He crawled to the sacred belongings of the Saint with supernatural strength and fervent desire. Pain was no longer a sensation he felt, and he passed Book 5 of Speculum Alchemiae without so much as a glance.

  From the darkness, he retrieved two texts and pulled his upper half onto the soft sheets of his bed.

  Immediately, he realized the books were thin: neither had a thickness greater than two centimeters.

  He was drawn to the crude one first—made of cheap tanned maculature and bound by linen threads—grainy, with no external cover.

  The outermost pages were blank, lacking a descriptor of both title and author.

  Cedric said he wrote this…

  His hands trembled as he brought it close. It was the last material possession Cedric had left behind.

  He said that the topic was on swordsmanship.

  The clash of dark aura-imbued weapons rang in his head.

  If I could obtain power like that…

  The book opened, and from the first sentence, Arthur was induced with gluttonous fanaticism at the enlightenment this book bestowed.

  After thirty minutes, the book closed. And from his hand burned a light-devouring darkness.

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  Amazing, this is really it. I can feel the effects immediately:

  My heart beats four times a second, pumping fresh blood and energy to every inch of my body. This must be how swordsmen feel every time they use mana.

  Except, my mana pool should be completely depleted by now—like it is when I use the crude method of mana amplification to imitate a sword aura.

  But instead of depleting, it doesn't feel like any of my mana is being used at all.

  I feel like if I were to strike this fortified stone wall, it would be the one to break, and not my hand.

  He brimmed with excitement, but he had to contain it for now.

  This one…

  He held the one with the smooth, black cover made of some kind of material like leather. It was covered in several strange—gold—engravings he had never seen before.

  Holding his eyes still—mind racing—he opened the book, but the contents continued to be illegible, though unnaturally precise.

  Is this really gibberish?

  The peak and base of each character aligned perfectly with every other character on the same invisible horizontal line—perpendicular to the vertical edges of the paper.

  As he flipped through the pages, this pattern only continued.

  The language was not alphabetic like human-tongue; it appeared to be logographic like the Magic Language, but different still.

  It's clear that this book was written by a mage using Mind Transcription—no penmanship could be so precise—which means it can't just be random scribbles, either.

  It also seems to be a magic grimoire based on these diagrams, or rather, shapes would be more fitting—similar to what Cedric described. The Magic Language is unique; Magic can only be cast using its language, but there's nothing like a line of incantation or a magic circle from what I've seen.

  I might be able to learn this language if I search long enough in the archives, but the time required is indefinite. My time would be spent much more effectively training with the power I just received.

  Yes; if I have this, revenge is possible.

  But the morning bell rang, so his training would have to wait.