The White Witch
I had built a library, so now I was going to shut myself in and do nothing but read books all day long. Coincidentally, that wish of mine went unfulfilled.
There were several reasons. For starters, I had to get books from somewhere. Naturally, books don't just spring up on their own — they are things made through someone's care and effort.
Leaving the library in Cheshire's care, I would slip out of the forbidden lands, find books somewhere, and return. That whole process took a fair amount of time.
Fortunately, unlike the North, there were still plenty of countries and cities I had never visited. Reaching my targets didn't take all that long.
"H-huh, y-you… the White Witch?!"
"That's right. You recognized me well."
"Well, I don't think there are two snow-white, beautiful witches flying through the sky in this world…"
"Well… fine. That makes things easier. Your country is suffering from drought, right? I'll bring rain clouds nearby. Bring me every book you have."
"Books, you say…? The books in the royal palace are national treasures…"
Every country has at least one hardship to contend with. I demanded books under the pretext of solving it for them.
Of course, no one ever readily handed books over for that. As I had said before, books in this era were extremely expensive and took enormous effort to produce.
Solving problems no one had asked me to solve and then collecting payment for it was the sort of thing only a thug would do. Still, I had a conscience.
"Ah, I'm not saying I'll take them. Just borrow them for a bit. Hmm, half a day should be enough."
"Only half a day…?"
Since they didn't have to give the books away for good, a request to borrow them for roughly half a day was something they quickly accepted.
Then I would hastily solve the problem with magic and, through Biblion, copy only the contents of the borrowed books to make duplicates.
This way the other party had only lent their books for a short while and gotten their problem solved, while I ended up with perfect copies of the originals. Mutual benefit.
"Well then, shall we head back. Cadere."
Once I had secured a large haul of books and finished my business, I returned to the forbidden lands on flight magic.
I dropped a small meteor on the monsters that fearlessly charged me to teach them a lesson, and the moment I got back to the library I dumped every book I had brought onto the floor in a clattering heap.
Lately I had been trying to keep a pace of one book a day, so a single outing for books usually lasted me about ten days.
I would read, and when I was nearly finished I would go out for more books, then shut myself in and read again. Repeating that cycle, half a year slipped by before I knew it.
But around that time another problem arose. For some reason, visitors started showing up at the library.
"I'm here. Got any cookies left…? What, Blond Pervert. What are you doing here?"
"Marina. I am not a blond pervert — I have a name, and it is Arthur. And of course I came to see Liber."
"White Witch. I heard you live here, so I came to repay my debt of gratitude."
"Open up, White Witch! Come out and fight me right now! Let's settle the match we couldn't finish last time!"
"Ahh, Lady Witch! Please help our kingdom…! Only your power is our hope!"
There were close acquaintances like Marina and Arthur. People whose lives I had saved or helped on my adventures. People who wanted to beat me to prove their skill. And desperate souls who came seeking the White Witch's power.
I must emphasize again: this was no ordinary city. It was the most dangerous region on the eastern continent — a forbidden land swarming with horrific monsters.
Just walking around meant putting your life on the line, and even fairly skilled warriors could barely last two weeks here. So why did people knock on the library door every day, begging to be let inside? Coming all the way into the forbidden lands defeated the whole point.
"Come inside for now. But if you dare touch the books with dirty hands, I'll feed you to the monsters of the forbidden lands."
"Haha, Lady White Witch! Your jokes are quite mischievous!"
"…"
"I'll be extremely careful!"
I couldn't turn away guests who had come all this way. Telling them to go home because I wanted to read would have been too cold. But whenever I talked with them and granted their requests, the time for reading vanished in a flash.
I mean, other than close friends like Marina and Arthur, I had never told anyone I was building a library in the forbidden lands. How did they even know I was here?
Filled with questions, I grabbed someone at random and asked. The answer came back that because of all my various activities to obtain books across the eastern continent, the news that the White Witch lived in the forbidden lands had become extremely famous.
Among the rumors was even the wild claim that I was deliberately staying in the forbidden lands as a test, and that if you fought your way through the monsters to find me, I would grant any request. When had I ever said that?
