1 Year
Additionally, as I continued reading books in the library, I was able to learn new skills as well from technical manuals and guidebooks simply from reading.
[Engineering]
[Cooking]
[Fishing]
[Acting]
[Carpentry]
[Programming]
[Hacking]
I called these lifestyle skills as they provided passive bonuses to lifestyle activities. For example, I couldn't just shout "Carpentry!" and make something out of thin air. No, the [Carpentry] skill didn't inject carpentry knowledge into my brain. I needed to know how to work timber and craft something out of it in the first place. The skill would then guide my actions, an auto-correction, which would then improve the overall quality of the finished product.
I had yet to lay my hands on any tools that could help me grind the skills, however just reading about the topics could grant me skill EXP as well. It was a slow and tedious process even with the [Genius-intellect] trait. From my experience, hands on experience gave much more skill exp.
This brought up another goal for me to accomplish - money. I would need money to buy the equipment necessary for me to grind my skills, especially for [Programming] and [Hacking]. I could foresee these two skills becoming a crucial part of my arsenal in intel gathering in the future.
So now the question was, how was a 3 year going to earn enough money to buy these equipment? Even a computer and an internet connection wasn't cheap in the 1990s, unlike the 2020s where one could get a cheap secondhand laptop over eBay.
Theft was one avenue I could pursue. With a high level [Concealment] skill, I could probably just saunter into a bank and grab cash off the counter without anyone realising. I had a personal gripe with stealing from individuals, but from large banks and corporations? I had not a single hesitation. But I still wasn't entirely confident that [Concealment] could erase my presence from security cameras, so outright theft was put on hold for the moment.
I also thought about inventing electronics and licensing patents. I had knowledge of future technology, and if I could level up my Engineering skill, it wouldn't be a tough challenge. Further with a high and ever increasing INT stat, technical subjects like electronics design wasn't a difficult topic for this big brained body. But again, 3 year old child's body, how was I even going to open up a bank account.
I also considered investing in stocks that I knew would become huge, but as this world I reincarnated in was essentially an alternate history, I couldn't be sure if the same companies I knew to be tremendously successful would be able to replicate their success.
I pondered about this matter deeply as I carried on my peaceful lifestyle of grinding as many skills and stats as I could.
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1 year later…
After a year, my INT stat point sat at a truly ridiculous number.
INT: 3709
The [Precocious Bookworm] quest line ended at [Precocious Bookworm (10)], which required me to read college-level textbooks. At the end of this quest line, I had over a thousand INT stat points.
And as my INT stat points rose, I could feel my mind evolving at a tangible pace. My memory improved, my creativity flourished, and I even started looking at the world with a different lens.
I had initially thought my INT stat grind would come to an end after the [Precocious Bookworm] questline ended. But I continued reading college-level texts in order to squeeze out the last few drops of INT stat points before the system stopped granting me INT stat gains.
However, I had realized something after awhile. The system did not stop awarding me INT stat points from reading College-level texts. Amused and excited, I continued grinding my INT stat.
I then understood why this INT grind could continue.
See, I had discovered that certain types of books would net me high numbers of INT stat point gains even if they were shorter than say a fiction novel. STEM textbooks, technical manuals, and such books would give me dozens of stat points during the process of reading.
Compared to a young adult fiction novel which might contain even more words and pages, a high school level Chemistry textbook with half the number of pages and words would give double the stat points.
Why was this? It was because I was learning. I realized that the system would continue awarding me INT stat points as long as I was learning from what I read. Which was why technical manuals and academic articles became my new favourite past time, though it was honestly a slog to read them.
This brain endowed with [Genius-level Intellect] and thousands of INT stat points was simply incredible. Even when I was reading college-level science textbooks, I wasn't simply memorizing its contents. I understood it. Not only did I learn fast, I comprehended nearly everything I read at a single glance.
Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medical Science, Engineering, Computer Science, Pharmaceutical Science, even Law… my brain absorbed them all like a sponge to water. Granted, there was a limit to how much I could learn simply from a public library.
There were only a handful of university-level textbooks available in a public library, and most of them were older editions that had been donated by graduates. They weren't exactly cutting-edge academic works.
My INT stat wasn't the only thing that grew in this time. Physical attributes like STR, DEX and VIT, though slow growing, was still able to be increased into the range of the dozens thanks to the daily quest [Baby Bodybuilder].
One would think that the adults around me would start looking at me weirdly. How else would they react to a young child reading 'Basic Pathology' and even looked like he understood its contents?
However, strategic and liberal usage of [Concealment] was sufficient to alleviate the majority of any suspicion. I still got weird looks now and then, but it was mostly because of how differently I behaved compared to other 4 year old children who were more content with eating glue (one of a thousand reasons why they were always so damn sticky all the time) and running around screaming their bloody heads off.
The only two people who would have any significant enough exposure to my odd behaviour to pick up on the peculiarities of my actions were my parents, but the old adage was truest between parents and their child – love is blind. In their eyes, I was the cutest angel who could do no wrong. I was not keen on proving them wrong, even if it was just to maintain my façade.