The young man stepped gingerly down the ancient stairs, carefully placing his feet away from the gaps in the old wood. He knew this journey well, being one of the only and the most frequent, possibly ever, visitors of the 'secret' library, since all modern mages had a subconscious instinct to activate their skills. There were, of course, many different solutions for this problem. There were many students at the Academy of Echoes with skills and traits capable of producing or mimicking flight, and there was certainly no lack of students with physical enhancement abilities. There were even the recently popular 'telepad' devices, which acted as relays for large buildings, allowing people to instantly teleport between different floors where other telepads were with a simple and small charge of magical energy. There were even items capable of allowing such abilities to be used by even the magicless.

However, the young man, descending the giant staircase, knew in his mind the answers to such hopeful and desperate solutions.

Items were way too expensive and hard to acquire for the magical in the first place; let alone a magicless. As a magical being, however, the boy couldn't make use of the enchantments woven into items, since his magical energy, unlike other humans, was locked inside of his soul. The reason why this was so strange was the fault of the term 'magicless'. In reality, all humans possessed magical aptitude in their souls, but only a select amount actually had elements with which to forge pathways for their magic to bloom. This young man had no pathways to forge for himself, but a high enough magical aptitude to require actively enchanted items, which required a magic charge. As for the telepads, he couldn't use these either due to the need for magical charging. However, he took great solace in the physical journey down to the great library. The transition of humanity from industry to magic to magical technology caused the populace to become lazy and unmotivated, but the young man, unable to make use of the wonderful secrets of the magical world, was forced to enjoy the realistic nature of life in the modern age. He waved lightly at a passing servant as he descended the floors, who smiled at him, before hurrying away to another task. The warm bloom of acceptance and care in his disillusioned heart uplifted his dark mood and helped him to cope with his usual crushing loneliness as well as his personal torment. And therefore, he continued to walk, eventually leaving behind the chatter of people, and later still, the presence of anyone in his vicinity. He stepped and stepped and stepped and stepped, leisurely making his way down the stairwell. He thought back to the solutions for the lengthy walk, and smirked lightly.

'Ah...' he thought, amused. 'Maybe I really should make use of the students in this place. After all, I have many friends at the academy...maybe my daily visitor can find someone to fly me to the bottom everyday...yes! That sounds reasonable...'

He gripped the centre pillar as a banister with sly resolve, the smile still darkly sticking onto his no longer innocent face, and continued down the stairs.

*******************************************************************************

After about fifteen minutes of walking, the boy reached the bottom of the stairs. He flicked a switch near the wall, and a surge of power went flashing across the dark space before his eyes. A flash of light washed across the area, and would've blinded him if he hadn't shut his eyes knowingly a few seconds before he turned on the lanterns, but he was a veteran in this place. He knew every nook and cranny in the wondrous library, and there was nobody alive or dead - not even the mighty Grand Magister - who could even hope to combat him in his reading ability. He laughed at this revelation, and walked forward, through the open stone door which led to the library. He looked around, taking in the nostalgic sight once more. There were dozens upon dozens of towering bookshelves in the front row alone, looming nearly twenty metres in the air. The boy nonchalantly walked past the first row of books, and grabbed a pair of silken gloves from a rusted metal hook on the middle bookshelf. He donned them swiftly, before speeding up from a light stroll to a brisk walk, and then to a quiet jog, to a driven run. His legs flew through the rows and rows of almost endless books and torn pages, whipping up dust from the ground at the point of impact where his rapid steps struck. He passed three narrowly place shelves in a few seconds, then after ten seconds, he had passed about a dozen. Still he ran, ignoring the multitudes of books in the area. Despite the incredible size of the blurring bookshelves, he knew himself that he had read every single one, word for word, at least once each. The library was ancient, and its age provided it with the boon of a powerful enchantment. As different people had arrived, and breathed life into the soul of the forsaken library, it began to develop sentience, curiously, as the creativity and emotion from hundreds of thousands of books had amalgamated and developed, slowly, over time, the library had formed an element within its sleeping soul, and eventually, a powerful trait and a single skill. The element recorded by the wonderful collection was the rare 'time' element, and its trait was 'Heart and Soul', which allowed it to source magical energy for its skills from the emotions of those within it, allowing its skill to be activated infinitely as long as someone remained within the library, reading, feeling, and existing. However, the truly astonishing aspect of the magical library was its unique skill [Years of Yearning], which allowed it to stretch out time itself into infinity. This was why the young man had been able to read so much in only six years; the enchantment of the library not only protected him from illness and aging, but also allowed him to read, and read, and read, until he grew bored. Fatigue did not exist in the space, and after many years of practice, the boy could control his emotions well enough to slow time in the library just enough so that he would emerge again from the place by dinnertime. And so he slammed down his foot, after about five hundred bookshelves of running, muscles burning, and legs aching, and swivelled towards a large bookcase on the left. He slowed to a walk, his lungs heaving as he regained his breath. While it was true that one could not grow naturally fatigued in the strange place, his own actions still had repercussions; he could still affect his own body, and other people could affect each other. The library's skill was powerful, but not powerful enough to override the actions of the magical, and not even so powerful that it could overpower the actions of those bearing souls. However, there were never even a glimpse of anyone going anywhere near the magical library; the young man would know himself if anyone had entered. The people at the Academy of Echoes only focused on raw power via intense and repetitive training, and had no interest for the quantitative study of magic and science and all of the various things which provided such wonderful insights to the ways of magic. And it was for this reason, which left the boy undeterred and unafraid in his safe space, that he left himself open, as he stepped towards a purple-spined book on the fourth shelf from the right, near the bottom, to the blisteringly quick swing of a metal pole into his temple, which cracked against his skull, and knocked him straight out into painful darkness.

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