“Where did you find this?”
“It’s on a shelf in the back here.”
The area that Lily pointed to on her library map may not be hidden, but it was in a place where you would not see it unless you were searching for it. It was probably one of the books in the stacks that they could not discard, but they didn’t want anyone to look at it.
“Lily, you’re free to enjoy reading any book you like for the rest of the day. I’m going to focus on this book.”
“Understood. I’ll put the magic-related books away.”
“Yes, please.”
I replied with a blank stare and opened the book back from the beginning. The first part was a typical foundation myth. It mentioned that the charismatic first King, who was favored by the God of Beauty, established a country with his admirers, and that he expanded his territory while fighting with the surrounding countries, which were probably at a village level, anyway. I’ll skip over that part of the story.
As I continued reading, I realized that just before the unification of the whole country, the country was in a literal sense similar to a North-South dynasty. It seemed that the northern and the southern part of the continent had been divided into two main countries and with Finnoi as their border.
I wondered if there was a big river that could be used as a border between the north and the south empires. But, I did not recall any from memory. I let my doubts be doubts for now and continued on.
The country of Zermunbeck was on the northern side of the continent, and in this book, written from that perspective, the King of Warbach on the southern side of the continent treated the northern King as a false King. He was written as a cruel, lustful, and evil king, but that was probably only half of the story. At any rate, it was a country of humans, and it was certainly not written that he was a Demon King.This indicated that the area where the country of Zermunbek was originally located now mostly remained under the sea.
And the current continent as I know of today was the territory of the Southern Kingdom of Warbach. Of course, I suppose that the details regarding other territories on the southern side may have already also existed, but why was it not mentioned?
I would leave that aside for the time being. What I found interesting was that there is no mention of magic in the book.
This suggested that either humans in this world were able to use magic from the beginning so there was no need to explicitly mention it, or there was no magic in the period of unification process. If it was later, then it means this kingdom existed before the Ancient Kingdom had been established. Leading to the question of what magic really was.
Another thing that I noticed was that there were descriptions of disasters here and there. However, the scale was not clear, and the details regarding how it happened were not given.
This was typical of ancient records, whereas war records were written, disaster records were only written as vague information if the scale of the disaster was not that great. After all, if they did describe each and every disaster in detail, it would fill up the entire book.
The other thing that I found interesting was the use of the term “fortress of Finnoi” in the book. Was Finnoi actually a fortress at this time? If so, there must be a reason why it was called the Great Temple today. I should do a little more research in that area, but I guess this concluded the book.
I know I said I would read this, but I doubt I would find the information I needed in this book. Furthermore, I wonder if there was a second volume or more.
When I took my eyes away from the book, I noticed that the books on my desk were gone and were neatly cleaned while Lily was nowhere to be found. She seemed to have put them all away while I was concentrating. I decided to look for a continuation of this book for now and headed toward the back shelf. It was dark in this area as a whole, probably because of the illumination not reaching the shelves.
Lily was also at the shelf I wanted to check, which was good, but…
“Lily?”
“Ah, yes. Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing really, uh, this book, this came from that space at the top, right? Can I use the stepladder?”
Okay, you should stop sitting on a stepladder to read a book. It was also dark in here, so it was not a good location.
Lily came down from the stepladder with a book in her hand, turning red and saying, “I’m sorry”. She was not a clumsy girl, but I guess, from time to time, she would make mistakes. Well, it didn’t really matter.
“What were you reading?”
“Well, it’s a book with beautiful pictures and something like a fairy tale. I had never heard of these stories from the village priest.”
“Oh.”
I had thought, “Isn’t that a picture book,” but people here didn’t know about the concept of a picture book in the first place. Normal people in this world would only call it a book with pictures. The fact that she said it was from the village priest suggests that it was probably a religious book as well. Come to think of it, I never tried to look at religious books of this world.
I was never interested in religion, so my memory of religious topics was hazy. I wondered what kind of stories were told in the church here. As I moved the stepladder around, I continued the conversation.
“What did it say?”
“The part I was just reading was a story about a time when there was a Flower God, and he was teaching the hunters about medicinal herbs…”
“Wait a minute. The God of Flowers?
“Yes.”
I have never heard of such a God. I mean, this world was monotheistic in the first place.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter