Chapter 196 - The Library’s 30th Floor

A month had passed since the students had arrived at the Final Plaza. The administrator never set a time limit on the length of their stay.

Of course, the students were limited by the amount of food they had packed in their spatial rings, but most of the Academies had the students pack enough food to last themselves 2-3 months while inside the trials.

The Urrugdrasil Trials were almost random and sometimes the trials could take a week at the shortest and 3 months at the longest.

The Academy leaders had all decided to stay inside the Last Plaza for as long as possible. This was good news for Cecil since in the past month; he was only able to finish reading all the historic records on the 1st floor.

Cecil learned many things about the races of Alterna. Their history was very intriguing and it enriched his brain. He could proudly say that he had an in depth knowledge regarding all the history behind every race on Alterna. This included some of the races that were extinct from the present era.

Cecil hadn't started reading any of the Runic Array books on the 2nd floor yet, but since they were going to stay for another month, Cecil naturally took advantage of this extra time. He quickly went to the library's 2nd floor and began reading the knowledge of the Ancient Runic Arrays.

The runic arrays were also essential in creating the magi-tech that Cecil was so fond of. He also wanted to upgrade the runic array on some of his weapons if he found better versions of it in the books.

With his Mana Eyes, he might even be able to upgrade some of the Ancient Arrays.

While Cecil was busy with his reading, Lucia and the rest were cultivating inside the healing ward's building. It turned out the building wasn't just for the student to rest and recuperate, but it was actually a cultivation building.

The ambient mana inside the building was exponentially higher than what was outside of it. It took a while for anyone to realize this because they were too busy exploring the other areas. It was only when Velicia, who was by far the most injured person at the time, had kept staying inside the building.

She was also despondent over the loss of her older brother. When she finally got over her sadness and resolved herself to improve, she decided to shut herself inside and cultivate her mana stage.

After a month, she finally came out and to everyone's surprise; she had reached the Mana Core stage! She was already a stage higher than both Cecil and Lucia!

Originally, the academy leaders wanted to leave the trial grounds after a month had passed, but they revised their plans knowing that they could speed up their cultivation while inside the trial grounds.

Everyone began to frantically cultivate after they found out the benefits of the healing ward which was now dubbed as the cultivation building.

Cecil didn't care about that however. He was the only student who still stepped out of the building and head towards the library.

The library that was full of people in the last month had become barren. Only Cecil was there in the quiet stillness of the library. It suited him perfectly since now he could concentrate on his reading.

He opened a book called Advanced Studies of Runes. Written inside were all sorts of different runes that were new to him. He quickly jotted down all the new knowledge into his Magic Tome.

From the new runes he found, he was actually not able to find a single one of them that needed improving! The ancient runes were all in their most optimal and perfect states and it seems that present day runes were only the degraded versions of the ancient runes.

"No wonder!"

Cecil eagerly began to learn. Not long after he began to experiment with the runes and found a rune combination that cooled down the object it was inscribed on. Cecil was ecstatic, but he still felt that it wasn't enough.

He needed to find more runes to supplement the combination and form a runic array. This way he could create a perpetual cooling array, but he couldn't find any runes that could supplement his combination.

Cecil could only stop his experiments and continue reading. It didn't take long for him to finish scrutinizing all that was written inside the book, he used his hyper-sensitivity to read the book with lightning speed.

He quickly tossed the book over to a vine and grabbed another book that a vine had brought over to him.

His peculiar way of reading was really mind-boggling. It looked like he was only flipping through the pages and not reading anything. It was no wonder the Old Library Sage back at Arks Academy's Library flipped out when he saw Cecil's way of reading.

Before when there were still other students inside the library, Cecil didn't dare to use Hyper-sensitivity. He didn't want to attract any attention to himself, but since no one was around anymore, Cecil could do as he pleased.

"I'll finish up the 2nd floor in a week then I'll go over to the magi-tech building and experiment on the runes and try and make one of those Ancient MIDs."

Cecil smirked then he voiced his thoughts out loud, "The administrator said that we can't take anything out of the building, but he didn't say that we weren't allowed to create something and bring it back with us...right?"

