Capitulo 3: La Guerra silenciosa

Five more months flew by, luckily, nothing had happened. It seemed that Adam had misunderstood the old blind man's timing and thought the changes in the school's bookshelves would be immediate. But it turns out that the bookshelves measure time differently, and the process was quite slow.

Nevertheless, after 5 months, some slight changes could be noticed in the bookshelves: from new books to mysterious mist and new decorations. Some bookshelves even fought to expand and grow; their battles were quite slow and generally involved using the librarians to steal books from the other bookshelves.

Any bookshelf that ran out of books was considered the loser of the fight, and the losing bookshelf would be destroyed by the winner. However, the battles between bookshelves were incredibly complex, involving alliances, book exchanges, and even betrayals – everything could be seen in those fights.

But most fights ended in a non-aggression pact with favorable conditions for the side with the higher probability of winning. Thus, not many bookshelves ended up being destroyed. However, there were quite a few librarians who sought to motivate conflict to gain more benefits, so some battles ended with both bookshelves destroyed, devoured by the intelligent neutral bookshelves.

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As the old blind man had said, the period after an ascension was chaotic, developing at a turtle's pace and growing over time. Librarians knew this phenomenon as the silent war, which could last for years or decades until a new balance of power was reached.

The absolute chaos for librarians was that during this war, bookshelves often changed their rules and conditions to take more advantage of the situation. But where there was a downside, there was also an upside – there were new books and secrets to discover, and every day there would be more until the war ceased. This motivated all librarians to venture out and re-explore the floor every day.

However, the old blind man was not mistaken about the greed among librarians: many incidents and thefts could be seen all over the floor. Fortunately for Adam, there was a rule set by the baron to not touch students or teachers. So, he was safe on this floor, and classes could continue as usual, despite the chaos reigning in many hexagons outside.

What Adam had not yet seen were the strange creatures mentioned by the old blind man. But knowing that the old blind man was daring enough to expand between floors and create an alternate passage, he must know more about these battles than anyone else.

Therefore, Adam always tried to stick to the well-trodden paths; the librarians wouldn't attack him, but the creatures might.

Other than that, today Adam was walking towards the school; it was a very special day as the young hero had reached the milestone of 40 pages, and they were going to celebrate it in class with the professor.