by N. Heller
Her higher consciousness body seemed to be following a planned trajectory, she was flying in the one straight rigid direction. Her three attackers, including the man in the top hat, raced toward where she was going to land as if cats who had caught the scent of a fish.
"Damn it!" Lin Sanjiu cursed inwardly. She knew that this was the effect of a Special Item. After pulling down quite a number of books in succession, she finally stopped struggling. She was sure that she would lose quite a number of lives this time!
Just then, a book from the top tier fell due to the tremor. It fell on Lin Sanjiu. When she wore her current clothes in the department store, she used a belt to secure her shorts to her pelvis bone. The belt buckle was made of metal. When the book touched the belt buckle, it disappeared into countless white light and integrated itself into the metal buckle.
Chapter 254 - Exactly 4 Million Items
Lin Sanjiu would never have imagined that the books in Kisaragi Library were all Special Items. When the book dissolved into the dots of lights, she almost felt as if her non-existent heart had leaped out of her c.h.e.s.t. Every single item there—that was, exactly 4 million—was a Special Item!
She had to admit that her incredible luck often helped her out during the most crucial situations. When one of the bookshelves was damaged and nearly a hundred books fell out, there was a high chance that the man with the top hat and his team could discover this. However, due to the fact that a Special Item could not integrate into another Special Item, none of their enemies discovered anything even when there was a heap of books on the ground. Extraordinarily, it was Lin Sanjiu who was the first person to uncover this discovery.
Saving herself from death's door, she immediate converted the book into a card and read the description.
[The Answers to 100 Questions about Raising a Dog]
This is the 280,573rd book in Kisaragi Library Collections. Meeting the demands of people's love for their pets in today's society, the publishers have collated this reference guide to teach people how to raise a dog. It includes an introduction to the different dog breeds, prevention, and cure to common ailments, the available vaccines, and treatments, the temperaments and preference of each dog breed and other information about food and nutrition. This comprehensive book is packed with information which will guide you how to raise a dog in a safe, trouble-free, scientifically proven way. This is the first edition and there are many photos included.
PS: This book from Kisaragi Library can only be activated in Kisaragi Library. The special effect of each book can only be used once. Thereafter, the Special Item would become a normal book.
As for its special effects, why don't you try it out yourself! When you want to activate this book, open the book, the content on the page you read would become the effect of this particular book.
"Dog Raising Guidebook? " Lin Sanjiu had just finished scanning through the words on the card with her higher consciousness when she felt a powerful gust heading her way. Regardless of her doubts toward the effect of the book, this was her only chance now!
Lin Sanjiu gritted her teeth, raised her arm to protect her head, and took a direct blow. Luckily, it was only a physical attack. Lin Sanjiu's higher consciousness just vibrated a bit. She didn't receive any sort of effect from any Special Item. Before the person could withdraw the attack, Lin Sanjiu flipped open the book in her hand. She quickly scanned the page with her higher consciousness.
Her higher consciousness could only create images in her head, it could not improve her reading speed. Luckily, she had opened the book at a page with a picture.
"Rottweiler..." when that word appeared in her mind, Lin Sanjiu felt her body sinking rapidly to the ground in a strange manner. The effect of the feather duster was almost at its end. Her three attackers, who were waiting to ambush her, weren't about to miss this chance. They abruptly ramped up the frequency of their attacks, that rained down on the skinless person before them.
An oppressive, monstrous growl suddenly filled the hall, causing the ground to vibrate slightly. It was like a rumbling thunder. When Lin Sanjiu felt the ground on her back, everything went dark for a moment. A gigantic black shadow leaped over her body in a split second and pounced on the people behind her. Disturbed by the sudden huge creature which appeared from nowhere, all the attacks missed their target. Lin Sanjiu quickly grabbed the opportunity. She turned over and got up quickly, just in time to see a giant dog, taller than a man and with black fur, biting a man's leg viciously.
Lin Sanjiu did not step forward, instead, while the three men were still distracted, she drew a book from the bookshelf beside her which was still wobbling non-stop. Even though the dog looked scary, it was just a dog. It definitely couldn't last long under the attacks from the three men. Besides, the small description under the photo stated: "Stable temperament, energetic, protective but knows restraint, this breed is not prone to aggression."
"Please give me a powerful book!" Lin Sanjiu prayed silently, even though she didn't know what qualified as "powerful".
The three men could attack her any second now, so she didn't have time to carefully choose her book. However, when she pulled out the book, she immediately felt disappointed.
"300 English Phrases for Traveling".
"This is even more useless than that Dog Raising Guidebook!" Just when she was about to throw it aside, she suddenly felt the floor shake. She looked up and saw that the large black rottweiler had received a serious blow. When it crawled up from the ground, it grew faint and then disappeared.
She had no choice.
As the three people charged toward her without saying a word, Lin Sanjiu quelled her anxiety and quickly glanced across the page. The page happened to be about asking for directions. A tourist was saying to a policeman, "Excuse me, I think I am lost."
