Chapter 555: Chapter 548: Touch and be touched

“I think we can only pick books we actually want to read,” Cinthia guessed, the candles around her immediately blowing out.

“Oh… That does explain what was going on. I can’t believe I didn’t realize that faster…”

“We should get on to the next section… But yeah, even for me, it was just a guess,” Cinthia confessed, “It’s just that the only book that rejected me so far was the only one I tried to pick that I didn’t care about.”

As Sofia and Cinthia returned to light once again, Sofia started reading the titles, while asking Cinthia a question, “You were really interested in methods to clean silk?”

“My mom is a [Weaver], she crafts fabric for a living, even now that I send her some of my money from the sect she’s still doing it, most of my clothes are sewn with homemade stuff…”

“Oh! Nice. This section seems like it’s about defensive magic? It’s shorter than the previous ones.” I shouldn’t have any issue picking from those.

Sofia grabbed one of the books with a promising title, opened it, quickly read through it and closed it, forgetting all about its contents.

This really feels pointless…

With a sigh, Sofia tried to open the book again, but it was tightly shut, the pages sticking together the book had become more brick than literature.

What now… Can we only open the books once?

I can’t believe we never tried that until now…

From her side, Cinthia yelped in pain again.

“Did you not want to read that one?” Sofia asked.

“No, I do want to read it!” Cinthia answered, “there’s something else…”

Sofia also tried to pick up that book that Cinthia failed to get, the title was interesting enough, but she suffered a similar fate except with an immensely more severe backlash from the curse as she had triggered it again and again. While the strange blackness had progressed almost up to her chest, lines of light shone through as Sofia’s skin cracked from her health going too low.

“Are you going to be fine?” Cinthia asked, worried.

“This is going to slow me down a bit but I’m alright… Another curse hit and I will be stuck in place though…”

“Let’s just get on with it then, I have a few ideas for what could be causing this,” Cinthia confidently said.

“Same, let’s just try them all.”

Sofia and Cinthia took turns taking guesses as to why this one book could not be picked up, and it was Cinthia who guessed right first after a very fast back and forth. “Maybe we are only allowed to pick one book per aisle,” she had said before the surrounding candles extinguished themselves.

The blackness had progressed up to their collarbones and down to their waist by the time they got to the next section.

“Let’s hurry to choose a book and I’ll give the two rules I still have, hopefully that’s all, we have no time!” Sofia pressed Cinthia as she started reading through the aisle’s book titles.

It’s all attack magic…

Sofia was aware that she was starting to be limited by her number of skill ‘slots’, so she was not overly enthusiastic about learning new spells, but she still found something that could end up being great amongst the rows of books, it was a collection of similar-looking books with one word titles arranged neatly on the same row.

Amplification

Aesthetics

Enlargement

Efficiency

Targeting

Hastening

Stability

Lingeringn/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Repetition

Simultaneity

Interference

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Layering

Mutation

Reach

She hesitated for a second, her hand hovering above Aesthetics and Amplification, but Sofia finally picked Hastening, then turned to Cinthia. “You got what you want?”

“Got one,” she answered with a nod.

“Good. Then, next rule: We can only open each book once.”

The rule was correct, and Sofia and Cinthia were ushered into another section by the lights. This time it seemed the books were about random magic spells that did not fit into the previous categories, things like Crowd contribution magic, Advanced Elementalization or Mass flight.

“Want to trade our previous book for one of those?” Sofia asked.

“No. Chat wants me to keep the one I have, it was Sorrow who picked it, actually…”

“Really?! Is that confirmation that we get to keep a book or…? What does She think of mine?” Sofia asked, almost shoving her book in Cinthia’s face, only to realize that the curse’s darkness was almost reaching said face. She hastily gave the last rule she knew of before Cinthia could even consider answering. “Next rule: one can only read the content of books they opened themselves.”

The lights went out.

Please say that it’s everything…

Unlike the previous times, the light stayed out.

“Sofia?” Cinthia called out.

