Chapter 11

Crimson felt his jaw drop. The library he had walked into was properly MASSIVE. The whole room was cylindrical in shape with book shelves lining the walls and even more shelves in the center of the room. The library had three floors and the whole thing was shaped like an upside down multilayered cake. The bottom floor had shelves running parallel to the entrance each reaching a good ten feet into the air. There were occasional foot stools all along those shelves for ease of access on the upper floors.

The wall on the bottom floor had shelves lining it all the way to the railing that circled the second floor. Those book cases were 20 feet tall; double the height of the ones in the center. There were sliding ladders attached to rails on all those book cases to allow access to the upper shelves for everyone who wasn’t a giant.

There was a staircase that followed the curvature of the room on the far side of the bottom floor. Crimson immediately crossed the room to the staircase and began carefully making his way up them. Stairs will be my eternal enemy!! Banzai!

The second floor was arranged in an interesting manner. The wall was forty feet from the balcony overlooking the first floor and it went another 20 feet into the air. In between the wall and the railing were a bunch of tables for reading and working. There was another staircase on the other side just like the one leading to the second floor.

Crimson walked around the circumference of the balcony overlooking the first floor and made it to the staircase leading to the third and highest floor. He, with the utmost caution and timidity, made his way up the third staircase.

Here’s a question: when you first enter a library, where do you go? Do you go to the front desk and ask where the book you are looking for is? Do you start perusing the nearby books? Do you wander the shelves aimlessly like a child looking for their parent? Well, Crimson will do none of those things.

Crimson is the type of guy who is drawn to secrets and mysterious things, and where do you find mysterious things? In the back, in the most inconvenient place! Well, occasionally it’ll be in the front right next to you or randomly placed in the middle, but most often is in the back!

He walked around the third floor and slid a ladder to the spot directly opposite the staircase and slowly began to climb it; it was his first time climbing a ladder after all. It shifted a little as he climbed it but he wasn’t nervous. It pays to be careful, but too much caution is cowardice and the ladder was securely attached to its sliding rail. Worst case scenario is that he let’s himself fall, second worst scenario is the ladder sliding away from where he wanted it. Neither of those were a real problem.

Bingo! The best books are always in the back!

There were a bunch of very old books on the shelf but a pair of old and worn tomes stood out more than the rest of the books on the shelf. Crimson pulled one of them into his arms, then made his way back down the ladder. He walked over to a nearby table and sat down.

The book he grabbed was very interesting. The cover had a single complex set of lines intertwining together to form something similar to a Celtic knot. For some reason Crimson was able to understand that it meant ‘knowledge of writing’ or something like that; it wasn’t a precise translation.

Now that I think about it…I haven’t been speaking English the entire time I’ve been in this world, and since I’m able to read this book…I guess reading was included in my knowledge of the language.

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Crimson had studied the book for quite a while. It didn’t really share any stories, tell him anything about the world he was in, or give him magical powers, but studying all the interesting runes was engaging enough for him. He sat back and stretched considering everything he 'learned’ from the book. Some of the runes were complex, some were simple, some combined together to create a new concept, and some represented sounds or emotions instead of physical things. Bottom line: the writing in this world was a Level 10000 boss and he was only Level 1 cannon fodder before it.

He suddenly felt a hand touch his shoulder and jumped as a question rang out behind him: “What are you doing here?”