William instantly interrupted her words, "Tell me what else I can do, things that any master can do."
"There are lots of things, but they will give little to none at the end," she tried to convince him to expose more of his origins and the knowledge he knew about monsters around the city, and yet she failed.
The two were like cunning foxes, knowing what each other wanted, and didn't let the other have what he wanted.
Yet in the end, she had to succumb to his wish, and finally told him about other ways to gain contribution points.
"Add any new knowledge to the city? Prove one's worth in Alchemy and Forging? Easy peasy..." The look on William's face told Tara that he wouldn't suffer from this challenge.
"Do you know of things we don't? I can hardly believe it!!"
"Let me in the common library first," William didn't explain anything, "and then I'll start amassing contribution points like dropping rain, hahahaha!"
"..."
Tara didn't say much and led William and Angelica towards the common library. The library was big in size, making the one he visited before at the academy greatly pale in comparison.
The library was divided into five main buildings, each was at least five times the size of the Aspire academy's library, or even more. Each building had scrolls about one field of knowledge, including Training manuals, techniques, formulas, blueprints, and arrays.
"There is nothing related to the world's history and knowledge?" William stood in front of the main five buildings, feeling a bit disappointed.
"You have to go to the higher library to read such scrolls," Tara gave William a look of interest, "here is everything any master will dream about. What do you need the scrolls speaking about the known history of the world for?"
"Just an addiction of mine," William didn't give any information about his real intentions. Instead, he turned to the five buildings, showed a lazy look, "after going through all this, what shall I do to get contribution points?"
"You need to apply for an audition," Tara paused, "the strongest and deeply resourceful masters will listen to what you have to say. But I have to warn you, these people aren't that free to allow for anyone to waste their time. So..."
"Don't worry, I'm not fooling around or have any suicidal wishes," William knew what she wanted to warn him about. Even if she acted a bit hostile to him, sceptical about what he said and hid from her and others, she still had a good heart.
He then stayed inside the library for an entire week. He ate and slept there, making everyone visiting the library feeling a bit admiration towards him.
The library here was much different than the one he visited before at his academy. It wasn't deserted, filled with a crowd of people who came here to study and learn, and get stronger by the vast knowledge stored here.
Unlike what William expected, the library didn't have any mysteries at all. The scrolls were all easily understood, written in common language, one that he could read. The scrolls spoke about common things, either training manuals and techniques, or forging and concocting methods.
William noticed that the level of knowledge in these scrolls wasn't half bad. This world was like a middle stage between any tiny world and the outer one. It felt like lots of knowledge passed from the outer world to here.
·ƈθm "But they lack a lot of fine details... It sounds like parts of the initial scrolls arrived here, and the masters of this world tried to make up for what the scrolls missed..."
He found lots of gaps, areas where he could modify and upgrade the level of these scrolls without much effort. Yet he didn't intend to do much, just enough to let him check the other library.
He wanted to find scrolls speaking about secrets related to this world, find hidden and unknown ways to get out from here and go back to his world.
He was sure there must be a way, as any connection between worlds was built in a two-way direction. The last thing he wanted to do was to go back to the place he arrived at first, face such scary monsters to find a way out of here.
"I'm ready," after one week, and as Angelica and Tara kept tagging along without saying much to him, he finally stopped checking scrolls like crazy and turned to them, exposing his desire for getting through that audition thing.
The two girls were interested about what William wanted to do first. They kept watching him in interest and focus during the first day, but later on they started to lose such interest.
William was doing the same thing over and over like a machine. He took out one scroll after another, read through its content for a few seconds, before dropping it and picking another one.
He didn't say a single word, didn't show any expression on his face but pure focus and weird calmness.
Tara knew how vast the knowledge stored within this library was. She never heard of someone who was able to go through all the content of this place like this.
At first, she thought William was trying to put on a show, acting as any arrogant teenager would do, refusing to acknowledge his lacking and wanting to get what he wanted despite being unable or unworthy of it.
Yet William's persistence and confidence made her feel puzzled at first, then very curious about what he was going to do.
"Are you sure? Once applying, you can't go back on this..."
"Just apply for it for me," William was exhausted, wanting a few hours of rest. But he also wanted to get rid of this. He wasted lots of time in the library, wasted unknown time in that Hot Snow weird world.
He didn't know if his friends and team were ok or not. But as he didn't receive anything from Sloth for all this time, he knew there wasn't anything wrong so far.