CHAPTER 53: THE LIBRARY

Soren glanced up to see a large, marble stone building with hundreds of steps leading up toward its entrance. The roof of the building was made entirely out of stone and was supported by countless columns. At the front of the building stood a grand yet eerie mural portraying an apocalyptic battle, with angel-winged beings descending from the sky with swords in their hands battling against beings with horns holding spears. At the center of the battlefield, a depiction of an open book was shown, surrounded by six gems that formed a circle around it.

Beneath the mural, the words “Public Library” were inscribed in Vinuan script, elegantly carved into the stone facade.

“This is home?” Soren was a bit perplexed but also shocked. Did Star Fate Guild seriously own this entire building? Its size was enormous, and the amount of people flowing in and out had to be in the hundreds.

Myrin chuckled—his hand lay on Soren’s shoulder. “No way, we are immensely broke. Our Mistress works here as the Head Librarian though.” He walked past Soren who was still staring up at the grand structure in awe while looking silly and went up the steps. “If you’re this shocked just by seeing the outside, I can’t wait to see what you’ll say about the inside. Follow me.”

Tina said nothing and simply went up the steps as well. He grit his teeth and slowly dragged the wooden cart full of crates to the side of the steps where the ramp was. Reaching the top, Soren’s neck cranked back all the way as he took in the full sight of the grand marble columns supporting the building. Each one had to weigh almost as much as the skyship they rode. Their circumference alone was larger than some of the trees he had seen in the Feylith Forest. He continued moving toward the grand entrance where he found Tina and Myrin had stopped. A guard was present there, checking their belongings.

“You are also with this group?”

Soren nodded.

“I will need to look over everything you are bringing in with you. Flammable materials are not allowed within any Aelloran Archive. Failure to comply with this rule will result in fines or even imprisonment.”

“I see,” he said, “look over everything.”

The guard did just that. Soren was worried he would discover his Soul Weapon since he was still hiding it, but the guard simply assumed it was a regular book. As for the crates, they weren’t allowed to bring the cart with them inside, so Tina decided to go back to showing everyone how much of a superhuman she was.

Stepping inside the library, Soren finally realized why Myrin was curious about his reaction. If the outside looked imposing, the inside was short of majestic. The library was hollow, with a vast, open chasm that plunged tens of floors below them. Each floor had a stone railing that went across the edge of the chasm, providing a way for someone to lean in and glance at the floors below them. Soren could see countless bridges connecting each segment of the balconies to each other, with hundreds of scholars flowing across them.

“Wow…” His mind almost couldn’t comprehend it all.

“Follow me,” said Myrin, who walked toward one of the bridges just in front of them. The words “Floor One North” were inscribed into the stone floor. It seemed to him that each floor’s bridges were shaped into plus-shaped patterns that allowed for someone to head toward each of the four cardinal directions on each floor. Reaching the center, Soren noticed a strange circle etched into the floor that Myrin stepped inside. Tina followed and did the same, prompting him to also do so.

Without warning, the floor began to shake and slowly descend. The circular platform was magically dropping them toward the next floor. Soren wanted to be shocked, but he had already seen a similar mechanism before. There were platforms just like this that sent people toward Floramere Keep. He did notice something odd, however—there were no visible rune markings he could see etched into the platform.

Still, that didn’t stop his fear of heights from not kicking in. The fact that the platform also had no railings only made it even more terrifying.

If I tripped here… The thought played in his mind as he stared down the chasm. His legs shook slightly.

“Don’t throw up on me, I’ll kill you.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

He straightened his back and stopped looking down. His fear of Tina immediately canceled out his fear of heights.

Their slow descent continued on for a while. Soren assumed they would only need to make it a few floors down, but even after the first dozen, the magical platform didn’t stop.

“Where exactly are we heading here?”

