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Chapter 122: Infiltration (8)

Letting out a sigh as he closed the book within his hand, Shinto glanced over towards the area where he heard the shoutingQuickly taking note of Ethaniel and the group making their way over to him in a hurry.

"...is there anything you need?" Shinto raised his brow in question, bewildered by the actions of his party.

"We found something!" Kon stated excitedly as he took the paper from Ethaniel's hand, quickly handing it over to Shinto from his mouth.

"...you found something?" Grabbing onto the paper, he took a look at it.

[ Renryth's Report #3 ]

A piece of paper from a series of reports made by the human 'Renryth'. The contents of the report seem to be written by hand, though in an ugly and rushed way. Despite that, it's still readable to those who understand standard Arcos if you read hard enough.

"R-Renryth's report?" Shinto slightly blinked at the sight.

"H-Huh? Reryth's report?" Rustly seemed to be tilting his head as he quickly turned towards the paper within Shinto's hand. "That old man's?!"

"I guess so..." Shinto said whilst looking at the details of the item. "Where did you find it?"

"It was by the top shelves!" Kon nodded his head with excitement in his eyes. "I did well in finding it, right?!"

"Mhm," Shinto nodded his head as he petted the fox. "Have you read the report yet?"

"Well, yes but no," Frey coughed. "We checked the contents... but uh, the words aren't that clear... it's scribbled all over the place! So... we couldn't decipher whatever this thing's saying."

"...it's hard to read? Sigh," Shinto shook his head helplessly. "...are you saying you want me to go through it thinking I can read it?"

"No! Well uh... I thought maybe yes?" she laughed awkwardly. "While you read through it... we'll go and find the rest of the reports to save time!"

"..." Shinto glared at his group, letting out another sigh as he showed the book titled 'Spells of the Gloop' to the party. "I'm busy with trying to learn a spell from this book."

"...wait what? Just like Raina? HUH?!" Frey cried out. "So that's why you were so intensely reading... Jeez. No fair! That slime is really giving you and Raina special treatment!"

"...cough. Well, learning skills from books is stupidly hard," Shinto coughed. "Anyhow, I can't decipher Renryth's words since I'm busy."

"Damn it! So it's back to the debate..." Frey pouted. "...Ethaniel do you want to do it?"

"Ugh... The writing is giving me a headache," he clicked his tongue.

"Well, it gives us all a headache!" Frey shouted out.

"...you say that and yet you ask me to read the report?" Shinto blankly stared at Frey.

"Well... I figured maybe... you could understand it?" she reasoned.

"H-How?" Shinto raised his brow, however, he soon dropped the question. "Nevermind. Just, decide among you three... That might give you something to do anyways."

"Tch... It's annoying that we can't go out. Otherwise, I'd be training while leaving you all to read," he clicked his tongue. "But, the slimes are a nuisance."

"Oh shut up you stupid crazy human!" Rustly growled.

"You guys..." Shinto helplessly uttered out. "Sigh. Whatever... do whatever you want. Though, do update me on your findings."

"What? Hey!" Ethaniel frowned as he saw that Shinto walked away from the group as he sat down over by a quiet place in the corner. Moments later, he opened the book and began to increase his proficiency in the arts. "...tch. I hope this spell is worth it..." Helplessly turning his head away from Shinto, he glanced at Raina who was nearly doing the exact same thing as him.

"...so, you read it and me and Kon go and find more reports?" Frey asked.

"You really don't want to read it, huh?" Ethaniel clicked his tongue. "Argh! Just be done with it!"

...

Sitting over at another corner of the room, Raina steadily continued to murmur the chants of 'Flames of Etheral' over and over.

"..."

Whilst doing so, she heard the shouts and cries coming over from the area where the group stood at.

"Jee... these guys," Raina sighed at the sight of the group's loud voices ringing through the entire room. "I'm going to be preferring the previous quiet environment at this rate..."

During the time when Raina was alone, her efficiency in reading through the books increased. It was possibly due to the quiet environmenthowever, now, the efficiency that she was previously at dropped slightly.

