Library System Reset: Overdue: A Magical Library LitRPG Adventure, page 28
It tingled as it ran through her, and then using her as a veritable conduit, it moved farther along to her connection to the Library and the core. In short, it came full circle, bringing its cycle of information through all the avenues it needed to light up and be functional.
Technically, anyway.
Practically? That was a whole different ball game.
First up, some of the information overloaded her briefly and made it painful. Quinn wasn’t sure if it was just the type of information determined the amount of pain, or else, that she’d just gotten used to it.
And, with all four of the defensive or counterattack books Malakai had got for her under her belt, she felt like she might just be able to put some of them into action. She pushed herself back to standing, leaving the tomes on the floor.
At first, there was a wave of dizziness, but then it was gone. Just a weak vertigo spell.
Maybe absorbing the information got easier the more she did it.
Incorrect assumption. The type of knowledge and level of current concentration value dictates the difficulty of absorption.
She ignored the Library, and looked up at Malakai, grinning. "I'm ready now. Come on, teach me, show me how not to die."
"Sounds like a great plan," he said, cracking his knuckles while returning the grin. He rubbed his hands together and looked at Quinn. "First up, I think we need to make sure all of your defenses are well in place, okay? We have to activate that knowledge and beat it into your muscles as muscle memory."
"Got it. Just tell me what I need to do." She braced herself, having no idea what would come at her.
Malakai spoke in a soothing tone filled with patience. "You've absorbed the knowledge. Your brain knows what it needs to do. It's your body we have to train. Then we need to make sure that you can reinforce the shielding you already have with earth magic and or ice magic. Then we're gonna move on to counterattacks and then we'll move on to destructive attacks, okay?"
She counted to five running all the new information in her head and nodded. "So, counterattacks use the opponents energy against them… in a way?"
"Sort of," Malakai said, "but also not really. Not when it comes to magic."
"I'm ready." She was almost surprised at how much conviction she felt. Because she really was ready.
He threw a full-on spear at her.
Okay, so the tip was dulled and it was made of a rubber-like substance, but it still smarted when it hit her.
“Avoiding being hit is the whole reasoning behind dodging.” Malakai stood with his hands on his hips waiting for her to stand up. “Come on. Up and at 'em again. If you can’t dodge something this big and slow… you can never go out in the field, and that’s not an option for a Librarian.
Quinn groaned, scowled at him, but pushed herself upright again. This time she concentrated harder. And she was rewarded. This time, when he threw a spear, she barely danced out of the way of the tip.
However, he didn’t wait for her to be settled again, and another flew at her. She twisted to the side in such a sudden movement that she tweaked her side. The point of the rubber spear hit her foot, and she crumpled to the ground.
“Damn it, that hurt.” She scowled back up at him. Fiercely this time.
Malakai shrugged. “Access the information. Allow it to flow through you. Let it move your muscles in the way it knows they can be moved.”
That was more difficult than he let on, of course. Quinn had always been a bit of a control freak. How was she supposed to just let magic do what it wanted to?
She sighed. “Fine.”
This time. This time she wasn’t going to let it get to her.
Over the next couple of hours, Quinn thought she was going to die, for real. Not to an icy blast, not to drowning, not to attack by an octopus, or even a black hole.
No. Dodging, it seemed, required a lot of stamina, a lot of energy, and a lot of perseverance, none of which she really possessed. Sure, she’d been able to run a couple of miles. Run being the generous term. Jog was much closer. But that took like twenty minutes. Her endurance needed to increase badly.
Yet.
With each and every attack Malakai threw at her, she could feel herself amalgamating just a little bit more of the knowledge. Her muscles screamed at her, but they began to know what to do.
She felt powerful, proud, and like she was starting to really get the hand of it… until she fell flat on her face, tripping over the tail end of one of Malakai’s magical attacks.
"Oof!" she yelled, as she fell on the mat, for the—she'd lost count of how many times. "I really thought I was getting better at this.”
"You are," Malakai said. "Despite a severe lack of natural ability, it seems."
Quinn grimaced up at him. She wasn't even going to try to put enough effort in to stand up. "Fancy that."
She liked the mat. It was oddly comfortable, and she’d rolled over to look at the ceiling far, far above her. Maybe a nap was in order.
"Quinn, now is not the time to be lying down on the job."
"I'm not lying down on the job. I'm contemplating what is apparently going to be my very short future." She was still gasping for breath, so her words came out punctuated.
"It doesn't matter if this is your forte or not," Malakai said in an extremely controlled tone. "If you can’t even manage the basic books’ skills, we’re all dead."
"You're being a little dramatic, wouldn't you think, Malakai?" she muttered sullenly.
But the elf was pissed off. "No, I’m not. You remember Kajaro. He’s the first of many people who want the Library gone—if what he said is true."
"Hey, I smashed his face with an icicle." Quinn felt the need to defend her pride.
“Because you caught him unawares. Fantastic instincts, but you can't survive all the time on instinct." He sounded tired too.
