The Library of Records

“Wai…!!!”

‘Instructor Isolde?’

When Shati felt something was wrong was when she saw Isolde reaching out her hand towards her before the light of the teleportation magic obscured her vision.

But it was after the activated teleportation magic had swallowed everyone including Shati, and only then could Shati clearly realize what had gone wrong.

Woong──

“Urgh…!”

With a feeling of her insides turning over, the magic power inside her body twisted. Then the coordinates of the arrival point that the magic power in her head had been fixing greatly shook, and Shati exhaled empty air feeling a strong impact in her abdomen.

It’s not a misfire of the magic. If it had been a misfire, they wouldn’t have moved in the first place, so if there was a mistake, it would probably be a problem with the structure of the magic itself.

She realized that this was also the reason Isolde was running towards her, but it was already too late, regret after everything had happened, so Shati collided with the floor along with intense pain while feeling the floating sensation of her body falling.

Crash bang───!!!

“Argh?!”

“My, my back…”

“Ugh, uuugh…”

“Sh-Shati… What on earth happened here…”

They crashed onto what seemed to be the floor with a loud noise.

Shati screamed at the impact, but apparently she wasn’t the only one who had fallen, as the screams of the other four were also heard from beside Shati.

Should she take comfort in the fact that they arrived in one place without separating despite the wrong structure of the magic?

While thinking that inwardly, Shati barely got up from her spot and answered Pina’s reproach heard at the end:

“I’m sorry… It seems there was a mistake because I’m still inexperienced with teleportation magic.”

“Was there a problem with the teleportation magic?”

“Probably… Urk, urgh…”

Shati nodded to Pina who asked back about her mistake, then covered her mouth at the rising dry heave.

It seemed her twisted insides due to the misfire of the teleportation magic just now hadn’t properly calmed down yet.

Pina seemed to recognize this too, as she hurriedly got up and approached Shati, swinging her staff once largely over Shati’s head.

“I’ll calm your insides first, Shati. 『Great Heal』, 『Divine』.”

“Ah, thank you…”

Light bursting from the staff Pina swung envelops Shati’s body. At the same time, Shati thanked her for her body condition improving instantly.

Perhaps it was the holy magic of a Pope candidate, as the pain and nausea that had been tormenting her body until just now disappeared in an instant, returning to a state no different from usual.

As Shati was admiring such a body, Pina, who had checked that her condition had improved, approached Arin and the others who were still lying face down behind.

“Then I’ll restore Arin, Kana, and Riana. Please wait a moment.”

“Ah, okay. Please do.”

Glancing slightly, the three were also lying face down on the floor with groaning faces.

Seeing that, Shati asked Pina, who was sighing as if tired, to do the work, and turned her gaze away from the three collapsed behind.

And as Shati turned her gaze, she began to look around at the surrounding scenery that she could now properly take in.

“Where is this…?”

Looking around, the first thing she saw was pure white walls.

Walls that seemed to soar to heights where the end couldn’t be seen, filled with only white, filled Shati’s vision.

“It doesn’t seem to be an ordinary building in the underwater kingdom…”

No matter how she looked at it, this couldn’t be an ordinary building somewhere in the underwater kingdom. Generally, the interior walls of the underwater kingdom were blue or sky-colored, and before that, there were no ordinary buildings with such high ceilings.

“But it doesn’t seem to be outside the underwater kingdom either…”

However, even if it wasn’t one of the buildings in the underwater kingdom, Shati didn’t think this place was outside the underwater kingdom.

The underwater kingdom is a kingdom located in the middle of the vast ocean, hundreds of kilometers away from the continent.

No matter how problematic the teleportation magic was, Shati’s magic power wasn’t enough to teleport to the outer continent of the underwater kingdom.

Moreover, there was still more than half of her magic power left in her body, so it was reasonable to think that this building was inside the underwater kingdom no matter how she looked at it.

Therefore, when the question of where exactly this unknown space they were currently in was continued to grow, the sound of the three behind Shati getting up reached her ears, as if Pina’s treatment of them had ended.

“Oww, my back…”

“It feels like every bone in my body is aching…”

“A-Anyway, where on earth is this…?”

“It seems we can only say it’s an all-white place…”

The three who got up frowned at the pain still mentally remaining, then looked around and showed the same reaction as Shati.

It was understandable, as they had been in a place completely covered by a purple barrier until just now, and then moved to a pure white space that seemed to have nothing to do with the underwater kingdom, so it would have been stranger not to be surprised.

Therefore, Shati approached the four who were looking around with curious eyes to tell them what she had grasped first.

“I’m not sure where this is either, but it seems to be somewhere inside the underwater kingdom for now.”

“Here?”

“It doesn’t look like that at all though…”

Shati wanted to tell them the fact that it was still inside the underwater kingdom first, but Arin and Riana tilted their heads first at those words.

Of course, Shati herself would not have been able to believe it if she wasn’t the person who actually used the magic, so she understood their feelings completely.

However, because it was the truth, Shati corrected their denial and continued speaking:

“The teleportation magic used with my level of magic power couldn’t go outside the underwater kingdom. If this wasn’t the underwater kingdom, shouldn’t we be submerged in the deep sea by now?”

