Books Are Expensive in This World

No matter what world one was in, language and knowledge were always the first steps forward. —Cui Ciyou

During the journey with Carl's merchant caravan, Cui Ciyou relied on his remarkably gifted talent for languages.

Together with the generous and enthusiastic instruction of Carl, Dak, and the others, he had basically mastered listening and speaking in the Human Common Tongue. Everyday conversation was no longer a problem.

However, his progress in reading and writing was comparatively slow.

On the one hand, the writing system itself required a great deal of time for memorization and repeated practice.

On the other hand, learning resources were extremely scarce.

Carl's caravan was, after all, merely a small-time group of traveling merchants, and the books they carried were exceedingly limited.

Most were practical manuals on trade routes and maps, or crude monster guides. There were no systematic language textbooks for him to study.

What left Cui Ciyou even more helpless was that in this world, books—the primary vessels of knowledge—were an extraordinarily expensive luxury.

One night, as a campfire burned, Cui Ciyou had asked Carl about the price of books.

"Books? Hahaha... Ciyou, those are things only noble lords can afford to play with."

Carl took a swig of cheap ale and said with a bitter smile,

"Take the most basic kind: beginner books that teach children literacy and grammar."

"Even in a little place like Turan Town, a thin booklet would cost at least five silver coins!"

Carl held out his rough right hand.

"Five silver coins! That's enough for people like us to eat and drink at a tavern several times over. Who'd spend money on that?"

"Why are they so expensive?" Cui Ciyou asked in confusion.

"Why?" Carl looked as though he had heard something amusing.

"Ciyou, you don't know."

"The papyrus and parchment used to make books aren't cheap to begin with."

"And every book is copied out by hand, word by word, by literate scribes."

"How much work does that take? Labor, materials—what part of it doesn't cost money?"

"So, at its root, knowledge was never meant for mud-legged folk like us."

That conversation gave Cui Ciyou his first direct understanding of this world's rigid class structure.

[Cheap paper was one factor, and the lack of printing techniques was another reason books remained so expensive?]

[In the original story, Roxy wrote Rudeus a Demon God Tongue textbook.]

After arriving in the bustling city of Roa and seeing its larger markets and dazzling array of goods, Cui Ciyou gained an even clearer understanding of it.

For example, the Elementary Magic Compendium, which might have been mere basic reading at a magic academy, perhaps even a book everyone owned.

Or the illustrated Twenty-One Slashes of North God Style, revered by North God Style swordsmen as a foundational textbook.

Their public market prices were shockingly high: ten Asla Kingdom gold coins!

Cui Ciyou had already come to understand this world's currency system.

One gold coin was roughly equal to ten silver coins, one silver coin equaled ten large copper coins, and one large copper coin was worth ten ordinary copper coins.

In other words, a single gold coin was worth as much as one thousand copper coins.

Ordinary people generally settled their daily expenses in copper coins and large copper coins.

Even the monthly earnings of a merchant caravan guard captain like Carl, who traveled year-round, were usually calculated in silver coins.

By Cui Ciyou's estimate, a typical family of three in a town needed only around five large copper coins—fifty copper coins—a month to maintain the bare minimum of food and warmth.

Ten gold coins meant one hundred silver coins, one thousand large copper coins, or a full ten thousand copper coins.

The price of such an apparently ordinary professional book was nearly equivalent to the total income of an ordinary commoner family for almost sixteen years, assuming they neither ate nor drank.

[Knowledge... truly was the most expensive form of wealth, monopolized by a select few.]

Cui Ciyou felt, deep in his heart, the vast and insurmountable class divide in this world.

[No wonder it was so difficult for commoners to change their fate through learning.]

[Without a distinguished family background or a heaven-sent opportunity, they probably could not even cross the threshold to acquire knowledge.]

This made him even more grateful that his original decision to come to the Boreas Greyrat Family had been so wise.

Because this place possessed what he needed most urgently—a genuine treasury of knowledge.

