Looking at what the treasure chests had spat out, Leon couldn't keep the wide grin off his face.
With a weird little cackle, he quickly laid the items out one by one on the stone table, then settled in with a smile to appraise them in earnest.
First up was an old familiar friend.
A black envelope, bright red wax, the Familia's seal.
[Name]: Familia Invitation
[Origin]: System
[Type]: Contract Scroll
[Effect]: Invites a destined individual to join the Familia. A contract is sealed the moment they accept.
[Description]: A black envelope sealed with the Familia Crest pressed into wax, containing a single yellowed parchment contract within. Distributed subconsciously according to the user's preferences.
...
Leon picked up the black envelope and turned it over a few times, grinning.
"Two Familia Invitations. Looks like the Familia's about to pick up some new blood."
He pinched a corner of each envelope between his fingers and murmured a few words under his breath. Both letters were instantly wrapped in flame and vanished before his eyes.
"Invitations sent. Now it's just a matter of waiting."
With the recruitment letters handled, he turned his attention to the covers of the two Grimoires.
Oho!
Gold legendaries!
...
[Name]: "Grimoire: First Secret of the Twelve Ice Mysteries of the Sequence Arts, White Art"
[Origin]: Tale of the Magic Sword, Staff and Blade
[Type]: Grimoire
[Effect]: Ice clone, an ice-element clone magic. Each ice clone holds a certain amount of magic and can cast simple spells the original has mastered. With high enough proficiency and skill in controlling the ice clones, you can even pre-set magic circles inside them, so at the right moment they can chain with the original to rapidly unleash long-chant and ultra-long-chant large-scale wide-area magic.
[Summary]: The ice clone of the clone arts. It has physical substance and is hard to tell apart from the real thing.
...
"White Art? Got a nice ethereal ring to it. Emmmmmm... if I remember right, isn't this that ice-staff heroine's self-made magic?"
Leon's mouth quirked sideways, and after a moment's thought he dredged the matching detail up out of his hazy memory.
"The Ice Staff, one of the Five Supreme Staves."
"Tch, though looking at this spell, honestly my first thought was that shadow clone technique from another show..."
He chuckled silently and set the Grimoire carefully aside.
By the time he finished sorting everything, he was itching to start studying the magic.
The spell wouldn't just massively boost his damage output and exponentially raise his experience-farming efficiency, what he valued even more was the survival insurance the "ice clone" offered. After all, no mage enjoys having a warrior-type close the gap and get right up in his face, even if Leon's endurance was every bit as exceptional as his magic.
He looked over to the other side and picked up the second Grimoire.
...
[Name]: "Magic Guide: Blizzard"
[Origin]: Warcraft series
[Type]: Grimoire
[Effect]: Summons a bitter blizzard laced with hail, freezing all things with its endless frigid winds.
[Summary]: Sir, your AOE.
...
...
"Oho!"
"AOE magic. There it is."
Leon ran his fingertips over the Grimoire's cover, his blazing stare nearly enough to set the gilded lettering alight, the corners of his mouth tugging up beyond his control, joy written all over his face.
As an ambitious young man bent on becoming a true mage, he knew well: beyond single-target burst and crowd control, the core measure of the gap between a mage and those brutes who only know how to swing fists at point-blank range was clearing power, what's commonly called area-of-effect magic, AOE.
Of course, by Orario's local conventions, perhaps "Wide-Area Annihilation Magic" was the more fitting term.
For a while now, backed by his monstrous mana pool and powerful mana regeneration, Leon had wielded an offensive capability that could fairly be called a "magic machine gun," thanks to the Instant Cast of True Essence of All Magic.
But whether it was the Scorch he'd mastered or the Fireball, even though their power in Leon's hands had grown beyond anything from his early days as his magic improved, at the end of the day they were still fundamentally single-target spells.
The fully charged, fully chanted nuclear Fireballs he'd thrown a few times looked plenty impressive and maxed out the visual effects, but when you really examined the attack radius, it was nothing special. Forget being mentioned in the same breath as Riveria's three-stage attack magic, it didn't even measure up to the area of effect of Aura, a Lv. 2 Mage.
But with AOE magic, things would be different in Leon's hands.
"Tch, with Blizzard, never mind farming as a team, even soloing dungeons my efficiency could go straight to max."
Thoroughly satisfied, he stacked the Grimoire recording Blizzard on top of the ice clone one, rubbed his hands together, and picked up another parchment scroll with anticipation, slowly unrolling it.
...
[Name]: "Potion Recipe: Wild Mixture"
[Origin]: Warcraft
[Type]: Recipe
[Effect]: For 2 hours, the drinker gains a 5% boost to all abilities, with no impact on experience gain rate.
[Summary]: An essential for adventuring and frontier-pushing. Money is no object.
...
[Name]: "Wondrous Potions: A Beginner's Guide"
[Origin]: A certain magical world
[Type]: Knowledge
[Effect]: An introductory text on potion-making. Once learned, grants basic knowledge of alchemy and a rudimentary ability to brew potions.
[Summary]: Potion-making isn't some fairy-tale trick where you wave a wand and conjure rainbows!
...
The first yellowed parchment had a potion recipe scrawled across it in black ink. As though it had seen straight through Leon's complete ignorance of potion-making, right behind it came a tome thick enough to rival an encyclopedia.
"A Wild Mixture recipe? And this "Wondrous Potions: A Beginner's Guide" too?"
"The recipe I get, but this... what the hell is a potion-making textbook for!?"
Leon hefted the heavy doorstopper in both hands and turned it over a few times, an expression caught between laughing and crying on his face.
"What I wanted was something to raise my combat power, and instead, potion-making..."
But on second thought, he was Lv. 4 now, and his Familia was no longer what it used to be in either strength or depth, so... learning a bit of potion-making at this point, wasn't half bad?
"Ahem... I suppose learning it wouldn't hurt. The difficulty's no joke, but... it does make serious money."
He thought ahead to after this year was out, when Orario would enter a long stretch of peace, and he'd likely no longer be able to go stirring up trouble with Evilus whenever he pleased and then casually "shopping for free" on the side.
On top of that, beyond the daily dungeon grind, he had plenty of free time, so it really was worth picking up a high-barrier side profession to supplement the household income.
He couldn't very well go drink himself stupid in the Pleasure Quarter every time he was bored, could he?
Leon glanced at the Hand of Omnipotence on his stat panel, gave a small smile, and stowed the book and the recipe away properly.
"Looks like... my future funding streams are sorted out."
"Hmm... I just hope Nazha and Airmid won't complain about me stealing a slice of their business."
...
...