“Then where exactly is this?”

“Well… I’m not really sure about that either.”

After somehow making them understand that it was the underwater kingdom, Shati shook her head at the following question about this place.

Although they had teleported due to a magic misfire, it was a place she had never seen before, so Shati had no way of knowing.

Therefore, after that question and answer continued, all five including Shati began to look around without anyone taking the lead.

Gathering information was the first thing to do now when there was no proper information about this place.

The immediate goal was to somehow get out of here and return to the museum where Isolde and Morgan were.

They wanted to collect as much information as possible about this place for that purpose.

However, after looking around for a while, in less than 10 seconds, the five looking around grabbed their throbbing eyes.

“Ugh, it’s nothing but white…”

“And it’s so bright that my eyes hurt… No, they’re hurting.”

“Should we move somewhere, anywhere, first?”

White, white, white.

No matter where they turned their eyes, nothing but white was visible.

Of course, it looked very clean because it was covered in white, but there’s a limit to even that.

When looking around a space filled with nothing but pure white from the floor to the walls to the ceiling, it was not enough that their eyes hurt, it felt like they might go crazy, so they had to turn their eyes away.

“At this rate, I really feel like I’m going to go crazy…”

It wasn’t a joke, but if she had been standing here alone, it wouldn’t have been strange if her mind had gone long ago.

Thanks to the slight black lines between the tiles, she could at least understand that what she was standing on was the floor, but if there were no other people besides herself, she wouldn’t have been able to endure enough to distinguish up from down.

Because Arin, Riana, Kana, and Pina were right beside her, she could at least recognize that this was reality.

But that was just that much help to each other, and no exit they wanted to find was visible even a bit, so Shati rubbed her throbbing eyelids.

Her head seemed to throb more and more, and her vision became gradually blurry.

Moreover, there were no other beings that could be called people visible around, and added to that was this completely unknown place, continuously inviting anxiety.

“There’s no choice…”

Therefore, Shati glared at the pure white walls spread out before her, opening her eyes wide at the slightly improved vision after rubbing them with her hands.

“It might be better to just destroy it.”

She could tell at a glance that this was a high-class building.

But no matter how high-class it was, a building that dries people to death like this when they enter is no different from a torture chamber, isn’t it?

Shati, who always received teachings from Meiyel, always remembered something she had heard from her.

-You are more important than anyone else… Never die… If you’re going to die, survive somehow, even if you have to do dirty things…

‘Rather than dying, survive somehow.’

She didn’t know exactly why she had been told such words to the point of having them drilled into her ears, but at least here, Shati was prepared to destroy this kind of building as much as needed because her own life was more important.

Moreover, even if she destroyed it, with her family’s wealth, compensation would be fully possible.

…Although she would be scolded a lot by her father.

“No, that’s not what’s important right now.”

Anyway, having made up her mind, Shati shook her head to shake off unnecessary thoughts.

And Shati raised her staff and gathered magic power while looking back at the four standing behind.

No matter how powerful magic is, it would be easier to break if all five of them, who were as strong as herself, attacked in all directions together.

Therefore, Shati was about to shout to the four to break this place and get out while projecting the almost completed magic in front of her.

No, she was about to shout.

“That’s enough, please.”

A voice that even felt holy interrupted Shati’s words and stepped down between them.

At the same time, the space that had been filled with only pure white in their vision began to transform.

Clang clang───

The space changes with the sound of gears turning.

And in such a transforming space, a woman in neat attire landed lightly in front of the five as if falling from the sky.

“This is a precious library that I have been ordered by the goddess to maintain. Please refrain from destroying it arbitrarily.”

The woman who came down speaking once again in that holy voice from earlier.

No one opened their mouth first at that sight.

More precisely, they couldn’t open their mouths.

Therefore, in the space where everyone was quietly closing their mouths, the woman still said with an expressionless face, looking down at her side:

“I came to greet you first because you are long-awaited guests. Everyone who tries to come here wants this one book.”

As soon as the woman’s words ended, the transformation of the space seemed to finish as the sound of gears turning stopped.

Then, at last, a mysterious lectern rose from the floor the woman had been looking down at, and the woman grabbed a book that had been placed on that lectern.

A holy book that one wouldn’t dare to think of touching even at a glance.

It even felt as if the holiness felt from the woman’s voice was emanating directly from it.

Although they didn’t ask, all five could easily understand that this book was the one the woman had just mentioned.

“The fifth page of the last page. It seems you are qualified to read.”

The woman muttered incomprehensible words while opening the book. The woman who easily flipped through the book that seemed to be three or four times the size of an encyclopedia stopped at one page, looked alternately between them and the book, and then nodded.

It’s full of incomprehensible words and incomprehensible actions.

Until just now, they were overwhelmed by the woman who felt holy and the transforming surroundings and couldn’t speak properly, but now that some time had passed, it was not so.

Therefore, Arin, who was the first among the five to step forward, was about to ask the woman a question about the current situation, but before that, the woman spread her arms.

As if she knew such a question would be asked, the woman showed a smile on her expressionless face and shouted loudly:

“Welcome to the Library of Records!”

With a smile that somehow seemed genuinely happy.

The woman, the librarian, shouted so.