Primordial Sage: Plight of Immortality

Once he got into his new accommodation, where he would probably spend a long time, he decided for the first time to completely unpack his belongings. The room, while small, was of much higher quality than the inn’s room and had much better furniture.

There were two beds, implying that the room was for two roommates, and had basic wardrobes and dressers for their belongings. The room Illyan was in was shared together with Nord, who also became an apprentice. However, since Illyan’s interview was prolonged, Nord already unpacked everything and was nowhere to be seen.

Illyan went to his own wardrobe and put everything he got in his bag there. He planned to toss the bag away after this as it was of low quality, since he built it in a hurry back then. He would buy a normal one later.

When he finally put everything away, he took the black rods at the bottom and pondered where to put them. Although this was their room now, he still feared theft. In the end, he decided that he would hide them in the bed. He put the mattress of the bed away and put the rods there before putting the mattress back. Then he sat down and wondered what he should do.

He and the duo were told to wait before being officially added to the apprentice list and being able to participate in lectures of other academics. There, they would learn the basic knowledge that every learned person should know. That included elegant penmanship that Illyan lacked and ability to take care of books.

Of course, there would also be lectures on the main fields like medicine and history, but those were optional as it was up to individuals to choose their specialization.

Illyan already chose medicine since he was already skilled in it. That wouldn't stop him from reading other information in the library later on though.

But for him to pass the test, he first needed to pay up one silver or ten bronzes. That was half of his fortune. So of course, he had to be sure of his success before even trying.

By talking to the staff that guided him to the room, he found out that there was just one academic physician in the institute right now. The problem was that for the test, at least three of them were needed. There was another in the town, but he served as the personal physician for the Mayor and was quite selfish and uncooperative. On the other hand, they would need to call another physician from the region which would also take a lot of time.

All in all, it would take at least three months before he could even try to be requalified.

Illyan didn’t mind. Instead, he took out the two books he owned and started to read them. Before becoming a physician, he didn’t have a good way to make money so he planned to read those books and then sell them to the institute. While Illyan was a sentimental person, he wouldn’t let those sentiments make his life difficult. Since his eyes allowed him to have almost perfect eye memory then why not use it?

Thanks to that, he didn’t need to own the books to relearn things after they dissipated in his memory.

While feeling a little reluctant as it was the only thing left after the person he thought of as a grandmother, he still believed that it was not the things that held the value but the memories he still retained. As long as he wouldn't forget it would be alright…

........

It took him two days to finally finish those two books. The more he read, the quicker his tempo was. Now, every word was engraved in his mind as if he had read it thousands of times.

Some of the content inside was already known to him, but he still read it all as it was now immortalized in his mind. He realized a long time ago that memories would fade away and that was why you needed to practice whatever you learned repeatedly, but now he was excited to know that anything he read was perfectly copied in his mind.

That meant that he could read more without considering his memory capacity.

That made his mood especially good.

And so, he decided that he would visit the library that day. He took the books he wanted to sell and went out of his room.

The accommodations where they would live until they leave or get promoted were in the right wing of the institute where most apprentices lived. Of course, some of the academics lived there too, but most of them would choose to have residence outside as the rooms inside were too limited.

When he finally got to the main hall, he saw that Ollie was still sitting there while commanding some young people with books in their hands.

While he was acting as a receptionist, he was also the librarian who took care of this library. Since the library was officially public, there were people visiting. Those who did were usually wealthy people like merchants and lords, but there were also many people of lower ranks of hierarchy.

Some of them were poor people who wanted to educate themselves or even fulfill some kind of distant dream.

Unfortunately, most of those poor people couldn’t even read and just looked around. Some of them even had dirty hands while wanting to hold the old books. That was why most of them couldn’t even pass the reception into the library.

That was also the reason why most people desired to become students of academics. But those usually accepted only those from the upper class of society and thus those at the bottom couldn’t do anything but wallow in despair.

However, because of that, the number of academics started to decline in this land where most rich and affluent lived more in the southern part of the kingdom.

Thanks to that, the apprentice system was created where even village peasants could start as apprentices for a small fee. Of course, while it was a small fee, because of their poor nature, they usually paid off in different ways such as free labor, assistance in academics’ works, and so on.

Until they became full-fledged academics, they had to work in this way. After they became one, they could decide whether to leave and use their new title to find a new path or continue being affiliated with the institute and working with other academics in the projects they were working on.

When the young men left, Ollie turned his head to Illyan and welcomed him with a warm smile.

“It is good to see that you were successfully accepted as an apprentice. Hopefully, though, you will not stop at this position and soon climb up. After all, there is a lack of proper physicians in this town, hoho~.” Ollie laughed out.

