After his meal, Alz took apart the bandages on his right hand replaced them using the herbs he had gathered earlier.

He started to feel drowsy while tying the bandages and proceeded back into the room. He then put his equipment aside and lay down on the floor, drifting off to dreamland.

About six hours later, Alz woke up from feeling refreshed. His stomach was full, his throat wasn’t burning, and his wound was freshly bandaged. His legs were also almost back to prime condition and he was finally in a decent state for the first time in a long while.

“It is getting weaker”. Alz thought after closing his mind and feeling the pain in his head.

The stinging pain in his head was alleviating with the passage of time, a good sign as it meant that it wold probably soon fade away entirely.

He looked at the rows of bookshelves in front of him and revealed a look of hesitation, but he quickly turned his eyes away,

Since he knew now that the pain was getting better, there was little meaning risking a relapse by reading now as he wasn’t planning on leaving this place in the near future.

He had initially planned on staying here only until he fully recovered but things were different now, there was also no strong compelling reason for him to rush back to the central village.

Alz started thinking of what to do as he sat, as there was nothing pressing he had to do now.

After a fair bit of thinking, he stood up and went before the shelf he gathered wood from and cut out two rectangular pieces of wood with larger bases and several long thin pieces of wood.

He looked at the wood with a serious expression and started carving the wood with his dagger. A few minutes later, he looked down at the objects below with a satisfied expression and carried them over to his cooking area.

These were naturally the skewers and skewer stand he regretted not having earlier, since he had free time now he decided to make them before he forgot again.

He organised the things he needed in his head and then set out to gather them in the area. Now that his legs recovered, and his body no longer felt weak, he had the confidence to escape even if anything happened.

Day by day, time flew by as Alz quickly got used to living in the underground archives.

Two weeks later,

Alz was carrying a wolf corpse over his shoulder as he walked back into the underground passageway. The bandages on his right arm were nowhere to be seen, replaced by a long thin scar that stretched across his arm.

When he arrived, he laid down the corpse along the passageway and proceeded to empty his bag which was full of shoddily made water containers.

These containers were made simply by tying a vine around a wolf skin with a small piece of wood used as a lid, an exceedingly primitive design even by the standards of elves, but it served its purpose which was all that mattered.

[I think this every time but water sure is heavy.]

He muttered as he looked down at the bags of water he took out.

He then stretched awhile and looked into the room at the back, his eyes lit with determination.

“Its about time” he inwardly thought as he started to proceed towards the room. The stinging pain in his head had disappeared completely about a week ago, but he decided to wait another week just in case, as the hellish experience each headache episode caused was still fresh in his mind.

He stopped by the entrance of the room to take several deep breaths before entering. He walked back to that familiar bookshelf and reached out to grab a book.

As he reached out, his hand was visibly trembling, partly due to the trauma of his episodes and partly due to his sheer anticipation as he quickly took a book off the shelf.

The book he held was titled “Money in Society”. The meanings of the words appeared in his head each time he read a word as Alz slowly flipped through the pages of the book.

About an hour later, Alz gently closed the book he held in his hands, and carefully placed it back onto the shelf.

This first read had been an eye-opening experience to him as a currency system was not used in his tribe and he was highly intrigued by many things mentioned in the book but there were many things he could not understand in the book just with knowledge on the language.

He was unable to understand many of the concepts in his book but there were several things he learnt from the book which shocked him to no end.

This included the scale of the population of this ancient civilisation. The book mentioned of settlements called countries which had population on the scales of millions, some even having billions, a scale he could not have even imagined in his wildest dreams.

He remembered reading back about the prime days of the Calla tribe where they had more than 2000 elves, yet it couldn’t even begin to compare to the smallest of the countries that existed in the past and these countries even numbered more than the tribes their race had in total. Furthermore, all these countries were populated only by one race, a race that was called ‘human’.

His eyes sparkled like small diamonds, as he swept the room with a fiery gaze, like the gaze of a pirate who had a large mountain gold before him.

He grabbed several more books off the shelf but saw they were all books relating to economics, which made him recall the inscriptions on the sides of the shelves. He quickly walked over to the side of the shelf and went to read it.

“B-12 Economics” was carved on the side of shelf.

Alz immediately walked over to the shelf beside it and removed the protective coating, revealing the carving on the side of the shelf which read “B-11 Economics”.

Alz then went on to check the shelf on the other side of the first shelf and saw that the inscriptions read “B-13 Geography”.

He looked at this in thought and slowly walked over to the first shelf on the left in the room, piercing through the protective coating. This time, the shelf read “A-01 Archive Information”.

It was only now that he had realised the oddity of this shelf. There were only three rows out of the six found on these bookshelves that contained books and there was even some space leftover on the right side of the second row.