He shrugged and thought it was worth a try. It was better than not doing anything. If he was indeed able to make the ancient MID using the materials present inside the Magi-tech building and bring it out with him...that'd be super!

The extinct materials were in abundance inside the magi-tech building, that treasure load of materials were within reach, but he couldn't even bring it out! Now that he found a plausible way, he just had to try it out no matter what!

Cecil quickened his reading speed and notes taking. A week passed and just like he planned, he was able to successfully finish reading and copying all the books on the 2nd floor within a week.

Just before he decided to head back to the cultivation building, he still had one more place to visit.

"Let's head up to the 30th level."

During his time while inside the library, Cecil had checked every level of the library before reading over the books on the 2nd floor.

When he got to the 30th floor, he was surprised to find another similar gap in the door leading to the 30th floor that was identical to the one he found in the cultivation building's moving platforms.

He hadn't opened up the door yet because there were still many other students inside the library during that time. Cecil didn't want to attract any unneeded attention so he had planned to secretly open the 30th floor, but thanks to the students now cultivating in the center building, he could now open the door at ease.

"Let's see what's behind door number 30 shall we?"

Cecil pulled out Providence and stabbed it into the door's gap. Nothing happened, but when he twisted the sword a little in order to pull it out and try again, the door's mechanism seemed to have activated. He was startled and let go of the Providence, but then the sword twisted a full 360 degrees clockwise twice and 4 times counter clockwise by itself. Then a large clunk was heard and the door slowly opened itself.

Behind the door was a singular podium with a book enshrined on top of it. It looked pretty ancient with the cover and bindings being all worn down.

Cecil walked over to the podium and grabbed ahold of the book. Just as his hands touched the book, a dark green colored mana rose from the book and began rushing into Cecil's body.

"Ahhhh...not again."

Once again, Cecil's consciousness was cut and he collapsed right in front of the podium with the book in hand. The door to the 30th floor slammed itself close and not long after, a wizened old elf slowly materialized inside of the room.

The elderly male elf lowered his eyes onto the collapsed boy and smiled gently. "You were not a part of this old one's vision...have the Gods granted us mercy and sent your people to us?"

The elderly elf rubbed his long white beard and extended a hand. He began to gently caress Cecil's hair. "Receive my Ultimate Blessing young one..."

The elf's hand that was stroking Cecil's hair began to glow with a rainbow light and the light started to seep into his body. A cocoon of rainbow light surrounded Cecil and once he saw this, the elderly elf stood up and smiled in satisfaction.

"I leave the future to you young ones..."

The old elf then disappeared in a flash of dissipating light particles.

******

When Cecil woke up, he was surrounded by white threads. He panicked a bit, but when he pushed away at the threads, they immediately collapsed away easily. He emerged from the cocoon and he quickly stood up.

"..." Cecil could only sigh in frustration. He didn't know what happened to him or why he was suddenly inside of a cocoon. After fainting, he completely lost control of his surroundings. He felt oddly comfortable though while in his sleep, but waking up inside of a cocoon was not something he wanted to experience ever again.

"Whatever...let's take a look at the...book?"

Cecil finally noticed that the book he was supposedly holding tightly on to was nowhere to be found. Just as he was about to look for it, he suddenly felt a piercing headache.

"AH??"

He felt like a boat load of information was being forcibly squeezed into his brain. Cecil collapsed while grasping his head in pain. The pain came so suddenly, but it was fortunate that it quickly vanished after only 5 seconds. To Cecil however, those 5 seconds felt like an eternity.

When the pain subsided, Cecil was surprised to find some new information inside of his brain.

"World Tree's Final Blessing?" He mumbled, but then in the next instant he exploded in fury. "What blessing, goddammit! What kinda blessing puts me through such agony?! It's a curse! A curse I tell you!!!"

While yelling to no one in particular, Cecil checked up on the 'blessing' he had received. "Healing Arts? Woah!"

Cecil was surprised to find that the book that he had 'lost' was actually floating inside his brain. With a mere thought, a flash of green appeared in front of him and the old book materialized in his hands.

When he opened up the book, the boy discovered many lost and ancient healing magic spells inside. The unique thing about these healing spells was that they needed use light elemental mana, but nature mana instead.

"There's even a way to cultivate nature mana!"