She pushed herself back up, and studied him. He was right. Taking a deep breath, she nodded. “Ready.”
Malakai sighed and apologized. "I'm sorry, I just… it's imperative we keep you alive."
"Yeah, yeah," Quinn said. "I know."
There was a tiny part of her that was excited about how her life had turned out, but there was another part, even if it was smaller, that was extremely loud, screaming at her that this wasn't normal. It wasn't the life she'd been planning on, and frankly, it was damn downright scary. But if she needed to do this, then she would do this. She was going to be the best damn Librarian the Library had ever seen.
Or, at the very least, she was going to try.
She hunkered down in a squat and put her hands out to the side like she'd seen wrestlers do on television. "Okay, I'm ready."
Malakai stepped back, looked her up and down, and sounded very bewildered when he spoke. "What are you ready for?"
"To get really serious about this?" she said, even as her thighs began to burn holding the position.
"Serious about squats?" He seemed genuinely perturbed. “Wait… hand to hand? You're too short and too small, and you don't have the muscles right now, nor any natural ability whatsoever. I’m head and shoulders taller than you, so logistically that’s not even going to work at your current level. So for now, with the amount of work we still have to do, I think we’re going to concentrate on your magical abilities."
"Hey," she said. "I don't suppose you've got a training chamber that extends the time inside it but not out here in the real world? So, you know, I can do a training montage in there and get really strong over a period of like four months that's actually only an hour outside."
Malakai scoffed. "You are kidding, right? That's just like a total fantasy story."
She remembered back to all the anime that had obviously betrayed her in this isekai moment, and let out a big sigh. "Yeah, I know. I was just hoping it was real in some part of the universe."
Lynx popped into view, looking thoughtful. "You know, if we were to harness the time dilation from—"
"No, stop it," Malakai said. "We're not going to wait for however many years this experiment you're considering is going to take. She needs to be trained now."
"Of course," Lynx said. "I wasn't considering not training her. I just thought it posed an interesting scientifically magical question."
"Is that speaking as the Library?" Malakai asked.
Lynx nodded. "I always speak as the Library."
"Except when you're not, right?" Quinn asked.
"Exactly."
“Aren’t you busy?” she asked him.
Lynx smiled. “Oh, I’ve completed the advertisement for an assistant. Just running it through a few more processes to double-check the current inhabitants of the worlds I picked to run it in. And then I can launch it.”
“When?” Malakai and Quinn blurted out together, the mood in the room considerably lightened.
“A few hours at most.” Lynx didn’t appear to sense their excitement. “Show me how far the training has come.”
Quinn sighed and smiled. It might not be the worst place in the universe to be here, training alongside these people, being connected to a magical universal Library at its core. For just a moment, Quinn felt like things might actually be okay, that everything was going to come together.
And then Malakai threw a fireball at her face.
32
FOOD AND FACTS
Every part of Quinn’s body hurt.
Dodging and rolling from fireballs strategically placed to trip her up was definitely not her favorite pastime. But at least now her muscles moved in accordance with the information in her head.
Speaking of information in her head.
The chip she ate had been rather anticlimactic. She felt like she’d gained more information about the Library from the books she’d absorbed, and the fighting Malakai was teaching her than from the chip.
As she walked slowly back into the main section of the Library it was easy to breathe in and inhale that amazing aroma of books and dust and knowledge. The light shone down, no flickering or glitching at this exact moment.
It really was wondrous.
The Library finally looked like a library.
All of the benches, couches, and armchairs in the middle pathing area had been righted, as well as the tables. Those that were broken were back in action. It made for a comfortable seating and research area for anyone who might visit.
There was room for a lot of people in here.
There were times when Quinn was skeptical of just how busy the Library might get, but… that was something to think about once they officially opened.
Thanks to the information that was slowly soaking into her brain, she could see a copious number of doors littered through the entire place. Where there was a space on a wall, she could see a door.
Sometimes just a potential door. Like it was somewhere a person could come through if they summoned the Library. But with this brain boost, she understood the entire concept more than ever.
Maybe the training had done more than develop some combat muscle memory. It seemed to have jolted her entire nervous system to be more synchronized with the Library.
Dottie, with her beautifully plush royal-blue-velvet cushion, walked around a corner with a couple of sofas trotting behind her. Quinn didn’t quite have the guts to walk up and introduce herself, but she couldn’t help thinking she’d like to get to know more talking furniture.
She stood at her vantage point, able to see back the way she came, and through the odd hundred feet to the massive check-in desk. The Library was gorgeous.
“What are you doing?” Malakai asked, stepping out from the corridor that led to Farrow’s worms.
"I'm observing." She didn’t even move to look at him.
"Observing what?"
"My Library. Have you seen how beautiful it looks now it's not all Gloom-ridden and musty?" She took another look, just for good measure. The pillars were clean and shone brightly. The books were in the bookcases. Return trollies bustled about, obviously bringing books to Tim and Tom, or else they shuffled the damaged books off wherever they were storing those for now.
The damaged books always made Quinn angry.