The Boreas Greyrat Family's library.

To demonstrate his courtesy toward tutors, Philip granted those he hired partial access to the library.

Naturally, book collections involving the family's core secrets or certain forbidden knowledge remained closed to outsiders.

But even partial access was enough to make Cui Ciyou ecstatic.

When the butler, Alphonse, used an antique brass key to open the heavy double wooden doors engraved with the family crest, Cui Ciyou almost held his breath.

The library, located deep within the Boreas Estate, surpassed all his expectations in both scale and the sheer volume of its collection.

Rows of immense mahogany bookshelves stretched all the way to the ceiling, standing in neat lines that extended to the very edge of his vision.

Countless books, carefully bound in thick leather or hard covers, were packed densely across the shelves.

The air was suffused with the distinctive scent of parchment and ink mingled together.

Cui Ciyou could hardly wait to plunge headfirst into this vast, boundless sea of knowledge.

To his delighted surprise, he discovered that the basic grammatical structure of the Human Common Tongue had many similarities to the Chinese he had known in his previous life.

Both used a relatively simple and clear subject-verb-object structure.

Unlike certain languages he knew of, they did not have all kinds of complex and irritating changes in tense, voice, and subordinate clauses.

This discovery undoubtedly lowered the difficulty and threshold of learning to read and write.

Over the following days, Cui Ciyou immersed himself in reading to the point of forgetting food and sleep.

With his extraordinary memory, exceptional logical and analytical ability, and the library's abundant reference materials such as dictionaries and grammar books, his reading and writing improved at a rapid pace.

Like a sponge that had been dry in the desert for far too long, he greedily and frantically absorbed every drop of knowledge about this brand-new world.

Cui Ciyou began with the most basic Human Word Spelling Rules, then moved on to complex grammar rules and varied sentence structures.

Before long, he could independently read relatively simple children's books and folk tales.

Next, he began to study a wide range of historical documents, geographical records, biographies of famous figures, and miscellanies of local customs.

There were even introductory theoretical books on magic and swordsmanship.

Through this enormous amount of reading:

Cui Ciyou gained a clearer and more systematic understanding of the Asla Kingdom's historical development, geographical distribution, political system, and its intricate noble hierarchy.

He also developed a more direct and in-depth understanding of this world's six major races, its principal religious beliefs—such as the Millis Faith—and its diverse cultural customs.

He also acquired a preliminary theoretical understanding of magic's elemental classifications, divisions of power, basic casting principles, and the characteristics, core combat philosophies, and renowned representatives of the three mainstream schools of swordsmanship: Sword God Style, Water God Style, and North God Style.

Cui Ciyou even read in an ancient biography that the first Water God had not only been a God-level swordsman, but also a powerful Water God-level magician. This gave him a new understanding of this world's true powerhouses.

Cui Ciyou also learned that North God Style had been founded by Kalman, the First North God, and was later expanded by his son Alex, North God II, into its current scale.

Acquiring knowledge was so exhilarating.

Every time he opened a new book, it felt like exploring an unknown starry sky. He became so engrossed that he nearly forgot the passage of time.

Yet the more freely and pleasantly Cui Ciyou acquired this world's knowledge and information,

the more it highlighted how difficult another part of his "work" was.

Just as he had finished reading a thick tome titled Studies of the Laplace War and contentedly returned it to the shelf,

a faint scream came from beyond the library's heavy doors, followed by the crisp sound of porcelain shattering and the furious roar of a girl.

Cui Ciyou rubbed his slightly throbbing temples, a helpless, wry smile appearing on his face.

[The sea of knowledge was intoxicating, but the mire of reality... still had to be waded through.]

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the reassuring scent of ink, as though gathering his strength for the coming "battle."

Then he turned around and walked with steady steps toward the source of the noise and trouble.

Cui Ciyou's job—serving as the tutor of that "Mad Dog" young lady—was... well... extremely difficult. Hell-level difficult.