“I’m here. Sending you a bone rope, catch it.”

“Got it. I’m coming closer. Chat fell silent just now.”

“The curse is being lifted,” Sofia informed her. Since the darkness was preventing her mana senses from reaching out, she was very aware of the mana movements inside of her, and she watched as the curse flew out of her body, tendril by tendril, as if sucked up by the library’s ceiling.

“Thank goodness. It was getting worrying.”

“Agreed. Seems like we have to navigate the darkness here now though, not exceedingly reassuring.”

“We’re still in the library, right?” Cinthia asked.

“I think so? Let me check.”

The curse is gone so I should even be able to touch all of those damn books without worry, right?

With the bone tendrils of her armor, Sofia scouted the surroundings. They had not moved, The books were all still in place, and Sofia could touch them without issue, but trying to store them was still a futile effort.

I might be able to take more anyway but I’m not sure about carrying a bunch of random books through whatever is coming next. Protecting Cinthia and the one book I chose might already be hard enough.

“We’ve not been teleported or anything,” Sofia confirmed to Cinthia, "we can also touch all the books now that the curse is gone.”

“Should we search for an exit?”

“Doubt it’s that simple, the entrance door even disappeared after we walked in. I think the hint is in the poem the voice sung at the beginning. Beyond the flames find me, and on your way you will be.”

“There are no flames anymore…”

“Well… I would say we can make some, but they won’t produce any light.”

“Wait, Sofia, did you hear this?”

Sofia shut her mouth and listened. In the silence, she heard it too, footsteps. Very light, in the distance, the tapping sound of feet hitting the floor in rhythm, moving through the aisles.

“We might need to fight in the dark,” Sofia whispered.

“Let’s hope not. But I’m ready.”

“I go first, keep a hand on the bone rope and stay close.”

Sofia took the lead, grabbing her shield from her storage ring and encasing her book on the backside with more bones as she advanced slowly, ready to attack or defend, her bone tendrils allowing her to map out the surroundings. There were plenty of aisles of the library that they had not been able to explore as the light had never shone there. Sofia was about to reach the footsteps. In a few more steps, she would just have to look left to look into the aisles where the sounds were coming from. Without a word, she held out a vision token between two fingers with her extended right arm, and used it to look ahead.

She expected to see nothing, but there was actually light. Somehow it did not spread far from the source, but Sofia was still able to see it, a single lit candle on a brass chamberstick floating through the aisle, as if held by an invisible person. It moved up and down as it flew away, but stopped abruptly instants after Sofia started looking.

The chamberstick and candle dropped to the ground with a clang.

Sofia almost dashed in to prevent what she could foresee was coming, but she was being wary of the invisible entity which had been holding said candle.

The nearest book caught fire.

Cinthia was pressing Sofia from behind, “What’s going on?!” she asked in panicked whispers.

As if the books were filled with Ihuarah’s explosive powders the fire spread to the entire aisle in a matter of seconds. Sofia felt a strange feeling of loss as the entire library burst up in flames, becoming a blazing inferno in less time than it took for Cinthia to react to what was going on.

“We found the flames…” Cinthia observed, clutching her staff and her book, letting go of Sofia’s bone rope.

Sofia could see in all directions, and within the flames, she started to see something unsettling, shadows that looked like long-fingered hands.

“BEHIND!” she shouted, urgently using [Summon Self] to teleport behind Cinthia and intercept what was coming for her, one of the shadowy hands, with a punch of her dragon armguard, leaving her scepter to float next to her.

The hand was like a bundle of dark flames; it survived the blow, and retreated to the flames with a high-pitched shriek.

“What are these things?!” Cinthia asked as she channeled her [Slow mode] skill to protect herself against any other surprise attack.

“I have no idea but it’s everywhere!”

Everywhere Sofia could see, in between aisles, behind the books, under the burning planks of the floor, anywhere where the flames burned, shadowy hands of dark fire rose like dimmerion stalks.