Mystical Journey

Intelligence is a funny thing. It represents the ability to memorize, imagine, analyze, so on and so forth. If it’s too low, it’d be severely impact the ability to learn and comprehend.

Garen rested on his chair, considering his next moves.

"The timeline is changing, that Diaz shouldn’t be here yet, why is she sent here early?" He set down his cup, his fingers tapping the table.

"If I recall correctly, there were a few major events before Beckstone arrived. The RAL (Royal Alliance of Luminarists)* had a fall out with the Obscuro preceding some riots. Within a year the power that RAL holds weakened significantly, until they were overturned by the Obscuro. The key turning point of that was the War of the Luminarists led by Rosette."

Reviewing the information from the memory, Garen started to finalize his plans.

"If that’s the case, in this Totem World, there were three major factions, The RAL, Obscuro Society, and Terraflor Society. All three have their own top Luminarists. At first, the RAL and Obscuro had a clash, leading to their loss of power, Beckstone from Terraflor took the opportunity to rise up."

He meticulously picked at specific details in the memory. Soon, he found the strongest Luminarists under all three factions.

The Royal Alliance of Luminarists had three Luminarists leading the three departments, they represented the benefits of the Royal family and the nobles.

Obscuro’s were Hellgate and his two disciples.

Terraflor’s were Beckstone and his teammates, along with the Silver Knight’s leader. They have a lot of people, but they were the weakest out of the three.

These are the strongest Luminarists from the three factions.

Viscount Vanderman was only one of the supporters outside the three departments, and was at the same time an outer member of the Obscuro, he was one of the initial opponents Beckstone faced.

"The leaders of the three departments of RAL, that’s too far away. Any one of them would be stronger than Beckstone in his most powerful period. Vanderman couldn’t even reach them." Garen analyzed. "If these three people were still alive, Obscuro wouldn’t be so daring to attack the manor. In that case, the attack I faced was probably as a warning to Vanderman."

Frowning, he figured out the situation.

"The following event would probably be small-scale collisions between Obscuro and the RAL before it turned into large-scale ones. Right now, Terraflor is still a small fry. With upcoming battles, Obscuro wouldn’t be able to pay attention to us, so they will only destroy the manor when Beckstone arrives."

Garen’s brows were tightly knit, he stood up.

"But I was just attacked, that means both sides were not planning to do it secretly anymore. Time is running short, maybe the timeline would be shifted forward even more."

He paced in his room.

"I need to keep up…" He had made his mind.

His gaze fell onto the ability pane.

His Precision Blueprint skill was shown as Intermediate-level.

"I’ll raise this to Master-level first, then I’ll go look for Teacher Emin to learn the Tactics to get a head start with creating my own Totem. But before that, I need to recover my strength completely!"

He showed a sense of determination.

"No more keeping secrets, I guess."

　　***********

After Garen made up his mind, he started hiring the townsfolk in the town to pick amejade grass, pinweed and the other herb. With every individual plant, he bought it off of them with ten rumbs*.

The Rumb is the official unit of currency issued by the Kovitan Empire, its buying power is slightly higher than the American Dollar on Earth. That was not a bad value.

After asking his servants to man the booths for purchasing the herbs, they spread the news, many townsfolk started collecting them for Garen.

His father Viscount Vanderman found out, but he didn’t ask. About his son’s behavior, he reasoned as one of his passing fads.

Acacia used to like planting roses too, switching it for another isn’t that big of a deal.

After the initial confusion, Viscount Vanderman found out that his son switched every single one of the roses to herbs. He guessed his son learned some alchemical formula from somewhere and that he kept wanting to have a mysterious potion for his own use.

With regards to this he scoffed, alchemical potions were debunked about a hundred years ago. It was just a scam, but one of the biggest scam in the century. It wasn’t spending much of his money, so he ignored it.

Viscount Vanderman was busier than usual.

He went to the capital of the empire and visited scores of famous Luminarists and aristocrats, getting information about the Obscuro Society. As an academic Luminarist, he always had means to contact people. After all the trouble he went through, he even gotten himself two other Luminarist friends to stay over at his manor for a few days to show the Royal family’s attitude toward them.

