Chapter 319 Volume V - Chapter 37: Overly Stagnant Mana Flow
When I looked at the staff standing in front of me, waiting to hear what I was going to say, I came to my senses.
I may not know what to do, but there's no need to look suspicious.
"Oh, I was lost in my thoughts... sorry. I'll just go upstairs and look at some books."
He bowed his head slightly without changing the smile on his face. Then he turned around and headed toward another person he saw.
As he left, I slowly made my way up the spiral staircase to the first floor and began to wander through the shelves, looking at the titles of the books and what they were about.
And so the minutes began to pass. After fifteen or twenty minutes of wandering around the library for no apparent reason... I had taken at least a brief look at almost every shelf on the first floor.
I couldn't help frowning slightly as I went up to the second floor without giving it much thought.
Am I doing the right thing? Is looking at shelves and books like this on every one of the floors really what I should be doing? I can't think of anything else... but it doesn't feel like continuing to do this will lead to anything.
Even though I thought like that, again, one by one, I began to look at all the shelves on the second floor. There were literally countless different books in the library. From mathematical theories to history, from novels to poetry, from research at the bottom of the ocean to articles about space, from where the system originated and what the 'awakening' of the planet means, and on and on…
Obviously, there were a few books that interested me. I wanted to pick some of them up, look at the content, examine what they were about. But this feeling was not overwhelming. I had more than ten hours and I wanted to at least look at all seven floors of the library.
So the second floor was finished. And then the third and the fourth... By the time I got to the fifth floor and spent a few minutes there, I was getting a little uneasy. But I kept going.
So, when I reached the sixth floor... I felt something strange.
First, I looked around, but there was no one watching me. Aside from that, this floor of the library was just the same as the others. There were a few people moving between the shelves full of books, and a few library staff constantly cleaning the floor and organizing the books on the shelves. There were no problems with anything I can see.
After a short time, though, I realized what this strangeness was. I had been under the influence of the seal for a really long time, so I hadn't gotten used to feeling the mana so clearly and comfortably. That's why I could confuse it with other things. But now, when I focused on it a little bit... it was clear that the strangeness I was feeling was related to the mana around me.
I lifted my head up, looked at the colorless but dense stream flowing over the shelves, and then... I knew instantly what was happening.
Mana often moved randomly. Sometimes it would be drawn to something and gravitate toward it, sure. For example, the mana around my body would often move toward me, surrounding me. Not only that, sometimes it would be attracted to me and do things that it wouldn't normally do. It would react to my emotions, for example.
Lucia also had this in a way I couldn't make sense of. The charm statistic determined how much the beings in the universe, whether living or non-living, were attracted to, sympathized with, and interacted with a person. But Lucia's situation was strange even with an extremely high charm.
Well, the strangeness on this floor of this library was... something else entirely. The mana here was not moving. It wasn't flowing in a random direction. It was meaninglessly... stagnant.
I mean, it was moving, but it was so slow that it was extremely strange. And because of this slowness, the mana flowing toward this point started to accumulate, joining this 'stagnant flow'. As a result... between the shelves, above them... this whole floor was literally filled with tons of tons of mana.
Another strangeness was that this mana, so dense, was barely perceptible. Maybe a normal person wouldn't even notice it. There was enough mana here that if it were a little denser, it would have felt like liquid, but... it felt like it wasn't there.
I focused on this mana slightly. However... the moment I did so, I couldn't help feeling dizzy due to its extreme intensity. Soon, a sharp pain shot through my head, to the point of losing my balance. Before, I could hardly even feel its presence, but the moment I focused on it, it seemed to appear out of nowhere.
I gritted my teeth, struggled against my blurred eyes, and while I was forcing myself to stand, I pushed the Friend of Mana to its limit and reached out to this stagnant mana. My headache slowly subsided, and the sharp pain I felt faded slightly. I focused on this mana again as I regained my balance.
As I said, this mana had a flow, even if it was extremely slow. And when I looked at it specifically... I could see where it was flowing. It wasn't moving in a random direction like a normal flow of mana. On the contrary... all this mana on this floor was flowing continuously to a single point.
Slowly, step by step, not letting myself get dizzy again from the intensity of the mana around me, I moved through the shelves, past a few people looking at books without the slightest idea of what was going on.
