As Orsaga stepped into the library, the attendant's eyes lit up instantly.
He walked over and asked politely, "My lord, is this your first time here?"
"Yes."
Upon hearing the answer, the attendant began explaining the rules:
"Unless you've passed an official evaluation, you're only allowed to access knowledge from Rank Three and below. Entry to the first floor costs 50 silver coins, the second floor costs 1 gold coin, and the third floor costs 5 gold coins. Even then, access doesn't mean you can freely read the contents—you're only granted temporary entry privileges. If you wish to read the materials, there are additional fees. I hope you understand."
Orsaga didn't press further. He casually tossed a few gold coins to the attendant. "This should cover the entry fees for the first three floors."
"Very well."
Accepting the payment, the attendant led Orsaga inside. As they walked, he continued,
"My lord, if you're looking for more valuable knowledge, I recommend registering for evaluation. Based on your assessed strength, you could gain access to higher floors. It would be much more convenient."
"No need. Not for now."
It wasn't that Orsaga wasn't interested in higher-level knowledge—it was just that he had no intention of going through the so-called evaluation.
Just entering the city required magical screenings; this evaluation sounded even more thorough. He could already imagine all the invasive procedures that would follow, and he didn't want to get tangled up in that.
Besides, Orsaga could guess without thinking that the so-called high-rank knowledge wouldn't touch anything near the level of gods.
That kind of information was always reserved for private exchanges among top-tier powerhouses.
As for demigod-level knowledge—it wasn't particularly useful to him. He'd take it if he could, but if not, it wasn't a big loss.
In fact, it wasn't much more important than a large volume of foundational knowledge.
With his current level of power, his various innate abilities had already formed a nearly perfect synergy. Not only was his strength formidable, but in every aspect, he was far superior to most beings.
His only flaw, perhaps, was that—being a demon—his mind occasionally short-circuited...
While he wasn't yet capable of the Godborn ability to understand all things at birth—to "see through every secret ," or "grasp the whole from a single part". as long as he had enough basic knowledge, his talents would allow him to extrapolate the structure of the world's higher power systems.
After all, those systems were built atop that very foundation.
And more importantly, he had already slain several demigods in this world. By reading their memories, Orsaga had long since converted their cultivation methods into various templates for his own reference.
With those comparisons, his learning speed when studying this world's power systems would increase dramatically.
Back in Misturk, he had secretly read the entire library's contents in just two months. But it still wasn't enough—Misturk's knowledge reserves were far below what he needed.
Pushing open the doors to the first floor, Orsaga gave a low whistle at the sight before him.
Row upon row of categorized knowledge greeted his eyes.
Just a glance revealed tens of thousands of bookshelves, each packed with hundreds of books.
This place was worthy of its reputation as a nation of mages.
Its accumulation of knowledge far outstripped that of a third-rate city like Misturk.
Compared to here, that place was little more than a county records room—barely worthy of being called a library.
The attendant beside him received a floating plaque drifting through the air, then handed it to Orsaga.
"My lord, this is your access permit. I've already registered it with the tower spirit. With this, you're free to move between the first three floors. If you need anything else, feel free to ask."
"Thanks."
Orsaga hung the plaque lazily from his waist and paid the man no further attention. He casually walked up to a bookshelf and pulled out a book to read.
Seeing this, the attendant said nothing more and quietly walked away.
The book Orsaga had picked up was titled "100 Methods of Bloomshade Tree Cultivation."
It looked completely useless.
And in fact, it was. The price tag of 1 copper coin made it clear it was a civilian-grade book. barely a step above garbage in the eyes of the tower spirit.
Although Orsaga appeared to be reading it, most of his attention was focused on analyzing the magical formations embedded in the book.
He was trying to determine how the tower spirit detected when someone secretly absorbed its knowledge.
It didn't take long before he finished analyzing the spell formations on that book.
Then he paid for another book and continued dissecting.
By the time he reached the twentieth or so book, Orsaga had figured it out:
There was no fixed pattern.
Each book contained two randomly selected detection spells drawn from a vast library of surveillance enchantments.These were linked to the tower spirit embedded in the building itself.
Anyone who accessed the book's knowledge through unauthorized means would trigger the formation, and a signal would be sent to the tower spirit.
If you paid the fee, no problem.
If you didn't—you'd be ejected instantly.
To be honest, the reading fees meant nothing to Orsaga.
What he was concerned about was that the moment someone realized he was extracting knowledge on a massive scale, they'd start taking a serious interest in him.
That would inevitably cause trouble.
After all, his real identity was... problematic.
No official registration, no background, no traceable history—he was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost.
Even though he had taken precautions to mask himself, there was still a chance someone might spot something unusual.
And that didn't align with his plan to keep a low profile.
So far, although his actions hadn't exactly been discreet, everything remained within his control. Some people might be curious about where he came from, but with his strength and the lack of anything on him that would tempt high-level powerhouses, those nobodies hadn't been able to uncover what he wanted hidden—they were just spinning in circles like headless flies.
But here? Things were different.
This was a country with hundreds of thousands of mages.
There were bound to be powerful individuals who could actually threaten him.
And against potential threats of that level, Orsaga wouldn't act recklessly unless he had absolute confidence.
After carefully examining several dozen more books, he finally had a clear grasp of the situation.
Thanks to the tower spirit's relative indifference toward this floor's books, there were only two security layers on each book, aside from the building-wide scanning pulse that swept through the entire floor every three seconds.
To Orsaga, bypassing those defenses was just a matter of effort.
So he made his move.
His vast mental energy, under his near-perfect control, split into tens of thousands of invisible tendrils.
They slipped past the magical defenses embedded in the books and pierced directly into their contents.
At a speed far exceeding that of the human eye, they began funneling every scrap of recorded knowledge into Orsaga's mind.
For now, he didn't try to analyze it.
Doing so would drain too much mental energy and split his focus.
Instead, he packaged the knowledge according to shelf layout—creating organized "data packets" and stored them neatly in the corners of his mind.
He'd study them later, once he left this place.
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T/N:
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