The Knowledge That Was Lacking

Ciemnosc was walking around the academy. He had come down the mountain with another little beast especially prepared for the workshop. He was now walking through some students who looked and pointed at him, especially when he walked out of the mountain's foot close to the monument of honor, where many who saw him immediately grew crazy about seeing him even more than when he was titled as Genius.

Within his hands, the large ‘notebook’ was opened. It was already the third time Ciemnosc could be seen doing just that as he read through the notebook with incredible speed. His hands moved the pages in slow movements, but the pages turning were over at a pace that only those in the Spirit Gathering realm about to step into the Conflagrate realm would be capable of seeing through.

His eyes were going pretty fast, though there was some ‘aid’ from his head as he tilted it and cocked a few times as he read. The place he was now heading to was the Academy’s Library, from which he needed to comprehend a lot of stuff. The notebook, which was the guide that Older Brother gave him, was a little bit too much. It could be seen that Older Brother spent most of his life in the library and nowhere else whenever he wasn’t being the world’s botanist #1.

And with how large the contents of the notebook were, Ciemnosc who was intending to just look around for a little and exactly for what he wanted, began to think otherwise as he became more than self-absorbed in the marvelous little life’s project that Older Brother gifted him. Though he was going to indeed go for the things that are mostly in his needs, like the teachings and records to guide himself so that he can create or try to create his first Mortal graded weapon or so, it was all lately but finally coming into his hands; he needed that knowledge.

He rapidly, in a way, made his way to the Academy’s Library at a slow pace. The outside of the library was pretty simple, and from afar when Ciemnosc first entered it, he only thought of this building as a kind of storage or farm where livestock were to be taken care of for the daily food of either ‘mortals’ or cultivators.

But, of course, he later got to understand that there was no ‘mortal’ around in the academy’s territory and that the cultivators didn’t really eat food from livestock, only from either Creatures’ bodies after hunts and missions of the like or satiate themselves with pills.

With all this in mind, the large rectangle, almost a rectangle-shaped building that was several tens of meters tall; was putting it nicely and short. It seemingly did have some columns every few tens of meters from its already 200 m width and a couple more hundred meters length. But other than that, it was a building that had little to no decoration.

Whether because the academy was just that null in terms of artistry capabilities, or because that was the choice on how to make one of their most precious treasures so dull. Ciemnosc ended up liking it very much.

He also never considered making a library in none of his previous self-established settlements. Of course, that was because he had never thought of creating what was basically an army on his own nor a new organization of sorts. He wasn’t crazy enough to try and chew a full moon with just his 10, 11, and very close to his 12 year old’s teeth, even if it seemed like a good idea to try in the future.

Step.

In any case, as Ciemnosc stepped into the Academy’s Library, he was immediately met with eyes that were rotundly focused on reading books or lists or just clipboards on their desks. Even though the place seemed large enough for holding several thousand students at once, with how ‘small’ in height was the first floor, which Ciemnosc noticed right away before even entering with his Spirit Sense; it seemed all mostly empty and only the ‘clerks’ and ‘workers’ were around.

The eyes of those glaring at him as soon as he stepped were clear and not reddened or haggard in the slightest. Each and every ‘worker’ around here was of at least the Spirit Gathering realm, with a few old ones seated on certain chairs with nothing accompanying them. Such must be either the teachers in charge of the library or supervisors who were taking a rest.

When looking at Ciemnosc, the Gifted, they were like teenagers discovering that a woman without clothes is more interesting than with them on. And, of course, being their first time seeing one nude, they felt so impacted that they couldn’t stop looking.

“I have this. Now I want to go to the forging section. Who can bring me?” Ciemnosc passed over a little torn piece of paper in his right hand around the air, waving it and showing it to the silent, dizzy, and foolish-looking students.

Tumble, rkatata, crash~.

“Me, me, me me me!” Many went immediately into action. Eyeglasses, glasses of water, nice-looking pieces of art and books, items made of wood, and chairs fell about everywhere and anywhere. Their sound made a constant noise to appear within the library that the teachers or supervisors on the chairs a bit further within the reception looked at the other students with slightly more attention; but still lazily and feeling comfortable resting.

In the end, a young man of about 26 years old-looking arrived first, as he had toppled over the least around his own stuff at his own desk and was the fastest to employ some parkour without using Power Energy to dash into Ciemnosc’s direction. When he finally got to stand in front of the Gifted, the rest gave out moans and turned around like their butts had just gotten whipped.

On the other hand, the young man had brown-orangish skin color, cocoon hair, and very big, round gasses that seemed to have twirls on them and looked in worship to Ciemnosc while fixing those damn half a face-long pair of glasses.