In the space between one row of shelves and the next, I saw an employee standing where he was, staring at me. I couldn't make out his body because I had trouble focusing on anything other than mana, but... his eyes seemed to be squinting.
I ignored him. As I continued to follow the flow of mana, I finally reached... a normal wall at the end of a row of shelves.
The mana went into the wall and disappeared there. The wall was clearly not normal.
Reflexively, I raised my hand and put it against the wall, but... nothing happened as if it was indeed a normal wall. Then I focused on the mana around me, slowing down the mana in my body as much as it was slowing down, using the Friend of Mana to match it to myself. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath in and out, reaching out to this static mana, and as it responded to me in the same way... I let myself fall into its arms.
For a moment, the wall against which I rested my hand dissolved as if it had disappeared. I felt like I lost my balance for a moment as I had put my weight on my hand, but I quickly recovered myself. I didn't open my eyes, but I didn't stop either. I took a step toward where the mana was directing me, then another. I started walking. At the same time... I couldn't stop thinking.
It was normally cool inside the library. In the middle of an ordinary summer day, every one of the air conditioners was working. But here, behind that wall... it was as if there was no concept of temperature. It was neither too cold nor too hot. It was the perfect middle of the two.
Of course, my perceptions could have been blurred because all the intense mana from that whole floor flowed into a small corridor here. But... thanks to the Friend of Mana, it didn't affect me too much. So I doubted that this was the case.
That aside, even with my eyes closed, I could more or less perceive the intensity of the light behind my eyelids. And behind my eyes... it was pure light. It was as if I was in a completely white place.
The strangeness was not limited to these, there was one last thing. And what really confused me... was this strangeness.
I don't know why, but... the mana here felt strange. Different from the mana that sleeps in the atmosphere, different from the mana that just goes with the flow without a purpose. The mana here... seemed to have a purpose. It was as if it was under someone's command, even. As someone with the Friend of Mana skill, I could feel it.
Despite all this strangeness, I kept walking, because unlike the last hour and a half I had spent in the library, here I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. At least... I felt like I was on the right path.
So, I kept moving forward, but when I took one last step and the extremely stagnant flow of mana began to flow normally, as if freed from the hands of the slowed down time, that's when the extremely dense mana that had been accumulating behind me suddenly regained its normal speed and came at me with all its intensity.
It felt like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer, like the mana that had been gently guiding me had suddenly pushed me from behind. It was as if it had become an enemy when it should normally be a 'friend' to me. With that, I lost my balance and found myself stuck to the ground. My body had been subjected to such a sudden and intense flow of mana that I was writhing in pain, shaking involuntarily.
I even had a metallic taste in my mouth for a moment. But I did my best to swallow back the blood and gritted my teeth.
If I had been in the previous library, I would never have tried what I'm going to do now because I was in public, but... I wasn't even sure I was in that library at the moment, and there was nothing else I could do.
So... I focused on one of my skills, the one I'd last used months ago, the one I only used when it was most necessary.
Mana Ascension activated. I felt all the mana enveloping my body, anchoring me to the ground, flowing through me with tremendous intensity and speed. I simply inhaled into my lungs as my hair rippled and my whole body was filled with tremendous power.
Finally... I stood up without much difficulty. The trembling of my body had not gone away, on the contrary, it was even worse than before. The sharp pain that spread through every cell in my body was even sharper. It was the price I paid for using my skill, which is why I didn't like using it so much, but... I didn't care too much about it.
I reached out to the mana around me as I slowly opened my eyes. Only this time I didn't give myself over to it, I didn't let it guide me in any way or gently direct it myself. Rather... I simply commanded it.
"Stop."
For a moment, my body was enveloped in a golden glow. I felt my hair falling over my shoulders and ignored the strange and meaningless patterns that covered every part of my body.
Instead... I looked in front of me, and as all the mana around me suddenly stopped moving and froze in place, as I had commanded it to do, I saw that I was indeed in a white corridor... and then... a large, hall-like room from which this corridor led.
Inside this room, I saw three children looking at me with a mixture of curiosity and fear, and two women, one of them elderly, and a stern-looking man standing behind them...
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