Awakened: Evolving to Godhood

"It's undoubtedly a fantastic material, but how is it created?" Elliot questioned.

"Death of a star," Karim replied casually.

Once a planets die or get killed, it leaves behind a core full of energy, and one can use it to create unbelievably powerful treasure or upgrade existing ones.

"What about why this technique is hard to learn?" Elliot asked while shaking the black book up and down. While he was shaking it, it opened up. That should only happen if he were already its owner!

"What? When did you purchase it?"

"Never did."

He only used the free token to become one of its owners!

"I was just getting to that part," Karim said. "The person who created it added a few insidious mechanisms to make it hard for others to read or comprehend it. Some say that the words started twisting around when they read it. Others say that in addition to the words moving about, their consciousness also got pulled into a different dimension where thousands of beasts assaulted them. The former are those who failed to comprehend even the tiniest bit of the book. While the latter are those who managed to learn the first part. Of course, there are many other rumors, but they are mostly similar or so exaggerated that it's hard to believe. And they are not many as not everyone is rich enough to purchase this book only to read it once a year."

Although a person could only purchase these pieces of information from information brokers, Karim didn't mind telling them to Elliot for free. Information brokers like their name were people dealing in gathering information from all across the universe only to sell them to whoever wanted to buy them, and they were extremely costly. As for why Karim was being so friendly to Elliot, it was because he was interested in him, immensely interested.

He didn't have any ill intent in trying to befriend him, just pure interest.

Elliot was also feeling thankful to Karim. He didn't care what plans the other had for him as the other had helped him immensely. Thanks to him, Elliot understood what the high-level civilization considers as treasure. And it was also because of him that he came across the demonic-ranked skill, energy radiation.

"Thank you for telling me a lot of things," Elliot said, "In the future, if a situation arises where you are in a troublesome position, I will help you."

Elliot just finished saying his piece of mind when Karim pulled out a card with numerical numbers on it.

"It's my number. Call me if you want to purchase information." Karim, although an infamous space pirate, was also an information broker.

"Sure," Elliot said and accepted his card.

He didn't know anything about the vast universe.

Thus, It was going to be helpful to have the contact information of an information broker.

Elliot also checked the card to ensure that it wasn't a recording device and merely a card. After making sure that it was simply a paper with numbers on it, he put it in his subspace.

"Well then, excuse me."

"Please."

Elliot went to the nearby table, activated the privacy barrier by paying a few spirit points and immersed himself in memorizing and mastering the demonic-ranked technique.

The first thing that came to his mind was to try to memorize it by flipping through it.

[Warning: The book is extremely dangerous. If you use that method to learn it, there is a high chance you will get brain damage.]

Thanks to its opportune warning, Elliot didn't dare cheat his way through it.

"I got to do it the normal way, I guess."

Left with no choice, he opened the book like what any normal person would do and tried to read the first page.

"Holy shit, the words really are moving!" Elliot exclaimed, a look of disbelief flashing across his eyes. At first, he barely believed Karim. But now, after experiencing it for himself, he totally believed him. "Just looking at them makes me dizzy. I guess the words moving on the paper come with some curse that gives headaches and dizziness to the people who look at them."

What to do?

The best thing was to know more about it.

As they say, information is the key to victory.

The more you have it, the higher the chance that you'll succeed in what you're trying to do.

Elliot scrutinizing gaze landed on the page with many words moving inside of it. Some of them combined to form a ship while the other, an ocean with many waves. No sane or insane person would be able to learn it.

A lot of information popped up in his mind.

"My guesses were on the mark."

Looking at the words made him dizzy because the creator of this book had imbued multiple curses into the words! He sure was not a good man as he was not up to any good. Anyway, the good thing was that Elliot had found a way to defeat the first mechanism. He knew how to make the curses ineffective and also how to make the words stop moving and return to their original places.

One just needed to pour spiritual energy into the page as well as each of the words. A unit of spiritual energy rushed out of his right palm and changed into the page. After one unit vanished into the book, a word stopped dancing and returned to its place. As it was in the soul language, he could read it. Seeing that it was working, he released all of the spiritual energy into the book. All the words returned to normal. Now, he could read the entire page!

He read it and saw that only weird gibberish was written on it!

"What the hell? Did I waste my money on this shit?"

Elliot only started feeling angry at the book and its creator when suddenly something happened that caused him to calm down.

[You're the 27th person to solve the first mechanism of the dark book. Congratulations! You've passed the trial of the master of weapons and earned 90 energy radiation technique essence.]

[Out of all the people who read this book, you've solved the first secret mechanism in the shortest amount of time! As a result, the dark book consciousness has rewarded you with ten extra energy radiation technique essence.]