"It seems your generous nature has given rise to some strange misunderstandings, my lady."
"Haa… You're telling me. Such shameless people. Do they think I'm some kind of wish-granting lamp?"
"Rather than that, isn't the real problem that if someone begs desperately enough, you end up indulging them, my lady…?"
"What? When have I ever? I only grant requests that benefit me. Do I even look like someone who indulges people?"
"…"
Cheshire, in the form of a cat, seemed unable to refute my answer. With an expression full of things it wanted to say, it clamped its mouth shut. See? Couldn't even answer.
Anyway. What was I supposed to do about all these unnecessary visitors? I couldn't exactly move the library I had worked so hard to build. As I continued to worry and worry, Cheshire, who had been baking bread and cookies, came up with a brilliant idea.
"My lady. What if we required that anyone with business at the library must bring at least one book?"
"…What? Wait, Cheshire, you're a genius."
It was a stunning shift in perspective. I needed to go out and find books, but guests kept flooding in so I couldn't leave. So I should just make the guests who showed up uninvited bring books themselves.
Suffering under the constant stream of visitors, I immediately spread the news far and wide. Don't even think of coming without a book. I'll throw you out beyond the forbidden lands.
Perhaps because I actually hurled a few people out past the forbidden lands, the convenient rule settled in nicely: if you had a request for the White Witch, bring a book when you came.
"Yes! Perfect! This way I won't even have to leave the library! Cheshire! You adorable little thing! You're amazing!"
"Guek! M-my lady! If you hug me that hard, my body will snap in half! Aaaah!"
Of course, this did not eliminate every problem. Getting books was apparently quite difficult, so some people dragged entire squads of soldiers to demand I grant their requests, or brought unreadable garbage claiming it was a book.
On top of that, some people lost their lives trying to force their way into the forbidden lands, or provoked monsters and caused damage outside. Naturally, I had to deal with all of it. What a pain.
If I had known it would be like this, I would have thoroughly hidden the fact that I had come here. I had let my guard down thinking no one would find me in a forbidden land, and it only made things more annoying.
Still, thanks to Cheshire's idea, books kept piling up. Books were basically spawning on their own without me having to go out and find them. This was practically a miracle.
"No, why do so many people go this far just to see me? I have no time to read!"
But whenever I tried to read, a guest would arrive, and after roughly handling their business and sending them off, another guest would arrive. I simply had no room to keep reading books.
Finally my patience hit rock bottom. I grabbed Marina, who had at some point made a room for herself inside the library, and decided to create a new spell.
"I'm going to make a Room of Spirit and Time."
"A room of spirit… what?"
"I'm going to cast a spell on the library's reading room that makes time flow faster. Roughly… twice as fast as the outside would be good. So help me create the spell."
"Hey, this is way too sudden. More importantly, a spell that makes time flow faster? Why on earth would you make something like that?"
"Because guests keep coming and I have no time to read! I'm going to turn one day into forty-eight hours instead of twenty-four!"
Marina looked at me with an "oh, this again" expression, but I was completely serious — not a shred of joking in it.
In theory there was no problem. I had previously created a spell called the Time Prison to seal a monster known as the Earth Demon. I just needed to take the core structure that twisted the flow of time from that spell.
To put it simply, I needed to build a scooter, but I already had the engine from a motorcycle I owned. All that was needed was the calculation and detail work for stabilizing the magic.
Even so, the spell itself was quite tricky. Even with two of the world's greatest mages working on it, it took two weeks.
The time acceleration spell was completed by linking the mana needed to maintain it to the overflowing earth veins of the forbidden lands. With that, the reading room became a wondrous space where time flowed faster than outside.
"I think this every time. Star magic is just ridiculous. I should have been born with the star attribute too."
"That's not something you choose…. And I wanted a plant attribute like my master."
If I had had a plant attribute, I would have created a spell that made trees that grew books. When I sincerely expressed that regret, Marina looked at me as if I were some strange creature instead of answering. Just curse at me already.
