I Studied Mainly Textbooks! Chapter 10

“From 20 thousand years ago?”

“As a colleague of mine from the academy requested, I used to interpret it together with him. He’s an archaeologist fella, and he asked me about the contents because the book was about magic. It was also barely interpretable since it used the language from before the apocalypse, and the concept of magic was also something I can’t understand at all, so I didn’t research it for long.”

“Before the apocalypse… you said?”

What a frightening word.

“There was an incident 20,000 years ago in Kornos where all life forms in the continent had died, and this is called the ‘apocalypse’. No reasons were recorded so we don’t know why it happened, but there are theories where it’s because of a lunatic mage’s ‘meteor’ magic or demon king’s descent as of a black mage ritual, as well as G.o.d-demon war. No one knows the exact truth even to this day. The dead do not speak after all. Moreover, the records from before the apocalypse were also mostly lost, so there aren’t many things known about how the ancients lived.”

He felt this from quite a while ago, but this was one dynamic world, alright.

“Can I have a look at it later? I’m curious.”

“Haha, sure. It is said that the book is comprised of 3 books in total, but only two have been found until now. The other one should be in possession of that fella.”

‘I’ll quickly do today’s worth and read it.’

A book from the ancient times, eh? This may interest him a little.

This world was without computers or smartphones. Not only that… he had no friends here either……. The people from the tower were too old, but that didn’t mean that he could call Reina every day. She also seemed to be taking lessons, and had a lot of things to do.

In the end, the only thing he could do to pa.s.s time was to read books but… really, the people of this world were totally terrible at writing.

It was like reading the legendary masterpiece, The Invisible Dragon.

Well, this was probably because there were no writing cla.s.ses in compulsory education…. Hmm. Perhaps introducing the cancerous group projects system to further enhance writing capabilities is necessary. Extreme measures had to be taken.

“Let’s finish this quick!”

Abel spoke as he took out Casio.

The bright moonlight s.h.i.+ning through the window felt as though it was blessing the 61st night of the calculation serf.

The oldest book Abel had read until now, was the War Diary of Yi Sun-sin at Yi Sun-sin memorial hall, and that was barely over 400 years old. And he read that over a showcase window as well. Though, he couldn’t read anything because it was all written in hanja.

(T/N: An English alternative would be Shakespeare’s works going by timeline.)

Meanwhile, the book in his hand was over 20 millennia old. Even after all this time, it was in a better condition than the War Diary he saw at the museum.

Flip.

When he flipped through the thick front cover, he could see characters he couldn’t comprehend written in a very untidy manner. It seemed as though the author was rushed when writing this.

Below the ancient characters was the common tongue interpretation, and from the handwriting, it didn’t seem to be old man Kyle’s. It was probably the archaeologist person.

My race will finish our history here, but our legacy, White Magic, will be written here, left for all eternity. May this book survive and be pa.s.sed down.

Once time for Ariana stops, this world will probably be filled with grey mana……. May there be at least one being that is born capable of feeling even the slightest traces of white mana. I speak this again, but there is not a lot of time left.

- The last mage and the final king of the Eternal Elves, Thrandriel>

The first page was strong!

‘Ha… now I want popcorn…….’

It was much more interesting than he had expected.

Flip.

In Abel’s silent room, the sound of flipping over quietly resounded out.

The book wasn’t that long. Although he didn’t know the exact material because he was no expert, every single page was quite thick.

The second page had concepts about ‘white mana’. It seemed that the archaeologist needed old man Kyle’s help from this page onwards, as there were marks around the concepts that he couldn’t understand.

Black mana is relatively well known as the wors.h.i.+ppers of dark power are high in number, but white mana is only secretly pa.s.sed on between us Eternal Elves. That is because only a pure person can wield a pure power. …>

“Wow~.”

Oh yeah. The famous line for any hero story. ‘With great power comes great responsibility’.

Chew chew.

He was now chewing on some meat jerky he bought from the market.

<… now="" i="" shall="" proceed="" to="" write="" the="" principles="" and="" methods="" of="" ‘white="">

(omitted)

…>

Plop.

The meat he was chewing on fell to the ground. It was due to his shock after reading the next page.

The next page was about the principles and the use methods of white mana, and although it was translated, Kyle’s own interpretations wasn’t there due to the difficult concepts.

‘This is the realm of zero!’

No wonder Kyle couldn’t interpret it. This was a concept that could not be comprehended before knowing the existence of zero. Yes! It wasn’t that zero was not discovered yet, but it had disappeared!

‘This is not the time for this! Screw 9 circles!’

Excited, Abel ran to Kyle’s office with the book in his hand.

Boom!

He slammed open the door and shouted.

“Old man! This, this is awesome!”

“Whoa, that surprised me. What is it that got you so excited?”

Kyle, who was currently doing research with the numbers that Abel calculated for him, looked back at Abel with surprised eyes.

“Look at this! White mana is the perfect form of mana, and allows the utilization of all magic without the restriction of circles as long as the quant.i.ty of mana is sufficient! Moreover, there is almost no mana loss at all, so magic can be used with less mana.”

“Hahaha, I’ve read that part as well. However, isn’t the whole white mana itself very illusory? Moreover, it might be something that someone wrote as a prank.”

Abel also thought that at first. Just reading the first sentence, he thought that this was some Marvel movie synopsis.

“No! There’s a method to gain white mana, and I think I know the principle!”

‘……!’

White mana exists? If Abel’s words were right, then the entire principles of magic would collapse bottom-up.

“Th, then what do I need to do for you?”

Kyle started stuttering in shock.

“Everything that you did until now to make me feel mana! I need to extract the white mana between the grey mana. The more mana the better!”

He finally started seeing hope.

Mana amplification magic formation, plus all sorts of artifacts and mancontaining items around his body… as well as the all-new out-of-the-oven Hydraken that just arrived today! This was almost OP as an education system.

It’s like how rich people taught their kids: with all sorts of overpriced equipment.

“Hahaha! It’s working!”

A gleeful cheer was uttered from Abel’s mouth while extracting the white mana inside the formation. The sheer quant.i.ty of grey mana inside the formation would suffocate anyone sensitive to mana.

Actually, being insensitive to grey mana instead helped in extracting white mana. Perhaps this was the silver lining?

“Hahaha, that’s fortunate.”

Kyle became less worried now.

As someone sensitive to mana, he also vaguely felt the existence of white mana, but felt that it was unnecessary for him. He had enormous quant.i.ties of mana he gathered for his entire life, and grey mana was incompatible with white mana.

Srrr.

The pure white mana erased the grey mana circle on Abel’s heart and started wrapping around it. Then, it formed a thin membrane and not a ring.

Although he succeeded, the amount of white mana he extracted out of so much grey mana was minute at best.

“Try using magic! I wish to see its effects.”

Kyle also urged Abel in curiosity.

Eventually Abel focused. Casting magic! Since it was such a simple magic, calculating it in his head was enough.

“…Aqua!”

Plod!

When Abel said that, a cup of water plodded down from midair.

“Nice!”

This was Abel’s first magic.

“Hahaha, I remember the time I first started magic! Try using a chant this time as well. The effects should be amplified. Abel, you are quick in your calculations so a short word should suffice.”

A chant, eh…….

Abel thought about a famous line from a movie he liked.

“Asurabalbalta! Aqua!”

PLOD.

This time, it was a cup and a half. This was the power of the tongue.

(T/N: ‘Asurabalbalta’ is a word from the Korean movie ‘Tazza’. Think of it as ‘Abdacadabra’. There’s a reason why I’m not using that)