v2 c6 - Additional System Information
The next morning, Lena woke up in blinding sunlight.
She stretched lazily and opened her eyes, dazed.
"Hiss!" Lena couldn't help feeling under her left ear, where there was a little pain.
What had happened...
After a long while, the distracted Lena finally figured out the situation. She hurriedly turned her head and looked to her side, but there was no one there. She jumped out of bed with bare feet and ran into the bathroom, but there was also no one there.
She clutched at her messy hair. "No way! He looks so honest, how can he play with this old lady and slip away after finishing?"
Huh, what's that...
Before Lena's anger could erupt, what was on the table drew her attention. They glowed satisfyingly under the sunlight.
"Gold, gold coins!" Lena cried out in pleasant surprise. She quickly picked the gold coins up from the table, a total of 5 coins.
The glorious color, the Titus Kingdom's emblem, was held in the palm of her hand and still carried some of the sunlight's warmth. Lena was finally certain that she was holding 5 gold coins.
She thought of who had left these gold coins, and her irritation towards Tang En disappeared.
It had to be known that Nightingales' prices weren't high. Even for a rare young one like her, a single time would net her at most 2 silver coins. The night service would be 6 silver coins, and could be negotiated down to 5 silver coins.
And now she had actually made 5 gold coins, which was half of her typical annual income.
Tang En naturally didn't know about this situation. Lena hadn't explained the price to him last night, and it was his first "night service," along with the fact that he had knocked her out. Ashamed, he had left 5 gold coins.
Tang En knew this price was definitely enough, as it was also the price to assassinate someone.
After that, Tang En's first "night service" operation ended. The result was that he lost 5 gold coins and didn't gain anything... a complete failure!
Alright, no more of Lena's excitement, let's move to Tang En's side again.
At this time, Tang En was standing at the entrance of Black Rock City's Bolton Academy.
Bolton Academy was located in the northern part of Black Rock City and was its only complete academy. Inside, subjects such as magic, battle qi, alchemy, military affairs, aristocratic etiquette, and more, were taught. It contributed a high number of military and administrative talents to the Titus Kingdom.
Tang En had come here not to become a student, of course. It wasn't even the academy's admission season right now anyway. What he wanted was the library here; the old butler urgently needed many foreign materials to perfect the assassin system, or else much of the assassin training could not be carried out.
For example, the assassination skills' poison proficiency taught how to create and deploy poisons. However, most poisons came from various plants and animals, and the system didn't have anything on this foreign world, so there was no way to discuss constructing poisons.
As soon as it was morning, he went to the Thieves' Guild to confirm the completion of the mission. Afterward, he asked around and found out that the biggest library in Black Rock City was in Bolton Academy.
Bolton Academy wasn't like other knight academies in that it didn't implement a closed administration, so Tang En easily got in. And after asking a few students, he found the library successfully.
The library was a small three-story-high building. Stepping into the building, rows and rows of bookshelves could be seen with books placed in an orderly way. There was even a kind of quietness unique to libraries.
Tang En's purpose could be clearly seen. Directly starting from the innermost bookshelf, he picked up the first book and held it with his left hand. His right hand quickly flipped from page to page with a "flutter," finishing a book with several hundreds of pages within a few seconds. Then he picked up the next...
Such fast page turning, naturally nothing could be seen. At most, densely-packed handwriting could be seen flashing by.
But the system could...
"Ding, the Caesar Continent's landforms' situations have been entered."
"Ding, the beastman tribes' religious rituals have been entered."
"……"
Books were continuously entered into the system. All Tang En had to do was pick the books up, look at them, and flip their pages.
Listening to the fluttering sounds in his ears, Tang En was filled with emotion. If there'd been such a system before transmigrating, wouldn't Tsinghua University and Peking University1T/N: Tsinghua University and Peking University are the top two universities in China. have been crying and calling for him, sigh...
Flutter, flutter...
Tang En rapidly scanned every row of bookshelves, averaging ten books per minute.
The first floor of the library was mainly for history, geography, and etiquette. There were also a few books on magic and battle qi, but they were all just general outlines.
When Tang En had just scanned a book of poems and was about to grab another one, a pair of delicate hands picked it up first.
