In the end, the best I could do was to create a quiver that was bigger on the inside, using the same idea as the Armor Rings to limit the Artifact World effect to arrows only. Since the Artifact World only consumes mana when it is placing an object into the hidden space, and then collapses that space to supply the mana to bring the object back, it was the ideal solution.
Sadly, this meant that I spent the rest of the day enchanting bundles of arrows. What I did learn, was that you could enchant arrows in stacks of twenty at a time. This was useful, since otherwise I would have to take a minute to enchant each arrow, one at a time, and I’d never get done. By the time I finished that night, I had created six hundred normal arrows, and one hundred each of fire, water, wind, stone, lightning, and ice arrows. I also created the Bottomless Quiver that Denise now proudly wore.
Shortly before I was done for the night, I received a message that I had been waiting for all night.
Solomon’s Wisdom has completed its set-up phase. Due to the presence of a Hellgate, it is possible to annex the Library of Solomon as a region of Hell. Do you wish to do so?
Origin Magic has increased to 24
Upon receiving the message, I thought it over for a few moments. Ultimately, I decided not to do so, because annexing the library would mean that only those welcomed in Hell could access it. There was even the chance that the badge I had given to Dariel would no longer work. As soon as I chose not to accept the message, a new one appeared.
You have chosen not to annex the Library of Solomon as a region of Hell. It is currently designated as a free-roaming dimension outside of conventional space. If, at any point in the future, you wish to either annex the Library as a region of Hell, or anchor it to a location in the middle world, this option will remain open. The owner for the Library of Solomon is set to Jin.
While I had expected most of that, there was one section which jumped out at me. I can anchor the library to a physical location? Given the sheer size of it, I had never expected that to be possible.
Before I slept for the night, I decided to send a message to Dremor, informing him that the library was done expanding. Personally, I was just glad to have my full mana back now. While I was forced to use only half of my power, there was a lot that I couldn’t do, such as effectively fighting with Stoneheart. I honestly believed that, if I had my full power, the fight would have gone much more smoothly. The next day, when we awoke, I received a message from Levy.
“Hey, Jin! Did you get to see your finished product yet?” She asked in a happy voice, though I wasn’t quite sure why she was so excited.
“No, not yet. Had a busy night working on some stuff for Denise, why?” Denise and the others were all outside, gathering supplies so that we could get back on the road. Dariel took the liberty of providing my second robe for me, though I hadn’t had the chance to enchant it yet.
“Well.. it’s a bit larger than we expected. Mom took Nix, our fastest demon general, on a run from one end to the other to measure it. According to her, the trip to the far end of the library was roughly a hundred miles! And it was just as wide, too. No wonder it took so long for it to be created.”
I had to admit, I was surprised when she told me the size. That was about five times what I had originally expected. “For reference, how big is Hell? Do you know?”
“Hmm? Hell is.. if you include the underwater portion, it’s two thousand miles from one end to the other. So, your library isn’t anywhere near that big, but until Dremor finishes adjusting it, it’s still bigger than even the largest human cities.”
“Well, any idea how long it should take Dremor to finish his adjustments to the library?” I was eager to get in there and try it out, but a hundred miles was several days’ walk on foot, and there was no way to take Midnight down those aisles. Not to mention that the initial lighting in the library was poor.
“He already set up the lights, and the search enchantment. Apparently, he had been getting those ready for when you told him it was complete. The renovations could take a few weeks, given the size of the place, but it’s safe to enter while he’s doing that. He also has the renewal function ready, but is waiting to implement it until he is done renovating.”
“That makes sense.” I was getting ready to say more, when I heard the demoness giggle on the other end before speaking up.
“Mom’s been in there all morning, since he installed the search function. Since books from your world actually appeared, she’s been in there all day reading the various stories about the Lilith from your world.”
“Ah, so my world actually was affected, after all..” I was prepared for that to be the case, but there were some things in those books that shouldn’t be read by people of this world.
As if she read my mind, and she likely did, Levy spoke up in a smaller voice. “I already asked some of my creatures to go through and eliminate any of the books that refer to ‘video games’. I don’t think the people here need to know about that, either.”
“Thanks. I’m sure your mom knows already, since she can hear anything spoken in the shadows…”
“Yeah, I know. I talked to her about it last night. She said she’s been aware of it since a bit before she met you, but wasn’t able to piece together the information until recently.” Levy let out a dry chuckle, “She took it better than I did, really.”
“That’s saying something. I thought you took it pretty well.”
