novelraw Chapter 65 : Chapter 65
Chapter 65 : Chapter 65
Chapter 65. The Virtual Library
Thump thump thump!
The sound of someone descending the stairs quickly from the second floor.
Ha Myeong-yeol and Ji Byeong-seo, who were in the kitchen on the first floor, looked up.
The person coming down was naturally Riman.
Behind him, Saya was flying and following.
Riman said in an urgent voice.
“I'm going to the Info Shop for a bi-ack!”
Riman tumbled down the stairs just like that.
His mind was urgent, but because his body wasn't fully recovered, he had missed his footing.
However, no one was worried.
At most, he had just rolled down the last two steps.
Toward Riman sprawled on the floor, Ji Byeong-seo said.
“Wherever you go, eat before you go. Moving your body with just medicine has its limits.”
“…Understood.”
Riman picked himself up toward the smell of kimchi stew rising from the kitchen.
Like that, a meal with three men and one dragon sitting around began.
Of course, Saya drank liquor instead of rice.
Watching Saya sipping distilled liquor filled in a glass, Riman asked.
“Can you stomach liquor from broad daylight?”
“Shah-a-a-a—.”
Anyway, after finishing the meal and recovering some energy like that.
Riman prepared to go out again.
Ha Myeong-yeol asked him.
“So where are you going?”
“I'm going to the Info Shop for a bit.”
He also intended to check Wong Chen's corpse kept at the police station while he was at it.
Of course, he didn't bother bringing up the ominous talk about going to see a corpse.
Like that, Riman arrived at the Info Shop located in the city center.
Info Shop, another name is Information Exchange.
This facility operated by Inforox Corporation was a private business providing various services related to information trading.
Facilities were located all over the world, including various places in Korea.
Here, one could purchase information held by Inforox or be introduced to informants.
But what Riman wanted was neither purchasing information nor recruiting informants.
“I will guide you to Booth 127.”
Following the staff's guidance, Riman went down to the facility's basement.
There, hundreds of booths about the size of telephone boxes were lined up in rows and columns.
Riman entered Booth 127 among them.
This is the Information Search Room.
It was a place providing access routes to places inaccessible with ordinary terminals.
Metaphorically, it could be called a PC cafe specialized in information search and reading.
However, its appearance was a bit different from PC cafes of the 2000s.
Cheolkeok—
What was seen as soon as he opened the booth was one chair and one helmet.
No monitor, keyboard, or mouse.
Just a chair and a helmet.
Riman sat on the chair and put on the helmet.
A helmet covering the entire head.
Then, detecting the biological reaction, the helmet turned on by itself.
Ki-ing—
The pitch-black view brightened at once, and a pure white space appeared.
Right after that, numerous windows popped up in front of his eyes.
This helmet is a VR (Virtual Reality) access device.
There was a reason why there was no monitor or keyboard.
‘…Impressive.’
He had tried VR devices a few times in his previous life, but it couldn't be compared to this.
A feeling as if he had really entered another world.
Riman skillfully pulled and enlarged the windows in front of him and began to search for the necessary information.
‘What I need to find is the Virtual Library of Sanhae Magic Tower.’
Magic Towers upload some of the literature or papers they possess onto the net.
This is exactly the Virtual Library.
Considering the unique closed nature of Magic Towers, it was a system hard to understand at a glance.
In fact, this was an arrangement for Mages active outside the Magic Towers.
There are only three Magic Tower locations on Earth, and even those have no branch campuses.
However, the scope of Mages' activities is worldwide.
For these Mages active in various parts of the world, there was often a need to read the Magic Tower's literature, but returning to the Magic Tower every time was excessively inefficient.
So, the system built to allow looking into the alma mater's literature from anywhere in the world was the Virtual Library.
Of course, not just anyone could access the Virtual Library.
Only graduates of the relevant Magic Tower could access it, and an access code was required.
Ping—
Riman opened the access window for Sanhae Magic Tower's Virtual Library.
Normally, a site Riman couldn't access at all.
But now it was different.
Riman had the memories of Wong Chen, a Mage who formally graduated from Sanhae Magic Tower.
Of course, retrieving complex information from Wong Chen's memories is difficult for now.
Because the information was mixed up and the context completely lost.
But if it's extremely fragmentary information.
If it's just very simple information understandable even with all context cut off, it was sufficiently calculable.
For example, that the name of the memory's owner is ‘Wong Chen.’
Or something like the access code for the Virtual Library.
‘…Cheonbyeonmanrak Beonsangjaegwi (Thousand Changes Ten Thousand Falls, Burning Loss Reappearance Ghost).’
As Riman entered the code, the firmly closed door of the Virtual Library opened.
Sa-a-a-a……
The surrounding scenery changed in an instant.
An old and antique giant library of Eastern style.
Dozens of large wooden bookshelves stood in a row waiting for Riman.
‘…Stupid Mages.’
To think one can access this precious literature with just a single line of code.
If there had been someone with proper engineering thinking inside the Magic Tower, they wouldn't have left the security so lax.
They would have set up security like iris recognition, facial recognition, or at least fingerprint recognition.
But Mages did not do so.
Perhaps because they were those who wielded the mighty power called magic, they had little interest in engineering.
So they dragged their feet for over 10 years even in creating the Virtual Library, and the security was lax like this.
‘Well, thanks to that, I could enter this easily.’