　　*************

"Good evening Sirs." Garen stood in front of the white-bearded old men, greeting them with the utmost respect.

These two were his father’s Royal Luminarist friends from the capital city, Rob and Eric. They both wore white robes with silver lining, and had an aura of wisdom.

Both nodded.

"He’s not bad, even though he’s not intelligent, he’s still a polite kid."

"I can see the respect for intelligence in his eyes." Eric boomed. His voice is loud, echoing throughout the study.

Vanderman sit at the side, his face slightly fark.

"This attack on Cia, I strongly suspect it’s by the people over there. Several of the other lords were also attacked, reducing their powers. This is obviously a planned operation."

He eyed Garen.

"Cia, you can go now. Do go out unnecessarily, the situation now is a little unstable."

"Yes, father."

Even though Garen wanted to listen to the conversation, but all three Luminarists were much stronger than his current self. Even if he recovered all his strength, it’s impossible to fight them. Eavesdropping is out of the question too.

He used his Turtle Breathing Technique and slowly backed away from the study. The hushed conversation carried on behind him. He left Vanderman’s building briskly.

When he passed by the yard in front of the building, he looked up and stared at the candlelit room on the second floor.

"Looks like the RAL is going to fight back soon. They even got two Luminarists to support…"

He strode toward his own building.

Closing the door, he rushed to the second floor into his own study, closing all the curtains and windows.

He retrieved a redwood briefcase and unlocked it.

There were scores of bottles with a cornflower blue potions.

"I managed to concoct so much potion, it wasn’t the millennium ones, but they can still work." He took out a bottle and chugged it.

If it was the potion made from the millennium old amejade grass, he wouldn’t dare to drink it. It was too strong. But these amejade grass were only less than a century old, their medicinal properties were much milder. If he doesn’t drink it, the effects would be even worse. Right now, it’s just strong enough that his body could endure.

After one bottle, Garen kept the briefcase away.

His body started to heat up.

During the past few weeks, through collecting the herbs with his servants and brewing the potions himself, he had already consumed a large quantity of the potion, his body was almost back at his peak.

He glanced at the attribute pane, having a sense of expectation.

Just a little more to his peak.

‘Strength 2.0, Agility 1.9, Vitality 2.2, Intelligence 1.7. Luminarist Talent detected.’

"This is a physical attribute built purely with the potion, I have developed resistance to the potion, but I’m also almost recovered." Garen was happy at the result feeling his strength.

At his peak, all the attributes were about 2.6.

As of now, his attributes were twice an average person’s. When put together, his power would be exponentially more powerful than that. He can already use his strongest Four Secret Techniques.

All in all, he had already recovered 90% of his strength.

"However, this is no longer the original world. My strength here is not enough…" Garen sighed.

After resting for a bit, when the effects of the potion had subsided, his gaze fell upon the ability pane once again.

"Now that my body is almost back to normal, I need to work on my skills… Need to raise the level of Precision Blueprint."

Garen stared at the skill Precision Blueprint for three seconds.

Immediately, the name of the skill vibrated and blurred out and finally turned into Master-level!

The Potential Point decreased by 500% with just a second!

The skill pane has changed.

‘Precision Blueprint: Master-level. (Levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Master)’

"It really is an advanced ability… I have advanced to Intermediate-level myself, so I didn’t use up the Potential Points, but now to turn it into Master-level, I used up 5 whole points…" Garen thought begrudgingly.

The Potential Points looked like it was a lot when it was 18 points, but because of the Precision Blueprint skill, there are only 12 points left.

"I wonder if there are Antique of Disaster in this world…" He thought.

In this manor, he had already touched all the antiques Vanderman collected, but none of them were Antiques of Disaster. His Potential Points had not changed.

This made him wonder if Antiques of Disaster actually exist in this world.

Following the mastery of the skill Precision Blueprint, Garen felt another breeze as thick as ink flowing to his hands from his brain.

Translator's Thoughts

J_Squared J_Squared

1. May shorten to RAL in future chapters depending on context.