“Star Fate Guild, of course,” Myrin answered. “Our guild isn’t exactly legal nor is it licensed, you see. Our hideout needs to be well hidden. Luckily, our Mistress has a lot of sway in the library—leaving a few rooms empty for our activities isn’t difficult.”

Soren agreed with this line of logic. “So basically, you’re all a bunch of criminals masquerading as bookworms. Got it.”

Myrin laughed out loud. “You aren’t exactly wrong. Though, half of us do like reading. Our activities revolve around archeology after all. To uncover the future of Yarian’s fate, we must dive into its past.”

“You’ll grow to appreciate this place, Soren.” Tina said. “Your abilities were practically made to leech off places like this. If anything, you’re the biggest bookworm here, you damn hypocrite.”

Soren’s lips twitched. He wanted to refute her, but couldn’t. Soren had seen just how powerful his [Record] and [Eyes of the Fairy] abilities were in Floramere Keep’s library. The only reason he wasn’t able to obtain even more information freely was due to the monitoring as well as the fact that he was limited to only a small subsection of the first floor.

But here? He was standing in the middle of an archive filled with all kinds of knowledge about this world—none of which will ever be denied access to him.

Still, that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be selective of what information he chronicles. One of the biggest flaws that [Record] and [Eyes of the Fairy] had was time. Information processing was not instantaneous—whenever he needed to use [Eyes of the Fairy], he didn’t just need to hone into the unseen and focus on what he wanted to see most. That process alone took a bit of time to process correctly, but then you also needed to factor what he was seeing with the unseen. Depending on its complexity, he would need to keep [Eyes of the Fairy] active for longer to process it.

And then there was the [Record] aspect of it. Whenever he needed to use [Record], his Soul Weapon would need to manifest a mysterious fountain pen that wrote down that information in some sort of ancient script he had no understanding of yet. That writing portion wasn’t instantaneous either.

He had seen this flaw in full display at the Floramere Keep library. He had tried chronicling an entire book, but realized that at the pace it was going, not even a few hours would suffice.

It seemed that there was a clear indication being drawn here: Soren, just like The Records itself, needed to act as a filter for information. While The Records sifted through lies and deception, Soren would need to sift through quality of information. He would need to seriously examine the information he wants to chronicle and pick out the significant parts from the insignificant.

Why would he spend several hours trying to chronicle the existence of five thousand different species of ducks, when he could simply chronicle their overall existence or pick out the ones that needed to be known about the most?

Still, that didn’t mean that this limitation was permanent. It was obvious that his skills could be upgraded somehow. Eventually, his [Eyes of the Fairy] should in theory, be able to process things quicker. The same could be said about [Record].

As the magical yet not so magical elevator platform lowered itself even beyond the scope of what he could first see from the first floor balcony, Soren heard Myrin say, “We’re here.”

They had reached the bottom floor of the immense library chasm. Soren’s eyes widened when he saw it.

Broken chandeliers, lamp-posts, trash… It was a mess. Entire mountains of books, papers and other material were stacked haphazardly. It looked like a landfill. He wondered how this could have even happened, but he instantly got his answer. Books were tumbling from the floors above, raining down in a chaotic cascade. Each new addition sent the piles shifting and growing.

The first thing that came to his mind was, “Why?”

“The Graveyard,” Myrin said. “This is a restricted floor in the library. Books that contain falsehoods get discarded here. Though it has also became somewhat of a trash dump in recent years,” he chuckled.

“Watch your head,” Tina interrupted. “Let’s go.”

Without any time for answers, he followed them from behind—his hands placed above his head to shield himself from any falling academic materials. He watched them maneuver across countless piles of garbage and knowledge, until they arrived before a large, imposing wooden gate. Strange symbols which he could only attribute to be Scripted Runic, were positioned into a circle. Myrin reached out and placed his palm at the center. The symbols flared, as the door began to shake. Dust fell from the rusted metal frame as friction made itself heard—the gate inched open before them.

Myrin turned around to face Soren, “Welcome to Star Fate Guild.”