Chapter 134

Ellie walked after William, pacing and knowing what to expect and do. It wasn't like the lower floors in the slightest. Every staircase had a specific historical archive that touched upon the main room. This was about the Earth, continents, and many details and books about what happened on a large scale.

“Careful about this room. There are a lot of old books and displays. Some are even older than some comics or tales. I say it for our sake. Be careful.” Ellie reminded him.

“Sure, but what is this about? Are those...” William said, aiming his finger at numerous rows of bookshelves, with some looking old.

“This is something you said you like. It is also part of why you came here. A historical overview of many past nations, kingdoms, continents, and the world in general. People are there too. That's what's up with the Earth. No one knows who named it, but people definitely created languages and most of Earth's history. Why, you wonder?”

“Earth's?”

“Imagine it. What's time? What is history but paramount words and flow of time that long passed? Who would remember it? Rocks? Who writes it down like this? Pelicans? Penguins?”

“This? Oh, there is so much!” William registered her words but first glanced at boos in dozens upon dozens of bookshelves. Each had thousands of thick or small books, yet the whole room was surprisingly tight and small, yet full of them. It even smelt like paper in here, and there were very few tables and chairs.

“There is no way someone could read everything here,” William said, breathing the air, and feeling short of breath due to his imagination.

“That can be true, but so what? Do you think this whole place is for a single person? Nay. How many generations worked on this? How long? Where? How much of it comes from even older generations lost in time? Think about it. This is a collection of a lot of lifespans. Nowadays, a lot of interest exists only in imagination or nowhere. This? It describes a lot of things, frankly.”

William had no trouble imagining that.

“Above the books are their respective tags, so look at what you want. This is not like that hall with numbers. There is no point in dwelling over the details of quantity. Think about quality and what is helpful. Many texts depict a single interest or delve into some specific subjects that you might want or find nice to know. Everything here is here to stay because it is still history. Some Walkers even reclaim their journals of journeys around the world and let them here rest for future generations to see. Each is meant to be interesting to someone, or no one. It's subjective.”

Ellie stepped aside, put her documents on a table, and shoved her arms around the shelves. This was a knock on deep records of human and Earth's history. It wasn't everything, but it sure was better than nothing.

William looked at six-foot-tall shelves and read many tags with many names. This was a bigger, much heavier room than those below, even if it was smaller and with a lower ceiling. At least there was a bright light coming from bulbs on the ceiling, hindering no reading.

Continents had many texts, descriptions, and books. Nations were more detailed than Wiliam guessed, as they were culturally important and filled with past historians. Many had their chronological order and documented history. By importance, he took this for an old archive, or perhaps he would change his mind after reading through these shelves.

“Most things within this room are repaired, copied, or retrieved collections of the past that hid from the Dawn. It is good that Darks don't loathe or love history, let alone know how to read, so people should be glad this exists. Darks like humans, so....” Ellie didn't like this analogy and let him browse and her mouth speak.

“In distant, yet close time, many people were struck by unfathomable disaster. They weren't hurricanes, tornadoes, or cataclysmic earthquakes. No. It was worse. It was a hunt. No matter where one went or hid, some plans and actions were impossible and they went on and on like endless nightmares. But! With the vast amount of land and human settlements scattered literally all over this planet, you can imagine destroying everything takes time, or it is straight-up impossible. Humans also fought back, either by thinking about the future, or reproducing and trying to strike back. Then.... the Walkers arrived, changing this world and people forever.” Ellie smiled and pointed further back where there were small racks of Walker-related texts. All locked for the most part.

Some pieces were open, hiding behind glass windows with simple handles and locks. William saw it and figured he could break it in a heartbeat, though his card should open them better. He wasn't a thief today.

Their dedication piqued his curiosity immediately, as Walkers had their historical importance, coming from politics, nations, and many wars and survival. They were quite old as well, and William wasn't even sure when they arrived and began to fight. These texts had no cohesive answers either.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Unknowingly, he already had a pretty decent key for answers, and it wasn't in his pocket. It was that old diary, whose first pages had yet to reveal much of anything.

William forgot about it, so he took that shelve for power and secrets that might give him many ideas, or satisfy his curiosity. That wasn't bad. William almost did not expect this to happen before the upper floors.

“I guess I will look through it. Isn't it about perspective? What is an inch before a mile? It is about concepts and knowing stuff. Wait. Why is this stuff here?”

“Yes.” Ellie nodded, not sure what she was answering.