“Well, we both were able to take comfort in the fact that some people from your world do treat us as real people. By the way, I took the liberty of compiling my Origin spells into books before the library got to Hell. I’m not sure where it’s at, but the copy should be in the library somewhere now.”
“That should help me out a lot. I planned to go check it out once I leave here, since there is some stuff I wanted to look for in the library anyways.” With a sigh, I got myself to my feet, quickly arranging what little I had to get ready to leave as well.
“Alright, well hopefully I’ll see you there.”
Once the call was dropped, I became rather curious about the library itself. Given the difference in technology between this world and my own, this one doesn’t have as much ability to mass-produce books. So, while there would appear to be less books on any given subject, there might truly be more books in the library from here than my world. This was because, with the books mostly being written by hand, some could contain different information. That small difference of information might make the spell register it as a different book.
Wanting to see if this was true, I tried to open a menu for the Library of Solomon. Since it registered me as the owner, I had guessed it was possible. What appeared in front of me surprised me greatly.
Library of Solomon
Dimensional Location
Owner: Jin
Type: Legendary Library
Features
Books: In total, the library currently possesses 2,192,829,401,013 books, spanning five dimensions.
Size: To accommodate for the vast number of books, the library is 100 miles long, and 100 miles wide.
Index: The shelves of the library have all been enchanted, to allow one to instantly search for a given subject from the entrance of the library.
Protection: No book created by the library may be removed from it.
Hellgate: The owner of the library has chosen to create a Hellgate within it, allowing demons to access the library via the gate network.
The sheer number of books made me lose my balance, falling flat on my backside and staring at the message. Two trillion books?! Well… if you include websites, I could understand maybe two billion of it being from my world. And what’s with the five dimensions? Earth, Hell, Heaven, the middle world… what is the fifth one?
I tried selecting that information to learn more, but it wouldn’t list the origins of the books. Assuming that I was right, and that this had copied websites, diaries, and a copy of every book from both my world and this one, I could see the poss
ibility of it reaching two trillion…
Remembering something that Levy had said, I immediately sent a Message spell for Lilith. She responded with a particularly happy voice, likely having been reading something about her namesake. “Yes, Jin~?”
“I need your help with something, in regards to the library. There’s something I don’t understand about it.”
“Oh? What is it? I’ll help you if I can.”
“I just looked up what information I could on the library itself, and it says that it pulled the books from five different dimensions. If I count my world, and the three dimensions here, I don’t know where the fifth one is coming from.”
“Five..? Oh, dear. That could be a problem, yes.”
“Do you know of any other dimensions connected to this world, such as Heaven and Hell?”
There was a pause, while I suppose Lilith thought it over. “None that I can think of. And I’ve no idea how long it would take to find the books from there, either. Do you know how much there is here?”
With a calmness I didn’t feel, I told Lilith exactly how many books were in the library.
“Oh… I suppose you do. Wow, I didn’t think it would be that many. It’ll take a while to find what comes from where, especially since your world seems to have so many languages of its own. Some of these seem like completely alien languages.”
I chuckled, mentally comparing the latin alphabet to languages such as Korean or Japanese. “Okay, just set it as a side project or something for the demons to do. Honestly, I won’t be surprised if it took one person five years to find one of those books. And that’s assuming that they can recognize all of the other languages at a glance.”
“I agree. Even if I put a hundred demons to the task, it could take quite a while. There’s also the fact that, once we find a book from the mysterious dimension, we probably won’t be able to understand it…”
Thinking back to something, I smiled a bit. “Leave that to me.” After that, we dismissed the call, and I went out to greet the others.
“You okay, Jin?” Denise glanced over to me from where the three women had been standing. “Sounded like there was a crash in there.”
“Ah, sorry, I tripped. Dariel, can I borrow you for a minute?” I smiled to the elven woman, who nodded and walked towards me.
“Always, Jin~. What’s up?”
“Do you have a book written in elven that I could borrow?” I recalled the book she had lent me in the past, but it had been translated to the human language so that I could read it.
With a curious expression, she nodded. After moving into her home, she called out. “Does it matter what kind of book it is?”
“Not really, anything will do.” I still had a smile on my face, thinking about the idea of what I might be about to do.
A few minutes later, she came back out with a normal-looking green book written in a script I couldn’t read. “This is our copy of the nature magic book I gave you before.” After extending my hand, she carefully handed the book over to me.
Concentrating for a moment, I activated my Speed Reading skill. Seeing that I made no move to open the book, Denise’s eyes went wide. She was the one who had spent the most time around me, so no doubt she figured out what I was trying to do. “Jin, are you sure about this..?”
