A bunch of people glared at Claud as he placed a bunch of books down on the mahogany table with a bit too much force, and he hid behind the impromptu wall of paper and words. The Vacuos County Library held great attraction to many scholars; known as the City of Learning, it hosted many, many books and stores that catered to books.

From what Lily and Claud had gathered from listening to the Vacuos city guards talk, it would seem that this city outstripped even the continent capital when it came to knowledge, which made their thirty-minute flight actually worth it. After all, Monsville was under the overall jurisdiction of Count Cava; in other words, Claud and Lily had travelled to another county just to read books.

If this city hadn’t lived up to its reputation, Claud had a feeling that he might have just pulled another Tot by scaring the lights out of everyone in the city. Absolute One gave its user an awesome, immense presence, which would be more than enough to make everyone else need a change of underwear.

“There’s not a lot of books on the Celestia Ruins,” Lily whispered, as she joined them with few books in hand. “Most of them simply talk about the items that fall out every so often too.”

“We won’t be needing those, I think,” Claud replied. “But I suppose information on the actual experience inside will be very scarce.”

“Because not many people can fly.” Lily smiled. “It’s great that you’re special!”

“Not that special,” Claud replied. “I heard that Count Nightfall can fly with an artefact. And besides, you need to be really familiar with pain and fear to actually pick up such a skill.”

“But thanks to that, we can get here in half an hour,” Lily replied. “Not many can do that.”

“Stop praising me. I’ll get conceited.” Claud chuckled. “Come on, let’s look through these books first and write down our observations.”

Lily pouted, but followed his instructions anyway. The sound of pages turning filled the air as Claud started to look through the many books, and the minutes began to drift by after he made his choice.

No one knew just how old the Celestia Ruins were. The Coloured Gods didn’t know. Nor did the Six Gods of Virtue. And in the Primordial Era, when humans wrested in the sky and carved out many, many gullies with a single swipe of their weapon, a set of floating sky ruins didn’t particularly stand out either.

The book Claud was reading had records of four floating cities powered by the mightiest of mortal folders, each of them an ennea-folder. With nine mana circuits embedded in them, these five folders had reached the limits of mortal might, and in their floating city, they were almost always invulnerable.

The author raised a fairly popular theory — the Celestia Ruins were one of those floating cities, or at least a piece of it. Those cities had been destroyed in the First Godsfall, although Claud couldn’t find much material on it either.

Claud placed the book down, since the rest of the books were mostly introductions about the items that fell from Celestia once in a while, which didn’t really make sense. The First Godsfall occurred six hundred thousand years ago. Even if the Celestia Ruins dropped something tangible and distinct once every year, there should have been nothing left by the Second Godsfall. And yet, things still fell out at irregular times.

It didn’t make sense to him, so he picked up another book and leafed through it.

“Just a catalogue,” Claud muttered, before setting it aside. He picked up another book, which simply detailed the many theories related to Celestia. They made a good read, but after looking through the same rehashed formula for the fifth time, Claud picked up another book instead.

“Psst!” Lily nudged him. “Look! I found something important! I think this book is the one we’re looking for! This bit in particular!”

Claud turned his attention to the book in her hand, which was display someone’s status. At first glance, it looked like any other status, but there were…quite a few different bits.

[Name: Lucien Lostfon (NPC)

Race:

Class:

Class Mastery:

Energy Rank: C?

EXP to next rank:

EXP stored:

Physical modifier: ??? ( * )

Energy modifier: ??? ( *)

HP: ?/? (??? * * )

Energy: ?/? (??? * * )

Active Skills: Foreseer’s Eye, Projectile Nullification, Prophecy, Intuitive Strike, Intuitive Guard, Intuitive Riposte

Passive Skills: Intuitive Impulse, Alarm

Tale????: ???

Comments: ]

“What in the name of the Moons is this supposed to be?” Claud furrowed his brows. The status screen of this person, who had to be related with Caroline, was showing things he had never seen before.

“That’s a really good question,” Lily replied. “This seems to be a mutated status screen. Did the Goddess of Learning try to do something inside the Celestia Ruins?”

She pointed at the title of the picture and narrated it out loud. “This status takes the place of our regular status when we enter the Celestia Ruins.”

“The author entered the ruins, then,” said Claud. “This seems like what we need. Next page?”

“Alright!”

The next few pages detailed the findings of the author and his team. At first glance, the Celestia Ruins were actually a huge city, a city with many automatons in huge, huge buildings. These automatons would build odd gadgets. Some of these gadgets could be used with mana, while others just stayed silent. After they were done, those gadgets would be shifted to an ever-growing pile of metal and other things, and sometimes, some of those things would roll off the edge and fall through the sky.

This sounded miraculous enough, and yet, there was more.

The author was of the opinion that the Celestia Ruins belonged in a different world — literally. When one entered a certain area around the Celestia Ruins, the sky and land would change. The skies that everyone was used to would change to a vast, starry sky, while far below them was a huge globe. To make things worse, the ruins themselves would physically change every century or so; apparently, the Celestia Ruins used to be a physical city on an alien world, bounded only by the physical constraints of the ruins themselves.

To get out of the unfamiliar sky, one just needed to put enough distance from the Celestia Ruins, and the old sky and land would return.

“No mentions of any traps, though.” Claud tutted. “I’m not sure what to prepare.”

They flipped through the next few pages, which detailed their explorations as they trekked through the ruins. Nothing dangerous happened, apparently, and the more he read, the more he felt that this was just a treasure trove for people who knew how to fly.

“Still, it’s quite luck-based, though.” Lily folded her arms. “There’s a huge pile of artefacts that may or may not be useful.”

“Yeah.” Claud looked at the specimens closely. “Can’t tell much from here. But if the place doesn’t have any danger, the danger must stem from another source.”

“Another source?” Lily asked.

“Humans,” Claud replied. “People are capable of great good and great evil. In times of danger, they can band together to form bonds that transcend friendship. In times of great gain, they can forsake their closest friends for profit and hope.”

“I won’t do that,” said Lily. “We live and die together.”

Claud looked at her. “In the past, I wouldn’t be happy to say that last bit, but that’s before I met you.”

“Claud…”

He held her hand. “But I would like to make a correction. We will not die together. No. We will not die. We’ll go in there, paranoia at full blast, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. It won’t be dignified. We won’t feel like explorers. But we’ll be safe.”

Lily nodded. “I’ll follow your every word.”

“Don’t do that,” said Claud. “I might be controlled or something, or I might be inattentive. You have to look out for yourself, see? Look for things I might not catch. I’m human. I make mistakes all the time. Did you forget about the time I bashed through that wall?”

“…Maybe that isn’t a mistake, though,” said Lily.

“Hmm?”

“They couldn’t find you, but I was by your side.” Lily smiled. “They might have used me to find you instead. Therefore, now that I think about it, taking me and leaving the place was the best plan.”

“You tickled me for an hour unjustly, then.”

“You can tickle me back anytime,” Lily replied. “But we should finish this book first. Do you think we can buy a copy of it? I think it’ll be useful to have around there.”

“We should,” Claud replied. “This is a snapshot of the Celestia Ruins then. If there’s any changes, we’ll have a handy reference point at hand. The other books…we might as well look through them, though. Might be useful.”

Lily fiddled with his fingers and nodded. “But can we read together?”

“What are you, a child?” Claud rolled his eyes. “Fine, let’s read together.”