Chapter 553: Chapter 546: The shadows of doubt

Silence engulfed the library as the echo of the void faded. The mana in the air started to curl, under some unseen influence, it formed long chains, curses aplenty. There were multiple ways to avoid one’s mana being encroached onto by such a passive curse, be it burning the mana to do something else or repelling it from one’s body, but Sofia did none of that.

Open your soul to curses dire, the voice said.

Cinthia seemed to have reached the same conclusion, and was cautiously monitoring her chat and health as the curses slowly entered her mana circuit.

“I don’t feel any different. You?” Sofia asked in a hushed voice, taking a few steps forward between the two tall bookshelves.

“Not different at all,” Cinthia confirmed, also speaking softly, “I would say it is dormant, but I have no idea. The chat’s also gone mostly quiet already, they’re just watching now, fourteen of them.”

“Let’s give them a good spectacle, then,” Sofia continued, and, thinking they might be on a timer, she started sharing her first impressions, “The library’s rules are key here. Proving ourselves worthy of the code can mean a few things but I think, whether it’s a code like an encoded thing we have to decipher, or a code of conduct we have to abide by, but either way I tend to think the rules and the code are one and the same.”

“Jumping to conclusion quite fast,” Cinthia commented, “but that might be what we need right now. ‘Open your soul to curses dire, and the library’s rules acquire’ definitely sound like a single sentence, so the two might be related. That might be why the curse is doing nothing right now. Maybe it only acts up if we break the rules?” she suggested.

“Good guess. The beyond the flames part makes me wonder if we’re supposed to burn the place down, but let’s not be rash, could very well be about the candles. And that’s not all, here’s what I had on the scroll before summoning you: Here lurks the Candle-meistre. The writing is on the wall, will your obstacles go up in flames? Does the flame of your ambition yet burn hot enough?” Sofia recited from memory.

“This definitely does sound like we should be burning the books to have a look at the walls behind,” Cinthia quickly said, “but I wouldn’t feel safe doing that before we know what the curse does.”

Sofia stopped to think for a bit, before spinning on, her heels to face Cinthia, “Don’t move for now, this is my trial so I should take most of the risks, not many things we can do here so let’s try things out. This is a library so if we’re trying to learn the rules, there are a few obvious ones. Be ready to defend yourself, just in case.”

Cinthia answered with a confident nod.

Alright.

Sofia took a deep breath.

“HELLO! IS ANYONE HERE?!!!” she yelled.

“W- what are you doing?!” Cinthia asked in a hushed voice, a slight panic visible on her face.

“No reaction from the curse… In most libraries, you have to be careful not to make too much noise so as to not disturb other readers. That’s one of the most basic of basic rules, but if the curse is supposed to activate for rule-breaking, then this isn’t one.”

“I see…”

“Well, I’ll be trying a few other things,” Sofia announced as she walked closer to the left side shelves, her eyes gliding over the title of the many leather-bound tomes. They did not all have names on the spine, but most did, and the vast majority of those were in ancient human. “Can’t Identify them for some reason,” she noted out loud.

As far as Sofia could tell, these books seemed to all be about plants.

Common medicinal flowers of the south.

Guide on Bloodsapper harvest.

Mundane crop rotation advanced analysis.

Alith would love it here.

Her eyes stopped on a particular book with a familiar subject.

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The verdant scourge from space: Dimmerions.

With an extended hand, Sofia grabbed that book. The curse was spread evenly inside of her by now, and she felt it vibrate as her fingers touched the book, but that was the entire extent of it, she pulled the book out of the shelf, and the curse soon became dormant again.

“Something happened when I touched the book,” she informed Cinthia, “the curse reacted for a second, but it calmed down just as fast once I pulled the book out.”

Cinthia went to grab a random book, “I felt that too. No obvious effect so far.”

Sofia nodded and opened her book, she was curious, the original unstoppable dimmerion came from space? Maybe one of the nearby planets out there is just covered in dimmerions? Our planet was the only green one, though.

