Library of Rain

Economics

Thirty-six looked at the most recent message Mr. Purple had given her.

[WARNING: Mental corruption has risen 3%. Current mental corruption 3%]

What's mental corruption?

She didn’t feel any different. She tried to asses her mental state. As far as she could tell, she was fine. No holes in her memory. No strange urges or voices in her head. Maybe it only made a difference when she reached 100%. Deciding to see what Mr. Purple could tell her, she asked him to show her her information. 

[Name: Thirty-six

Age: 10

Mental corruption: 3%

Physical corruption: 0%

Class: [error]

Hidden Class: Master of the Library

Class Skills:

[error]

Hidden Class Skills:

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Door to the Library

Lend

Truth Sight

Passive Skills:

Aura of the Unnatural]

It looked like how she would expect, except that two kinds of corruption were listed. What is Physical corruption? She didn’t worry about it too much since she had none, but she would need to keep an eye on it.

More importantly, she had gained a skill, “Truth Sight.” If every book in this library gave skills to those who read them, then she understood why this library was so valuable. While the experience of learning “Truth Sight” was unpleasant, there didn’t seem to be any significant drawbacks other than the mysterious corruption. 

Emboldened by this, Thirty-six started exploring the library with new excitement. “Truth Sight” might not help her escape the auction house, but one of these books surely had a skill that could help her. 

The problem was that none had titles that made the skills they offered obvious. Most didn’t even have visible titles. 

As she wandered the shelves, she came to a wall with a simple door set in it. Excited to see a door that wasn’t covered in strange carvings or some other unsettling thing, Thirty-six opened it and stepped through into a small bedroom.

The bedroom was sparsely furnished. It had a small bed with a dark wooden chest at its foot. A coat rack stood by the door, a tattered black cloak hanging off it. 

Thirty-six went straight to the coat rack and grabbed the cloak. Despite its tattered state, the cloak felt soft and smooth to the touch. Thirty-six added soft things to her list of new stuff she liked, right next to pretty colors. 

As she donned the cloak, it shrank to fit her. She wasn’t sure if clothes were supposed to do that. Her knowledge of clothing was somewhat lacking. Since it wasn't hurting her though, she decided not to worry about it. 

Feeling a weight pulling down one side of her coat, she found an inner pocket with three tarnished silver coins in it. The coins had an old man's head on one side and a shield with a horse on the other. 

Putting the coin back into her pocket, she opened the chest. Unfortunately, whatever had been in the trunk had long since turned to dust. Disappointed Thirty-six tried the bed. She knew what beds were from her skill, but nothing could have prepared her for how laying on a real straw bed felt. She couldn’t believe people got to sleep on something like this every day. It took her ten minutes to convince herself to get up and explore the library again.

Leaving the room, Thirty-six decided to follow the wall to see if she could find any more doors. The only features of note, however, were the opening she came in from, the door to the bedroom, a handful of arches set into the wall with blank stone in them, and the wall of pedestals. Everything else was bookshelves, very tall bookshelves. 

Having mapped out the library, Thirty-six started paying more attention to the books. She couldn’t read all of them because she was worried about her corruption, but maybe she could find one that could give her a skill to help her escape.

The first book that caught her eye dripped shadows. She was sure that it would give her a shadow skill. Pulling the book off the shelf, she opened it and started reading. This book was gentler than the last, with no letters peeling off the page or anything similar. Instead, as she looked at the words on the page, written in a different language from the last book, information on creating a dusk rose seed seeped into her mind.

After reading about the dusk rose for a bit, Thirty-six paused to see if she would get a new skill. Nothing happened.

Disappointed that this book didn’t grant a shadow skill, she replaced it on the shelf.

[WARNING: Mental corruption has risen 4%. Current mental corruption 7%]

Thirty-six jumped at the unexpected message from Mr. Purple. If she gained corruption, then had she gained a skill? Asking Mr. Purple to show her her information, she glanced through it quickly. There was no change except for her rising corruption. That meant she had gained more corruption learning about some useless rose than from learning a skill. 

Fortunately, the extra corruption didn’t seem to do anything, so she kept looking through the library. This time, she decided to look for a book that felt right, not just one that looked like it might give her a skill she wanted. 

After an hour of searching, she decided to try a clear book that had different coins suspended in it. The silver in her pocket seemed drawn to the tome. Opening it, she realized she had no idea how to read a clear book. There were no visible words. She could only see the coins suspended in the clear pages. This first page held the cross-section of a gold coin with a bit of the coin on the cover and the rest suspended in the future pages.

Focusing on this cross-section, Thirty-six found that the inside of the coin had a swirling pattern that conveyed a subtle meaning as she concentrated. She began flipping through the pages, getting a little more with each cross-section. 

The coins told of the power of wealth and how it could open doors. The more a coin is worth, the more doors it could open. They instructed on how one should claim wealth for one's own. It went on like this for a while, but as she neared the end, the tone of the book changed. It went from praising wealth to a complex theory of how, due to the value humans place on money, coins gain a spiritual weight that leaves an indent on reality. The book ended on that odd note.

Thirty-six tried to put the book back but found she couldn't stop thinking about it. She was missing something. Opening the book up again, she restarted from the beginning. This time, she realized that the part of the book that aggrandized claiming wealth, when read with the knowledge from the end of the book, became instructions on how to forge a bond with a coin. 

She tried forming a connection with one of her silver coins. After a few tries, she felt the coin in her mind; it was a faint presence. She couldn’t tell where it was or how far, just that it existed. Excited by her success, she read through the book a third time, and this time it clicked. The book had always been speaking of the metaphysical. The doors opened were doors in reality that could be opened at the indent coins created in reality. If one had a connection to the coin and knew how they could slip through space to the location of the coin. 

As Thirty-six came to this conclusion, Mr. Purple created a message.

[Skill Attained: Path of Wealth.]

[Creating class around Path of Wealth.]

[Error: Path of Wealth has been absorbed into Master of the Library; creation of new class canceled.]

[Path of Wealth: You may connect to two coins and teleport to their locations at any time. The value of the coin will determine how many uses it has. Once all of a coin’s uses are spent, the coin will be destroyed. You may increase the number of coins you may connect to through practice.]

[WARNING: Mental corruption has risen 12%. Current mental corruption 19%]

This time, Thirty-six knew something was wrong.