In blurs the futuristic metal hallway rushed past Sigmund, his frantic steps beating clanking irregular noise of desparation into the labyrinthian complex. He could not tell whether he was being followed, any door could obscure an assailant, any slowing down could allow them to tag him with a weapon, injuring his legs, making him slow, he knew what had happened, he was having a flashback of the death he had experienced, he doubled his efforts.

Dead end, through the door, quick. He slammed the door shut behind him, staying still to catch his breath and assess the situation. The slam of the door halled back in a way Sigmund had never experienced, the room he was in was truly truly big. Like a warehouse there were shelves lined up, rising high into the sky ... which actually was a ceiling, one could tell due to the point of reference that the shelves provided - that much was certain.

Ladders provided ways to access the books, construction scaffolding allowed horizontal traversal. White neon lights were mounted in regular distances along the scaffolding, providing good if sterile and cold visibility. Between the shelves multiple tracks had been laid on which some more or less empty metal wagons were parked, some of them contained books.

Sigmund had cought his breath and advanced in a hurried but no longer hasty step. The wagons provided no way for propulsion, thus did not make it easier to cover distances faster. He grabbed a book out of one of them to take a look, this couldn't all be fake shit, could it? This was a ginormous place, who would build something like this if it just contained books that were essentially scams?

The books had a white smooth laminated softcover appearance, they looked cheap, serious and neutral, in black bold serif letters, the title 'Smrgdine-str, .varW2, s4, SpC', sounded exclusive, arcane and highly specialized. Sigmund dropped the book back into the wagon and began hiking away from the door he had closed, still nervous that someone might have followed him.

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He looked behind himself several times as he wandered through the library, but did not spot anyone following him, he allowed himself to relax his steps and sat onto a pile of books, the exhaustion coming crashing down. He had made the right choice, he felt. There was nothing to fear here, he would maybe indulge some books, very critical of the truth in them, maybe build some intuition of magic, he could learn it, defend himself, become... a mage or something like that. He liked the idea of that, obviously, but he did not like the titles of the books. There were sadly several systems, some of these books were written in encrypted words, making no sense at all at the first glance. Some were written in foreign language or even letters that he hadn't seen before. Then others were overly simple, like 'Path to Power - Powerful Magic', which were incredibly suspicious in being directed at simpleton noobs. Of course without Blues warning he would have gobbled those books up and probably end up with some cursed magic changing him into a slave or bot or whatever.

And yet the books begged him to be read, advance his knowledge, become more than a plaything of the elite which had figured it all out already. Sigmund selected a wagon from the tracks - it was time to create a hoard of knowledge.