[ 'Flames of Etheral' proficiency has increased by 0.02%. ]

[ Current proficiency in the arts: 40.02% ]

Looking at her notification bar, she could only helplessly shake her head. The rate of her learning the arts was slowly increasing; but it was just as what Reru had said, by estimation, it'll take more than a week.

But, even then, compared to an average person at her level, one would be around 30% rather than the current progress Raina had made. Why's that? This was because of her dedication from the past few days.

Unlike a normal person who would mostly get bored from constantly having to read a book for almost the entire day in-game, Raina was dedicated enough to vigorously push forward and read. Thus, allowing her to be at the proficiency of 40.02%.

"...just 58.98% more points to go..." she sighed. "But, I guess it'll soon be done if what Shinto said was true, right?"

Even if one were to take into account the circumstance around Raina's situation where she had to read and learn the spell without being able to do anything else, the game wasn't that cruel and still issued a warning before she accepted the task in the case a player hated to read or couldn't feel dedicated enough. Thus, even at the very start, she was convicted to do it.

"Anyways... back to this," Raina stated as she took a deep breath and began to continue increasing the proficiency of her arts.

...

The hours slowly went by as the group all did to their own things. Shinto and Raina were busily learning the spells of Rainy Slime and Flames of Etheral respectively; Ethaniel reading through the reportsFrey and Kon were sweeping through the shelves looking for reports and Rustly was busy screaming at everything.

...

The next day, within the room where the group were at, Shinto let out a tired sigh as he closed his book.

[ 'Rainy Slime' proficiency has increased by 2% ]

[ Current proficiency in the arts: 52% ]

[ The skill 'Degraded Rainy Slime (Lesser)' has been upgraded to 'Degraded Rainy Slime (Greater)'! ]

[ You can now use 'Rainy Slime' more efficiently! ]

[ Wisdom has increased by 1! ]

"...well, that took a long while," Standing up, Shinto stretched his arms. "But at the very least, Rainy Slime is now in a much more usable state than last time."

[ Degraded Rainy Slime (Greater) Lv 1 ] [ 250 MP ] [ Cooldown: 20 Minutes ]

The user creates a small cloud within the sky as it rains down slime onto a small radius (3m), quickly dealing 300% magic damage over the next five seconds. During the skill duration, there is a 15% chance of inflicting poison onto the enemies caught within the rain.

Noting his newly updated skill description, he turned away from the screen as he then glanced around the area, seeing that Ethaniel was busy reading through the reports whilst Frey, Kon and Rustly were fast asleep with a small stack of papers by the side.

"Hah... when did they fall asleep?" he shook his head helplessly. Shinto was mostly reading the book and practising the spell the entire time, ignoring his surroundings. "Whatever... It looks like Ethan is still up and as for Raina..." Turning towards the corner of the room, he saw that Raina was still busily chanting out the spell.

"..." Without a moments notice, Shinto walked up towards Ethaniel. "Any updates on the report?"

"...?" Ethaniel looked away from the papers as he turned to Shinto with bored and tired eyes. "Oh look... finally decided to move away from that book of yours?"

"Aha... It looks like you were reading the entire thing yourself without their help?"

"What do you think? The moment they started reading, they fell asleep," he clicked his tongue. "And that annoying slime too... argh!"

"Well... It can't be helped, they at least found the reports..." he shrugged. "Anyways, anything you found from reports?"

"Ugh... reading through all these five reports was torture and guess what? I got nothing. All of the reports were literally about Renryth's daily life in this damn castle researching about the catacombs and the behaviours and studies of the slimes. Like I care about that! Give me some information on Sanke or whatever."

"Wait, researching about the catacombs?" Shinto tilted his head. "Could you elaborate on that?"

"Bah... it's nothing. It's just about the interesting architecture of the village and that stuff. Man... for some guy who was said to be powerful and knows the arts to defeat Sanke, what the heck has he been doing most of his life here? It seems as if he's been wasting away neglecting everything about Sanke and the curse. Nothing about it is mentioned here."

"..." Shinto pondered to himself as he heard the words from Ethaniel. "...as if he's been neglecting everything about Sanke?" Just as he was about to continue with his thought, a loud voice rang by the door.

"Oi! You humans! Get ready!"