Chương 50: The Royal Library, and Traces of a Second Traveler

The deepest level of the Solaris Royal Library sat a hundred meters beneath the palace, enclosed within a zero-gravity preservation field. Thousands of dust-gilded ancient books, millennium-old parchment scrolls, and stone tablets carved with archaic script drifted weightlessly through the air, forming what looked like a miniature galaxy of knowledge. Clack. The white-bearded Royal Librarian slid a golden key into the lock and pushed the five-ton bronze doors apart. He gave a small bow and gestured inward.

"Competitor Lucian Vance. By His Majesty's decree, you have a full two hours to read and copy any material in this collection." Lucian stepped through the doorway, his feet drifting free of the stone floor as he floated into the sea of books. Sylvia trailed close behind, her beast ears pricked, scanning the wards around them. Without wasting a second, Lucian activated all ninety-five billion points of Spell Control at once. Layered Focus: Activate. Photographic Recall Lv. 1: Engaged.

Lucian's eyes swept across row after row of floating books. His gaze moved rapidly from text to text, Photographic Recall preserving page layouts, diagrams, and unfamiliar scripts in his own memory for later review. Ting! Ting! Ting! The System v2. 0 notification kept scrolling numbers like a stock ticker. [READING SESSION PROGRESS] ['Photographic Recall Lv. 1' operating at 100% efficiency!] [Ancient Royal Language analysis progress: 15%... 40%... 80%... 100% (MAX)!] [LEVEL UP!] Level 28 → Level 32!

Stamina and Mana fully restored. Mana Capacity expanded: +200, 000! Four levels gained in just ten minutes of scanning. Lucian drifted toward the darkest corner of the library — where a marble statue of the founding Emperor stood. In a crack behind the statue's pedestal, the small blue-black corner of a notebook caught his eye. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Unlike every rough parchment book and ancient bronze tablet around it, this object was no bigger than a palm, its cover made of dark blue synthetic leatherette — a material that had no business existing in this world at all. Lucian reached out and pulled the notebook free from the crack in the stone. The cover was worn and cracked, the pages yellowed with age. He opened to the first page. No Old Elvish. No Ancient Demonic script. No magic circle or divine seal of any kind.

Staring back at him were handwritten lines in blue ballpoint ink, the slanted handwriting unmistakably modern English:'To-do list: 1. Build a steam engine. 2. Seduce the prince. 3. Find why the fuck magic exists. (Update: Failed, I am in massive debt).' Lucian froze in midair. His eyes went wide, staring at the ruled page. His whole body locked up as if someone had just chucked a Tier-9 ice orb straight at his face. He blinked three times.

The English text was still there, along with a crossed-out doodle of a dopey smiley face in the corner.

"What... what the hell is this?!" Lucian blurted it out in his past life's mother tongue, nearly dropping the notebook straight down into the magical abyss below. Sylvia, floating nearby, saw his stunned expression and drifted over quickly.

"Lucian, did you find some forbidden dark-magic text left by an evil god?" Lucian shakily snapped the notebook shut and shoved it deep into the innermost corner of his spatial ring, taking a slow breath to steady his voice.

"No... this came from my old world." At the entrance to the archive, the old Royal Librarian watched Lucian pass over thousands of Rank A grimoires to pick up a battered little notebook from behind a statue, and felt a wave of genuine shock. The old man stroked his silver beard, thinking to himself. That strange notebook had appeared in the restricted collection less than a year ago with no valid accession record. Since then, every linguist who examined it had failed to identify the script...

and this boy had picked out its value with a single glance! The librarian's expression sharpened. So the boy recognized the script. Lucian couldn't care less what the old man was speculating. His mind was spinning through a thousand questions. The continent's history had recorded strange individuals before — people called "Lost Souls" — who appeared with mad ideas about machinery, tried to build carriages that needed no horses, and then vanished without a trace.

And this notebook was ironclad proof: he wasn't the only one who'd ever been reborn from Earth into this world. Two hours passed in a blink. The bronze doors of the Royal Library sealed shut behind him. Lucian stepped out into the palace courtyard, the bright midday sun of the capital falling across the ten-year-old's face. His right hand still gripped the spatial ring where the English notebook now sat tucked away.

He tilted his head up, looking straight toward the towering spire of the Solaris Royal Academy standing at the heart of the capital. A cold, wary smile — the smile of a predator — slowly spread across Lucian's mouth.

"So there's still another one of us... from Earth, in this world?"