I woke up the following day, surprisingly refreshed. The nightmares of the previous night hadn’t returned, and with the hope that they wouldn’t, I took the book, grabbed a quick breakfast, and returned to the reference desk. Elody was sitting behind the desk just like the last two times I had been here.

“Do I need to do anything special to check this book back in?” I asked her.

“Just pass it over for me to do a quick check, and I’ll return it to the shelf,” she said. I pushed her the book, and her upper eyes once again scanned it. The moment they finished, the book vanished. I assumed that meant it was back in its proper place.

“I’ve actually got a couple of questions, besides just another book hunt I was hoping you could help me with today. Would that be possible?” I asked, giving her my best friendly smile.

“I don’t know. You’d have to tell me the questions before I know if I can help,” she replied.

“Fair point. So, first up, every time I try to check my level or attributes in the system, all I get is an error. Alongside that, I don’t seem to be gaining any experience for the quests I’ve completed. Any guesses what might be the cause?” Her second set of eyes lowered from watching the archive and looked directly at me for the first time.

“When you say you get no experience, are you getting any notifications that you gained experience, but no counter goes up, or are you not even receiving those?” she asked. Her bottom set of eyes narrowed.

“Nothing at all,” I replied. Judging from her expression, this wasn’t a common experience.

“Certain high-grade items could be responsible for the experience loss, though to even suppress the notification, you would be looking at something exceedingly rare. Do you have anything like that on your person?” she asked, her tone having become accusational.

“So the world I come from has no ambient mana at all. The fact that I’m even here is kind of strange, so it’s pretty unlikely unless it’s this thing?” I said this as I pulled the experience orb from my pocket.

“It is certainly that thing, as you so put it. Put that away now!” her voice had dropped to a whisper, but I still felt the threat of that whisper.

“I promise I didn’t steal it if that’s what you think. It was given to me by the person who sent me to the spiral. He said it would be more useful for me than him at this point,” I said, pleading my ignorance.

“It’s alright, I believe you. I apologize for the harsh tone. It’s just items of that nature that will draw prying eyes, and not everyone who seeks out a refuge of knowledge does so with noble intent. Be very careful of who you trust with the existence of that orb. Do your comrades already know of it?” she asked, her second pair of eyes having resumed watching behind us.

“Yeah, they told me to put it away as well when I showed them,” I answered. What had the bird, no, Sanquar apparently, given me? I know he had called it an experience orb, but what did that mean?

“I have no idea how someone would have attained an item like that or why they would ever give it away, but I would rather not have this discussion in a public setting any further. Would you be open to joining me for lunch in my private study here? I can make sure we aren’t overheard,” she asked. Was I? She was one of the people who said I shouldn’t trust people with this information, so should I risk being alone with her? I wasn’t sure I had much choice in the matter. She already knew about it and knew far more about the archives than I did. If she really wanted to take it from me, it seemed likely she could just slit my throat in my sleep or something similar.

“Yeah, I could do that. What time were you thinking?” I asked, having made my decision

“Meet me back here in about six hours, and we can break for lunch. In light of that object, I suggest you hold any other questions you may have until then. Now, what was the book you were looking for today?” Her tone had returned to its usual pleasantness as she asked the question.

“Doplingint’s Manual on Synergistic Effects,” I said, causing her eyebrows to rise.

“My, you really have an interest in the archaic, I see. For that one, you’ll want to take the elevator to the archival sub-basement thirty-seven. While you could walk there, I don’t imagine you would be back in time for lunch, or dinner for that matter. It should be in the fifth row. Good luck, and I’ll see you for lunch,” She said, still giving me the curious expression the name of the book had elicited.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

As I stepped from the elevator into the dimly lit sub-basement, another question to ask her the next time we met occurred to me. Was it possible to access the System’s interface anywhere besides my room? It would be convenient to see the new quests as I completed the old ones instead of having to make the trek back anytime. I was making footprints in what was hopefully just a thick layer of dust on the ground with every step. Why was the System sending me off to read books that hadn’t been touched in god knows how long?

I found the book exactly where she said it would be. What I didn’t find, though, was anywhere to read it comfortably. I sighed, knowing it wouldn’t be the first time I had sat on a dirty floor to read a book, but I had hoped those years were long past. I tried shoveling some of the dust away with my shoes before sitting down, but all that did was cause it to fly into the air, giving me a round of sneezing.

