Borne returned to the underground laboratory, his mind still a little foggy.
He took out the Golden Scroll, feeling as though it couldn't be real.
"I got the Golden Scroll this easily?"
No, that couldn't be right!
There was no love without cause in this world, nor hatred without reason.
Even the dean had agreed that this was fair compensation, which meant Borne must have paid a fitting price.
Borne thought back over everything that had happened, but nothing seemed worth such a price.
Could the price be for something to come in the future, paid in advance?
Even setting aside whether Borne was capable of it, the temple's Archivist still needed his help. Could that be it?
Besides, Borne hadn't promised to do anything...
"He said it was compensation... Does that mean I've already paid the 'price'?"
Borne froze, then shuddered.
If he wasn't mistaken... he'd just been a hair's breadth from death.
That would explain why Rodney had offered the Golden Scroll as compensation.
Borne had found Rodney's files in the Arcane Society's research lab.
The records from that time had been destroyed, but memories didn't simply vanish.
Several of Rodney's successors had also left behind some information.
It was scattered and disorganized, but the system had sorted it all into a coherent whole. That was why Borne knew so much about Rodney.
Not just anyone knew about the title Archivist. Even among clergy, only the higher-ups were in the know. As for Nether, probably only the dean and the count knew anything about it.
Based on what Borne knew, Rodney had certainly come with bad intentions.
"If I'm right, he came to poach someone, just like he did back then! My grandfather probably only found out later that his prized student had been 'brainwashed' into joining the Church!"
Borne guessed that this also explained why the Academy had destroyed Rodney's files.
But Nether had been in a bad state at the time. After Great Netheril had been wiped out, the royal family's grip on Nether had weakened.
With the Church so powerful, and the Academy only recently founded, they had no chance of taking it on directly. And with no evidence, all the Academy could do was swallow the insult.
They even had to help the Church cover up the scandal!
"But if 'brainwashing' replaces someone's entire personality, are they still the same person?"
Borne recalled the way Rodney had looked at him. It was as if he weren't looking at a person, but at an 'object'—a rare treasure!
Borne suddenly came to a startling conclusion. Had all the Archivists over the years been 'brainwashed' by the Church? Or at least most of them?
Like Arcanists, Archivists needed a spirit of exploration and innovation, and had to understand the laws governing how things changed.
Arcanists were one thing, but Archivists studied the gods and divine power...
If you stripped away every secret of the 'gods,' would they still be gods in your eyes?!
Even the 'gods' had enemies. The best solution was to become one of their own—the kind who would never betray them!
At that moment, Borne began to understand why the higher-ups had wanted to study divine power!
The outcome of the future had already been decided!
If not for the Chip and the 'anti-magic' property of his 'qi,' he might have been done for today!
He'd been sitting at home when disaster fell from the sky. Being too famous wasn't always a good thing.
Although the attempt to poach him had failed this time, they might come back again.
Completing the Monk inheritance had to become a priority. He also needed to study Psychic magic, and upgrade the system's firewall.
The power to control someone's mind was terrifying. Even now, Borne still felt shaken!
Looking at the Golden Scroll on his desk, Borne gave a wry smile. "I really did trade my life for this!"
The most important thing now was to grow stronger. Strength was what mattered!
Damn it, they'd actually dared to target him!
Once he became a Great Arcanist, he'd pilot a Floating City and blow their Divine Realm to pieces!
Hmph!
Borne had never been this furious. For the first time, he was truly determined to become stronger.
Then he unrolled the Golden Scroll and realized that these ten volumes were part of a set.
More precisely, they belonged to the same series!
The Scrolls of Netheril were the foundation of Nether's human magic. Their contents were as dense as an encyclopedia, encompassing knowledge from countless fields. Many professions would eventually emerge from the Golden Scrolls!
Nether had obtained two sets of Golden Scrolls, a total of 100 volumes.
The contents of these 100 Golden Scrolls were divided into five sections.
1: Introduction to Arcane Arts (Basic Principles of Magic)
2: The Creation of Magic (The Art of Making Things)
3: Advanced Creation (High-Level Creation)
4: Mechanics of the Planes (The Study of the Planes)
5: Arcane Treatise (The Making of Artifacts)
The set Borne had now covered Mechanics of the Planes, containing knowledge about space, fields, and domains.
It mainly discussed Plane Shift, effective defenses against extraplanar harm, and ways to weaken the influence of other planes!
"Mechanics of the Planes is basically the theory of space magic!"
Then Borne had a bold idea.
He wanted to enter all the knowledge recorded in the Scrolls of Netheril into the Chip. That way, even if all 100 Golden Scrolls were lost someday, he'd have a backup.
The memory issue was a minor concern. After the Chip gained 'divinity,' its memory capacity had turned into three question marks—too vast to calculate.
Besides, if it wasn't enough, he could always make a few more memory units by hand.
System Chips were hard to come by, but memory units were easy enough to make.
Knowledge was the legacy of civilization. It would be a terrible shame if the Golden Scrolls were eventually lost.