Anyway, after completing the time acceleration spell, I finally secured time to read. The downside was that mana did not recover inside the spell, but still, being able to read books at leisure was quite appealing.
But every matter in this world has light and darkness. The time acceleration spell I had created to relieve inconvenience soon gave rise to a serious problem.
"…What do I do. There are no more books to read."
A year and six months after building the library in the forbidden lands. Around the time I turned twenty-six, I sat down in the middle of the library and muttered that.
In just a year and a half, the books gathered in the library numbered in the thousands. But those were all books I had already read. To someone addicted to new books like me, rereading books I had already finished felt somehow stifling.
I had finally gotten to enjoy books in an environment similar to my previous life. With the influx of new books cut off, my chest felt tight and my whole body itched as if withdrawal symptoms were setting in.
Books. Give me new books. Already-read books can't fill this sensation. But I instinctively realized I had read every book that had come into my hands. New books… did not exist.
"My lady. What if you give blank books to famous authors and ask them to write something new?"
"…Not easy. There's no printing technology here. Everything would have to be written by hand one letter at a time. And even then, producing a single book of around three hundred pages would take at least a month no matter how fast."
My tastes had grown expensive; I could no longer be satisfied with cheap books. Books that just filled pages. Books you had to apologize to trees for. Those didn't even feel like I had read them.
They absolutely had to contain the author's sincerity and anguish, or open my eyes to facts I had not known before. Without that, I simply could not quench this thirst.
"Ah, I'm dying…. Cheshire. I might die soon…."
"My lady. Ordinary humans don't die from not reading books."
"Do I have to wait like this until new books come out? I'm on the verge of dying of thirst, and I have to wait for water droplets falling one by one from a crack in a rock? From now on, forever? Until I grow old and die?"
"I was wrong. Maybe the first human in history to die from not being able to read books is about to appear."
Feeling a sense of crisis, I hastily got to my feet. This was no time to be sitting around. Shouldn't I revolutionize papermaking and printing, lay roads, get carriages moving, and advance world civilization by thousands of years?
I seriously felt that necessity, then realized it was unrealistic. I was good at handling magic — I was not an expert in civilizational development. It would take at least ten years. People would die before then.
"Books, let me read books…. I need new books…."
"My lady…. Please maintain some dignity."
"Let me reeead boooooks!"
Ahh, I suddenly missed my previous life. A world where there were more books than people. Not a stingy world like this with a few thousand or tens of thousands of books, but an insane world with tens of billions of them.
Why are there so few books. I want to read tons of books. As I rolled around on the floor half out of my mind, Cheshire, sweating profusely, urgently came up with an idea as if to say "how about this?"
"My lady. If you can make time go faster, can't you make it go slower in reverse?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"If it hurts because there are no new books, just sleep until new books come out and then wake up!"
"That's…. A truly spirit-like solution."
I pointed out the problem with Cheshire's idea. Humans are social animals. Doing something like that would mean falling off the timeline.
I may not look it, but I have plenty of close friends in this world. If everyone died and I was left alone, maybe. But skipping through time like that — I felt I would regret it someday.
"Still, the idea itself isn't bad. If there are no books, then to a future where there are books…."
Flash. Suddenly a good thought struck me. I immediately sat up straight and seized the decisive idea that would solve this situation.
Yes. I did not like the civilization of this era. But changing the world would take too long, and abandoning the world to leave meant leaving precious friends behind.
So what if, for a little while, I could visit the distant future? Read books there until I was sick of them, and once I was satisfied, come back and resume my daily life here?
"…Not bad. No — rather, there's no solution other than this."
Star magic can manipulate space-time. So visiting the distant future was not theoretically impossible. No — it was something only I in this world could do.
Having made up my mind, I immediately burst out of the library. Cheshire asked where I was going at this late hour.
"Well, there's only one thing, isn't there? I have to go find a star that can help. I need to make it as fast as possible, before my reason gives out."
A world filled entirely with books I have never read! Just imagining it sent electric currents racing through my body.