Strongest Among the Heavens

Morning arrived the next time Dasha opened his eyes. It was strange. The light was likely a construct of magic but it felt so real. The clouds, the heat, and the ambience felt so nice.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Dasha bit his tongue. He rose from his slumber, glanced back at his nice pillow, and sighed. He stood up and went to the counter.

"What?"

"O-oh." It was an old man with a long, thick grey goatee. He had been hitting the wooden counter to test its endurance. "I, uh, thought nobody lived here. My bad."

Dasha stared at him blankly. Over the old man's shoulder he saw two puzzled faces. Players. "Mistakes happen," Dasha said. "If you have no further business, leave."

They did without further argument.

"You should clean this place up better," Dasha told the couple, who had been cowering at the back.

"S-sorry," Zhang Mei replied. "We…we've had some bad people try and take this place from us."

"Don't apologize." Without another word, he turned to leave.

Zhang Mei asked, lips trembling, "Will you come back?"

Dasha didn't look back. "I will."

While eavesdropping yesterday, he learned that sellers and merchants were still reeling from the previous Heavenly Game. The time between Heavenly Games, which was supposed to be twenty years on Earth, was significantly less for them. In other words, they went from Heavenly Game to Heavenly Game without too much delay. Some of the merchants claimed it was about a year's time for them—not enough time, apparently.

Consequently, sellers were lowering their prices on rare items they kept from previous Heavenly Games. Items that they knew wouldn't be useful until much, much later. Items many were selling to the big guilds in order to make an early profit.

Eavesdropping was a most useful skill.

In his head, while walking, he flashbacked to the description of his new Passive Skill.

[ Passive Skills ]

[ Martanda's Boon

Subtype: Support

Rank: SS

"I shall bestow upon him a fragment of my energy, enabling him to engage with the sacred texts. I shall also endow him with the sacred texts, thereby nurturing his ability to speak with eloquence." ]

Although he carried a masters degree in history, his studies were concentrated on the Industrial Revolution. His thesis, for instance, was examining the impact of the Industrial Revolution on social structures and labour patterns between 1760 and 1850. If he had brushed up on Hindu scriptures, he could have extracted the page the boon came from.

'But what's important is its rank. It's SS-rank. On top of that, it lets me read and understand any kind of sacred text.' Since he read the description of the ability in the forest, a glorious idea had been rocking his head. Gaining no results from eavesdropping, it was time to switch to his prior plan. 'The House of Wisdom: the greatest source of knowledge in existence pooled together by gods of various mythologies. I'm certain there would be blueprints of weapons too. If I find something and then go to the forge…'

He could create an incredibly powerful weapon right off the bat.

So that was his next destination: the House of Wisdom.

***

Unlike the Nebulous Bazaar, there was only one spawn point for the House of Wisdom. It was a very strange spawn point too. An empty elevator playing music from a harp. A soft, gentle melody that would be excellent to fall asleep to.

The elevator gave the option of travelling to one of a hundred floors. The buttons were uniquely coloured and tattooed with a symbol. Swords, spears, skulls, fire, water, wind, and so much more, covering a wide array of magical topics.

Dasha found the symbol of a fist and pressed on it.

The elevator music changed from the harp to the flute. Still high-pitched, it was rather relaxing than sleep-inducing.

The elevator doors opened. Dasha stepped into a vast chamber filled with towering shelves. There was nothing else beyond it, just towers upon towers of books. He anticipated a theme of martial arts but nothing. There were only books.

"Hello there. I'm Brigid, the library assistant. How can I be of assistance to ya?"

Dasha had been hoping for Athena. She was the goddess of wisdom as well as warfare. He could have benefited a lot from her advice.

"What can't and can I ready?" Dasha asked. "Are there restrictions perchance?" 

"All books are accessible to anyone."

Dasha waited for a but. There wasn't. The redhead's complexion was whiter than a ghost's and her smile was soft.

"A lot o' people ask about that. I think they watch too much Harry Potter," Brigid chuckled. "There are nearly a billion books in the House o' Wisdom, but wisdom does not equate to peace. Any books that might've had curses or somethin' to that nature have been stripped of that power. If y' want to read a cursed book, y' must traverse through the Heavenly Tower and find it yourself. Oh, but this isn't a recommendation. They're very dangerous."