Accepting my fate, I sat down in the dust, wiped a couple of cobwebs from my hair that had gotten tangled, and opened the well-worn cover of the book. I could feel my old habits settling back in, the long unused need to pull apart a book for the parts that really mattered. It had been decades since I last digested information like this, but it looked like you never truly forgot it. Old memories of long nights with engineering textbooks sitting in my lap popped into my mind unbidden. As much as I wanted to reminisce on the nostalgia of those long-ago, happier moments, I didn't have the time for that right now. I pushed those thoughts away to focus on the book in my hands, steadily working my way through its contents.

The book covered in great detail how different mana orbs would interact with one another if in the same core. It primarily focused on dual socketed cores, which I gathered was the easier kind to study, and even that was difficult to get access to. He did mention that he knew of at least three individuals who had a triple socket core, but they were not willing to talk to him, let alone test any interactions. He further theorized that there were those with even more sockets who kept that secret to themselves. I was finally starting to understand the root of Karlinovo’s research. He must have been trying to replicate the concept of multiple sockets in a way that would be more accessible to the average person.

Wait, was the system pushing me towards following in their footsteps? I supposed that made some sense the more I considered it. If it was just a matter of building a circuit capable of handling energy flow, that was pretty close to my expertise. That would also explain why I hadn’t received a quest for creating my core yet. For some reason, the system had taken an interest in me learning about these concepts and possibly applying them in my own core creation. But why? There had to be people already within its influence who knew as much as I did. There wasn’t anything special about my knowledge. If anything, I lacked so much foundational knowledge when it came to these concepts that I should have been a hindrance in pushing the field further.

As I was considering the implications of all of this, an alarm started sounding in my head, and the words “upcoming appointment: lunch with the Librarian in fifteen minutes” popped up into my vision. I hit my head on the bookshelf behind me in surprise. I blinked my eyes in annoyance and rubbed my head in pain. The alarm was now starting to give me a headache. I tried dismissing it as I would a System menu, which seemed to work. While I was glad that something had notified me, I sincerely wished it hadn’t caused my near concussion.

“Hey there, are you alright? I saw you hit your head.” A voice brought me out of my annoyance and pain and back to the world around me.

“I’m alright. Thanks for checking, though,” I said as I pushed myself to my feet. My knees cracked in protest, dragging back the worry about my age yet again. Maybe Elody knew something there as well. I looked over at the voice and realized I had a problem and that I really needed to pay more attention to my surroundings. The figure had a hood drawn over its face so that I couldn’t make out any details there, but due to the large knife it held in its hands, the intent was obvious. “Look, I don’t want any problems, so how about we both go on our separate ways, no harm, no foul,” I didn’t have any expectation of my words working at this point, but talking had the added effect of buying me some time.

“I saw you come into the archive yesterday. You’re a newbie to the system, right? No core yet, I can tell. So give me the mana orbs, and I’ll make it quick. Otherwise, well, as you can probably tell from the dust, no one comes down here, so I’ll let you leave that possibility to your imagination,” the voice said, inching closer with the knife.

I had no intention of giving away any of the few possessions I had, especially when the only thing I would be getting in return was a less painful death. If this guy wanted to kill me, he would have to at least work for it. I threw the book in my hands as far as I could at him, somehow managing to hit him square in the face. I followed that up by running at him and slamming my shoulder into his chest as hard as I could. I felt the knife bite into my left arm as we both crashed into the bookcase.

It hurt like hell, but it didn’t compare to what I had been through only days ago. Instead of continuing the fight, I took the opportunity my shoulder check had given me and ran as fast as I could for the elevator. I could hear him huffing behind me, the distance growing as I ran. Either I had hurt him enough that he couldn’t keep up, or he had decided I wasn’t worth the risk. I got into the elevator as quickly as I could, ordering it back to the main archival floor. My arm screamed in pain as the doors closed. There was a lot of blood coming from the wound.

I stumbled through the elevator’s doors as they reopened. The energy I had used in my run had apparently faded, and the reference seemed so far away. How much blood had I lost? I felt arms grab me and pull me up, and a warm feeling flooded my body. The burning in my arm faded, and my vision came back into focus. Elody was holding me up, and it felt like she was healing me as well.

“Can’t have you die before our lunch. That would be rude,” she said, smiling brightly at me.

“I suppose it would. Someone had a knife and demanded my mana orbs. They managed to stab me before I got away.” The words poured out of my mouth at rapid speed, blurring them together so much that I doubted she fully understood what I said.

“Come on, let’s head to the study room and get something to drink in you, and you can tell me again once you’ve calmed down a bit. I’ve healed the wound, so you shouldn’t be in any danger of exsanguinating,” she said as she guided me to a door beside the reference desk.