Natives of the Cold Weapons Era

"There's a new discovery. I found books made from plant fibers in one of the rooms."

The Collectors exploring the ancient ruins used the properties of their rootlets to conduct a pervasive search of the entire fortress ruin, slipping through every crack and entering every hole.

This method of searching allowed them to discover a large number of hidden compartments, storage rooms, safes, and other such places within the fortress ruins in only a short time. Most of the items inside had been unable to withstand the passage of time and had been completely destroyed for one reason or another, but quite a few things had been preserved.

In a safe found in a room deep within the fortress ruins, the Collectors discovered a large quantity of paper made from plant fibers. Written on the paper were characters composed with some kind of chemical pigment.

The paper was extremely fragile and had a history of five thousand years. It had survived until now only because of the relatively stable, sealed environment inside the safe.

By infiltrating with their rootlets, they ensured there were no large openings in the safe connecting it to the outside environment, preventing the paper from changing due to airflow between the inside and outside. The rootlets then carefully spread over the tops of the stacks of paper and secreted colloid to reinforce them.

The rootlets were so fine that they were on the microscopic scale of single cells. Thanks to this, they could easily slip into the stacks of paper that had been stored for five thousand years and reinforce them without damaging them.

After a period of busy work, the Collectors completed the task. However, as they looked at the rows of tadpole-like characters they could not understand, they began to struggle.

After simple attempts