Spirit Sword Academy (2)

William went out of his room to find a bald man standing in the middle of the training area. The other students gathered around him, numbering 50 or so people. The man waited for everyone to arrive before starting to speak.

"Alright, kids. I'm Jared Massey, your instructor until you get yourself your own teacher. Now, I know most of you are excited to explore the school building, since you just got here. You will be given some time to do that later on, but first, I'll tell you about how things go here."

"First of all, outside currency won't buy anything here. The currency we use inside the school are called sword tokens. Each of you have already received 150 of these from the moment you enrolled here, which can allow you to exchange for things with other students or trade for things at the school treasury. However, the school doesn't want to encourage laziness in their students, so 50 sword tokens will be deducted from you every month, meaning you'll have to actively complete missions to earn them."

One of the students raised their hand.

"Yes?" said Jared.

"How do we get more sword tokens?"

"Good question," said Jared. "Student tokens can be earned by completing missions outside the school. The less uncommon method of getting them is to have them given to you by your teacher or instructor. We can get a certain number of tokens each month that can be given to our students."

Another student raised their hands.

"Is there anything else we use the tokens for?"

"Sword tokens also serve to allow you access to the school library, the private cultivation rooms in the school, and many other things."

"What's a private cultivation room?"

"It has a sound isolating formation in it that allows you to be undisturbed while cultivating. It also has a spirit gathering formation that gathers the spiritual energy from the air into that room, making it easier to cultivate there."

"Is that the only way to speed up your cultivation?"

"We do have many cultivation resources you can trade for here, and there are also some slightly weaker spirit gathering formations in your rooms."

"Oh, okay."

"Anyway, there's only one thing left to go over. The school has several rules for its students, all of which must be followed."

"First, if you have any conflicts with another student, this must be solved at the school battlegrounds. There will be no fighting on school grounds."

"Second, no robbery or malicious acts towards others will be tolerated from you all. The Spirit Sword Academy is a righteous institution, and vile acts will get you expelled."

"Last of all, respect the teachers and instructors. Any form of disrespect against a staff member will likely have severe consequences."

Jared yawned, standing up.

"Well, that's all I have for you. For the following two days, I'll be going over the basics of swordsmanship, so be back by tomorrow morning. I've also transferred a map of the school to your student tokens so you don't get too lost. Now, go and explore."

Jared walked to the door at the back of the room, labeled "Instructor's Room- Staff Only".

The students looked around awkwardly, before taking out their student tokens. William did the same, looking inside.

"The school seems huge."

The Spirit Sword Academy had four floors. The bottom one was the largest, housing living areas for all the students, the auditorium, the area for the occupations, and the library.

The treasury was on the second floor, along with a market where students could interact and sell their possessions, and the cultivation rooms.

The third floor had a large-scale training area complete with many strength measuring devices, and training dummies. It also contained the school battlegrounds, where students could fight freely in a huge room.

Finally, there was the top floor, containing all the rooms for the teachers, as well as the dean's office.

After a moment of contemplation, William went to the school library. This would be his first stop so he could get some more combat techniques, since he wouldn't be able to use 1,000 Swords Converge during the exam. Plus, he also needed a cultivation technique for the spirit condensation realm.

Simply following the map, William arrived in front of a large wooden door, covered in golden adornments. Next to it, there was a counter, with a sleeping girl sprawled on it, drooling.

"Hello?"

"Ah!"

They woke up with a start, wiping their drool and looking around. Then they noticed William.

"Oh, hi!"

Straightening their clothes, they stood up.

"What do you need?"

"I need access to the library."

"That'll be five sword tokens an hour. How long would you like to be inside?"

"Just one question, am I allowed to take books outside the library?"

"No."

"Okay. Give me 2 hours then."

"Student identification token, please."

William handed them his student token.

"Alright, 10 sword tokens have been deducted. This token will start beeping one minute before your time is up, and you'll be charged an additional sword token for every additional minute you're in there. And a quick tip, if you need to find anything, go to the big ball of water at the center of the library."

They handed William his student token back along with another token, a dark blue with a book carved into it.

"Thanks."

William took the tokens and walked into the library.

"Woah."

The library was a massive room, with bookshelves reaching tens of feet up all the way to the roof. It was like a maze, filled with books of all colors and sizes. On the roof, there was a giant chandelier, illuminating the room in a golden light.

William walked around the library, simply looking around since he knew he wouldn't be able to find anything specific among this huge collection of books. Walking to the middle of the library, he found a large sphere of water floating above a stone platform.

After admiring it for a moment, he looked at the sign next to it.

'Submerge any part of your body with spiritual energy into the water to access the information contained within.'

"So all I have to do is touch it?"

William poked the ball lightly, and his finger wouldn't pierce through, almost like the water was covered in a thin membrane. Injecting spiritual energy into his finger this time, his did it again, successfully piercing into the ball of water.

Suddenly, a large amount of information appeared in his mind, overwhelming William. Recovering, he inspected the information he had just gained.

'This is convenient.'

The information he had received from the ball of water detailed every book in the library as well as its location. It didn't have any of the book's contents, but it did include a brief summary and explanation for every book there. It even told you what famous people in history had used or created it, as well as the teachers currently in the school that knew it.

The only thing was, all the information was just randomly placed in his mind, and had no organization whatsoever. Therefore, if he wanted to see just the sword techniques, he would have to go over all the information in his head and manually look at all of them one by one.

Suddenly, the voice of the system sounded in his head.

"A large database of information has been detected. Connect to it?"

"System, what do you mean?"

"With my abilities, it is possible for me to access the information in the sphere of water and sort it, so that I can help you find what you need. I can also do this with other data you gain, putting it all on one interface for ease of access. Would you like me to do that?"

"Wait, you could scan the cultivation techniques I had before, could you also do that with other books?"

"Yes, I can. However, it is not possible for me to make you instantly learn or memorize them."

"Then can you also scan books in this library and put them in the database?"

"Yes."

William was excited, to say the least. With this, he would be able to save any book he needed in the system's database and read them without the physical copies. This effectively meant that he would no longer need to pay more sword tokens to access the school library!

"System, connect to the database and scan all the books in this library."

"The database has been connected. However, I can only scan books in a 1 meter radius from you."

"So... I have to run around the library?"

"Don't forget the books at the top of the shelves."

William craned his neck upwards to look the top of the nearest shelf.

"How am I supposed to get up there?"

"The database says there should be a sliding ladder on every shelf that can move left and right."

William looked around and found the ladder. Experimentally, he pulled it left to right on the bookshelf, watching it slide without coming out.

"It's like a sliding door. How does it work?"

"It is connected to the bookcase with rollers on long guiding rails placed horizontally along the length of the bookshelf, with one on every layer of the bookshelf all the way to the roof. The guiding rail is also curved in on the outside edge, preventing the rollers from falling off. This allows the ladder to slide left to right along the bookshelf, while not letting it fall off."

"That's a lot of words to say that a ladder slides on rails."

Wondering why he didn't already know this, William checked his memories. He didn't seem to remember learning that from the ball of water.

"I managed to get higher access to it by exploiting faults in its system to-"

"So you were hacking it?"

"...Basically."

"Okay."

William stopped playing with the ladder and looked around the library.

"System, start scanning the books around me, and find the location of any sword techniques you think might suit me." While he was getting the books he needed, William wanted to scan the books on the way to save him some work later on.

"Okay."