“Okay, let’s get going,” Ciemnosc said nothing more and began walking with the young man following suit, starting to explain the Academy’s Library and bringing Ciemnosc to the top notch forging section of the library. The young man didn’t bother to say his name, either because he forgot or because he deemed it unnecessary for the Gifted to care about some random’s name.

“... One of the most important rules of the library is the usage of Power Energy, it cannot be used for whatever reason! So be careful, Gifted, or else any movement your powerful self makes might bring us trouble, eheh… Usually, the Academy’s Library is empty, but the alchemy and botany sections are always full. There are many who just want to find a way of crafting elixirs for lewd purposes, but that is not how the cultivation world works! Still, thousands come here every year just for that purpose, sigh- they never end…”

“Oh, here we are!” Finally, with Ciemnosc enduring the mental test of listening to this young man and trying to pick up as many things that weren’t stupid stuff in between the words that were full of stupid stuff, they arrived at the best section of forging.

The Roaloi Academy might be a little neanderthal-level organization when it comes to its progress in technology, and that wasn’t an exaggeration. But their cultivation resources were there, and they surpassed anything that even the 4 major organizations had in the past; together. Let alone now that they were not only with fewer low cultivation members of each organization but also with Jing Zhu’s grand plan for saving Ciemnosc, which ended even more lives of all statuses within the major organizations.

It was one thing the recruiting students to follow her case, but it was another thing to have some Obsidiafying realm cultivators on her side. When it all came to light, and the analysis was undergoing, more questions that were already quite a lot before the results surfaced continued to nowadays.

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But that was both; a thing of the past and something that Ciemnosc had no fucking shit to give about. It was all now a problem of the major organizations. He was also their problem now.

“Mn, leave me be. I’ll search for myself,” Ciemnosc said, not waiting for the young man to say anything in response before going into the small section. It was a really smaller section compared to the other sections within the library that he has seen so far. There were only about 4 bookshelves for this section, 2 on the right, 1 on the left, and 1 to the front on the other end from where the hallway to the other sections was.

The other sections, for the ‘normal’ sized, have a total of 12 bookshelves for each side and 4 to 6 bookshelves at the front. In the largest section, there were tens of bookshelves on each side and 13 to 15 bookshelves at their front. Even for smaller sections, there were a few more for each side and a couple at the very least for their front. This best forging section of the library was possibly the smallest if not one of the smallest at the very least.

Each bookshelf had about 20 steps, with each one of those steps having a total storage of 20 books, more or less. It could vary depending on the thickness of the book, and cultivators’ knowledge could just be so vastly different from each other that the academy seemed to opt for going for the ‘whatever can fit’ for each step - option.

With this, the smallish section had about 1,600 books alone and at the very least. While the bookshelves were tall, they were accessible with an easy and agile movable staircase that could even attach itself to the bookshelves when in use and follow someone by just attaching one of its ropes to one’s waist or arm for that matter.

When Ciemnosc stepped into the small section, the young man remained outside and walked away for a couple of steps before stopping and just stood there, in waiting. On the other hand, Ciemnosc continued walking around the small section, he was now marveling to an unbelievable degree though it couldn’t be seen through his lifeless, darkest eyes.

‘Now I understand Older Brother’s addiction to books, and how many things he had to write on that list.’ Ciemnosc spun a few times, looking around everywhere while his Spirit Sense, and even without it, had already deciphered where the books he needed the most right now were. After spinning slowly a few more times, he faced the direction where those books were and began waking towards them, walking and taking them at his own pace.

Knowing very well what meant to take the books out of this small section, Ciemnosc was careful when grabbing them. Some were incredibly old, some could be seen that they had been copied once more, not too long ago and others could be seen to be very new.

There were many ways that a lifeless object, even corpses, could be maintained with the use of Power Energy, as purely as it sounds; or with array formations and even the so-called ‘arts’ that Ciemnosc has heard about a lot since he joined the Rocaloi Academy.

One of the reasons the Moribund Yearning Cult wasn’t fazed off from existence was their methods to conserve corpses from cultivators. It was an easy matter to conserve a ‘mortal’s’ corpse, but a cultivator’s corpse required one to use Power Energy as well as personalized array formations whose inscriptions just had to be rearranged for every new corpse depending on their features and causes of death.

The Rocaloi Academy was much better at that, being able to keep books whose age is, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of years old. That’s just not something that anyone within the history of the Moribund Yearning Cult had ever been able to even be remotely close to achieving.

If anything, only that medallion in his pockets right now was what could be considered a true treasure in the entire world. According to Lady Calisneia’s diary and the ‘new things’ in his head, Ciemnosc was now sure that the age of the medallion and this grand array formation was… beyond unthinkably old.

