74 World Library

Okay, so I've entered a door on the side of Yggdrasil, and now there is some sheep lady librarian who wants to know why we are here.

Does saying I don't know slide here?

Well, I don't know if she is crazy or not or who she even is. On the bright side, the branch that flew into the tree earlier is back in my hand. I don't know when it got there, though.

"Um… please excuse us. My soul item, this branch, flew into the tree, and we followed it." I hold up my branch to show it to her, and she has a slight look of shock on her face before returning to a calm persona.

She seems to know something about what is happening.

"I see, so you are the first branch. Welcome to the World Library. This place has all the knowledge of the World Tree, Yggdrasil," the sheep lady says calmly. Her eyes tell a different story, though. She seems shocked for some reason.

More than anything, though, I'm shocked that SHE is here. Does anyone else know that there is a random person living in Yggdrasil? I have a feeling that no one does.

"So, what are you doing here?" I ask her.

"I am the librarian of this place." She calmly says with her deadpan face.

"Yeah, I got that. But no one knows that this place exists! Heck, me and my friends didn't know that this place existed until now! How did you get a job here? Does Yggdrasil put up job notices?" I am actually so confused.

"I have been working here for so long I lost count." the librarian retorts.

She looks like she is in her mid-50s, but I guess she is a lot older than that. Probably gives Chiron a run for his money.

"May I ask, first branch, why do you take the form of a lowborn elf?"

"Um, because I was born this way? And my name is Jess, not first branch."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, when a male and a female love each other very much-"

"I know how reproduction works among human-type living creatures. But, you are a branch of Yggdrasil."

I have a feeling we are going nowhere. What does she mean by that anyway? I was definitely given birth to by my parents. There are even baby pictures. What is she going on about?

"I've heard about this first branch stuff. But, I really was given birth to by my parents, not Yggdrasil."

"Hold on, I need to check something."

A book starts to float towards her, and she turns to some random page. After a little bit of looking and a slightly confused look on her face, she turns back to me, saying, "Sorry, I was mistaken. Seems like things are more complicated this time."

What in the world is she on about? Well, whatever. We are on the same page now, at least.

"Do you mind if we look through this library a little?" I ask her.

"Yes, this place is meant to be used by those who the World Tree has granted access. You are free to read as much as you like. The other two as well." She answers, still as deadpan as ever.

Great, I grab my friends, and we walk towards the shelves. There are so many books here, I wonder where we should start.

I wonder if Yggdrasil has knowledge of the Shift? I mean, it didn't exist in the pre-Shift world, but you never know.

"Oh yeah, Miss Librarian, how do we get out of here?" William speaks up, making a very good point.

"Just go out the way you came in," the librarian replies.

Oh yeah, that helps. The door already disappeared, lady! Aaand… she's gone. Great.

Well, let's worry about that later. For now, we should look for clues about the Shift and maybe some other stuff as well. You never know what the giant tree in the middle of a kingdom might know.

"Let's split up and see what we can find out," I tell my friends.

Sophia argues, "Splitting up! That never ends well."

"This is a library, not a horror movie." I refute. I mean, come on, she has been watching too many movies.

We all go our separate ways, and I walk up to what I think is a computer. I mean, it looks like those computers they have at libraries that allow you to search for the locations of specific books.

I didn't know that Yggdrasil was keeping up with the times. Good on it.

Well, guess I should look up books on spontaneous reality changes… that sentence feels wrong.

Well, whatever. Oh, look at that. There is something. I'll go grab it, but before that, lets look up some books on the three branches. I feel like that knowledge may be important.

After spending some time collecting the books I needed, I walked over to a table where Sophia, William, and I agreed to meet up.

I guess they aren't done finding their books yet, so I'll just start reading.

Well, the reality change book is kind of useless. It is mostly about theoretical physics, which doesn't really help me here.

I mean, the book could come in handy later, so I'm taking notes of what it says, but quite frankly, the stuff in the book goes way over my head.

I have no idea what I am reading about. Someone way smarter than me would be required to understand half the stuff in this book.

Time to move on to the book about the three branches. Well, I grabbed more than one. The first book I grabbed was about general knowledge of the three branches, and the second book I found was actually tailored toward the use of the three branches.

It is supposed to describe how to use the soul items, what powers come with being a branch, and all that stuff. It seemed helpful, so I grabbed it.

So, from the first book, the three branches come from Yggdrasil. I already knew that. The first branch had the power of Spacetime magic, and the second branch had the power of… special MP? That's it? No information on why the MP is special or what the heck that even means.

This library should have all the knowledge of Yggdrasil, who created the second branch, so why isn't there more information?

Maybe Yggdrasil is trying to keep it a secret from me? But what reason would it have?

Well, maybe the other information on the third branch will be useful. The book says that the third branch has a well-tempered body. It will never get hurt or sick, and the skin is as tough as metal.

That sounds cool, I guess the third branch is the creator of Enhancement magic.

Well, the second branch is still a secret, but I have a little bit of information on the third branch, at least.

Now I just have to look for a ridiculously strong person who has skin as tough as metal. Does anyone know Heracles' number?

Okay, in all seriousness, the knowledge I've gained has at least given me a bare bit of knowledge of what to look for.

I also know that Yggdrasil doesn't have any knowledge about the Shift either; well… if it does, it's keeping it a secret from me.

William and Sophia appear. Eventually, William has a good few books, and Sophia has a tower of at least ten books stacked on top of each other.

"Um, Sophia… do you need help there?" I ask her.

She apologetically replies, "Um… yes, please."

I use gravity magic to float half the stack to the table and stack them on top of each other.

"That magic seems useful." Sophia looks almost amazed, I sometimes forget that she probably isn't completely used to this magic world yet. I've been getting used to it for about eight months now, but she is different. She has only personally experienced magic for, at most a couple of months.

"You seem so shocked about floating books, yet you literally came back to life." I tease her.

"Oh, shut it."

"Anyway, why did you grab so many books, Sophia?"

"Well, these are books about knowledge of the Magic Liberators."

"That… is pretty smart. Know your enemy, am I right?"

Sophia gets to binge reading those books, and William seems to have found some books on Time magic, so I'll leave him to his research.

I'll keep reading the books I've grabbed and see if I can get any more information.

===

It's getting late, so William, Sophia, and I start to pack up. After we are done putting our books away, we walk up to the wall where the door used to be.

I pull out my branch and poke it into the wall. Unfortunately, that doesn't work. Hmm…

"OPEN SESAME!" I scream.

"Jess, your an idiot," both William and Sophia say at the same time. See! I told you they can be in sync at weird times!

"Shut it. Do you have any better ideas?"

"Ugh."

Just then, my branch starts to glow the same soft yellow, and a door opens where I stabbed the wall.

"Hah! I told you it would work!" Jokes on them.

"..."

I'll take that silence as surrender! Off we go back home!