I nodded to her, still watching the book. No doubt thanks to my mental scores, as well as the fact I already knew the contents of the book, the progress bar showed that it would take ten minutes. The first time, it took me forty-five minutes to complete, so this was a definite improvement. “It’ll be fine. Worst case scenario, nothing happens. I already have all the information this book can give me, except for one thing.”
Denise nodded slightly. “The language.”
Hearing her, Cynthia and Dariel cast a startled glance in my direction. “Y-you can learn languages just by holding a book?”
I chuckled when I heard Cynthia’s question, watching the progress bar slowly tick down. “We’re about to find out, aren’t we? There’s a chance that I could only do this with books I’ve already studied in another language, or ones designed to teach people a language.”
She nodded slightly, both her and Dariel seemingly placated by that answer. Speed Reading was a skill I gained from Magical Knowledge, and would likely be available in other talents such as Scholar. If I was able to examine Levy’s skills, I could see if she had it.
A few minutes passed by in relative silence before the message that I had been waiting for appeared.
You have finished reading The Power of Nature.
You have learned the Elven language!
Due to your level of Nature Magic, this book provides no experience.
Clearing my throat, I tried it out. I didn’t actually know Elven, but I focused on speaking the language. “Okay, it’s done. How’d I do?”
Dariel’s eyes shot open wide again, and she grinned after I spoke. Answering in what sounded like a chorus of softly spoken words, her voice translated into english somewhere between my ears and my brain. “Very good, Jin. This will make things easier for you, I imagine?”
I nodded to her, and looked at the others, speaking normally now. “Okay, looks like it is a success. Let’s head on out of the forest so that I can open a gate to the library.” After saying so, Cynthia started to pout, causing me to smile wryly. “Cynthia, you can find books on dwarven smithing techniques, and Lilith will probably let you practice in one of Hell’s forges. You might even learn some special demon techniques.”
Once I brought up that possibility, her mood took a complete change. “Really? You think so?” Her eyes were as wide as her smile. “I don’t want to cause any trouble, but that would save me some time.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she’ll agree. And remember, if you ever want me to enchant one of your weapons or armor that you make, bring it to me. I’ll also make you special materials if you want.”
With this, if Cynthia produces several magical weapons and armor, we should all have a great deal of versatility in fights. Me, with my personal armory of staffs in the Artifact World, as well as my spells. And then Denise, with her assortment of magic arrows. I could also turn some of her equipment into infernal items if she wanted, so that we would each have a set of that.
“Don’t worry, I won’t forget. I’ll be bothering you for that a lot. W-when you’re not busy, of course…” After announcing it in such a straightforward manner, she became shy and tried to take it back.
“It’s alright. As long as I’m not in the middle of making a deal with some entity to create a contract, I should be free to help you.”
With that, the four of us descended to the floor below. I still need to make that flight spell! Having that thought in mind, I remembered how elementals cold control an element purely with their aura. When I thought back to my own aura exercises, it could be looked at as though the aura manifestation was solidified wind. That could explain why it had trouble holding things, and when I did internal cuts it was a case of the aura shifting to that element…
I’ll need to test that theory later. It was entirely possible that the talent I thought of as trash could be that key to elemental manipulation without spells. Of course, this only would, at best allow me to manipulate pre-existing elements. I wouldn’t be able to create fire or lightning from nothing without the use of a spell.
Once we were down on the forest floor, we quickly made our way to the nearest edge of the forest. Since we weren’t ready to continue our travels just yet, there was no point in grabbing Midnight. As such, we came out far away from the village. Dariel smiled to us, wearing the badge I had made her over a green and white dress. “I’ll head over first. There are things I would like to see as well.”
Saying so, she placed her hand over the badge and uttered the phrase, ‘Take me to the Library,’ before vanishing in a yellow flash. Following her example, I cast Hell’s Gate, opening up a pitch-black gate that linked to the library. Opening it up, I let Cynthia and Dariel
through first before going myself.
The library had already changed more than I had expected. There seemed to be no end to the rows of books spreading out in front of me, either to the left or the right. I had to assume that this place was built with the typical curvature of the world, because I could not see any of the walls aside from the one behind me.
About twenty feet to my left and right, there were wide seating areas, with various demons already engaged in reading books. Directly between the two areas, placed just a short distance beyond the summoning point for Dariel, was a marble pedestal. Seeing Dariel standing in front of it, I walked over to stand behind her.
The Dive: Birth of a Hero Page 32