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Ch. 5 - The Door and The Plant

  Moving on, Liza thought of the next natural step in her grand plan: A door.

  Now, how she was supposed to make a door when she wasn't technically capable of really making anything, at least not from scratch, was a mystery.

  It couldn't be as simple as simply puncturing a whole in the wall, could it?

  ...

  Looking at the middle of the wall opposite to the tables - the western wall - Liza mustered up her will and magica and focused it on a small point, in the exact middle of the wall. In her mind, she demanded;

  'Open sesame! (Whatever that means...)'

  The Librarian had to admit, she did this kind of more as a joke than anything else, there was only so much entertainment one could find in a barren library, after all. Not in her wildest dreams did Liza think this tomfoolery would actually work.

  But... it did!

  Starting from the point, a small hole was created, no bigger than a nickle, whatever that was, and no sooner had it appeared than the now familiar blue screen pinged into existance. It didn't actually make any sound, but the point still stands.

  [Do you want to create a Door?]

  [Yes/No]

  'Yes!'

  As Liza gleefully watched, the little hole turned into a larger, slightly square-shaped hole, and finally into a door opening. Before she could get a glimpse of the outside world, however, an unnasuming wooden door, made from the same kind of wood as the tables and chairs, popped into existence upon hinges made from the same concrete-like material as the walls, floor and ceiling.

  Liza approached the door, and held her breath. Not really, but that didn't matter to her.

  Reaching out to the door with her mind, she willed it to open...

  Slowly, with a creak that made the door sound much older than it actually was, the door opened, and revealed a poorly lit, dirt tunnel.

  Liza held her immaterial breath, and... flied out the door and into the tunnel, immediately turning back and closing the door.

  'What... What was that!?'

  The moment the airborne mind had left the safety of the library, she felt a deep and immediate sense of unease rattle through her. It wasn't a physical force, and admittedly, it wasn't all that strong, but to a being that was new to the world and had only felt the naturally filtered and purified magica of her own little glorified book-shack, it was a big experience.

  She'd also sensed her will depleting, but that was nothing compared to the pure alienness she felt when the naturally occuring magica in the tunnel wafter through her. She was a mind for Pete's sake! She didn't have any defences!

  Gathering her courage, Liza opened the door for a second time, a fire burning in her soul.

  This needed to be studied! This needed to be UNDERSTOOD!

  Willing the door open, she ventured out yet again. This time when the more chaotic and disorderly magica of the tunnel hit her, she expected it, moving past the entrance of the library and into the tunnel itself.

  If the magica of her Hall was a gently poised breese-fairy-goddess of purity and order, the magica of the tunnel was a harrowing wind mixed with more, denser harrowing winds that were as loud as the wind on the top of a mountain, yet also, strangely, silent as the dead.

  It was strange - it felt like it was mixed, and Liza couldn't tell which was the main one, the turbulent, earthy one or the darker, more silent yet haunting one.

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  Or perhaps they were one, complex magica... thing? She couldn't tell.

  Getting an idea, she re-entered her room and charged up on Stamina, revelling in the purity and sophistication of the library's own magica ambience before leaving and activating her Research skill.

  Research 1: The Librarian must be highly adept at uncovering the truth within all the subjects they research. It is The Librarians duty to fill the books within their library with their accumulated knowledge to grow a library worthy of the Visitor.

  '... Time to become 'worthy of the Visitor', I guess!'

  The moment she activated the skill, a wave of white magica pulced from her mind and flowed through the tunnel, unobstructed by the walls around her. Everything it touched gained a white, nearly see-through film and outline.

  Well, the tunnel wall itself didn't have an outline, that Liza could see, anyway, because it was one, seamless entity without any kind of edge to outline. Liza wondered if the walls, floor and ceiling of her library Hall would have outlines, but stowed that thought away for later.

  The young Librarian marvelled at the sight before her, intuitively understanding what the purpose of the outlines and film was.

  The outline, spesifically its color, signified what type of material it was. Magica-based items would be blue, organic materials like the plants in front of her was some shade of green, and so on. Something interesting she also somehow just knew, was that the depth of the color spoke of how potent the thing was. The budding Genius wasn't entirely sure what 'potent' indicated, but she was sure she'd figure ut out as she went along. The last thing she could gleam was the reason behind the film. Essentially, it's purpose was to, blessedly, protect her from being bombarded with information about everything in her viscinity whenever she activated the skill, and to make it so that she only uncovered and studied one thing at a time. Apparently, it was an innate aspect of the skill to try to facilliatte the best learning enviroment for her mind that it possibly could, though she wondered what that entailed.

  Liza aknowledged that she did feel more 'in the zone' since she activated it. Perhaps it had somehting to do with that?

  Anyhoops.

  Checking her screen to see how much magica had been gobbled up, she was pleased to see that activating the skill was... absolutely free! Huzzah! That the skill was free to use was insane - even she, freshly spawned as she was, recognized that.

  Maybe the universe didn't have it out for her after all...

  Then she checked her stamina stat and saw it had dropped a point after only being outside for a few seconds, and retracted her hope.

  Randomly selecting the nearest plant for experimentation, Liza mentally gasped when the veil covering the plant with the pale green outline dropped, and a whole slew of information entered her mind.

  The information she recieved was truly random - miscelanneous words that held no meaning to her without their context. She tried making sense of it, but it was a whole torrent, a veritable river of information she absorbed so fast, she couldn't even begin to digest, driving her to a point of mental confusion.

  Desperate for somethign that could help make sense of the things that now filled her mind, Liza opened the blue box and used the little free mental capacity she had to sweep over her skills, fortunately finding one that seemed useful.

  Knowledge Distillation 1: The Librarian must prioritize purity of truth in all aspects of librarianship. Purify and filter information until you are left with knowledge.

  'Purify and filter. Great,' She whispered soundlessly, and activated the skill, feeling immediate relief as a whormwhole-live vortex popped into existence in her mind, drawing in all the random bits of information she'd ingested, filtering it and organizing it so that each word was placed in context with the words around it.

  On the other side, came sentences, now well organized pieces of knowledge ready for the books.

  

  < A plant of the Silent Wafters branch in the Verillion family, a common type of foliage commonly found in the intersection between the first and the second layers of the Dungeon meet, preffering this region's particular mix of naturally occouring Earth magica and the more dense Death magica over other regions.>

  

  The description went on for a few more lines, stopping abruptly in a middle of a sentence that had something to do with it's general use and history, giving her the impression that things regarding the past and such was still a little outside her purview at her low level.

  It only made sense, she reckoned - she was still only level one, after all.

  Seperated from the previous text was knowledge pertaining to the plant she chose in particular.

  

  

  

  She shifted her focus between the new knowledge she'd attained and the small, glowing plant before her, contentedness radiating from her mind.

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