“Hmm… Yes, I also hope so…” Illyan could only nod as he saw the laughing man.

“So, what brings you here? Are you also interested in the library?” Seeing that Illyan didn’t continue the conversation, Ollie asked what he came here for.

“That too, but firstly I would like to sell those books.”

He brought out those two books from his robe as he put them on the desk. Olli opened his eyes wide as he observed those books before turning back to Illyan.

“You would like to sell those?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm…”

After saying so, Ollie started to examine the books. They were old, and so he had to take care of them carefully while also looking at the content of the books. Those books had generic names like Herbology Book and Herbalism Book and there were tens of books named like that just in this library alone. Because of that, it would be bad if they were just copies of books that were already in the library.

Ollie didn’t ask why he wanted to sell them as he could already guess. Instead, he said to Illyan that he should wait for the answer for a bit as Ollie needed to make sure those were original books which would take some time.

“It will take a minimum a day, so feel free to visit the library. As an apprentice, you don’t need to notify anyone as you can enter whenever you want. Just don’t bring or make fire inside even if it is in the form of a candle, have clean hands, treat the books with respect, and don’t make too much noise inside.”

After saying that, he scurried away while calling another man to go sit at his original seat substituting for him.

Seeing this, Illyan didn’t waste his time as he turned his attention to the library. On his otherwise cold expression, a hint of expectancy showed up as his eyes twinkled with interest.

He started to wander around the bookshelves to get to know the layout of the library while also reading what each bookshelf encompassed.

‘History, Archeology, Astronomy… There are so many, huh…’

It took him over ten minutes before he stopped and decided to take one book out of the bookshelf. The section he was in was the history and there was a name of the book that sounded familiar.

‘Valas Peninsula’s history.’

Wondering if it was the same Valas he thought it was, he took the book out and found an empty seat in one of the reading alcoves.

There, he opened the book and started to browse through it. The first thing that took his attention was the simple map of the territory. It wasn’t detailed and even Illyan could say it was quite rough but it fulfilled its objective.

The good maps were monopolized by the nobles, royals, and military, after all.

When he looked at the map he noticed that in the corner it showed the individual cardinal directions.

‘North, West, South, and East…’

When he looked back at the map he saw that far in the south the land spread everywhere beyond the map while the more north the land was the more narrow it got surrounded by the Cold Sea.

The territory was divided into five places. One was the southern tip of the land beyond the peninsula called Arkravav Empire. At the start of the Valas Peninsula started the Vanaras Kingdom that took over half of this land.

The kingdom borders ended in front of the Alchemy’s Doom Forest…

‘Alchemy’s Doom? Never heard of it… But it feels like this is the place where the Blood Crow Forest is. How weird…’

While confused he continued looking more north and as he expected there was Frozen Valas Tundra taking the second biggest part of the land and this tundra ended far in the north at the tip of the peninsula where were small Frozen Islands which were called the Land of Eternal Winter...

Once he confirmed the basic layout of the Valas Peninsula he looked back at the ‘Alchemy’s Doom’ Forest.

It was between Vanaras and Frozen Valas Tundra. It should be the same forest he thought of. But the name was different.

That was nothing new as everyone liked to call things with their own names and so he was used to the fact that some of the herbs had several names under their belt.

But he wondered why it

 was Alchemy’s Doom.

‘What does it mean?’

He didn’t have an idea. However, he remembered this piece of information as he planned to look for other books for an explanation later on.

Instead of pondering, he continued observing the map. He noticed that Western Mountains that he saw for years when he was young were called the Snowless Mountain Range since there was no snow on its peak despite its altitude while the Eastern Mountains that reached beyond Vanaras were called the Iron Troll Mountain Range.

The names intrigued him a little and so he planned to look at them in more detail.

Anything beyond the Vanaras Kingdom was barely documented and so his eyes fell back on Vanaras. The first and only landmark known to Illyan was the Winterfrost town he was in right now and based on it he learned where the other towns and cities were.

He noticed that there were no villages marked on the map and realized that they were just insignificant to most people. Nobody cared about such peasants who were living difficult lives in their hell holes.

That made Illyan frown. While he was far from an ordinary peasant he still didn’t forget his origin. The most ordinary life where you work half a day to not die of hunger during the night.

Now, he was in a place where most peasants can only dream about.

But that was not enough. As time passed, greed crept up into Illyan’s heart. He wanted to climb to an even higher position. Somewhere where even the most privileged people couldn’t even look up to.

This was only the beginning. Now that he had means to educate himself, he would create a solid foundation that he would build on for the rest of his life.

 

Shoutout for my first patron: obsidianguru! I really appreaciate it. 

Also the map of Valas Peninsula