Chapitre 12: The Arcane Theorist

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"Take this, put it on your head." Molly handed Leon a towel drenched in cold water.

"Man! Jessica is so violent." Leon complained while covering his left eye with the towel.

"Is it true? You spoke to her boobs?" Beside him, Jordi asked with an amazed face.

"Yes, I've been telling…" Leon Spike in confirmation looking at Jessica's boobs across the counter but.

*Slam*

On the bar's counter, Jessica slammed a cup and pointed at Leon's face with her index expressing her passive-aggressive anger causing Leon and Jordi to back out together in fright.

"No talking about my boobs… no talking to them either."

"Yes, ma'am." Leon and Jordi both nodded.

The way she warned was both intimidating and charming. Her tan skin, her light freckles, her deep brown wavy hair tied up together and her bartendress makeup and tattoos were all adding to her charm.

Leon and Jordi took distance from her yet she could still hear them whisper.

"What do her boobs say?" Jordi asked.

"The left one said that Madam Ruth told you guys to throw me on the streets and Jessica didn't protest." Leon said.

"Holy shit!" Jordi's eyes widened.

Molly heard them as well and laughed, normally passed out people would remember what was said around them roughly.

"What about the right one?" Jordi kept asking.

"It said that even though Jessica didn't seem to disagree, she wanted to smack the Madam right in the face." Leon said.

"Such a thing…" Jordi didn't really buy it this time.

Molly laughed casually and looked at Jessica whose face was stiff as if she heard something she never expected. She then turned around and faced the wall while hurriedly fixing the neck of her dress to hide more of her chest.

Molly looked back at Leon with a fearful face and retreated to her kitchen. People hit on the head can really awaken strange powers.

***

Leon took the rest of the day off afterward. He could no longer focus on anything and headed to the shack behind the saloon. On the way, he checked that the books he was reading were back in his Storage not sure how.

Now that he thinks about it, how did he come down from the roof in the first place? Mostly this will remain a mystery and he just skipped the unnecessary details right to bed.

He closed his eyes, time passed, he opened them, it was a new day.

His head was so heavy and he couldn't even move properly. It seemed that the exhaustion from last night was still haunting him.

He turned around out of habit searching for his phone but he remembered that he just got reincarnated. This is officially the third day in the new world.

"Reincarnated as a Hero, reincarnated as a dragon, reincarnated as a twig and here I am reincarnated as a fucking loser. Isekai sucks!"

He held his head and no longer wanted to get out of this horribly creaking bed. The mattress may be some cloth patched together and containing hard hay but it still felt alright to him, he who spent most of his life in an army sleeping bag.

Now to the main subject; what the fuck happened yesterday?

He was trying to avoid reading Leon's depressing past when he stumbled upon a book called "The Arcane Theory" which sounded like a Magic Tome at first giving him the illusion that if he read it, he may learn a new Magic Skill or Technique.

Yet something he never imagined was in this book. He may have read the intro at first but the Author biography was written behind the book. The Author was called Grand Magus Arnold the Old. This man was a legend that lived thousands of years ago on this Continent and reached a height in Magic unreached so far by the known standards of the current day and age.

It is said that he founded the Magic Domain, a Kingdom of Wizards that resides in a hidden location and can only be invited in and never invaded. There, the Wizards were said to live in solitude and immortality away from the troubles of the political world.

To think that immortality, the thing which drives kings and emperors insane at its mention, is nothing but a mere perk of joining such a group.

But on top of all of this, Arnold the Old was said to be the first Arcane Theorist, the title which Leon could see in his status at the moment.

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< Status >

- Name: Leon Dark

- Age: 16

- Race: Human

- Level: 13

- Titles:{Legendary Thief} {Man Slayer} {Black Cobra} {Loser} {Rat} {Arcane Theorist ★}

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Thinking about it, part of the biography spoke about the Arcane Theory being the book which Grand Magus Arnold considered to be his greatest achievement and despite it being publicized and taught on a wide scales especially to the youth, it is considered to be the most correct and authentic tome of Magic Theory that predates the foundation of the System.

The System? This world is very aware that its Magic runs on a game-like system?

Maybe it is not as absurd to them as it is to Shady as it seemed that it has existed here for hundreds of years and not anyone can see it. But the book mentioned that the System was founded by someone called the Holy Mother Agartha whose heart is the very world itself.