Cultivators’ sense of time was drastically different from ordinary living beings. Even the turtles who lived long are like little shits to the world of cultivation. What is hundreds of years in the future ‘talk’ for ordinary living beings, it is among the millions of years in the past or future ‘talks’ for cultivators. Though the latter spoke the most about the past than the future, barely even thinking of the future at all, an unthinkable number of years for a cultivator had to be ‘that’ much indeed ey.

But, if even this number was ‘nothing’ compared to what Ciemnosc was thinking… then what the fuck was all of this planet about and hows, whens, and whys.

… In the end, Ciemnosc walked around for a bit, just a few minutes, before coming out of the small section and making the young man lead to somewhere else.

Botany, alchemy, forging, tools, cultivation; especially battle related with themes such as ‘arts’. Ciemnosc went through them all, picking them up and about to make a mess out of his eyes and stamina reading until he was done with life. Well, not really, he would just need a few days to read the hundreds of books he picked up, initially.

While the young man, on the other hand, was feeling crazy watching Ciemnosc grab 100 times the amount of books that other students take, ruling out the naughty ones coming here yearly. He also felt crazy since only Ciemnosc could do that, both because of Older Brother’s ‘note’ and because of being the first and fucking only Gifted in the academy!!

… In the end, once more, Ciemnosc ended up waiting a bit of time for the workers at the reception to revise and record the books he was taking away. There were so many, it would have taken a long day for a worker to do the job. Fortunately, the teachers or supervisors made a blind eye as all of the workers at the reception got to work together for the sake of the Gifted and in the hopes that Older Brother would feel generous the next time he came to the Academy’s Library.

Returning to the bedroom that he was given, now basically empty without his teammates here, which he could not bring because they needed massive experience in dealing with logistics and day-to-day matters as each would have to do just the same but on their own and without his help in the not so far future.

Arriving at his private bedroom, he took out the first book from the forging section. The title, like the rest of the books he read, was completely ignored, while he marked down the author of this book, ready to prepare his forks and torches in case it was a disappointing piece of crap. With little to no life at all.

And so, the boy began reading…

. . .

A few days later. It had now been 4 days since his return to the academy, a temporal return.

In the next few days after the night when he arrived at the academy, Ciemnosc finished those hundreds of books a couple of times before returning them. By then, the mental notes and comparisons between knowledge had already been massively amassed and processed. Cruelly, without any heart, Ciemnosc destroyed the fundamentals and ideologies of most books, only selecting a few that were the least worse off, and proceeded to slowly destroy them to form his own.

If one thing Ciemnosc has grown to understand in this world, it was that the knowledge of it was untrustable and that he could only trust himself and not the general knowledge or the ‘personal’ knowledge that was abundant everywhere and in every book.

The word ‘essentials’ was one that went through his mind over and over again while he studied them even after having read through them. The contents that weren’t exaggerated and gone past authenticity, even of the superficial kind, were the only ones that seemed worth reading through if even just once, but Ciemnosc had to bite the bullet and read each and every book. If he wasn’t who he is, going crazy would be simple even for a 1st stage cultivator in the Obsidiafying realm.

Reading was done as soon as the 4th day came, Ciemnosc returned to the workshop after all that was done. His body was too itchy to start digging his brains out and body to start creating, Ciemnosc endured it all just a little more. For he, more than anything at these moments, had to go through the mysterious shit that the foreign force had left him. He more than anyone was the most attracted to such… ancient grand array.

As soon as he went into a Creature-renting service and arrived at the workshop’s landing zone for such Creatures, Ciemnosc stepped towards the monument with hurried but relaxed steps. His shoulders moved slightly as he made his way there. From the buildings, Ciemnosc saw Older Brother busy with the new tools and Tini making quite a fine piece of work on parchment, on which were already written several different writings that seemed to be a brand new formula for obviously a new pill. A carnivorous plant on her lap nibbling on her wrists when she got tired of writing so much.

Though Ciemnosc was close enough to Older Brother’s hard and soft building, his Spirit Sense didn’t reach all the hell away where Tini’s buildings were, all improved and much better than before. Instead, what Ciemnosc made use of…was something he had already been trying out but failed all the time with minimal success.

Yet, he was now able to somewhat find success despite still failing. And it was all thanks to that information that was new inside his head. Ciemnosc had barely ‘tickled’ that information with his insatiable self, but he had already managed to gain an actual minimal success at the first attempt at peeking into a young girl’s private bedroom.

One could only think of its grand and majestic potential once he delved further into it.

…