Chapter 9

Dyon walked along a moving floor, heading back to the same pillar he had met Libro in – Patia-Neva Pillar. Looking down at the white card in his hand, he sighed.

‘After all that, it seems like I’ll be stuck with books on just the first level.’ He smirked. ‘Delia’s never going to fall for me if I have to ask her for help at every turn.’

Thinking back to Meiying, Dyon chuckled. ‘She’s definitely not simple either. I felt like I was almost being used, but what complaints would I ever have about such a pretty little lady needing my services?’

Dyon’s eyes flashed with seriousness. He knew he needed an action plan.

For one, the currency system in this martial world was entirely different. Dyon was so poor here that he couldn’t even afford a ride on the silver yacht. Secondly, there’s the matter of access. Being restricted to just the first level wasn’t a big deal for now, but considering Dyon’s speed reading ability, he knew he’d finish the entire first level in about 2 months at the most, and that was if he read things useless to him. Plus, that wasn’t accounting for the increase his speed would undergo as he further familiarized himself with the technique.

Dyon shook his head. ‘These people are so petty. By my performance, I definitely deserve higher floor access. But considering their anger, being frozen out might be the best possible outcome. I’ll have to publicize my future accomplishments so that they have no choice but to follow the rules in the future.’

Dyon’s eyes glazed over in thought. In truth he had many ideas, but they needed time to be implemented. With just 1 week before classes started, Dyon didn’t have much time before his freedom was cut down by almost half.

‘This money thing is going to be an issue…’

Although Dyon had his wrist bands to preserve the food he brought from home, considering how much he ate, that would last another 2 weeks at the most. After that, he’d need money to eat. And that’s not even speaking on how he would protect himself.

Of course, the main way students protected themselves were factions. But, with Dyon’s pride, he had no intention of asking Delia to join hers. Even if she asked him, his answer would be no.

To these people, his arrogance was bordering on stupid. To them, he had a pride he hadn’t earned. But, only he knew what he had been through in his life. He’d crush them in their own field without relying on anyone else.

That said, this didn’t mean that Dyon didn’t have avenues to explore. In addition to student led factions headed by the ‘Chosen’ and ‘Pseudo-Chosen’, there were so-called secondary profession factions that caught his eye. Usually, students who joined these factions had niche abilities that ‘Chosen Factions’ would seek out. The best factions could permanently employ those of secondary profession factions.

From the books Dyon read, the library was considered one. But, he immediately crossed it off his list. Unfortunately, he didn’t do this willingly. According the faction rules, only those of the Sapientia family could become members. Also, it required having knowledge of the first 600 levels to be admitted.

Unlike the student formed factions, that were more free-form, pillar factions had strict rules and guidelines to be met, as well as their own internal ranking systems that provided higher tier members with extra benefits. Of course, that isn’t to say that student run factions don’t have their own admittance tests. They were just seen as generally easier.

It was unfortunate that this route was barred to him because this faction provided the easiest path to the Inner Library. But, it couldn’t be helped.

The next were sports factions. But, as you might imagine, Dyon had never heard of these sports before. If it was a simple matter of reading the rules, he would have considered it. However, Dyon knew that these sports factions required understanding of the martial world he simply didn’t have right now.

It might have seemed like Dyon magically became a genius of the martial world after just a few hours of reading, but this was a wholly false perception.

Firstly, the shout that made Mayumi cough up blood was terrible double-edged sword.

After a few hours of reading, Dyon learned that his energy cultivation talent was absolutely terrible. However, he surprisingly had what was known as an innate soul.

Normally, martial warriors needed to go through various steps to awaken their souls from slumber. Souls would then provide an excellent means of communicating with the heavens and comprehending wills.

The problem was that Souls were extremely fragile. If Mayumi had been prepared for Dyon to do something so stupid as directly attack with his soul, the worst-case scenario would have been Dyon’s death. Simply put, the stupidity of Dyon’s actions was the only reason why he was standing right now.

In addition, invoking the will of music was something simple for him. Dyon had been playing the piano ever since he was tall enough to climb onto the bench that stood in front of his mother’s favorite Steinway. The only reason that he didn’t produce phenomena like today in the mortal world was because it was devoid of the energy the martial world had.

But, it wasn’t like Dyon could carry around a piano where he went. And, he had no idea how to attack with it, he could only vaguely affect the emotions of those around him.

This said, there was good news too. Although souls were terrible for combat, those talented in the soul path were the staples of secondary professions.

Dyon had no idea whether he was “talented” in the soul path or not. Simply having an innate soul wasn’t enough of a marker. But, what Dyon was certain of was that whether he was talented or not, he would grasp this chance. At the very least, he had a little more talent on the soul path than the energy path.

‘There’s the alchemy faction, the formation faction, the forging faction, the beast master faction, and the philosophy debate faction. Of those…’

Although the idea of what creatures the martial world piqued Dyon’s interest, he had no way of knowing how long it would take to make significant contributions to a faction that required raising animals. For all he knew, it could take decades to raise a decent creature. And even then, he would have to give it away for him to garner any of the basic benefits he was looking for.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

At first, he had thought of the possibility of using beasts as a proxy for his strength, but the time needed was again a barrier, not to mention money.