Capitulo 7 : Tunica Negra
Time passed, in a way that Adam still didn't fully understand, but there's no doubt that it did, and now Adam found himself comfortably reading a book at his desk while sipping on hot chocolate. To the reader's surprise, Adam wasn't reading his little yellow language learning book, nor was he reading his godfather's biography.
Instead, the young hero was reading the history of how different religions were forged within the library and how they evolved over time.
Reading books of general knowledge had become one of Adam's new hobbies. These new hobbies emerged after a particularly depressing day when he followed the advice of the eyeless old man and finally opened up to his godfather about his mental and psychological problems. As a result of the conversation, his godfather gave him several useful pieces of advice to deal with his issues.
The irony of the situation was that these problems were normal and happened to all librarians during their adolescence. So, his godfather recommended he read a bit for fun to feel happier and told him that his problems would fade away as he grew up.
And indeed, almost like a joke, that's what happened!
Books seemed to be instant happiness pills for the mind of a librarian going through adolescence. With reading a little bit every day, Adam's depressive problems disappeared (or rather, hid) along with his emotions in general. While the young man wasn't exactly happy at the moment, he wasn't sad either. And now, for Adam, finding a way not to be sad was like finding water in the desert.
Adam was surprised at how well the method of finding 'friends' in books worked. According to his godfather, that's how all librarians functioned, and his real problem was not having a father figure to tell him what would happen during his adolescence.
Unfortunately, it had been quite some time since Adam told his age to his godfather, and to Adam's surprise, his godfather seemed unable to notice the passage of time, so he always thought Adam was somewhere between 10 and 16 years old.
When his godfather found out that Adam was 25 years old, he started recounting several terrible things, such as how Adam should have changed his karma a long time ago, and it was absolute madness to have grown up with positive karma. Apparently, the idea of obtaining the positive karma mask was simply to create a cushion of good deeds to do bad things without negative karma.
In addition, Adam's godfather told him that he should have changed his deal with the eyeless old man a long time ago. His godfather's plan was to find some schoolchildren to test the effects of the magical books for him. Apparently due to easy fungi, the eyeless old man would be more than willing to change his rules and ask foolish questions. That way, Adam would already know the effects of the books and could ask for more books with his new deal. But Adam flatly refused to carry out this plan, since for the young hero it was wild to do such madness.
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Now his godfather wrote desperately for him not to reach the point where he lost his shadow. But Adam decided to ignore him. He preferred to be good and die that way, rather than live like the rest of the librarians who hid their heads to survive.
(What both Adam and his godfather didn't know back then is that the second level of positive karma was already enough to affect the decisions of a librarian's mind.)
Another thing Adam's godfather explained to him was that he urgently needed to find a topic of reading that truly interested him. If he only read casual books during his adolescence, his mental problems would reappear and become increasingly severe.
To Adam's misfortune, according to his godfather, a librarian was considered an adolescent until the age of 40, so he had many bitter years ahead of him. A librarian was an adult between 40 and 120 years old, old between 120 and 200 years old, and dying between 200 and 250 years old.
The most shocking thing Adam discovered from that conversation with his godfather was that based on the ascents of the surrounding floors where he was born, his life would be prolonged. In ancient times, a librarian only lived 45 years, and gradually, the life of all newborns was extended through the achievements of the ancient librarians.
In Adam's case, he was born on a very favorable floor that granted him an extra 205 years of life (in the best-case scenario). This was because there had been a significant number of ascents in the surrounding floors, and the most helpful one was the lower floors.
However, the surrounding floors counted a number of floors that his godfather was unaware of, so there might be another level of floors that would have been even more useful than the silver and gold floors, but Adam didn't know about it at the moment.
His godfather explained a few more things because he realized that Adam was a hermit who grew up in a cave.
Another thing that bothered Adam when he found out was that his attitude and way of treating others were more similar to the bookshelves than the librarians. That's why no one greeted him or gave him birthday presents without any ulterior motive.
Those abnormal behaviors were typical of the bookshelves that always sought the adulation of hundreds of librarians. This realization made Adam understand that his godfather was right. The only ones who desperately sought Adam's attention in this cold library, with decorations, greetings, attention-grabbing talk, and gifts, were the bookshelves or the librarians interested in gaining something for themselves.
Finally, Adam understood why he felt so uncomfortable in this society, and it wasn't his fault: it was from growing up in a cave and with a lunatic.
(In addition to the fact that the karma of these floors tended to be negative, contrary to my life path, and that I was an adolescent -----> However, Adam never understood this in this stage of his life; I'm noting it to make your life easier. Can the reader read my annotations? Or can't they read them, and I'm wasting my time? ... just in case, I'd better stop doing it)