Milo barely suppressed the urge to scream in joy mixed with terror as he sped down the cavern while hovering just barely above the floor, keeping a white-knuckled grip on the book with his single hand as he tensed what felt like every muscle in his body to maintain his seated balance on the flying carpet-book.

He was down to three mana. He should really stop. But this...this was just too incredible.

He wasn’t going anywhere near as fast as the book on its own, or even the boulder that had traveled to the ceiling, but he felt the skill was probably capable of accelerating his body weight roughly as fast he could take himself from a dead stop to full sprint—maybe faster, based on how quickly he’d been able to jump up to his current speed. Right now he was somewhere between a jog and a sprint, which was already faster than he was really comfortable with for the time being.

As he approached the far wall, Milo slowed the book, also shifting its angle so he wouldn’t slip forward off of it as he decelerated. He’d already screwed that up once, barely keeping himself from faceplanting on the hard ground.

Ever so carefully, Milo spun himself around and flew himself back to the little rock wall where all of his things were located. He dismounted just before his most recent activation of Fetch Book expired.

Breathing hard, Milo held the book in his hand and stared at it in admiration. Well, the stare was definitely far more in appreciation for his ridiculous skill than for the book itself, but the book was a much more visually compelling thing for his eyes to focus on.

Amazing. Insane. Ridiculous. Awesome. He struggled to come up with more words to describe how...stupendous his new skill was.

Milo had determined that the skill probably based its power on how much force Milo could exert with his body, with the important distinction that it could keep applying that level of force continuously and tirelessly. How the skill determined what that amount was—maybe the combined strength of every muscle?—he had no idea. It would definitely take more testing to verify his hypothesis, but it seemed like a good assumption for now.

In practical terms, what that translated to was that he could turn an ordinary hard-cover textbook into a devastating guided projectile that no enemy could reasonably hope to avoid for long. He could also use it in a pinch to literally fly away from harm, he could probably dangle heavy loads on it and then carpet-bomb unsuspecting monsters...and...his mind struggled...undoubtedly there were a great many more possibilities he had yet to think of.

Freaking outrageous. It was like the skill designer had just said, “Fuck it, however strong they are is how strong they can move the book. I’m taking an early lunch.”

Milo really wanted to play with it some more, but he should leave it alone for now. He only had three mana left, and he would feel really dumb if went down to a single mana and then a group of enemies wandered into his patch of tunnel. Although I bet I could still take them. Twenty seconds? Pshaw. He imagined scattering skeleroos like bowling pins.

But he shouldn’t get overconfident. Regretfully, Milo stepped back over his rock wall and laid down out of sight, trying to think about his plan for moving forward but failing as his mind kept drifting back to possible applications and exploitations of his new power.

He should probably chill here for twenty minutes or so and wait for his mana to replenish a bit—ooh, I could try to pick up enemies and drop them from up high, avoid too many impacts on the book—and then he should really get moving, who knew how long this floor was going to take to complete—maybe load up one of my bags with rocks and tie it to the book, that way I can smack enemies with the rocks instead of the book, save the book that way—wait, here’s a thought: what is a book?

What are the bare minimum requirements I need to meet to be able to use my skill on something? Is there something else I can use instead of my textbook? Can I make a book?

Out of rocks, maybe?

Completely abandoning his attempts at planning his next moves, Milo lost himself in concocting the best ways to abuse his skill. He needed to do more testing.

For the next several minutes as he waited for his mana to replenish back up to four, Milo prepared a series of tests to answer the question of what the system would allow him to manipulate with Fetch Book.

It took longer than he anticipated as he prepared his experiments. He was up to five mana by the time he was ready, but finally it was time for round two of testing.

Activating the skill, he proceeded with experiment number one: rock book.

It was literally just a rock with the world ‘book’ written on it in pen.

Unsurprisingly, the system wasn’t buying that for a second, so he moved on to his second experiment.

This one was slightly more sophisticated. Milo had found two rocks that were squarish and flattish, sandwiching a few pieces of paper between the two stones that served as a cover for the “book”. He’d actually had some hope of that working, but apparently a book was more than just a paper sandwich because that didn’t work either.

He proceeded quickly to the third experiment, which was his binder. It contained loose printer paper. He found he was still unable to manipulate this attempt at a book.

However, Milo wasn’t done with the binder yet. Quickly opening it, he jammed the top page of paper into the rings through the rough holes he’d made in preparation, then snapped the rings shut. Finally, his power was able to latch on.

Yes! I have made book! Achievement get!

He still wasn’t sure if it was necessary to have information or a narrative of some kind on the pages; he’d taken a few moments to write a short story on the single paper just in case:

"Once upon a time, there was a badass Scholar who pwned everything with his awesome book powers. He met really strong monsters but pwned them anyway and rescued a pretty girl and then they had sex a bunch of times. The end.

