As he stepped in, Lucas immediately picked up on a rather odd detail. The library seemed much bigger on the inside. In fact, it had a second floor.

Looking up at the elaborate wooden staircase that led above, Lucas was reminded of the Yggorin's village. How the space within it stretched to an impossible degree. Adding to that, there were multiple door ways that lead outside the library.

Looking through them, Lucas could see these apertures led to different spaces. Each one led to a building with vastly different architectures. The few Beastkins who left these gates were just as different in dressing and mannerisms.

Watching the Spirit energy in the air flow in complex weaves as it interacted with the people present, he felt both confused and surprised at the conclusion he reached.

'Is this library some kind of domain? Oh, right. I should ask Wiki.'

{Yes, it is a domain. A tamed one to be specific.}

Lucas resumed his walk forward with blank expression as he continued his questioning. He opted for a rather vague question given he didn't know much about domains.

'Are there distinctions between tier 0 cores.'

{There are myriad classifications and distinctions between tier 0 Domains cores. These distinctions are usually quite arbitrary.}

Lucas immediately noticed something wrong with Wiki's response.

'That's a non-answer. That usually means I'm not asking the right question. So how should I approach this…'

While he thought, Lucas looked around the library. He could see tens of Beastkin moving to and fro, some sitting at large tables and some at comfortable yet small sofas. Most of them were quite young and dressed in loose flowing garments.

A few of them conversed but the vast majority seemed absorbed by their books. They quite literally just stared at their books with blank, glazed over looks. Lucas frowned slightly at this but everyone else didn't react to this at all and went about their day.

He tried to look around for a counter or librarian but was greeted by rows of bookshelves, tables, sofas, and nothing else. Redirecting his focus to his previous question, he thought,

'Maybe I'm overthinking it? Wiki, why did you call this Domain a tamed domain?'

Wiki immediately responded with,

{This Domain's nascent Will has been completely removed. Hence it is tamed.}

'Okay… wait a minute. You answered my question directly even though you gave me a non-answer before, are you just messing with me?'

{Yes.}

Wiki said and fell into silence. Lucas almost stumbled when he heard the reply.

'Damn it, Wiki. I'm guessing you can't tell me what a nascent Will is?'

{Affirmative.}

With Wiki's neutral reply, a slight smile appeared on Lucas' face. At least some things were still familiar. With that's out of the way, Lucas brought his focus to another pressing issue.

'I should get something to read.'

With his question answered, he didn't want to get side tracked. There will be time to interrogate Wiki some more later. He stopped beside the closest Beastkin, an average height fellow who had bright yellow scales on his skin and face.

They were placing back book back on the shelf with an audible yawn and stretch. With a gentle tap to their shoulder, Lucas began their conversation,

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Hey, do you know how the library works?"

The scaled Beastkin just stared at him in abject confusion before they said,

<Excuse me?>

'Oh, it seems "mind talk" isn't as common as Evélyne led on.'

Lucas thought to himself as he shook his head with a polite smile before walking away, multiplying the scaled person's confusion.

'If Evélyne let me come here on my own, I can think of three possible reasons she might have; This is some kind of test, she simply forgot I don't know jack shit. And finally, it's just really easy to get the books I want or something along those lines.'

Thinking of the three options, he felt the most likely was the third option. So, he just reached out his hand and grabbed a random book. The tome felt surprisingly light in his grip, almost like a leaflet rather than a textbook.

The material of the book's cover was quite strange as well. It was a generic black cover. But with Lucas' sensitive touch, he could feel out hundreds if not thousands of grooves on the cover. Passing his hands over it for a few moments, his eyes widened in realization.

'These are Runes!'

His [Spirit Sense] honed in on the book as it received his full attention. He could sense microscopic threads of a strange type of Spirit energy linking each Rune. These threads also left the book before vanishing from his perception.

"Woah…"

The more Lucas analysed the book, the more he realized he didn't understand anything at all about Runes. He could sense a miraculous connection between each Rune. The tapestry was not something he had even dreamt about much less attempting to create.

"Wiki, how is this possible?"

{With sufficient mastery, nothing is impossible.}

"That doesn't answer my question, Wiki."

{…}

With a sigh, Lucas dropped the matter. Even though he knew it was unlikely for Wiki to answer, a mimic could dream. Lucas brought his attention back to the book. He stood for almost thirty minutes analyzing it before he noticed the odd looks shot his way.

With a sheepish smile, he left the spot, book in hand. He easily found an unoccupied table and grabbed his seat as he placed the book in front of him.

"I'm not going to figure out the book's secrets anytime soon. It's more productive to just read it."

Lucas rationalized as he tried to open the book. Suddenly, he sensed a beam of energy shoot out of the book, directly into his skull. Thankfully, it was the same strange type of energy the book's Runes used. The energy just nudged at his Mind, asking for surface level access.

Already familiar with the process, he accepted its presence and it linked with his Mind. Everything went white as his Psyche was drawn out of his body.

He found himself in a simple room. At its center was a table and a foldable chair. Lucas looked around for a bit before deciding to take a seat.

'As always, things take a turn for the weirder.'

He thought as a piece of paper and a pen appeared in front of him. They were both rather mundane with the pen being a blue ballpoint pen and the sheet of paper just had a series of questions on it.

Lucas picked up the piece of paper and read the questions. The first one was rather simple.

"'What governs the flow of your Spirit energy?' Hmm… let's see, while a lot of things influence it, the most important factor is my will right?"

Lucas wrote down the answer as he spoke out loud, the question vanished from the sheet of paper. Lucas just moved on to the next question, doing his absolute best to suppress his curiosity about this place.

As he answered all the questions, new and more difficult questions appeared on the page.

What are the four longest Spirit energy pathways? What effect does vibrating your Spirit energy at these frequencies do?

As he answered more and more questions, he finally reached questions outside his bounds. Every follow up question was outside the range of his self taught knowledge.

At that point he began fading from that strange place. His blank and glassy eyes returned to their usual vibrance.

'So that's why they look so out of it.'

He thought to himself as he checked out the book now in his hands. As his eyes scanned through the pages, he realized it was describing knowledge on Spirit energy. Its words were somehow in perfect English.

As he read through it, he realized "describing knowledge" was a rather apt… description for the book's content.

Apart from the definition of Spirit energy being clear, everything else was rather vague and required him to actually perform some Spirit energy manipulation techniques himself to verify their implications. As he did them, he heard Wiki buzz with a notification.

{More knowledge has been added to the [Spirit energy] packet.}

"That's possible? Nice!"

Lucas eyes blaze with enthusiasm as he said,

"Okay book, I want to learn about Physique."

At his request, he sank into that mental world once more, but this time it was a dojo. Some floating texts appeared before him listing some basic activities to preform.

•Perform a hundred meter dash in 10 seconds.

•Perform a backflip.

…

These were not difficult for him given his parkour background plus his current mimic form. But as he completed each action, more were added and some like the hundred meter dash were modified to become much more difficult.

As he performed these elaborate series of actions and body movements, he felt his body strain more and more.

Eventually he reached his limit and was sent out once more. This time he was greeted by a splitting headache and a nose bleed. His injured Mind having finally reached its limits. Wiki pacified this pain with another notification.

{Info packet on Physique has been added.}

'Yes!'

As he sat clenching his teeth in pain and jubilation, he suddenly got a mental message from a dignified voice. It was the Queen, Katlyn.

/Meet me at my office./

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