Having already gone through transmigration, one more thing—a library inside his head—was hardly so bizarre that it would be impossible to accept. But the fact that a great many books in that library couldn't be opened, their contents invisible to him, left Lucian deeply puzzled.
Forcing himself to remain calm so that the library wouldn't become hard to "touch" under wild emotional swings, Lucian leafed through the books one by one, carefully noting which ones could be opened and which could not.
"History books—can all be opened."
"Economics books—no problem."
"Art books—these open as well."
"Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and the like—some can be opened, some can't."
"Could it be that different world rules are preventing me from opening them? But when I try to recall similar knowledge I've studied before—at least university-level—I can still remember it. None of it seems to be blocked."
The books he could open were mostly at the junior-high and senior-high level. The university's general library wouldn't have bothered collecting middle-school textbooks; what it held were scattered pedagogical research papers and medieval theses at a comparable level, there for students' reference.
The library held enormous numbers of books, and Lucian had only managed to skim a small fraction before uncovering these problems. But he couldn't be certain of anything, nor could he fathom the reason.
Having only just recovered from a serious illness, his body was still terribly weak, and his mental state had suffered as a consequence. After going through many books in succession, his mind grew muzzy and he could no longer perceive the library at all.
Gripping his will, he dragged himself back to bed and sank into a deep sleep. Only by recharging his energy and recovering his health could he face tomorrow properly. Lucian certainly hadn't forgotten that he had only a single black bread roll left. Survival always came first.
Half-dozing, he heard a series of squeaking sounds and the grating, ear-piercing noise of teeth gnawing on wood. The sounds drilled into his ears, jolting him from a dream filled with lavish feasts and a warm, soft bed.
"Rats?"
Still heavy with sleep, Lucian foggily rolled over, intending to keep right on sleeping. But the rats' scratching—on wood, on stone—grew louder and louder, more and more grating, and with the sharpened senses that come in the dead of night, Lucian tossed and turned until he could no longer fall asleep.
He waited for a long while, but the gnawing wouldn't stop. In the end, he pulled the blanket up over his ears. Yet the sound seemed to penetrate from every direction at once, making it utterly impossible to find the quiet he needed for sleep.
"What kind of damned life is this!" An irritable Lucian couldn't help letting out a curse. He felt as though he were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The food was the worst imaginable—black bread that tasted as though it had been fermented from sawdust. The clothes were the cheapest, scratchy linen that chafed his skin raw. The blanket was barely warm, and he couldn't even tell what material it had originally been. And now, on top of everything, even the one small comfort of sleep—the chance to temporarily forget all his troubles—was being stolen away. Squeak, squeak, squeak… it sounded as though thousands upon thousands of rats surrounded him.
Gritting his teeth in frustration, Lucian listened carefully, trying to pinpoint the direction from which the squeaking was coming. If he couldn't sleep anyway, he might as well get up, find the rats, kill one or two, and scare the rest away. Under his breath, he cursed and swore:
"I will escape this life as quickly as possible!"
Cocking his ear, he strained to pick out the direction from the gnawing noise.
Squeak, squeak, squeak… squeak, squeak, squeak… Woo, woo, woo… woo, woo, woo…
The moment Lucian focused, he realized that what he was hearing was nothing like rats at all. It was, unmistakably, a series of eerie, hollow sobs.
Woo, woo, woo… woo, woo, woo…
In the stillness of deep night, the squeaking and gnawing were gone. There was only the desolate, mournful weeping.
Lucian's heart slammed into a violent pounding. Blood rushed to his head and his senses grew extraordinarily sharp; he felt as though he could hear the cold night wind threading through the crack under the door. The crying was like a spectral melody drifting through the air—half illusion, half reality.
In one fluid motion, he rolled off the bed and stood. Almost instinctively, he threw open the crate and grabbed the last remaining black bread roll, wielding it as a makeshift weapon. In terms of hardness, at least, it would be more than enough to knock a thief unconscious.
Thump, thump, thump… woo, woo, woo… Thump, thump, thump… woo, woo, woo…
Lucian wondered for a moment what the thumping sound was, but instantly realized it was his own heartbeat—it sounded so thunderously loud in his ears.
A chilling wind swept past, and Lucian's hand clenched white-knuckled around the black bread. A wave of fear crept up from his gut: "This is a world of Arcane Magic and Divine Arts. What if it really is a vengeful spirit—a ghost?"
Thankfully, the experience of transmigration, combined with the shock and terror of witnessing Divine Arts earlier that day and seeing a living person burned to death, kept Lucian from going limp with fear or blanking out in this suffocatingly horrifying atmosphere. His nerves were taut, but he forced himself to slow his breathing, commanding himself to stay calm.
He inched toward the door, step by careful step, trying to discern the direction of the crying.
The sobs were steeped in desolation. In the utter silence of deep night, they rang out with piercing clarity—yet every neighbor around him seemed to have been swallowed by their dreams. Not a single sound came from any of them.
"The crying… it seems to be coming from under the wall on the right." The closer Lucian got to the door, the clearer it became. "Wait—on the right side of my room… isn't that where the burned Witch used to live?"
A jolt of shock ran through him. "Wasn't her residence burned down by the Church? Could there be a hidden cellar or secret chamber where her vengeful spirit and other things are still concealed?"
The thought of a hidden chamber, combined with every novel he had ever read, sent a cascade of words flashing through Lucian's mind: "adventure," "treasure," "Magic Notes." A small, reluctant flicker of greed stirred in his heart.
Woo, woo, woo… woo, woo, woo…
The crying seemed to take on a sharper, more piercing edge. Lucian couldn't suppress a violent shudder, and his mind snapped back to clarity. "Even if there were treasure and Magic Notes, they'd be under the guardianship of this weeping spirit."
"I'm just an ordinary person who's barely recovered from a serious illness. I don't know how powerful vengeful spirits are in this world, or what weaknesses they have. What could I possibly use to fight one?"