Books shouldn't have been harmed.
The Library was almost ready for patrons again. She could feel it in her bones.
"Okay, so what do you think?" She looked across at Malakai. She couldn't help her eagerness at feeling like they were at a precipice, standing on the verge of opening the library back up to the public.
She also couldn't help but be extremely nervous about the fact.
Malakai paused, scanning the library himself. "It's not bad, perhaps still a little more dilapidated than I'd have expected. But I'm no expert. I'd have to ask my grandfather, because I never saw this in its heyday. I am pretty young. I'm only thirty."
"In elf years?"
"Yes, in elf years. What other years would there… oh." He paused. "Sorry, I forgot that human Earth years are, well, much more limited, shall we say."
"That's a good way of saying short-lived," Quinn noted.
"Yes, I was quite proud of that." Malakai bowed deeply. "But you don't have to worry about that. You realize that, right, Quinn?"
She blinked at him. "What do you mean? What wouldn't I worry about? Longevity?"
"Exactly. You're not fully human anymore. You're a Librarian. You are now part of the Library. The core lives within you, and you’re technically a part of it too. Or you will be. You're only going to die if somebody kills you." He sounded like he thought that would make anything that wasn't great, better.
Maybe it would have felt better if there hadn’t been all those pesky near-death incidents already.
Quinn mulled that over in her head, unsure how she really felt about it. She'd heard Lynx speaking about Korradine. Maybe that meant Quinn was going to live for centuries. Whoa, that was one daunting thought that she pushed out of her mind and decided to completely ignore for now.
Malakai snapped his fingers, drawing her attention. "Anyway, let's not talk about that. Do you really need a break from training?"
Quinn groaned. “Look. I have to absorb those energy books and let them, like, percolate overnight, and I need to eat. Like—do you not eat?”
Malakai shrugged. “I do. I’m just a bit of a snacker.”
She squinted at him. “I’ve seen you snack like once.”
“Rogue snacker. You’ll never see me eating.” He wiggled his eyebrows, oddly independent of one another. Must be an elf skill.
Quinn laughed. “Okay. Fine. But… how are my levels? Have we done what we needed?”
Energy Usage
98/592
Tome Knowledge: 5
Affinity Level: 5
Determination: TBD
She raised an eyebrow at that last one and sighed. Bring up the task listing.
The Library of Everywhere is ready for patrons.
Please complete the following procedures to unlock the doors.
Complete the Library reshelving - Complete
Complete the bookworm habitat rejuvenation - Complete
Activate the book restoration workshop - Complete
Assign combat instructor to Librarian - Complete
Increase Librarian defensive and combat power by 5
Recruit a minimum of three (3) additional assistants through a universal call out with requisite minimum qualifications as specified in the manual
“Hmm” She flashed the list to Malakai.
“I know. I can see it too. Any of us who are marked as an assistant can.” His tone was a little smug.
She shrugged. “Why isn’t mine crossed off? My Affinity is 5.”
In response, the Library popped another message up in front of her.
Previous Affinity Level: 2
Current Affinity Level: 5:
Previous Defensive capabilities 2 - Combat power 1
Current Defensive capabilities 5 - Combat power 4.
Please raise your defensive and combat power BY 5, not to 5.
She turned and glared at the elf.
“Fine. Learn the other tome. But replenish some of your energy first.” Malakai gave in.
Quinn grinned and moved toward the kitchen. “That’s precisely what I was doing when you so rudely interrupted.” She could sense his footsteps following. While it might be something she should question, she was beginning to learn that the Library would eventually be an extension of herself.
Right now it was just little things, but soon…
When they had more power, when they were fully operational again. She simply knew everything would be so amazing.
Best way to regenerate energy and mana? She pushed the question inward.
Energy and regeneration are regained through:
Sleep
Rest
Meditation
Sustenance
Potions and Alchemy
Gee, thanks, she thought directly at the Library. If she didn't know better, she almost felt like the massive repository of knowledge shrugged at her.
Cook was already at the stove when she walked in. But that’s all she noticed before she turned around to get a really good look at the place.
It had a massive—what appeared to be—eight-burner gas stove. The range above it shone like it was newly minted. The silver walls shone so brightly they could almost be used as mirrors, and all of the terrariums were freshly trimmed. The ones without contents had freshly turned earth in them.
The dining tables, plural, stretched out where there had once only been one. Each had ten seats spread around it. Light filtered in through here, too, given it an almost sunny disposition.
And whatever Cook was cooking smelled oddly like cinnamon.
"Come in, do not dilly-dally." The voice of Cook was somewhat robotic, hollow, like the sound a bell might make that wasn't quite right. Yet, in some way, it was still soothing. Like Grandma when she used to bake cookies as far back as Quinn could remember.
She smiled and stepped farther into the kitchen, making way for Malakai to do the same.
"What is troubling you?" Cook asked, whisking something in an implement that looked like a wok, but rounder. Quinn still didn't understand the kitchen. All Quinn understood was how drastically it had changed in a day.