By Milo Jemison"

If adventuring didn’t work out, he clearly had a writing career to fall back on.

He could work out later if the story had actually been necessary; it wasn’t too important for now.

Milo moved onto his final test, which involved his textbook. He’d actually removed all of the bands keeping it shut, and the book lay open to the copyright page.

Gripping said page with his mind, Milo proceeded to tear it halfway down using only his thoughts.

Interesting. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to do that.

He kept the page connected to the book, but went on to fold and crumple the paper, manipulating it easily. Finally, with only a couple seconds left on the skill, he ripped a piece of the page fully out of the book.

Immediately, he lost control of it and the mangled paper floated to the ground. Soon after, he felt the skill terminate.

Okay, that was pretty informative. What exactly did I learn?

Clearly, he couldn’t manipulate pieces of a book once separated. Also, the system was somewhat strict about what it considered to be a book but not overly so; a book had a cover that sandwiched at least one page, and it all had to be bound by some method into a single unit. The book’s informational content seemed to be of low importance. Materials...probably weren’t a huge factor, given that his binder was plastic and his book’s cover was—well, he wasn’t really sure, but he figured it was some kind of glued plant fiber covered in laminate.

He still actually wasn’t sure if it mattered whether the pages had to be paper or were allowed to be something else, but it wasn’t particularly relevant for the moment. He’d determined he was probably stuck with his textbook as his weapon for the time being, lacking convenient materials and tools to make a replacement. He needed to take care not to break it and cause it to lose its classification as a book. If it was destroyed he could probably cobble something else together, but the result would likely be vastly inferior.

Being stuck with the textbook wasn’t the worst thing in the world. The book was extremely dense and solid. He’d simply have to employ methods to make sure it sustained minimal damage during his usage of it in the dungeon.

Still, Milo was already dreaming of a steel-plate-bound, spiked monstrosity of a book for use in the future. Also, maybe a pair of book shoes he could use to fly around with. Little notebook shurikens...a giant book shield…

He’d need to take the final modifier if he wanted to use all of those at the same time, but that was no big deal. The future looked bright, assuming he could survive long enough.

Alright, enough for now. Time to move on.

Excited to face the rest of the dungeon with his newfound power, Milo set himself to gathering up his things and rewrapping his book with its exercise band bumper guard, which was a real chore with only one hand.

I really want my hand back. At least the nub was healed now.

He had two backpacks’ worth of things, plus the stuff Backlebutt had dumped from Milo’s gym bag. He was weaker now, too. Fortunately, that was offset somewhat by how much of the Soylent he’d already drunk, but ultimately it meant he would probably be forced to leave some things behind.

He took everything out of each pack, laying it all out in front of him so he could get a good feel for what he had to work with.

Clothes. He had too many, honestly. He quickly stripped out of the ones he was wearing, ripped and stained with his blood after his battle with the skeleroos, and put on a new pair. Then, after a “duh” moment, he put on a couple more pairs. Cloth armor. Everything fit him more loosely now that he’d lost weight; he might as well wear layers that could absorb some damage for him. He’d be a little warm, but maybe he’d also live longer. A fair enough trade.

He kept one backup shirt and pair of pants and some extra socks and underwear for his pack and got rid of everything else but what he was wearing.

He nearly did away with the wool blanket provided by the system, given his sleeping bag. However, in a moment of inspiration, he realized he could wrap up his book using both it and the thick, sturdy rope that was also in the system pack. He did so, and the rugged result had him feeling much better about the durability of his weapon.

With the blanket, rope, and clothes out of the picture, he was suddenly doing a lot better on space than he’d expected. If he drank a few more bottles of Soylent right now, he could probably make pretty much everything fit.

Milo began stuffing everything in the system-gifted pack, which he’d decided to use from now on. It was bigger than his Earth pack for one thing, and for another it was just so much cooler. It had leather and awesome old-world aesthetics. Not a synthetic fiber to be seen. It was heavier though.

Can’t have everything.

He had to make some sacrifices, like doing away with the boxes his pens came in and stuffing said pens in every nook and cranny available, and he had to guzzle four bottles of Soylent, which was a challenge, but he got it all in minus the excess clothing.

Milo got his sleeping back attached to the bag, and even hung on to his original backpack, wedging it between his sleeping bag and the bands securing it. It might come in handy for loading with rocks and using in conjunction with Fetch Book as a mobile wrecking ball.

When he put the pack on, he groaned at the weight, really feeling the loss of muscle due to that janky potion Backlebutt had fed him. I can’t wait to find a bag of holding.

What he really wanted to do was attach everything to his book and just fly down the tunnel, but his mana regeneration was far too slow for that. Hopefully one day he’d get to the point where he could spend mana freely, but that looked like it was a long ways away.

After a last look at his temporary little den, Milo started trudging forward once more toward unknown dangers ahead.