The scrolls had been given a strange 'curse': the knowledge written on them couldn't be recorded in text.
The 'curse' was practically a rule, so the only way to memorize the contents was by reading them.
The Chip had no such limitation. By encoding the information in computer language, he could perfectly bypass the 'rule.'
But there was still one more thing Borne needed to verify: information distribution!
Besides being impossible to copy, the Golden Scrolls also had another unusual feature: they read themselves into you.
While reading a Golden Scroll, you didn't have to worry about getting distracted, because the information on the scroll kept pouring into your brain.
This process was almost irreversible. You couldn't put the scroll down until you'd finished reading it.
Whether you could handle it or not, your eyes would be firmly 'stuck' to the scroll. The process wouldn't stop until all the information had been transmitted.
Many people whose brains couldn't withstand such a massive amount of information either went mad or had their minds 'crash.'
And if someone forcibly interrupted the reader during this process, the reader would suffer anything from eye damage and blindness to severe brain damage that left them in a vegetative state.
Someone might say, "Then why not just read one volume at a time?"
In fact, the knowledge in the Golden Scrolls built on itself.
If you read only one volume, you'd receive only the knowledge in that volume. But by the second, third, or even tenth volume, the amount of knowledge could be several times greater than the current volume, or even increase exponentially!
This effect was limited by time. Even if years passed after you'd read the ninety-ninth volume, the amount of knowledge in the hundredth would still be a multiple of what was in the ninety-ninth.
As a result, when the Golden Scrolls were first discovered, many people read them until their brains burst or they went mad.
Borne knew the limits of the brain. Humans made little use of their brains to begin with, and in a supernatural world, the body could be strengthened, allowing for greater brain development and even more potential!
Having read the scrolls before, Borne knew that the real limitation wasn't insufficient brain capacity, but the brain breaking down from overload.
Being able to eat ten tons of food didn't mean you could eat ten tons in one sitting. The brain was the same.
The scrolls' creators had built in a special rule: whenever you read the knowledge, it would all pour into your mind at once, without waiting for you to slowly digest it.
Eat too much and you'd throw up.
If your brain couldn't 'digest' the information fast enough, it would definitely 'crash' and kick the bucket...
That was why the Scrolls of Netheril were later kept separately, to stop people from reading too much and dying mad.
Even if the madness caused by reading a scroll could be cured, the price was severe damage to the reader's ability to use magic.
There had once been a high-level caster who read a scroll, went mad, and was cured, only to fall to the middle ranks. And after that, he could never advance again!
"System, create a new independent database and name it Golden Scroll."
Borne said.
"Ding! Generating database..."
"Ding! Database created. Name: Golden Scroll!"
"Pause all tasks and focus on receiving information!"
After issuing a series of commands, Borne took a deep breath and picked up the first volume.
Soon, the text on the scroll began to appear. Having read one before, Borne knew it was starting. The familiar sensation quickly returned. The words on the scroll seemed to 'come alive' and streamed toward his eyes.
Then came a 'ding.' The system began receiving the information, and Borne instantly felt his mind lighten. His thoughts, battered by a torrent of information, were freed up considerably. He could even think about other things.
"It really works!"
Borne was overjoyed.
Before long, he had 'read' the first Golden Scroll.
He checked the system's information. Although the Chip had gained divinity and its various functions had improved dramatically, a mechanical chip still couldn't replace a living brain. It could only handle a third of the information.
Borne guessed that the capacity was so high thanks to that bit of 'divinity.' Without it, he might not even have made it into double digits.
"31.415926%!"
"A third is enough!"
The record for the most scrolls read by a mid-level caster was thirty. Then their brain burned out.
Of course, that record was relative.
Just because you could hold your liquor didn't mean I could.
Still, Borne was fairly confident in his mental strength. He'd benefited from more than just whatever had come with his transmigration; even now, his mental strength was still increasing.
With the Chip taking a third of the strain, Borne could theoretically read the first forty volumes!
And he'd already redeemed points at the Academy to read nine volumes. Even with these ten, that only brought him to nineteen.
(The chairman's permission to read the scrolls came at an internal discount, but it still cost points!)
There were thirty volumes in the Academy's Introduction to Arcane Arts (two were missing), and he still hadn't read nineteen of them. He had to try to finish them before graduation!
Using the Chip to absorb some of the strain would help him play it safe, but it would also let him enter the information into the system.
And with the Chip serving as a buffer, Borne could also memorize the scrolls' knowledge with greater peace of mind.
Then Borne became so absorbed in 'studying' that he couldn't stop.
As he read, Borne discovered that Mechanics of the Planes covered not only space, but also a great deal of knowledge about other realms.
It included a wealth of records about planar travel and the characteristics of different planes, along with information about the World Tree and the River of Blood.
The information was astonishingly similar to what he knew from his previous life, and even more detailed.
Though he already knew this, he couldn't help but feel stunned. Was this just a coincidence, or had he become a character in some game or book?
The striking similarity made him question whether the world was real.
By the time Borne put down the last volume in his hands, seven days had passed.
Before you continue