As her eyes shifted away from the last word on the page, the man's top hat had already blocked the light above Lin Sanjiu's head, casting a shadow filled with murderous intent...
However, the black shadow suddenly glided past her. Lin Sanjiu was stunned. The man with the top hat actually just walked past her. Next, the two other men, who were just in front of her, suddenly acted like there was something wrong with their eyes or as if they were hallucinating. One of them pointed to another bookshelf and shouted, "There!" The other acknowledged and they ran in the opposite direction.
The three men actually got "lost" within this narrow path!
Lin Sanjiu was delighted at the turn of events. She leaped and jumped into the air, swiftly charging toward the nearest man. While the man was stupidly looking at the turning corner, she strangled his neck with her arm. "Crack," the person's neck bone snapped.
The number on Lin Sanjiu's back increased to 16. When a person received a lethal injury, they would not die as they still had their lives, but they would lose their ability to fight for a period of time.
Lin Sanjiu threw the man with the broken neck on the ground while he was panting. She raced back to the siblings' location like a leopard. On her way, she grabbed another book. Using the effects of the book, she repelled the people surrounding the siblings. The person who flew the furthest was the person who was holding the feather duster. That person landed right in front of Siri's desk.
After Lin Sanjiu's quick explanation, Reno held his sister's hand and jumped down from the bookshelves. "We can use all these?" he asked, almost in disbelief, as he stared at the rows of books in front of him.
Lin Sanjiu nodded her head and immediately twisted her body to look to one side. The book's "lost" effect had already ended.
"What can you use?" the man with the top hat eyed them from one bookshelf away. He did not move and his curious voice came from under the hat. He had noticed Lin Sanjiu's strange behavior. Despite being in a very tight situation, she still browsed through a book. He had his suspicions. He stared at the book that Reno had and also drew a book from one of the bookshelves.
At that moment, there was a sudden cacophony of almost inhuman s
creams. It interrupted the man with the top hat just as he was about to open the book in his hands. The screams filled with agony stopped abruptly after they reverberated through the library. Lin Sanjiu scanned the area around them with her higher consciousness and realized that the person she had flung aside, the person who was holding the feather duster, had been shredded into a bloody mess. What was left of him lay in front of Siri's desk. He had been killed by some unknown perpetrator.
Chapter 255 - A Progress Report from Siri
The sneak attack by the team from the north wing had backfired. After losing one of their members for no apparent reason, the morale of the north wing team had visibly lowered. After all, it wasn't that easy to kill a posthuman with additional lives. Nobody knew how powerful that attack was since it managed to, in a single instance, use up all the lives that the victim had acc.u.mulated.
When they continued fighting with Lin Sanjiu and her team, they started losing focus and accuracy. Even though Reno risked getting slashed by one of their enemies from the back, he created an opportunity for his sister to gain more lives. Finally, the number on Rena's back rose to 4. With that, Top Hat's team had already lost one member and two lives.
Worried that a third party would take advantage of the current circ.u.mstances and afraid that his members might lose more lives, he lead the team back to the north wing when he noticed an opportunity while Lin Sanjiu and her team counter-attacked. Lin Sanjiu stopped the siblings from chasing after the group and only watched coldly as the enemy team left.
"Don't forget. There might be other teams out there," she reminded the kids. She gestured at Siri's work desk with her chin. "Our team is small, so let's not stupidly provide an opening for others to attack us."
The bloodied corpse was still lying in front of Siri's work desk. The desk was situated in an open area within the central hall. Anyone from any wing could see the work desk when they looked down, so, naturally, his teammates didn't plan to collect his body from that spot.
Hearing Lin Sanjiu's advice, Rena immediately peeped out from the gaps of the bookshelves. Even though she couldn't see a thing, she couldn't help feeling nervous.
"From the looks of it, we can't go out there for the meantime—" Before she finished her sentence, she heard a raised voice from a woman.
The woman's voice suddenly echoed through the hall. "My dear friends in the central hall, you aren't hurt badly, right? Don't worry. We, people from the south wing, detest such mindless massacres. We just helped you out a little. Don't worry about it."
The three of them exchanged glances and found themselves a little loss for words.
Detest such mindless massacres? It was evident that even the woman who said those words couldn't believe her own lies. That corpse which was full proof of a "mindless massacre" was still lying on the ground without a face. However, why did the people from the south wing help them?
Oddly, the members from the south wing didn't help when the fight first broke out. They only intercepted when the fight was getting heated and people were hurt, stepping in and killing a person like a thunderbolt.
"I don't think they are trying to help us," Lin Sanjiu said calmly, "they are just grabbing an opportunity to wear down the north team. The south wing team must have arrived earlier than the north wing team. They must have noticed that the other team had six members, so they were guarding against them."
This wasn't complicated, and the siblings immediately understood what she said and nodded in agreement. "What should we do now?" Rena asked.
