Curator of the Library

I made my way to the center of the city.

To be honest, it was a pretty nice place.

I was aware that Babel was a wealthy city, but for some reason I imagined a placed inhabited by adventurers would be more grimy.

Clean streets, nice architecture, and a good vibe.

'Living here won't be bad.'

I could see the tower in the distance.

It was far taller than any other building in sight, so I could only assume that was the Tower of Babel.

More than being tall, the tower's width was also impressive.

It was quite beauitful, being made of marble and lined with gold.

From a distance, I could clearly differentiate each floor.

The first floor was naturally the widest, and higher floors became narrower.

'The Chairman is supposed to live at the top... wonder if I'll get to see him.'

As I approached closer, I could make out the many engravings made on the marble, depicting famous adventurers and legendary monsters.

'Pretty cool.'

Walking towards the entrance, I once again wondered about the nature of this world, a thing I had done since reincarnating here.

I was far from a scholar in my old life, but my general knowledge was decent enough.

Of course, I had heard about the story of the Tower of Babel.

Apparently, in ancient times, all of humanity was united and spoke the same language.

Those ancient humans agreed to create a great tower which would reach the heavens.

God, being displeased at their arrogance, altered their speech so that those people could no longer understand each other.

The story itself was not particularly interesting to me, rather, I was curious about how this world also came to have its own Tower of Babel.

It's not like this was the only instance, the founder of the Key Empire, Solomon, was there not also a legendary King Solomon on Earth as well?

These kinds of inconsistencies could only make me wonder.

Was this world an alternate Earth?

Were there others like me?

Hell, was this world in a novel or game?

I had asked my self such questions countless times, but such answers could not be found easily.

"Haah."

I sighed, knowing that thinking too much on it would only give me a headache.

I wasn't a person obsessed with returning to Earth.

Sure, there were luxuries that I missed, but in terms of connections such as family and friends...

I had barely anything.

All that meant was that finding out some grand 'truth' of the world would be pointless to me.

Coming to one of the tower's entrances, I swiped my association card against a magic device.

"You are permitted to enter up to the fourth floor, I hope your studies are fruitful, adventurer Outis."

I nodded at the receptionist's words and entered the tower.

"...Damn."

I had expected it to be grand, having seen how impressive it was from the outside, but even so, I couldn't hide my surprise.

The bookshelves on the first floor must have gone up dozens of meters high.

Looking around, those bookshelves seemed to go on endlessly.

'Shouldn't that thing come greet me?'

When speaking to Odyssey, they had heavily recommended I come to the library.

Even that unscholarly dwarf, Vengir, had said this place was excellent.

"Ah! Hello! A new visitor!"

A small orb of white light appeared in front of me.

"You're... supposed to be the curator, right?"

The orb energeticaly moved up and down, as if nodding.

"Yep! That's me! But you can just call me Curie, kay?"

I gave a nod, curious at to how exactly this thing worked.

This building had an absurd amount of knowledge stored inside to the point that it would take hundreds of librarians to organise.

But rather than that, there was only one... magical librarian.

Smiling at the orb, I asked a simple question.

"So, what can you do for me, Curie?

"Hmm... it would be better to ask what can't I do. I can recommend you all sorts of books to help you get stronger, you can ask me questions you need answered, you can ask me about monsters, you can..."

"Okay, I understand. Then, let me ask, what can you tell me of the Notary Art."

To be honest, I had no expectations when asking this question.

I was moreso just curious about what the thing would say.

"The Notary Art? That would be the heredetary magic of the Notoria family of the Key Empire. What specifically would you want to know about it? Of course, be aware that my answers are limited by your adventurer rank."

From what I knew, the curator would not leak any information it was told, not even to the chairman of the association.

Still, I would not choose to easily believe such words, so I framed my question in a certain way.

"Ahem, I'm interested in learning about the history of the art, to start with, would you happen to know anything of how the members train themselves to progress the art?"

"Alright... I'll see what I can do."

The orb began glowing, and I stood watching, assuming it was going through all the books within the library.

A minute passed, and I felt dumb for even asking.

Regardless of how 'great' this library was, there was no way they'd have information on this kind of magic.

The orb stopped glowing, and Curie began to speak.

"Hm... Unfortunately, you aren't able to access such information."

'Wait.'

'You aren't able to access such information?'

'Then, that means!'

"What rank would I need to be to access it?"

"You'd need to be an A rank adventurer... but I should warn you, the information is pretty minimal, so don't get too excited. Perhaps I could offer you some other manuscript? We have many books on the Key Empire which contain information on the Notoria family's history."

Even if the information on progressing the art was minimal, it was still infinitely more knowledge than what I currently had.

I had yet another reason to become an A rank.

'Fuck the trait token, fuck whatever weapon master will give me, I need to learn how to progress the Art!'

Realising where I was, I quickly supressed my elation with an awkward cough.

"Ahem, that's alright... you're supposed to be able to give recommendation on what techniques to learn, so how about that?"

"Yes! That's correct! Seeing as you're a third layer magician, Outis, would you be interested in learning spells?"

I felt slightly disturbed that the orb knew my name and information, but I guess it had something to do with me swiping my card.

Of course, I shook my head, I would not be able to learn any spells anyway.

'Matter of fact, what should I learn?'

Although I had learnt swordsmanship with Skelly, that was mainly to improve my physical conditioning and reflexes.

My preference when it came to combat was to just stay at a distance and snipe in silence, so learning some supreme sky splitting sword technique wouldn't make sense.

Advanced martial techniques were off the table, as I did not have a martial core capable of strengthening my body to monstrous levels.

Naturally, I had thought of twisting my own circuits to create a martial core, but I couldn't be sure of what exactly might happen with my infinite mana.

Since martial cores would passively consume mana to strengthen one's body, if supplied with infinite mana...

I'd probably just explode like an atomic bomb, being unable to handle that much mana flowing through my body.

There was a reason why mages who hit a wall in their development didn't suddenly decide to form a martial core.

Doing so would mean supplying their body with more mana than it could handle, mana which had been previously handled by circuitry.

So forming a core... was only really something that could be done by first or second layer mages, as their mana reserves would still be low, although even that was impossible to me thanks to my infinite pool.

"Why do you look so deep in thought? Trust me, this library has a lot of things, I'm sure there'll be something for you."

It seemed that I had got caught up in my own musings.

"I... I'd like to improve my casting speed, is there anything you can do to help me out with that."

Full auto fire...

I was already getting pretty close to it.

Perhaps something here could help me?

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LOG 34 - THE CURATOR 'CURIE'

The curator, better known by adventurers as Curie, is a mysterious spirit who has existed within the library for as long as anyone can remember. She has access to all the books stored within the library, and has memorised them all perfectly. She recommends books and scriptures to adventurers to help them grow stronger and more knowledgeable, so in a sense, all great adventurers have in one way or another been guided by her.