It was not just any book, it was a diary, a notebook and had descriptions of various things with small painted illustrations. The author had unique penmanship, not cursive nor simple, a sort of mix of the two and something unlike both. It was a miracle that he could understand the words at all, though formed as they were into sentences, the writing itself did not make clear sense.
He had picked up the book randomly, but it seemed to him that the author had not begun to write in this book first. He wondered if that particular book was part of the collection in the chest and if it was, did that mean that the author was the previous owner of his body?
Scanning through the pages, he noticed that most of the notes and illustrations were of various plants, none of which he had ever heard of. This, perhaps, was not too unusual considering his knowledge of plants did not stem much beyond trees and the types of wood they produced. But he was definitely certain that he had never heard of five-petalled ghostwort or silvertongue nightshade.
The first produced tiny flowers that had an intoxicating scent. It's leaves, when crushed, could nullify that same scent, should it get on a person's skin and the large root had nutritional value, but were tough and tasted as floral as the flowers scent if over boiled.
The latter was poisonous if handled unwisely. It's stems and roots were deadly upon consumption. It's silver leaves also, if eaten in too high a dose, otherwise they could produce a slight immunity over time. However the side effect and the reason that they were valued despite their nature was that eating silver leaves would make the consumer talk nonstop for a while and without falsehood.
Leon put the book down and concentrated on moving the comb through his damp hair. He wondered why the author had such an interest in plants. It was clearly not all he wrote about, after all there was a rather poetic passage before those descriptions about a particular morning, when the low mists swirled about the tree trunks and seemed to hang loose like oversized cloaks draped over saplings and bushes. The sun had seemed like a bright moon held in the hazy sky rather than its usually fiery self.
Taking himself and the blanket still wrapped about him into the small hut, he opened up the other books, a couple of which were empty of all words and found the one he believed was the first of the books to have been written.
The words used seemed simple and youthful and the brushwork inexperienced, but the author spoke with much joy about how he had been chosen to attend the learning academy and how his grandfather had gifted him with a number of blank pages books, that the old man had crafted by hand. It was his craft, to make these books to be filled with the words of scholars, but he wished more for his only grandchild. The man had come late in life to the skills of reading and writing, but had diligently taught the author what he knew and the child had been receptive and eager to learn. The grandfather had sent him to the nearby town where recruiting had begun for the academy with a small purse of coins to apply and the boy had been successful.
He later wrote about his journey to the school which was located upon a mountainous hill coated in a thick forest. How he shared a large hut with many other boys, most aged 16 or 17, though a few were a little older, but they were all new to the school and would study together. Then the boys were tested, things like fighting skills, aptitude for calligraphy, standard of knowledge for things like wildlife and magic..
Leon put the book down. Magic?
*****
The academy was known by one name; The Ascending Mountain Institute, but it was divided into five schools. The first was the school of martial arts, specialising in all forms of fighting, armed and unarmed. The second was the school of beast-taming, those who attended there had great knowledge about the beasts of this world, their fighting capabilities, how to kill them, how to tame them, how to train them. The third school was the school of magic, naturally specialising in the using the elements and bending them to their will. The fourth school was the scholars school, for students with a insatiable thirst for knowledge, divination, cultivation methods. The fifth school was the school of alchemy, who focused on flora, creating pills and potions.
As the writer was not physically strong, lacked strong spiritual roots and whose knowledge and writing skills were still very lacking, he ended up in the school of alchemy almost by default. In fact, he was fortunate that he was accepted at all, but rumour had it that those willing to focus on alchemy were few these days, people were more obsessed with learning to cultivate and fight.
The boy had not minded, he was just pleased to have a place at the academy. He had moved into a single room hut on the forested mountain where the school was located and given a cauldron to use to produce pills and potions. He was also given herb seeds to practice growing common herbs. Despite his lack of talent, he had strong ethics towards learning; he placed every word told to him by his seniors in his diaries, filling them up with the most detailed knowledge of herbs and the best methods to produce basic pills and potions as he was taught them. Slowly, his hard work began to pay off and he became reliable in reproducing pills and potions and identifying herbs. His pills and potions were of average quality, he never produced poor products, but when asked to create something specific, he always came through.
Naturally, he became noticed by his seniors. Unfortunately, he also became noticed by a handful of classmates, who envied him this attention. When rumours began to develop that he might be moved to the inner school(for higher learning and better teachers), a person known as Caprian came to find him.
Caprian was different to the other students, he was from a wealthy background. Not only that, he was from an alchemy family. The trouble was, the boy lacked talent and was lazy. The family purchased his place into the academy, hoping for him to learn and work. But Caprian saw no reason to change, he was spoiled, used to having everything he wanted. He was disgusted by the poor conditions of the outer school, but didn't like the conditions required to move into the inner school (aka work). So he bullied other students into giving him their pills.
The writer didn't want to give him his pills, he had worked hard producing them and had begun to experiment secretly with the recipes, so he needed his pills to fill school quotas. There was no real fixed amount for the quotas, he needed to prove his value by exchanging created pills for more herbs, but the seniors kept records of how successful students were in making their pills. His success was just over 70% for the most basic pills and potions and 50% for slightly stronger ones. Half of what he produced was given to the school and half he could keep. It was this half that he had hoarded so he could waste herbs when experimenting.
One of Caprian's lackeys caught wind of the boy's stock, for it wasn't exactly hidden from site and his hoard was raided when he was busy in the library. Such actions were frowned on and of course the seniors promised to search for the culprit, but the boy was unaware until later that they had been paid off. The seniors also recommended that the writer move to a new room as the lock on his door had been damaged and who knew when it might be fixed. They had move him to a hut that was far away from the central compound and isolated from the other accommodation, as instructed by Caprian. But the boy did not argue, thinking it was better to experiment here, however he was more cautious to hide his books, cauldron and successful experiments and other pills and potions.
The diary ended there, leaving Leon to fill in the gaps. Caprian must have come looking for more pills and clearly found them in this hut, but beat the boy to death in order to get what he wanted. Leon, for whatever reason, had taken over the boy's body not long after!
Leon placed the diary back into the chest and looked thoughtful as he finished combing his yin yang hair. Though he was not clear on the age of the lad, clearly he had not been old enough to silver if he was a student for the time that seemed to be no more than two years, so perhaps it was the shock that caused the pale locks that striped his black hair. Leon sighed. He was in a different world and in a school with seniors paid to forget about him, but without knowledge to survive, he was little more that waiting for a second death.
Therefore he ought to just begin where the boy had left off. The problem was, how was he to get the herbs needed to make the pills and potions?