“It is like the name of that book called Around the World in Hundred Days. One has to be a madman to travel around a planet of such size and make a tale about it. Is this the same?” William talked without knowing too much context about that book.

Ellie chuckled but agreed with his simple analogy before he dived at the Walker shelf without hesitation and found out a variety of present-day, or decades-old materials. In no time, that old diary came to his mind, though it hadn't escaped his mouth. He considered it curious, and less prominent than these texts, so he peeked at them while Ellie was aside from him, accepting how these texts got his very firm interest.

It couldn't be helped, considering they ranged from very mundane military talks to fascinating military operations that involved hundreds, if not thousands of kinds of strategies, people, Walkers, and prospects of numerous lands. As expected of the archive, there was a big range of importance, so looking around overwhelmed William bit by bit.

First came no surprise. It was about the warfare of the ancient kind. Not just Walker stuff, as Ellie quickly said.

Right at the start were the foundation of warring efforts from many cultures. For Walkers, they could be interesting, but for William, texts about Walkers were more to his taste, as they were more recent, written well, or spoken in achievements and facts that he could understand. A big chunk of them depicted familiar Outside, which made him happy and almost thrilled to read them.

Perhaps he could discover some matters about his memories, or reignite the lost thoughts? What about that camp where he lost his parents and hand? What about... the other stuff?

Briefly, as he thought about these possibilities, William forgot where he was and how this room might change his mind.

In a sense, he was looking at numerous hefty and less exciting materials, but they were still historical records of many clashes, while some rare ones would literally shake his mind and awareness. Against, or not against the people, that was. Finding the correct book was like fishing. There were no guides for anything, so he quickly figured Ellie might be a blessing that was a handful distance away.

There were fewer recent warring books thanks to lacking humanity and recent years. It made sense after William skimmed over the rows of texts that were in order of years, places, and nations. How much was about the last century? A slip? One-tenth? Five percent of those shelves? He wasn't aware it was even less.

For his curious needs, a promising start was here, if not something that he should take as his priority because this was realistically what he might need. Many events unfolded in every land in the last century, whereas what went on centuries ago or thousands of years in the past might be like a pebble falling onto a rock.

Darks or their mysteries were less important if one cared about deep wars, or about the foundations of what was once important.

What drove the efforts of wars and places? It didn't matter if Walkers ignored this history or not because their duties were impossible to overlook like their fights and differences from the rest of humanity. Many of that was good, but belittling it or not believing it was not.

There were hundreds of books about the perception of the military, their worth, work, and strategies. Walkers might have less prominence in some of them due to their sheer difference. They won't find humans fighting demons and beasts. That fact arrived much later.

What William got out of them was confirmation of how humans existed as he assumed. They warred for centuries and millennia and got to know it quite well. Only the recent twenty-first and chunk of the twentieth century showed some hope, albeit there were two blunderous oversights called World Wars, while the twenty-first century had the Dawn.

More interesting texts were less academic, which William quickly assessed. They were personal, blunt, and quick, stating matters and facts for what they were. Sure, some seemed as if a librarian had written them, but William didn't hate such writing. It might take a while to get something useful out of them, so he looked at them first and didn't judge them outright.

From the start, he began reading their names and primary topics, and Ellie made her comments and restarted her lessons on how to work with information and gather some familiarity or lists of what was good and better. He quickly gathered interesting topics, names, words, and subjects about Walkers and interesting concepts from the last century.

German Walkers. Japanese Walkers. Association of Hunters. World Military. Federation Military Efforts. Federation Divisions. First War. Second War. Destruction of Korea. Eradication of Australia. Notes of the Dawn. Emblem Academy: notes of the betrayal, and Military Operation NB134 with other numbered reports and cases.

One particular row had numerous great texts for sure, aiming at messages and many opinions, with less academic background. Those could be almost like diaries and most had locks, which Kaufman's card took care of in a simple motion.

William liked them a lot, even if they might not include some sensitive and secret topics, though these locks were here for something, and Ellie wasn't aware of every book in this place, let alone locks.

From the names in his brief lists, many interesting facts arrived. Especially those about the Academy seemed strange. He thought it was enigmatic enough to be very secretive, so how come this place had a text about it? For now, he didn't read through these notes, even if he had an itch for it.

Ellie observed him from behind and didn't help him with every choice. Her suggestions, lessons, and eyes lingered behind her most acts, so William took her words seriously and thought about how to sort these new topics.