4 A Worthless Encyclopaedia

Noah scanned the room he had found himself within. It wasn't particularly large, nor was it small. And it held a difference to the rest of the house, one immediately noticeable upon entry.

Shelves, a small table, paintings on the walls, knick-knacks on shelves along with a single wide-open lockbox with nothing in it but a small necklace with a single rectangular crystal on a brown string.

Reaching out to it, Noah was about to pick it up when from behind him he heard, "it was my daughters." The suddenness of the voice causing him to jump and spin around to face Liora. Slung over her arm a neatly folded blanket which she laid down upon the single persons bed against the wall. Her hair shiny and wet from her own bath

"Sor-"

"Don't you say that word," she snapped at him and silence him. With Noah silenced she gave him a vibrant smile, "I brought a blanket; thought you might need it." She said as she slowly walked up besides him. Her hands raising to gently pull a necklace from the box, saying nothing for a bit as she held it before her, her thumb stroking over the small pillar necklace with a loving smile.

"I made it when I first gave birth to her," she rubbed the crystal as if polishing it's purple tone with her thumb. "I found this gem in some rock Harv cracked open tilling the soil. I had a friend in the city who was a gemcarver, she offered to cut it into something nice for me as a gift for my new baby."

"I got it back not long after I finally gave birth. It was this beautiful red back then," she held the band, letting the pillar hang loose while holding it up to the setting sun outside casting a slight violet hue over her face. "I don't know what happened to it, but it lost its colour when Eleanora left with her boyfriend years ago."

Noah stood mutely, unwilling and unwanting of interrupting her while she was in such fond remembrance.

Placing the necklace back into her hand, Liora gave it one last look before gently lowering it back into the lockbox. "I could never find it in myself to sell it or anything in this room," Liora chuckled to herself.

He could see a pain in her eyes as she continued speaking, "Idiotic, isn't it. Thinking my daughter would want to come to this dead farm while she's living the life amongst the wilds. Hunting monsters, delving dungeons. I haven't even seen her in…" she paused to think, "fi…five years now? Has it really been that long?"

"Gods I miss her voice. I hope she hasn't been harmed at all…" she spoke to herself making Noah feel like he really shouldn't be eavesdropping on her.

Noah shifted his weight a little, but enough that a creak came from the flooring that was loud enough to wake Liora from staring at the opened lockbox and lift her head to Noah. "Oh, sorry, I was rambling to myself there." She said flipping the lid down and latching it.

"It's alright, I don't mind." He awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

Liora giggled into her hand, "why thank you for being so patient with this old hag, Noah's cheek twitched but saying nothing in turn.

Liora looked around the room with a weak smile, "There isn't much to do so late in the day, but there should be some books in the chest for you to read until you're tired enough to sleep." She told him, nodding to the chest next to the bed.

"If I had been smarter I may have kept a few of the games you could have played." Liora crossed her hands over her belly, "I won't bother you anymore." She said making small steps towards the opened door, turning her head back to him with an expression that caused his breathing to hitch from just how sore it looked. "If you need anything, I'll be in the room down the hall. Have a good night."

Noah's mouth fell open, wanting to say something to her but finding only a dull whine escaping him as she shut the door behind her leaving him staring conflicted at the door.

"Ugh…" he groaned slumping his arms down to his sides. "In time Noah, In time." Mumbling to himself he found himself falling onto the bed, bouncing a little from its surprisingly modern fluffiness, his hands coming to rest behind his head while he stared up at the ceiling.

He pitied Liora, she was such a kind woman treated so poorly by the world, doing her utmost to survive who was now being pushed to the edge with no way of backing away.

He wanted to do something, help her, give her a way out. But what could he do? A nobody. A soul inside a stolen body with no knowledge of the world.

'Excuses.' He may be a nobody, but that didn't mean he couldn't help. And he could very well just start learning the ways of the world simply. He looked to the chest besides the bed where Liora said some books may be.

And books, is where he could start learning of the world.

'If I can even understand the language…' He could understand Liora just fine, so he must be able to understand it.

Pushing himself up, Noah got off the bed and knelt before the chest. His hand gripping around the handle at the centre of the chest and pulled it open with a dull creak. Inside he could see a collection of not just books on one half, but various objects on the right, all tightly packed together in what looked like a variety of wooden boxes or just plainly tossed around with nary a thought of where they landed.

He'd be lying if he said curiosity hadn't gotten a hold of him. And that curiosity definitely didn't lead to him prying out one of the wooden boxes from the centre of the right half of the chest.

He knew it was inappropriate to pry upon another's stuff, but when his fingers found the seam and hinge of the box, he still flipped the box open. And what he saw left him agape, slowly shutting the box and pushed it back into it place in the chest. Bringing his arm to rest over his knee while staring blankly at the collection of at least eight.