Alz immediately reached for the top leftmost book on the shelf. The cover read “Archive Catalog”, bringing a smile to Alz’s face when he saw this as he quickly begun to flip through it.

Alz was surprised to learn that this was only one of many archives, constructed because the human race was facing an ‘uncertain future’. He was shocked to find out that there was something capable of threatening a race of that scale but did not think too much about it as it was something from the ancient past.

As he filled through the pages, his attention quickly focused when he flipped to a page with a familiar picture on it.

“Total number of written titles: 20,384.” was written at the top of the page and below, there was a floor plan which indicated the labels of every shelf in the room.

In the following pages, the book then went on to describe the contents on each of the shelves and stated that there would be more in-depth coverage of the books contained within each shelf in the subsequent 26 books.

Alz placed the book on the floor and reach out for the book right beside titled, “Section A Glossary” and ran through it quickly, seeing that it not only stated the titles within each of the shelves like in the first book, it was also arranged in alphabetical order and also contained a description on each title, containing various details on the origin and overview of contents of each book.

He then peered to look at the next book’s cover from the shelf and saw that it was titled “Section B Glossary”, but he did not take this book down as he carefully placed the “Section A Glossary” book back on the shelf and started walking around the archives with the catalog in hand.

Thus, Alz’s literature journey begun as he dove into the sea of books before him, browsing through all sorts of books in these underground archives and making many discoveries as he slowly delved deeper into the history of the world.

Meanwhile, about a month later in Alvein, The Capital of Elves.

A structure stood at the heart of the capital, towering above all other buildings around. However, the elves living in the capital did not feel an air of oppression when they looked at the building, rather, deep respect and gratitude reflected naturally in the occasional gazes which landed on the building.

This building was the core of their city, the building where all the important decisions were made, the building which always watched over and protected the members of their race, the Elven Palace.

In the largest room of the building, a large decorated hall, there was a group of elves standing in two orderly rows by the side, leaving a large space in the middle. These elves differed in appearance, gender and age but many of them had one thing in common, their eyes.

That is not to say that their eyes were all of the same colour and shape, no, in fact, there were more different shades in their eyes and the colours of the rainbow, and their shapes also varied largely.

Rather, the similarity lay in their gaze, many of them had deep gazes which appeared as if they could see through lies and deceit, gazes which seemed like they could peer directly into the souls of weaker willed individuals.

Yet these elves were all facing the same direction with their heads slightly lowered, but there was nothing forced about this scene, and none of them showed any signs of dissatisfaction, only genuine respect from the bottom of the hearts.

In the direction they faced, there was an exquisitely designed chair rooted to the ground, complete with two armrests by the side. One look was enough to tell that a lot of thought was put into its construction and was extremely pleasing to the eye.

Above the chair, a slender figure sat with her legs crossed as her gaze overlooked the entire hall. She had smooth hair which shined in a beautiful silver lustre with a pair of deep blue eyes. Her facial features were extremely exquisite, and her smile would make gems lose their lustre, possessing a beauty which was in no way inferior to Tia and Layla from the Calla tribe.

However, there was a deep crease in the middle of her forehead, the only blemish on her face, an inevitable product from the role she played. Despite her gentle appearance, a regal air overflowed from her as she silently gazed at the members within the hall with a kind smile on her face.

She was the Queen of Elves, the one who currently stood above all in this capital, the current leader of their race.

They were currently having one of their regular court sessions and were done with most of the matters, soon approaching the conclusion of the session.

“Are there any other issues to report?” The Queen’s melodic voice broke the silence, softly echoing across the hall and resounding clearly in the ears of everyone present.

Just then, one of the elves walked up from the side and reported, “Your Majesty, The Calla tribe just sent in a report of a wolf attack on one of their villages.”

As she heard this, the Queen’s eyebrows slightly furrowed and her smile dissapeared, her eyes were also tinted with worry and grief as she asked, “How were the damages? Do they require any aid?”

The elf swiftly replied, “According to their report, they lost one of their villages and only three elves survived from that village. They did not say that they required any aid though, so they should able to take care of it.”

The Queen’s expression relaxed slightly as she heard this, but she soon remembered something and turned to a woman who stood close to the front and asked, “Minister, As I recall, the time for the tribes to send in their tributes is approaching?”

The woman, noticing the queen’s gaze took a small step forward and replied, “It is as your majesty says, they will have to send in their people within the next seven years in accordance to the covenant.”

The Queen thought for a moment before announcing, “Send two squads over to check out the situation of the Calla tribe and inform that they only need to send in half the number of people this time.”

The minister smiled as she heard this and replied immediately, “Yes, your majesty.” before stepping back in place.

The man who had moved forward to report the matter also returned to his place and the court dismissed.