When Tang En turned his head, his eyes instantly lit up.
The girl in front of him had long, smooth golden-brown hair, and her beautiful face held a slightly heroic spirit. The smile on her mouth drew feelings of comfort and luxury.
"Classmate, are you looking for a book?"
Tang En froze for a moment. "Mm, yeah."
"Tell me the book's title, I might know it. I saw that you were searching from the first bookshelf to here."
"Uh, it... seems to be about farms."
"Farms... hmm, the free-farming method?"
"Right, right, it is..." Tang En nodded to go along with it. He had just casually spoken, but there were really books about farms...
The girl blinked her clear and bright eyes and said, "But that's a banned book."
"……" Damn it, did it have to be this bad!
"But I also like this book very much. I've read it just a few days ago, the viewpoints inside are very interesting. Returning the land to the farmers and letting them freely cultivate it, not only will this give both sides what they need, but also produce more. Do you think this is true?"
"Uh, it should be!"
"Why?"
"Growing things for yourself and growing things for others, they're definitely different..." Tang En said without thinking.
"Right, it is growing for yourself..." The girl was evidently deep in thought.
But she immediately snapped out of it, and seeing Tang En's face brighten visibly, she bowed gracefully. "Hello classmate, can I get to know you? I'm called Zosia2T/N: Previously "Qiao Xi Ya". Zosia is a real name; it means wisdom.."
"Sia……cough cough, hello Zosia, I'm called Tang En." So it was her, no wonder her voice had been a little familiar.
This was the second time Tang En had heard of this name. The previous time was when he had hitched a ride at the city entrance yesterday.
"The book isn't here, I'll bring it to you next time."
"Uh, thanks!"
"Don't mention it, it isn't a bother. See you next time."
"Mm, goodbye."
Tang En didn't mind this temporary interlude either. He continued scanning the books.
For the next few days, Tang En spent most of his time inside the library.
In the middle of it, he went to the Thieves' Guild to collect his reward, 4 gold coins and 50 silver coins. The guild took a tenth as a commission.
When returning to the assassin space, the system sent him a prompt about the mission's completion. The mission difficulty had been F and his performance evaluation had been C.
According to the old butler, an evaluation of C was already very high. It was probably because Tang En had made a clean cut. Of course, if he had killed the gambler without leaving any traces, his evaluation could have been even higher.
In the end, he gained 150 experience and 200 HP.
Now, Tang En's total experience was 475, and HP 450.
To upgrade the assassin system from Rookie, a total of 500 experience points were needed. That meant Tang En only needed 25 experience points to reach Standard, then complete the upgrade mission at that time to upgrade the system.
For a long time, Tang En had been unable to wait to upgrade the system. Seeing that he was lacking just a few experience points, he immediately accepted another mission. This time, it was not a murder, after all, since only 25 experience points were needed now.
The mission was to track a baron and find out where his mistress was.
Right now, Tang En read books in the morning, tracked in the afternoon, and trained in the evening. His life followed a consistent pattern.
Currently, the tracking mission still hadn't made much progress, maybe because the baron had noticed something, so he just took care of things in a regular manner and attended parties.
If there was one thing that was a little unexpected, it was Zosia.
Since the unexpected encounter at the library that day, Zosia would greet Tang En every time she came to the library and at the same time, chat with him a little.
Tang En naturally saw that Zosia had an unusual identity. Every time they spoke to each other, the people passing by would look over in shock.
But what really made Tang En surprised was that Zosia, who was obviously an aristocratic lady, had an odd way of thinking. From their conversations, Tang En could clearly feel her disapproval towards the aristocracy system. And on the contrary, she was very concerned about the commoners.
Even though some of the beliefs were naive and extreme, an aristocrat thinking like this was enough to make anyone shocked.
In Tang En's usual talks with her, he didn't pay much attention and said whatever came to his mind. It had to be said that Tang En's previous world's ideas greatly moved Zosia. Every time, Tang En's casually spoken words would make her think for a long time.
Gradually, the number of times Zosia came here grew, and Tang En didn't care. Even though it disturbed his reading progress slightly, he was able to chat with a beauty who was pleasing to the eye. Resting a little was good anyways.
