'So, the castle underground is actually the library... But...' Matt thought and looked onwards and upwards.
'My God, what the hell is this? It's gigantic!' He thought.
The sheer number of bookshelves was lost to sight, and there were several floors with countless shelves full of books.
The fact that they said this place was as big as a kingdom is because it gave the feeling of being endless.
No matter where you walked or saw, the only thing in front of you was many bookshelves and books. Tables full of books and the like.
He looked from side to side, and several people were reading in the distance. None of them paid particular attention to him, so Matt felt lost where to start.
'It's so big that 24 hours feels like it will be too little.' Matt thought and sighed.
Then he started moving towards the shelves to investigate, but then an older man appeared before him.
This man was tall and elegantly dressed; he looked like a librarian but a bit mysterious.
He looked him up and down and frowned.
"Student, who are you? You're not from the First Academy, but you were brought here by old Ryan." He asked, and Matt nodded at him respectfully.
"Sir, my name is Matthew Dietrich. I'm the winner of the Second Academy's Hall tournament." Matt replied, and the older man nodded.
"Oh? Dietrich? Interesting, kid. Good last name. And if you're the winner of the Second Academy, I guess you come here to research skills and theories all these shelves have, but I'd recommend going to the second floor to find more effective stuff." Said the man, smiling, but Matt shook his head.
"I'm not looking for skills or things like that. I want to research from the history of the past; can you tell me where I can find those kinds of books?" Matt asked. The older man was surprised and looked him up and down once again.
"Are you interested in history, boy?" The older man asked for confirmation, and Matt nodded at him.
But he hadn't found anything he wanted to investigate.
Once he got to one of the corners of the library, he was drawn to a book hidden among many other books.
As soon as he saw it, he could not see the name because it was turned over, but he found the book pages curious, as they looked extremely old and thick.
'A book from the past?' He thought and picked it up; even so, next to it came another book, a little smaller.
'Is it glued?' Matt thought doubtfully and tried to separate them, as they gave the sensation of being stuck together with some kind of glue. Even so, both books came apart as if nothing.
There was no glue or anything like that, so Matt thought he had seen wrong. Still, he held both books in his hand.
'This other book looks a little while ago... Thousands of years old, maybe.' Matt thought as he looked at the smaller book that didn't seem to fit in here.
It was a book with a relatively new design; it didn't look like the other book that gave the feeling of old age.
Still, he turned his attention away from the newer book and focused on the older one.
'How strange, the name was covered with a black ink...' Matt thought, looking at the cover and trying to get information about the book's title and who wrote it.
Still, all that information had been covered by black ink, so no one could see anything at a glance.
So, he stopped looking at those things and opened the book.
The first thing he saw caught his eye.
-The Dietrich Era I
By: Paul Hoffman.
'Oh?' Matt thought with a smile and, without thinking, sat down on the floor to read. It looked like he had found something important.