"Wood cannot be good for that," he muttered. "I mean, what if she got a splinter?" he shivered, just the idea of having a miniature shard of wood pushed into places they don't belong was disturbing.

Shaking his head of those horrible thoughts, he turned his focus onto the various books, reading through their titles one by one before concluding, 'while the characters are different, I can still read them.' He reached out to a particularly thick book titled 'An Encyclopaedia on Monsters: Volume 1.'

While not particularly informative to the ways of the world, it would certainly give him a decent basis about what's out there, and using Liora's little mention of a goblin swarm earlier, he was certainly expecting not to see things he was familiar with, at least, in the reality of their existence.

Pulling the red bound book from the chest, Noah flipped it over and tilted his eyebrow up when he saw the cover of a lewdly clothed woman with her hands interlocked at the centre of her chest with two large bug eyes and two fan like antennae coming out of her head, poking through a mane a silvery hair.

"This is a porno, isn't it?" which made sense considering this was not the type of picture someone drew for an encyclopaedia.

Noah's eyes skirted left and right, returning to focus on the moth like girl. Finger pinching the hard cover and pried open the book. Raising his brow even further when he was greeted to not a foreword or an index. But by a creature, one he had already seen before.

A human… woman, dressed in nothing in a neutral pose showing of her front and backside with a relatively modest amount of curves to her, behind her in small a male illustration with pants on. 'I can see what the writers priority was.' Noah chuckled, letting his eyes roam over the writing that took up parts of the side of the page.

[Human]

[Sapience: Yes]

[Sex: Male/Female]

[Nature: Depends]

[Diet: Everything]

[Favourite Food: Depends]

[Special Abilities: Hardy, Adaptable.]

[Arguably the most common of the sapient species to be found throughout the continents of Estra. Honestly, there's really not much to talk about. If your reading this your likely a sapient, therefore you know what a human is. Arrogant, thinks little about consequences, gets killed a lot, etc. Slow births, slow growths, fast adaptation and ingenuity to new situations. Really, if you run into one (and you will) feel free to kill them, gods knows there's enough of them.]

And that just left Noah blinking incomprehensibly at the last bit he read. 'well fuck you too,' he shut the book and read the cover for any indication of a writer. Finding nothing, he flipped it over to the back, finding a back shot of the half-naked mothgirl from the front page, her portrait ending just at her but crack. But also finding a name right where the crack was.

"Well fuck you too, Ali…" he felt an oncoming headache from this word mess, "Alikavamata Teraphainitun. Jesus and I though Arcturus was a mouthful, fuck me." He pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing it to alleviate the throbbing pain.

Opening his eyes, he read through the name again, only to wince at it, "guessing they aren't human then," with a name like that, he had no doubt.

Sighing, Noah stood up with the book still in hand and made his way back onto the bed to keep reading through it, no matter how much the writer had already irritated him.

"You may annoy me Alika…" he stopped mid name as he had forgotten the rest of it, "you know what, Alika sounds good to me. Well, Alika, you may annoy me, but I can at least still learn something from this.

***

Noah groaned as he rubbed his face with his palms. The An Encyclopaedia on Monsters: Volume 1, lay tossed to the floor besides him. Something he had done in frustration after numerous irritating remarks and comments about the monsters the write was writing about.

Unprofessionalism, thy name is Alika. Not a single sentence throughout the various chapters on the monsters held any form of actual decent information that wasn't some rambling of whoever this Alika person was.

Every other sentence was written in such a way that it seemed like it was just tossed together by someone who knew nothing about speaking coherent sentences that made sense. And yet, somehow this book had found itself published, to what type of reception, he had no idea.

But what he did know, was firstly that the monsters in this world were for the most part more humanoid than he first expected. And secondly, he could do so much better and he wasn't even a writer.

Noah pulled his hands from his eyes to find his room growing darker by the minute as the sun set outside. A yawn soon escaping him. "I got so pissed off, I'm tired," he snorted sending a scathing glare towards that kindling of a book.

Reaching his hand to the blanket he'd bundled up next to his body between him and the wall, he threw it over his body, ready to shut his eyes and let sweet slumber take him.

Only, were there not a loud crashing noise that caused to jump and sit up, heart beating rapidly from the shock. "What the fu-" he paused hearing what sounded like sobbing following the crash. He didn't need a degree to know who that belonged to.

And he certainly wasn't going to sit around while Liora was weeping her heart out.

Throwing his blanket off, Noah quickly got to his feet. His strides long and swift towards his door, flinging it open on a trip to the shut door down the hall where the weeping only grew stronger.

***

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Please do note, I do not consider these chapters as the final version. I am treating this free release of the story as a first draft that I will rewrite sometime after finishing the first book with the intentions of releasing as a full blown webnovel with illustrations and all that. So expect boring chapters or typos.

I'm not a planner so everything that happens is random and I may forget stuff as I haven't made a series bible just yet.

So yeah, a bit of a forewarning for the future.