25 Visiting the Library
After visiting Count Jurim, Ein, and the others spent their time idly. Ein was guarding the whole night outside the inn for a change. Although there were a couple of random thieves loitering around the inn, the regular guards quickly apprehended them without any problems.
Soon, the morning sun rose, and the girls woke up.
"Mr. Rain, you can take a break for today. We're just staying here at the inn for the whole day," Sophia told Ein.
"Alright. Thank you." After saying so, Ein went to their room and took his whole backpack with him.
Ein, after leaving Nayta and Melina with Sophia, went out of the inn and towards the busy streets. After consulting the map he had, he went to the right and walked slowly. After a few minutes, he came to a grand building. By appearances alone, it can be mistaken for a museum, but it was actually a library.
After passing through the guard's inspection and paying a large deposit of 10 gold coins, he was allowed to enter the library. Inside, he was quite surprised to see the towering bookshelves that looked physically impossible to hold strong without giving out due to the weight of books. The highest shelf reached the ceiling of the library, which was about 30 meters high!
'Are they using magic to lighten the books or to strengthen the shelves?' Ein wondered.
As Ein was approaching the shelves, he took out a pair of glasses from his backpack. After putting it on, he temporarily gains an automatic translation function that enables him to read this world's letters.
"The general knowledge is... over there." Ein quickly scanned the large labels at the side of each shelf and quickly found his target genre.
Seeing how he could easily read the text as if it were his mother tongue, Ein convinced himself that he really did well in buying this extremely expensive pair of glasses.
[Mock-eye of Yog-Sothoth: A pair of reading glasses blessed with the powers of Yog-Sothoth the omniscient. Enables the user to see and understand any and all things before them. Price: 100,000 DP]
The only problem for Ein is that he doesn't know how powerful the glasses really are. As Ein approached the shelf of general knowledge books, he started feeling dizzy. Just by walking a few steps, there were already thousands of books within the AoE of the glasses.
"What...?" Ein was puzzled.
Unable to control his legs for a moment, he fell forward and dropped the glasses. As soon as the glasses fell, the dizziness faded away as if it were a lie. However, in Ein's mind, countless pieces of information recorded in thousands of books flooded his brain. He was essentially unable to move for a few minutes until his brain finished processing all the information that he had glimpsed.
He was lucky that he walked slowly. If he jumped forward or ran forward while wearing the Mock-eye of Yog-Sothoth, then his brain would have popped like a watermelon under pressure due to the sudden influx of information. However, Ein didn't have any way to know about this function as it wasn't explained in the item's description.
Ein was confused. In his mind, there was information that was written within the books, the information inside the writer's mind, the information of the hundreds of magicians and carpenters who worked on the shelves and the library itself, and even the secret location under the floor he was standing on. The information was so vivid that it felt as if he was present at the scene when the book was written, the library was constructed, and the shelves were made.
Not only that, but even the information on the man sweeping the floor, the librarian who was arranging books on the shelves, and the invisible guard that was hidden behind a corner—their lives, their past, and their present—were vivid in Ein's mind as if it were his own history. As if it were he himself who had lived their whole lives to that point.
As a dungeon master, Ein had his brain functions enhanced greatly. Even then, this event was almost skirting the limits of what he could take. Ein was so lucky that he didn't reach his brain's capacity; otherwise, his brain matter would be scattered all over the floor by now.
Of course, Ein's brain automatically summarized, filtered, and discarded useless and redundant information to reduce the load it was taking. By the time he noticed, the seemingly vivid memory of everything was already covered in a metaphorical veil of mist. Even if Ein tried to recall the contents of the books, everything seemed to be hidden beyond the void. Like remembering the memory within your dream, it was extremely vague.
"Still, all the main points can be recalled clearly!" Ein was overjoyed.
He was happy that he could shorten his stay at the library by using the surprising function of the glasses. Really, ignorance is bliss.
Ein, despite his epiphany, didn't want to keel over again. After wearing the glasses, he took one small step at a time, only moving one more step after the information was already consolidated by his brain. Ein instinctively knew that it was dangerous to move carelessly with the glasses on.
The large library, containing hundreds of thousands of books, should take years to conquer all the books. Ein only spent one afternoon doing so. When nighttime was approaching, Ein triumphantly left the library. He had already learned everything the library had to offer. The information he got was obviously way more valuable than the 10 golds deposit he paid to the guard.
"Oh, Rain, you're back!" Melina quickly ran to Ein's side. "We've got some news for you!"
"Earlier today, after you left, the leader of the Poison Fang visited and apologized for her underling's uncouth behavior."
"Poison Fang?" Ein pondered and remembered the goons who tried to assault his wolves at the guild. "Oh, them?"
Ein was surprised to hear that their leader apologized. Remembering the gossip he heard back at the guild a few days ago, she seemed to be a villain through and through. Even back at the library, the Poison Fang guild had several bad records about them, which mostly contained harassment, extortion, and threats.
Seeing the complicated look on Ein's face, Nayta quickly supplemented. "She said she learned later that you have S+ rank combat power and wishes for you to let them off. They gave us 500 gold as compensation too," Nayta said as she pulled out a pouch containing five large silvery gold coins. "She also said that she'll come again tomorrow to personally apologize to you."
"Tomorrow, huh?" Ein pondered.
Without intending to, his schedule slowly filled up.
"Rather than that, we're heading out now," Ein said while pointing his thumb behind him. "Tell Sophia quickly that we're leaving for a few hours."
Nayta and Melina looked at each other with question marks on their heads. Despite not really knowing why, they followed Ein's instructions and reported to Sophia.
With Sophia's permission, the three of them rode their wolves and started heading out of the northern gates. Ein led the way toward the forest while looking for tracks of horse carriages leading to a remote place inside the forest.
When Ein reached the suspected location where the bandits would exchange with their employer, there was not a single trace of their presence anywhere.
"Did we go to the wrong location?"
Ein wondered; however, looking at it timewise and location-wise, this should be the spot. Even with the geographic knowledge he gained from the library, there's no other nearby location accessible by carriages or horses.
Ein stopped the wolves when they reached the center of the open space. Right after the three disembarked, however, a surprising phenomenon occurred.
"What?!"
"Ugh!"
"Ahh!"
Ein, Melina, and Nayta were forced down on the ground with a powerful pulling force. The three wolves were in a similar state. Looking closely, the entire open space was slightly emitting particles of light.
"What's this? And here I was trying to get rid of those useless beggars; look at what got caught! Gah ha ha!" A familiar voice echoed from all around.
Ein forced himself to raise his head and searched for the direction of the voice. Shock covered his face as a familiar figure stood by the trees with a nasty grin.
"You...! That pig noble!" Ein squeezed a painful shout.
The gravity magic got a step stronger, making it harder to even breathe, let alone speak.
"I told you two to be my wives, and you refused. However, I am a benevolent man, and I will still allow you to live if you swear to be my sex slave for life!"
The pig noble said as he approached the outer edge of the magic array. Nayta and Melina had tears in their eyes as they were having difficulty breathing.
"And those mutts... Dispose of them!"
With a look of extreme anger, he ordered his own soldiers. A rain of arrows flew toward the three wolves, still stuck inside the magic array. The wolves were hit, let out a painful but faint cry, and quickly bled.