Aside from the metaphors which Leon found himself cringing at, it says that this System was founded by a grand entity whose purpose was to make the magic and combat learning expand faster in order to face a foreign invasion that assaults the world. The commentaries in the book stated that this is a mention of the Demonic Invasion of the Abyss which devastated the neighboring continent to Agartha.

"So that Holy Mother and this Continent are called by the same name? Good to know."

Back to the topic regarding the [Arcane Theory] book, its author and the {Arcane Theorist} title; it seemed that through reading this Magic Theory Manuscript, Leon has gained immense knowledge in the field and has the ability to Recall whatever he read in the book whether he understood it or not.

The good thing about this is that his head became akin to a search engine. He thinks of something, he remembers it by heart until he can't understand something else, he goes back and starts Recalling information about it.

"This [Read] spell… it is too overpowered. If I had this in my high school… Damn! The thought is scary." Leon shuddered from the thought and pushed himself up off the bed despite the pain all over his body.

He is now a Magic Nerd who read a book which the mightiest magic scholars in the world struggle with. If his memory serves him right, the reason why this book was a subject in his first Academy year was that it only obligates the first ten pages of the book the whole year which made him laugh. It is normal to not delve too deep into studying manuscripts in an academic way but this is still absurd. The Magic Theory in its glory is a behemoth of an academic subject in its first two pages already. Some strict education that was!

But even after reading that scary book, Leon ended up with extra 10 Points in Intelligence and a few new skills.

The Mental Resistance skill decreases the mental stress after spending too much focus on something, not sleeping for a long time or reading for a long time. A very useful skill in cram studying.

The Heresy Resistance skill may sound comical but its reading said that it resists negative effects such as Madness, Mind Manipulation, Seduction and Hypnosis. A truly wonderful addition and probably added because of the commentary on the Arcane Theory since it had a lot of bias.

[A/N: For those of you who didn't study republished manuscript the way I did, the page is normally divided into two parts, one for the original text of the manuscript and the other one is for the commentaries which shed some light on the complicated sentences.]

The skill Hemorrhage Resistance is pretty self-explanatory and useful in combat where stabs may cause fatal bleeding but training this skill sounds very spartan if one considers leveling it.

As for the title {Arcane Theorist}, it was given to those who achieved a sufficient amount of knowledge regarding the Arcane Arts and it had the rarity SSS attached to it. More to that, it gave him a special skill.

Down in the list under the [Relife Ring], there was something called [Unrestrained Magic]. Its reading said that the owner of the skill has achieved sufficient knowledge to reshape the very fabric of Magic itself.

"I won't get that last one without experimenting."

With that Leon decided to put the idea into action and got out of bed while holding his aching body and limbing outside barefoot.

"Good morning!"

As he went out of the shack, Jordi greeted him as he was washing some clothes in a wooden tub as he sat on a small stool with his back to the shack's wall.

"Morning to you too. Doing your laundry?" Leon asked.

"The girls'." Jordi replied.

"Yuck! I won't be touching that." Leon felt a disgusting feeling.

"You will do extra cleaning then." Jordi said.

"Whatever!" Leon didn't disagree and looked around, "Hey, where does a man take a bath?"

"Up for a hygienic morning now?" Jordi laughed.

"Bruh! My face was covered in blood last night, if I wasn't so messed up, I would have taken one after each shift."

"Fine, fine. Don't rant. If you still have money, go to Ray Plaza and find the bathhouse near the market. If you don't…" Jordi said and pointed at the river.

"This doesn't bring back good memories."

Leon sighed and proceeded to pick a towel and a new change of clothes from his storage as he returned inside the shack. He went out again, and walked to the river just on the other side of the backyard and looked down. There seemed to be some sort of old stone stairs as if this place was once used to harbor riverboats.

Anyway, Leon took a spot where no one could see him and took off his clothes then walked in the water.

"Burrrr! That's just so good."

The water was refreshing despite being not entirely clear. As a river runs through a city, a lot of impurities get caught in the stream yet it wasn't as bad as the Nile for example.

Thinking about it, Leon never realized how scrawny his body is. To think that this weak body with his ribcage and joints almost visible managed to carry him through this chase with the Knights. It almost felt comical.

But none of this matters now, he took a small dive underwater to clear his mind and now he is ready to test what he learned from the Arcane Theory.

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