[NR] The Tome - Chapter 629

{The Exhaustive Guide on the Crafting of an Immovable Rod by Jason the Willful Survivor

Description:

A Tome written by a traveller named Jason. Within is a well laid out guide to the creation of Immovable Rods, including ways to substitute any material or step. Along with some already determined substitutions, this book has a near exhaustive Guide on how to determine if new materials or techniques will work. The vellum and leather was crafted from young water horse hide and can resist changes in humidity much better than one would expect. Using a variant of a common method the various diagrams can project illusions and move. All such illusions and every other powered function of the book uses Energy to work. Much care was put into the creation of this book and a great balance was achieved in this working.

Grade: Top Original

Effects:

• Learning Speed Boost - Above Average to Moderate

• Detail Oriented - Immovable Rods crafted from directly referencing this book in person are less likely to have errors during any step directly from the manual

• Simple Complexity - This book is laid out without any tricks or traps, with the only difficulty coming from the actual crafting of an Immovable Rod and as such, making copies of this manual has no penalty, though any alterations will instantly be noticed by those who have read the original

• Adaptive - The System has judged the methods written within to be applicable to such an extent that it would be a shame to shackle the knowledge to these few pages and as such, when a new substitute or technique has been thoroughly confirmed, the book will grow to include these new substitutions

• Energy Core - This tome was crafted in a manner such that instead of magic, it works with Energy and in doing so, a simple Energy core has formed within it allowing the book to passively regain any used Energy

• Energy Efficient - Because of the nature of Energy, this tome is highly efficient and can be used a magnitude times more often than other similar times

• Limited Uses - Can be read 120 time before it runs out of enough Energy to power it and the Energy recharges at a fourth of the capacity every week

• First Edition - This is the original copy created by Jason the Willful Survivor and as such, any Immovable Rods crafted using it as a reference will work better in all significant functions}

Jason whistled, that’s quite the list of effects. Except the System seemed to want to keep actual numbers out of it, which was odd considering how it usually did things. The System would even note when you’re 1% more able to grow what most consider a weed, but here it isn’t saying how much the time was boosting a person’s learning speed?

In fact, the only solid numbers mentioned were for uses and how fast it recharged. Though as Jason considered the issue more, an idea came to him on why this might be. The System doesn’t have stats for intelligence and learning would be based on that.

It is likely that no matter how much effort the System puts in, there will simply be a limit on what knowledge it can force on people. This would be especially true if it wanted to keep the fact it could affect the mind a secret. Jason thinks back on his conversation with Courtney, but comes up with a blank.

They had talked about the possibility of an increased learning rate, but not how it would work for players. Though this was a simple enough question to look up himself. The answer?

The System pulled some sleight of hand. Books with an increased learning speed would present themselves just like some of the better irl textbooks. While natives would just magically learn faster, the System still jumped through the hoops to pretend.

Which was good news for Jason. After all, if it was just fully out on the faster learning thing, it represented a much deeper problem. The fact that the System would have to be forcing people to not pay attention to this even outside of the game. By keeping the mask on, as it were, represented the fact that the System couldn’t reach beyond VR.

Good news all around, as even if the System could, it was at least restricting itself. So, Jason turned to other matters. With the Tome complete, he could focus on other matters. In particular, his monkey’s fist knot design for his lines.

Where he had last left off was pretty close to complete. It would simply take some work to perfect and then he could try replacing everything again. Though that last step should wait until after the book was sold.

While his book couldn’t exactly be called unique or particularly valuable, the adaptive effect was valuable, to say the least. An important detail being left out, is that it doesn’t just update when someone using that specific book manages to add a new substitution. No, going by other similar books in the past, any copy where the content is considered similar enough will update the original book as well. For that alone, some groups have spread their manuals far and wide.

After all, the only thing better than success at the end of countless attempts is when you can freely gain the successes of others with no need to fund those attempts. Jason didn’t particularly care about these benefits. After all, this was a magic item and while Immovable Rods are one of those universal types treasures anyone can use, the construction method didn’t hold much interest to him.

If he needs some, he can just have a part of the deal include getting him some. In fact, when he thinks of that, it isn’t a bad idea. After all, Immovable Rods are quite handy. It is more of a question of how many he wants and how many he can push for. Better to have more than you need or a surprise might find you lacking.