"I see. Could you direct me to a book where I can craft the strongest possible gauntlet?"

"Somethin' to work for in the future, aye?" Brigid's smile transformed into a toothy grin. Her fiery hair danced in the nonexistent breeze as she motioned for him to come along. "Fair warnin': ye won't be able to read most of it. While the Game System translates human tongues, it doesn't do the same for non-human ones. I'm sure ye've heard of dwarves. Very rigid kind of folk—fine smiths, yeah—but they write everything in their own language."

"Like you said, it will be something to work toward in the future. I don't expect myself to understand everything."

"Alrighty! To the back, we go!"

Given the scale of this floor, where the ceiling was so high he could see chandeliers in a moderate light, meaningless talk was expected.

"Not many folks come to the library this early. That's why it's so empty."

"Mm."

"You're a martial artist, I figure. It's a lot harder than anything else, you know? Gauntlets aren't sold as much as swords or spears."

Brigid started to hum to herself. It was the same melody from the elevator. He wondered where it came from. It was oddly addicting.

Brigid stopped at the edge of the column and her finger skidded across book spines. They were close to the centrepiece, a pillar. 'Wait, no…' Upon a second look, it dawned on him that it was not a pillar. It was the bark of a tree emerging from the previous floors and going all the way up.

A foreboding feeling settled in the pits of his stomach. Whatever this tree was, it wasn't normal.

Brigid continued reading the titles of the books, humming. Dasha's curiosity couldn't help itself.

"What is this?"

"Hm?" Brigid followed his gaze. "Oh, that? That's the Tree of Life. Have you read the Bible or the Quran? You know, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit upon temptation? This is THAT tree."

His heart stopped for a second. As a historian, no, as a person, he felt a connection to it. Being so close to it, a heavy weight took a hold of his heart—

"Oh, but don't worry, it's pretty much harmless now," Brigid reassured. She turned back to the shelf. "Without the soil of the Garden of Eden, it's not as powerful as it should be."

'Really? Then why am I feeling so uneasy?'

This was not a matter of his own flaws or thoughts; this was the very essence of his humanity connecting to it.

"Ah, here it is!" Brigid plucked out a book and touched its title. Her touch imprinted itself on it and a small blue light unfolded, causing the book to transform into a scroll. "Here it is! It's the Járngreipr, one of Thor's legendary gauntlets. It's the recipe to create a replica. While it won't be as strong as the original, it'll be pretty darn close. I wager if you smith it right, about an A or S-rank."

She gave him the scroll and he read it carefully.

'Five ingots of eitr-forged iron, ten scales of dragon scale leather, and ten ancient rune stones.'

Dasha checked the design of the gauntlet. Járngreipr gleamed with eitr-forged iron and was adorned with glowing dwarven runes. Dragon scale leather accents encircled the wrist, while each finger was embedded with an ancient rune gem. Black in colour and radiating in a crimson hue, it went up the wrist. Based on the schematics, it wasn't too long nor too heavy. The speed of his fists would go slightly down but his attack power would skyrocket.

"Yeah, I know, it's impossible to read, isn't it?" Brigid said. "Trust me, dwarven language on its own is hard. Took me a century to learn myself. But the language they use to record their weapons are encoded. No one except the best of the dwarves can read it."

"Hm." Dasha closed the scroll and handed it back to Brigid. She rolled the scroll back and it immediately returned to being a normal book.

Brigid plopped the book back into the shelf and sent him a comforting smile. "Anything else? I'm sure I can find some F or E class gauntlets for you to craft. If you've done the first main objective enough times, you might have collected enough points to get the materials from merchants."

"...sure."

While it would be nice to go straight to Thor's mighty weapon, there was a chance the merchants wouldn't have the materials. At the very least, Dasha wanted a weapon that would drastically increase his output. Fighting slimes with his bare fist was a life and death situation every time. He wanted to circumvent that.

He returned to the elevator to search for a set of armour and whatever else he could need. He planned to memorize and organize whatever he found would be key to his development.

That was Dasha's way of working: memorize everything, organize the information, and then plan.