Sofia’s eyes read the book’s introduction slowly, she was starting to get used to ancient human, truthfully it was much like the common language, just with a lot of added syllables in most words and a slightly different but confusing sentence structure and punctuation system. Some words were too obscure to decipher but the meaning of these could usually be inferred from context.

The book on Dimmerions was rather short, containing many sketches and illustrations about the plant, its root and mana structure, its ability to corrupt the living, its physikstone core and the peculiar properties of its purple flower. With her fast reading, it took Sofia about twenty seconds to flip through the entire thing, understanding most of what was said, while Cinthia silently observed from the side, clutching her staff, her muscles tensed and ready to fight at any moment.

Though her curiosity was sated, Sofia found the book to be completely useless in understanding this trial. She closed the book. That was when it happened, the cursed whirred, throbbing in her veins, encroaching in her soul. Carefully, Sofia observed it as it blended with her own mana in a strange way. She felt safe as she knew for a fact that Mr.Scribe was watching as if not more intensely as she was, and he would no doubt take control of their mana to stop the damage if something went wrong.

She was so focused on watching the curse that she only realized what had been happening when it was over.

Looking down at the book she was holding, Sofia felt her mind go blank.

She had forgotten all about the book’s contents, she vividly remembered reading it, but all she had gotten from that was the title, The verdant scourge from space: Dimmerions.

“I figured what the curse does…” Sofia told Cinthia.

“Already?”

“Yes. Just to confirm, can you tell me what I have been doing for the last thirty seconds?” Sofia asked.

“That’s… Weird but alright. You took that book, opened and read it, closed it back, and since then you’ve been standing silently for a few seconds before now,” Cinthia recounted.

“Good, that means I didn’t hallucinate anything. I remember the exact same thing… Except that the curse activated when I closed the book… And I completely forgot the contents,” Sofia explained.

“Just like that? Let me also try with another book,” Cinthia offered, pulling out a random book from the shelves, and opening it. She only read a few pages quickly, trying to remember them, and said a few lines out loud, asking Sofia to try to remember them.

Then she closed the book.

Sofia felt the curse activate once again. Even as she was repeating the lines Cinthia had told her in her head, her thoughts were suddenly muddled, her internal voice interrupted, she forgot.

“I don’t remember anything,” Cinthia said first.

“I know you read me a few lines, but I also forgot them,” Sofia then informed her. Crap, I should have tried writing it down to see what happens.

“Alright, well. We do understand the curse now.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Or the first rule, maybe? When you close a book, everyone forgets the contents, pretty straightf-”

Before Sofia could finish her sentence, all the candles abruptly went out, leaving Sofia and Cinthia in complete darkness for a brief instant, before dozens more lit candles emerged from the darkness, just a bit further away, illuminating a new large corridor of bookshelves.

“Sofia?” Cinthia asked.

“I’m here, let’s go to the light.”

“Alright.”

Both of them jumped straight into the newly illuminated zone still holding their books on plants. Although the sudden lights-out was surprising, no apparent danger had come from it.

“The light forced us to change sections, pretty much,” Sofia commented, already picking up on the fact that the books here all had a common subject once again, magical creatures.

As she read the titles, and remembered her early conclusion about having to burn down the place, she was starting to feel ill. Even if these books were thousands of years old, their knowledge potentially outdated, what was their value?

“Oh fuck…” Sofia cursed as she turned to Cinthia, “The knowledge here might just be more valuable than the divine item itself.”

“Sofia… I think we have a more pressing issue,” Cinthia worriedly said, observing her own hands.

“Shit.”

It was only when she also looked at Cinthia’s hands that Sofia noticed. The curse was ever-so-slightly more active than before, it now had an actual, continuous effect. Both hers and Cinthia’s hands were starting to become pitch black like a shade’s, starting from the tip of their gloves, slowly crawling down their fingers.