I guess I’m just a charismatic and incredibly handsome guy. Not to mention being rakishly handsome.

Is what Alius thought when the professions teacher finally relented under his unceasing barrage of questions. The truth was just that it had been nearly two weeks of constant questioning from Alius. Everytime Alius saw him, he would ask a question. If the teacher had a lecture going on, Alius would sneak into the crowd and ask a question. If the professor was on lunch break, Alius would ask him a question.

If the professor could break out into tears whenever he saw Alius, he would. Only his respect for his position and sheer willpower kept him from quitting his job on the spot. Eventually, he gave in.

“Boy,” the professions teacher had his head in his hands again, reminiscent of the first time Alius had met him.

“I give up.”

“You win. I’ll teach you.” The instructor grumbled.

Aluis made sure to keep an innocent and inquisitive expression on his face, but on the inside, he was grinning uncontrollably. Finally, it was his time to shine.

____

“...and as a result, the natural energy contained will draw lines layered onto their guides…”

“...conversion of energy…”

Alius really did appreciate the teacher. He launched himself into the lectures, clearly excited to have even a single person listening to him. The teacher had introduced himself as Mr. Shen, but Alius respectfully referred to him as Elder Shen.

The only problem was that everything he taught seemed so…elementary. Alius was able to understand the root of his words almost immediately, and the knowledge seemed to be floating in front of him whenever he needed it.

Even with the basic information available, Alius absorbed everything like parched ground getting its first rain. The lectures seemed infinite, but neither the teacher nor the student were ever bored.

The teaching continued for the rest of the year…

____

This afternoon, Alius was studying a manual given to him by Elder Shen. The manual was a personal collection of the teacher’s, worthy of being called a relic. To Alius, the information recorded in the book was a little stream slowly flowing into the vast sphere of professions knowledge sitting in his head. The vast ocean in his mind slowly grew and grew.

[*Ping*]

Alius whipped his head around to look behind him, but there was no one there. If you asked him, Alius would have sworn that he had heard a crisp ringing sound coming from his back. But there was nothing there. Alius shrugged, and continued reading his book.

The crisp ringing tone rang out again, and Alius looked towards the book in his hand in confusion. Did Elder Shen modify the manual?

The moment Alius thought of the manual, a brown book dropped down from above him, knocking the elder’s book out of his hands.

Golden-bronze words scrolled over the cover as Alius’ eyes widened. Formations! The book was setting formations into the air to mimic writing!

When the words had finished drawing themselves onto the air, the book let out a clear ringing sound.

[Detected that the host has reached a level of knowledge suitable for awakening the deviation.]

With that, the book left a faint trail of sparkles as it flew back into Alius’ forehead.

Moving slowly, Alius picked his jaw off the ground, and started to think.

If this book had the ability to write formations, then what level of treasure would it be? But why would I have such a thing with me? Where does it even stay?

Beads of sweat started to form on Alius’ forehead as he thought of what people would do if anyone found out what level of thing he had. A treasure with sentience? Even a country would kill to control it. But one more thing…

If this is all it can do, isn’t this the most useless treasure in the world?

____

No matter what Alius did for the rest of that afternoon, the book never showed up again. He tried to reread the section of the book that he was reading. He searched around the hill he was laying on when he had seen the book fly out.

As it is the tendency to do so, time passed, and Alius continued to scour the hill for any traces of the book he had seen before. Snakes and mice ran out of their peaceful homes in the grasses after Alius combed his fingers throughout the hillside.

Though his searching turned up interesting things, like a family of flaming lizards sitting under a rock, Alius did not find any trace of the tattered yellow-bronze tome.

Alius sighed, “Well, there goes an afternoon.”

But Alius still smiled to himself as he thought of what he saw.

That afternoon is gone, but certainly not wasted. I wonder what exactly that thing was.

“Might as well bring this up to Elder Shen. That old geezer surely knows more than I do…”

Having said this, Alius walked off towards the village, still moping about at his failure.

___

It took Alius no longer than 10 minutes to arrive back at the village. After all, the hill where the matter had happened was not so far away from his home. After waving a hello to the guards lounging about at the gate, Alius stalked towards the schoolhouse, where Elder Shen was usually sleeping.

___

The elder had not moved for more than 10 minutes after Alius brought him the news. He stood so still that Alius almost mistook him for having fallen asleep standing up. A persistent frown was plastered to the front of his face. Alius opened his mouth to speak, but quickly closed it again. Only when half a minute had passed did he make his voice heard.

“Elder Shen, why do you look so sad?”

At this, the elder turned around, a smile appearing on his face as if he had never been concerned at all.

“Don’t worry my child, everything is fine here. Your teacher can handle a matter this small.”

But as he turned away, Alius noted that Elder Shen’s face seemed to have a bit of a worried expression on it…