Riman quickly scanned the books in the Virtual Library.
For reference, the Magic Tower's truly precious literature is not in the Virtual Library.
For example, things like secret manuals or forbidden books.
But just with the books in the Virtual Library, Riman could sufficiently achieve what he wanted.
Grasping the basics and structure of magic theory.
‘Let’s see, where was that book…….’
Riman soon pulled out a book from the shelf.
The basic book that would solidify the foundation of magic theory,
The author is ‘Sage of the Beginning’ Shellob Luna.
A person who left a tremendous achievement of creating the very discipline called magic.
Therefore, regardless of which Magic Tower one attends, if one is a Mage, one unconditionally starts studying with this book.
…was what was written in the
‘But to see the actual thing.’
A book whose title was only mentioned in the setting book, but nothing about the text was recorded.
Riman finally turned the pages of that real thing.
* * *
Ten days passed since then.
During that period, Riman stayed stuck in the Info Shop almost all day reading magic theory books intensively.
The cost of using the Info Shop was subtly expensive, but it didn't matter much.
Since he had a lot of money anyway.
Magic theory study started blindly without a teacher like that.
At first, he was a little nervous, but once he started, surprisingly, it entered his head smoothly.
Symbols, calculation systems, and symbolic grammar seen for the first time also stuck into his head after scanning them with his eyes a few times.
But Riman knew.
That this phenomenon wasn't happening because he was smart.
‘Probably thanks to Wong Chen’s memories inside my head.’
The information Riman was reading down now was all information inside Riman's head.
In the form of Wong Chen's memories.
Therefore, strictly speaking, the knowledge Riman newly learned became a matter of ‘recalling’ what he already knew.
Although it couldn't give meaningful information, Wong Chen's memory itself became a considerable help in learning like that.
“Phew…….”
After nearly 10 hours of reading theory books.
Riman turned off the VR helmet and muttered.
“…Even in high school senior year, I couldn't study to this extent.”
He read books straight for 10 hours in the Virtual Library without eating or going to the bathroom.
Scary level of concentration.
But this concentration was something Riman had from his previous life, separate from magic talent.
The problem was that he played games instead of studying with that concentration.
‘…No, rather, isn't it because I dug into games like that, that I'm living this well here too?’
In his previous life, he was just an ordinary young man crazy about games, but conversely thanks to that, he is somehow living well in this hellish world.
The way of the world was truly unknowable in many ways.
“Heave-ho…….”
Riman took off the helmet.
With this, today's study is over.
For reference, the reason Riman only studied stuck here for the past ten days was because of his body.
Because the recovery of internal injuries was slower than expected, he absolutely couldn't do exercise or magic training.
The cause of the internal injury was none other than Heuk-gwang (Black Light).
The black light Riman created.
The internal injury created by being exposed to that light was slower to recover than thought.
‘First, let’s research this black light after accumulating some magical knowledge. It's a too dangerous ability to test this and that immediately.’
Thinking so, Riman stretched long.
And said to Saya lying coiled at his feet.
“Hey, let's go now.”
“Sia-a-a-aeng—.”
Saya yawned languidly and crawled up onto Riman's shoulder.
Outside came out like that, the timing was just about sunset.
Riman thought while walking.
‘Anyway, as of today, the internal injury is somewhat recovered.’
Since his body recovered somewhat over the past ten days, it was time to restart physical training.
So Riman moved his steps to a nearby park instead of home.
Because there was an item to test.
An empty lot at 6 PM without a single person.
Riman sat on a bench there and undid the bag he was carrying.
S-euk—
And what he took out from the bag was black leather walkers.
The very shoes he took from Wong Chen.
‘Surely there seemed to be some special function.’
He examined this and that before putting them on, but nothing could be known just from the appearance.
So Riman put on the walkers.
Shoes of quite a large size compared to Riman's feet.
However—
Seu-seu-seu-seu—
As soon as he put them on and tightened the laces, the volume of the shoes decreased and the size adjusted perfectly to Riman's feet.
In other words, they were absolutely not ordinary shoes.
“…It is a magic tool indeed.”
After putting on the other shoe as well, Riman stood up.
With just this, he couldn't know the function of the shoes yet.
But the moment he took a step immediately, Riman figured out the function of these shoes right away.
Hu…uk—
The moment he stepped on the ground.
No footstep sound was made.
It was a bizarre thing.
The soles of the shoes were hard heels, and the ground was flat processed granite.
At least a clacking sound should have been made, but it wasn't so.
Riman took another step as a test.
And one step, and another step.
But no matter how much he stepped and stomped his feet hard, no footstep sound came from the shoes.
“Oho.”
Riman entered an abandoned building near the empty lot.
And went up to the 3rd floor and stood on a window frame without a window.
Just the height of this place was over 8 meters.
A height where breaking a leg would be fortunate if one fell.
From such a height, Riman just jumped down without even a deep breath.
Onto the hard cement floor at that.
However—
Hu…uk……
Even though he landed, likewise no sound was made.
That wasn't all.
He fell from that height without using magic, but no damage was inflicted on his body.
“As expected.”
With this, at least one function was clearly proven.
Complete absorption of shock applied to the sole.
Thanks to that function, Wong Chen could move around without any presence.
But the test was not over yet.
Because the true value of these shoes hadn't been revealed yet.