The Black Book

It was 6 in the evening and Alex was sitting on his desk. A book laid open in front of him and he was flipping through its pages with his right hand while sipping coffee from the coffee mug in his left. A lamp protruding from the wall illuminated the book and the only sound in the room came from the occasional beeps from Alex's smartwatch like device which was also known as a gliss in this world. Phones and personal computers were already a relic of the past

The 2 storied house was situated in one of the better districts in the city and the neighborhood was generally quiet and serene. Adding on the fact that Alex's parents were currently not in the city and his sister worked on some other planet, Alex had the whole house to himself for the next two weeks or so, providing him the perfect environment for studying and preparing for the entrance examinations. But those were currently the least of his concerns.

Alex finished reading through the last page of the book titled, "A detailed analysis on the advanced characteristics of the spiritual roots" before closing the book with a bam sound. Alex leaned back on the chair he was sitting on and gave out a sigh.

"I think that was the last one..."

The book belonged to his sister and was meant for advanced programs in university. There was no way the contents of the book would appear in the entrance examination for school students but Alex was still reading it. Only he knew why. The same goes for the book he was reading in the classroom in the afternoon.

Alex leaned forward and neatly put the book back onto the pile of books to the side containing other similar books. Then he stood up and stretched for a bit before sitting back down and rubbing his forehead with his thumb finger, gently massaging it a bit. The reading marathon has been going on for quite a few days, and Alex had developed a bit of a migraine over the period.

After rubbing his head for a bit, he quickly finished his coffee and stretched out his right hand. He concentrated for a bit before reaching out to a black glob of light that had appeared in his consciousness. If someone else could see this glob of light, they would have seen something which seemed to be a silhouette of a thick black book floating inside the light orb. That book felt like something physical but ethereal at the same time. It was nothing but the soul spirit of Alex!

Soon after, a thick black ancient looking book materialized into the real world on Alex's stretched out hand. The book was quite large and also quite thick. There was an ancient look and smell to it. It was a hardcover book with no designs or illustrations of anything whatsoever on both sides of the book. But the book felt quite sturdy and not like some antique which would fall apart at any time.

***

Alex's thoughts wandered back to the day 8 days ago. It was Alex's birthday and Alex was still adjusting coming into the new world. His friends had dragged him to a nearby restaurant for celebration and later that night his parents and sister wished him through a video call. After going through all the motions, Alex finally started the ritual to awaken the soul spirit. The ritual itself was quite simple and just required a slightly more expensive reagent which Alex's parents had long prepared before leaving due to some urgent matters.

When the excitement died down a bit and the ritual was finally completed, Alex summoned his soul spirit. To his astonishment it was a black book. Book type spirits were not to be underestimated and normally were extremely suitable for either researchers or mage type soul spirit users. But to his utter dismay, Alex's book did not seem to belong to any of the normally seen book type spirits.

Normally when the soul spirit is awakened, the user directly gets a preliminary understanding on the abilities of his or her soul spirit. But this was not the case for Alex. He couldn't even detect any new effects or changes whatsoever to his body. After inspecting himself for a bit, Alex opened the book and was first greeted with a blank page. But immediately after beautiful black cursive lettered words started to appear on the page as if an invisible hand was writing on the book.

"Turn the page and confront the danger. Or close the book and receive a new soul spirit."

Contrary to the style of the book, the tone of the sentences written on it were quite simple and straightforward. But Alex was more surprised at the words rather than the tone of them. He can change his soul spirit naturally? This was the first time he had heard about something like this. There was danger while using your own soul spirit? Was this one of those legendary bad luck inducing soul spirits? The choice was obvious, wasn't it?

Alex still decided to research a bit if similar type of soul spirits existed. But it was soon obvious that his situation was quite unique. Some of those bad luck inducing spirits were quite strong but the effects of the bad luck were so strong that most of the soul spirits user would either stop cultivating that path or destroy their soul spirit. A situation like his where he could switch out his soul spirit naturally was quite unique. He would have wondered if this was some sort of transmigrator advantage, if he didn't know better that transmigrators and reincarnators like him existed all around the galaxy.

But Alex was still hesitating from closing the book. Were the words on the book reliable? It can be a trap and it was quite possible that he may still be affected by bad luck after closing the book or all the words on it were a lie. What if the bad luck starts if you don't turn the page and close the book and those words were some sort of test? What sort of danger will he face if he turned the page? Will there be any benefits?

On one hand Alex was being driven mad by his curiosity. What lies beyond the page? What are the abilities of his soul spirit? What is the danger the book is talking about? On the other hand he was scared about what those words were trying to entail.

"Screw it. At the end of the day, it's still MY soul spirit. We will see what happens."

Alex made a decision and bravely turned the pages. He was greeted with another blank page. Following the previous trend, words soon started to appear one after other.