Lin Sanjiu paused for a moment and her lips slowly curled. Before the kids could say anything, she suddenly raised her voice and replied. Her voice was cold but clear, and certainly no one would suspect that it was a voice from a skinless person. "Thanks for helping, but we could have handled it ourselves. I am just going to give everyone a heads up, we aren't afraid if you guys want to fight… We have already killed two people from the previous team."
The siblings were stunned. They gave it some thought and immediately got a sense of what she was doing. Strangely, the people from the north wing team remained silent, as if the top hat man, going along with her lie, concurred with his silence that there were only three members left in his team.
After the library fell into an awkward silence for a few seconds, a man with a nice, gentle voice suddenly laughed. His laughter rang out through the silence and was so clear that it was almost as if he was laughing beside each person.
"Alright, since you guys stopped fighting, we are going to look for Miss Siri and ask her some questions," Silvan's brisk voice came from the second floor of the east wing, "I hope you don't mind? After all, we came here last. We hadn't even finished reading the rules and Miss Siri had already chased us up here."
The library was silent. No one replied.
Silvan whistled once and said, "I take that as your approval." Following which, everyone heard the sound of soft discussion from the east wing. After that discussion, the flax-colored hair woman sprinted down the stairs noisily.
"Why didn't he come down here himself?" Rena had just frowned her brows when she heard a extremely sharp whistling sound as something like a lightning attack shot out from the west wing. It was directed at the flax-colored hair woman. She turned her head and looked at it in horror, but she didn't attempt to evade it. The next second, everyone understood Silvan's decision.
"Peach, you have to be a little more careful," Silvan's gentle voice c.a.r.e.s.sed the audience's ears. That lightning attack had been shattered by a sharp "arrow" which had been shot from the east wing. Everyone only noticed afterward that it was not an arrow, but a dart. They had never seen a dart being shot out at such velocity and intensity. The sonic boom created by the dart as it pierced through the air and the clash with the Special Item was so loud that it stunned everyone for a moment.
"Let's fight after we have searched through our own respective sections. We have plenty of time. There is no need to target Peach now." He used the same natural and intimate way of speaking. If Lin Sanjiu had not spoken to him before, she would probably believe that Peach was someone important to him.
The people from the west wing seemed shaken up by that attack. They did not take any action even after Peach ran back to the east wing. Everything seemed to return to the situation 30 minutes before. Lin Sanjiu and the siblings continued searching through the bookshelves with their guard up.
Unlike previously, they would pull out books with titles that seemed powerful and put them in a pile on the ground, just as a backup.
"Hey, do you think the other teams have also discovered that these books are Special Items?" Rena asked softly as she pointed at the books on the bookshelves. Reno shook his head and was just about to speak when Lin Sanjiu, who was not far from them, replied, "At the moment, I think only our team and probably the people from the north wing know about this… But, this isn't something we can hide. Eventually, they will all find out."
"I am just curious. Why don't the people from the library wings on the same side fight with each other? Are the east-west and north-south wings connected in some way? Could that be the reason why they're trying to attack each other?" Lin Sanjiu mumbled quietly as she analyzed the situation.
"This is very plausible." When the siblings thought about this, they heard Siri's monotonous, emotionless voice through the speaker. Her voice resonated through Kisaragi library:
"Progress report: as of now, one book has been found."
Chapter 256 - The Information Lin Sanjiu Uncovered
"That's impossible!" Reno almost couldn't control his volume, being the first to react to that information. "There are at least 800,000 books in each wing! Are you saying that they have finished searching through all those books so quickly?!"
"Who, where and which book…" Rena also became anxious. "Why didn't she announce that information?"
"Could this be pure luck?" Lin Sanjiu thought doubtfully.
The rules of Kisaragi Library's book-searching event
were very clear. It wasn't the sort of mystery where they had to understand the underlying logic to get the right answers. It was as direct as can be. The participants just had to look for the books. There wasn't any sort of wordplay or trickery.
Under this condition, even Nüwa would have to slowly search through the books manually. A person had to be a wizard if he could just point out the locations of the book with his mind.
"Are there really abilities that work like magic?" Lin Sanjiu sighed softly. She scanned through multiple books in front of her with her higher consciousness. The titles flashed past her eyes quickly. Some of the titles were very close to the target books but when she paused to take a closer look, she would find titles like "The Alluring Consort Escapes With a Baby" and other titles that were just slightly different. It was disappointing.
"I've heard of that before, in Twelve Worlds Centrum. However, that's like witchcraft and nobody knows if it is true," the teenage boy, who appeared more worried than before, answered Lin Sanjiu as he understood where she was coming from. "If there is someone with that ability, that person would be able to find the next book very quickly."
However, what happened next proved that the incident had nothing to do with witchcraft. For the next 28 hours, Siri did not make any further announcements that another book had been found.
Perhaps, everyone had been affected by the announcement that a book had been found, so no one from any of the four wings made any sound. There wasn't any other sort of disturbance. It was as if all the other teams, like Lin Sanjiu and the siblings, were fully engrossed in finding the target books.
After searching futilely for a long time, someone finally took action.