside.
This time, when I entered, I was able to understand what was written at the feet of the statue and had a fit of laughter.
On the double-edged blade was written in Ancient Astarian that with knowledge one could save and be saved or poison and be poisoned.
The words "save" and "be saved" were on the left side of the blade, pointing to the garden of the dragon's fountain, while the words "poison" and "be poisoned" pointed to the fountain of the tree with purple flowers.
'It was written here explicitly, and any Astarian who entered could perfectly know which fountain was which. That must be why the person who wrote the book didn't feel the need to specify which fountain was blessed and which was poisoned.'
As soon as I recovered from this new discovery and caught my breath, I went to the library.
I had a few goals:
- first, I had to figure out how to get past the protections around the area we were in, and learn the skills that would allow me to do that;
- second, I needed to find ways to increase my attributes without leveling up, and effective training methods;
- third, I needed to gather as much information as possible about Mundus, about its peoples, places, inhabitant species, culture and customs, magical knowledge, technique and technology; and
- fourth, learn as many languages as possible, prioritizing those with the most speakers or spoken in the areas closest to where I was.
Of all, the most difficult to fulfill would probably be the third.
Although finding any information in the practically infinite ocean of books that was the temple library was challenging in itself, it was an even greater obstacle that the most updated book in the place was at least five hundred years old, considering that it had been at least that long since Astar had been destroyed.
The Book of the Dragon Ragnor – that was the name now recognized by the system for the item – had a lot of information about Mundus, the dragons, the gods, and the fusion of worlds, and it was the most updated content I had.
However, having been sealed for over twenty thousand years and with its powers limited, it didn't have details or much information about the current organization of Mundus.
I spent the entire day buried in books and when I returned home the sun was almost setting. That day, I had dinner early and went to bed to sleep before ten o'clock at night, after sharing a few dozen words with my parents.
When I woke up the next day, it was already noon. I had been unconscious for almost fourteen hours and couldn't remember any dream I might have had during the night.
The exhaustion from everything I had lived through in the last 48 hours had finally caught up with me. It was the shortest day, however, of those to come.
It took me a week to come up with a satisfactory training plan. I found books on human anatomy and physical therapy that explained, in detail, exercises and techniques that activated every muscle in the human body. I also found martial arts scrolls that were quite useful.
Added to experiments I did in the optimized training zone with the help of the system, I managed to refine my workouts.
My routine consisted of waking up at seven in the morning, having a good breakfast, alternating between walking and running for forty minutes and then doing physical exercises for an hour and a half, including was already used to, and some others I learned from the Astarian books.
After that, I had a snack and packed a lunchbox to take with me to the Temple of the Knowledge of Astar. I spent the rest of the day researching spells, techniques, skills, and whatever could help me get past the protections. I also studied some dictionaries and books about Mundus and other societies besides Astar.
When I felt I needed a break, I ventured into the other facilities of the Temple, like the empty classrooms, laboratories, workshops, material storerooms, cafeteria, and kitchens.
This overload and simple sense of purpose allowed me to forget the things that were not under my control.
However, before sleeping, or when I was eating, or when I read a specific word in some book, I remembered what this whole situation meant and all the things that were implied in it.
I hardly had any time to talk to my parents since I spent most of the day isolated in the Temple, but during breakfast or dinner my mother sometimes talked about my older sister and my nephews, wondering if they were okay, if this crazy thing that happened to us had happened to them, and lamenting that we had no possibility of contact.
One day, my father was already in the car and I had to stand with open arms in front of it to prevent him from trying to leave the safe zone. We were all at our limit and seeking different ways to deal with it.
And, all this time, I had kept to myself the existence of gods, dragons, and beastials. The stories of peoples decimated and species extinct by the influence of all-powerful and spiteful creatures.
If they were already on edge knowing the little they knew, if they found out about this terrifying reality, I don't think I would be able to stop them from doing something mad.
I was busy thinking about this during one of my breaks, while exploring one of the Temple rooms.
It looked more like a bedroom than a classroom. It had a bed and a piece of furniture with loose clothes made of a light fabric. One of the walls was covered with bookshelves. It was clearly an adapted classroom.
I frowned. There was no mention in the books I had read in the library of anyone living inside the Temple. The bed was made and, like the rest of the Temple, there wasn't a speck of dust there.
This didn't mean much, however, considering that the Temple was enchanted with a cleaning and organization spell, allowing it to remain clean and in perfect condition even uninhabited for centuries.
I picked up the only book that was on the bed. Opening its pages, I realized it was a diary written in a language similar to Ancient Astarian but simpler, which I had discovered not long ago to be Astarian, a simplified language used in daily life by the Astarians in the last decades of their existence.
I sat on the bed to read its content. It was the last book written, in diary form, by the last Astarian, the sole survivor of the attack on Astar: Eleton.
They were the last words of someone who had suffered one of the greatest terrors possible during their life.
He had lived forty years in isolation inside the Temple and the safe area around it, after all his people had been murdered. He was also the one who had placed most of the protections in the surrounding region.
He dedicated the rest of his life to protecting the legacy of his people, longing for the day when this beautiful society could be rebuilt.
All the books on the shelves were his writings. There must have been over a hundred books there.
I needed to pause reading for a moment when he began to describe the destruction that occurred in Astar.
They were the words Eleton had never been able to write until he felt the final moments of his life approaching.
And it felt like his diary had swalled me, directly into his dreadful memories...