"Hello reader!"

As soon as Alex finished reading those words, the words faded into the yellow pages and new words appeared.

"Others' ignorance is your bliss but your ignorance would be your downfall."

Alex had tried writing on the book and even talking to it previously on the first page and did the same now, but it was impossible to affect the page. Alex turned back to the first page and realized that the previous sentences were gone and only a few bold lettered words were left.

"The Book Of *******"

The last word on the first page was like an ink blot and was not legible at all. Alex decided to ignore that for now and decided to turn to the third page...

***

During the previous 8 days Alex had conducted a variety of experiments with his spirit. The book was visible to others but the words on it were not. The book was also weird in the sense that whenever someone tried to attack it, it would become ethereal. Alex had requested Sarah to do a spiritual attack on it too not fearing the backlash, but that seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the book. Larry had suggested that maybe his book was some sort of illusion hiding his real soul spirit and not his real soul spirit. Alex wanted to believe that was the case but further investigation revealed no clues supporting that claim. Also, Alex didn't mention what was written exactly on the book to his friends about turning the page which actually supported the fact that this WAS his soul spirit as he was not exactly the same as the person before his birthday.

Except the first 3 pages which Alex had unlocked, all the other pages of the book were blank. Also, the book seemed to have infinite pages. When Alex tried to directly go the last page, the rest of the pages and the back cover seemed to be stuck together like a block and could not be separated. But he could easily flip through the pages. And when he started flipping through the pages, Alex quickly realized that no matter how many pages he flipped, he never got beyond the halfway mark of the book. The book was as strange as it comes.

Alex opened the book and willed it to go to the 3rd page and the first two pages quickly flipped away to reveal the third. The whole 3rd page was filled densely with a list of names as if a group of tadpoles were swimming around on the page. There were also few sentences at the top of the page.

"A person not well read cannot be a reader. Nor can a person who has unread books lying around in the house just for show."

Alex's face had darkened when he read those words that day. Combining the books he had read in his past life with this one, Alex could easily claim that the number of books he had read and the amount of information he had can hardly be matched by anyone his age. But he had suddenly realized something and looked down.

Below these sentences were the list of names. More specifically they were list of names for books. And even more specifically, they were the list of names of all the books present in the house!!! When Alex had seen that list for the first time, he was quickly filled with a sense of ill foreboding. Tensed he had tried to quickly remember the contents of a book he had read in school and sat cross legged on the floor to trying to sense the spiritual energy. When you awaken your soul spirit, you are finally able to sense the spiritual energy in your surroundings and then have the qualifications to develop your soul spirit. Through this you are also effectively able to skip a realm in most other paths, which have sensing the spiritual energy as their first realms like spiritual energy cultivation path.

Unfortunately, Alex realized that his spirit was one of those rare type of spirits which required special conditions for sensing spiritual energy. And as expected he couldn't sense even a strand of spiritual energy. Alex didn't even have tears left to cry seeing the humongous list of books. Alex was good at studying but if the black book expected him to learn the contents of all the books on the list, then Alex knew that there was no way he was capable of doing that in the span of couple of months. He didn't have photographic memory or anything and furthermore he would have to understand the contents of the book after remembering them. The task had initially left him in despair. Also if he appeared in metaphysical college entrance exam with just being able to sense spiritual energy, there was no way he would be able to make into a good college this year.

Thankfully though, when Alex started reading the books, he quickly realized that he had suddenly obtained photographic memory. This was also the reason why everyone thought Alex's abilities had something to do with research as this was what he told his parents and friends. Also when he finished through the first book on the list, the name of that book had a strike-through in the black book. Alex concluded that he just had to remember the contents of the books and it was not necessary for him to understand them though he understood most of what he read. This also explained why some of the books he had completed previously were also on the list. Because he hadn't read through the extra pages like introduction, afterword, references and so on. Also, only the books physically present in the house were included in the list.

Thanks to these details, the task proceeded much faster and smoother than Alex expected. Though there were times, where the task suddenly spiked in difficulty like when he had to read through cooking books and some cheesy romance novels of his mom. No matter how much he tried to detach himself from the books, he still felt incredibly embarrassed on behalf of the characters of the book. Alex mentally complained to his mom, why she didn't try to hide these books on her gliss and bought a physical copy instead of a digital. Another wave of embarrassment washed over him on behalf of his mom when he had to dig for the books hidden in her room.

Finally today, the last remaining name on the list was also crossed out. The words slowly faded away as if the page was nothing but a screen of water and a pebble was thrown into it and new words began to appear on the page

To his surprise it was a table of contents page. There was only one entry in the table of contents. Apart from that one entry, the word "Contents" was at the top of the page and the word "locked" in the middle of the page. It was apparent that other entries in the table of contents were locked.

"Pre-requisites"

That was the name of the first chapter.