Omni-Mastery

"Can I take the tome out with me?"

If there was an ability of mine that I was the most confident of, then it was naturally my mental ability!

As the only stat that had managed to go through a limit break evolution twice, Wisdom, or the main indicator of my 'Telekinetic Force', 'Mentality' was probably the strongest aspect of my ability arsenal.

In comparison to my elemental practice which had barely just reached the 3rd stage as well as my weapon practice which was still even within the 2nd stage, 'Mentality' was most likely the only field that I could be confident enough to contend with division masters and possibly sect masters themselves, and that was proven just recently as well.

Even the fact that these books were called 'Tomes' to begin with seemed to be targeted at the concept of mental learning instead of normal methods like learning and application...

As such, I was naturally willing to experiment the possibility of using tomes like a comprehension booster which would most certainly allow me to achieve 'standing out' in case of its success!

And since I couldn't just try a trial and error approach on how the mental linkage would proceed in the library which had a time limit to the time that could be spent inside of it.

"...I get it that you seem confident about your choice, but won't you reconsider? Those who have tried the same method that you plan to attempt on have been proven to have only wasted more time during learning the technique, and even then… their understanding didn't go much higher than their peers that learned through the conventional way."

For the very first time, Wind had decided to interfere with my choice, which I could only translate as his complete disapproval of this method, but his refuting only made me more resilient about my choice,

"Besides, while I did mention that copying the book to learn from was the main way, that isn't the actual conventional path of learning that the apprentice choose to go with. It's already an open secret that it's much wiser to use a 'Mental Guidance Session', which is the weakened version of the 'Archaic Guidance', as an introductory step to comphrenedign the technique making the process much faster than normal."

'Weakened but faster…?'

"Of course, while I did say it was a weakened version, that's only because you can't compare the understanding of an elder or even a division master with the ancient powerhouses that wrote these books and left their intent in it, however, the main advantage of the 'Mental Guidance Session' is that it lasts much longer, a whole hour to be exact!"

Wind's expression turned bright as he mentioned what he probably thought to be enough of a persuasive point, but that was just another nail in the coffin for me.

The fact that the rest of my token's would only allow me a minimum of 1~2 hours of such a comprehension booster didn't make it seem right.

As for going back on my decision and choosing only two techniques, that wasn't going to be of much help either, after all, I would lose the 'Outstanding' label if I achieved it this way.

As such, the only way to boost my way through the learning process while standing out even more was to gamble on using my superior mental energy to do what they deemed as impossible or even unbeneficial!

"Does that mean I can indeed take the tome out of the library?"

"...well, you can take it, but it's obviously not without boundaries, it's normally only allowed once a month when a member wishes to take it to challenge the 'Tower of Trial', but in your case, it can be allowed but you will naturally have to pay a bigger part of your token's score according to the period of borrowing…"

Wind's expression turned hopeless once again as he looked at me with a look of… pity.

"Would the token be enough to pay for the extra technique as well as one week of borrowing time for each tome…?"

"Yes… but once you make such a request, the score that would be still left in the token wouldn't be even enough for one 'Mental Guidance Session'..."

"That's good then, I will be choosing one tome to take with me then."

After confirming the plausibility of my plan, I once again ignored Wind as I started on my quest to search for a suitable technique to take along with me…

'Not this…'

Thanks to the one second 'Mental Vision' or 'Archaic Guidance' preview that took place for the first time that a tome would be opened, going through shelves upon shelves of books wasn't an exasperating process at all. In fact, a complete 3 shelf book drawer only took me an average of ten minutes to go through it whole…

"Alright, I have made my choice."

Naturally with how fast my browsing was I didn't even need to use more than half of the allocated time before I chose the tome that I found most suitable for me.

"Mhm, do you want to head to the next library immediately, or do you plan to leave that for tomorrow?"

Wind's speech was mostly uncaring as it seemed like he has completely given up by now, it became even more strange that he was still bothering to help me after I blatantly denied his repeated advice, but that only strengthened my belief that his 'care' was driven by a motive and not just out of goodwill.

"It would be better if we headed to the next library."

"Let's head to the Earth Castle then, it's close to the Wind Pavilion when compared to the Water Courtyard… here, put the tome here if you want to take it out."

Wind handed me a full body book cover that was hung beside the door as we found the carriage that we used yesterday waiting for us outside...