Just as Silas successfully completed a certain step in his plan and officially became one of Saladin's disciples—
On the other side of the ocean, in a distant land, Orsaga finally strolled his way into the central library of this so-called "City of Culture."
It was a building that spanned roughly the size of a football field and towered over fifty meters high.
By the standards of this world's architectural capabilities, this was undoubtedly a top-tier facility—standing out like a crane among chickens within the entire city.
"Built this big, huh? Seems like this 'City of Culture' title isn't just for show…"
Muttering to himself, Orsaga casually tossed the random food he had bought into a nearby trash bin and walked into the building.
——
After casting a casual glance at the people inside, he turned his attention to the large announcement posted prominently on the wall.
It wasn't anything complicated.
It detailed the fee structure for each floor of the library—ordinary citizens were only allowed access to Floors 1 through 5. Higher levels required a VIP card—aka, pay-to-win.
If you didn't have the money, possessing certain professional certifications could also grant entry privileges.
Of course, that only granted access. If you actually wanted to read the books, you still had to pay.
Every word on that notice board screamed a simple, universal message: "Poor people, kindly get lost."
After reading it, Orsaga whistled cheerfully and made his way forward.
No one noticed him, nor did anyone try to stop him.
His spiritual power quietly spread out from his body, transforming into countless imperceptible tendrils.
They stretched out toward the bookshelves—and even toward the books held in other people's hands.
No obstacle, whether it was a living creature or an inanimate object like a wall, could impede their path.
They began greedily siphoning up knowledge from all directions.
Unlike in the Myling World, where he had to carefully conceal his actions when harvesting knowledge, here on this planet, Orsaga had no need for such caution. As long as he didn't do anything that would trigger the world's Will, he was free to act however he pleased.
Half an hour later, he retracted all of his spiritual tendrils.
He had finished scanning every single book, tablet, and scroll in the entire library—not just those on display, but also the ones hidden in the basement and even wedged between the walls.
Total count: 17,644,748 volumes.
There were no supernatural artifacts among them, so absorbing the information was relatively easy.
Even after a rough sweep, Orsaga estimated that about 90% of the content was useless garbage. But he didn't mind—if even 10% was worthwhile, that was already more than enough.
Based on his calculations, it would take him about a month to fully digest and internalize all of it—assuming he didn't enter a sleep state to speed things up.
After wrapping up, Orsaga didn't leave right away.
Instead, he casually reached into the air in front of him.
A book that had originally been sitting on a shelf on the third floor instantly appeared in his hand.
Its cover was pitch black, etched with strange symbols—no words at all.
Well, that was how he saw it.
To ordinary people, this book's appearance would automatically shift to resemble whatever kind of book they desired most.
Of course, if they tried to read it too deeply, they'd find the contents... rather mismatched.
After all, the content came from within themselves.
Orsaga opened the book, which had been playing dead this whole time.
He reached his hand in—like dipping it into water—ripples spread out across the page as his fingers sank into the paper.
A few seconds later, he pulled his hand out as easily as if he were plucking a chick from a cage.
In his grasp was a snarling, violently struggling spirit.
Ignoring the spirit's resistance, Orsaga's mouth split open, tearing all the way back to his ears, and he took a giant bite out of the creature's head—chewing off nearly half of it.
He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then glanced at the now-twitching, almost-dissipated spirit in his hand.
"Not bad," he commented with satisfaction. "A little on the sweet side, though…"
Just like shopping for vegetables at the market.
Then, he casually stuffed the still-trembling spirit into Eternal Agony and even kindly patched up its injuries.
After all, the "24 hours work" had just begun. Letting it die so soon would be a real shame.
In the process of devouring that half a head, Orsaga had also absorbed a portion of the spirit's memories.
From what he saw, he had to admit—he kinda liked this guy.
The spirit had a hobby of randomly picking "lucky readers" and beating them to death.
Orsaga, on the other hand, liked randomly beating up "lucky passersby."
Both made decisions based on mood.
The key difference was that the spirit did it to survive—to fill his belly—while Orsaga did it for fun.
Besides that shared interest, Orsaga also absorbed a pile of other information: how spirit evolve, which noodle shop nearby had the best broth, how to properly carve barbecue meat…
Some memories were from when the spirit had still been human. Others came from his time as a malevolent spirit.
Though jumbled and unclear due to the spirit's disjointed consciousness, this information would be extremely useful to many people in this world.
It could help them understand spirit better and prevent unnecessary losses.
But to Orsaga?
Completely worthless.
Whether it was a bloodthirsty spirit or a terrifying anomaly that left mortals helpless—
To him, they were all trash that he could crush with two fingers.
Weaknesses? Irrelevant.
He could just brute-force everything into submission.
To Orsaga, spirit were like seasoning. Anomalies were the main dish.
Both could be tortured to improve quality—nothing more than crops to be harvested.
Not even worth taking seriously.
If anything on this planet was worthy of his attention, it wasn't the spirits or anomalies themselves—but rather, the reason they had begun to appear in the first place.
Just a few years ago, this planet had no such things.
Now, they were popping up more and more frequently.
Something critical must be behind it.
For anything to be mass-producing such entities… it couldn't possibly be something simple.
If he could uncover the cause, there might be some valuable prize waiting at the end.
Of course, that was assuming this phenomenon was confined to just this planet.
If this mutation was happening across the entire universe—on countless planets simultaneously—then Orsaga would have no choice but to give up the investigation entirely.
The scale would simply be too massive.
Maybe a Archdemon or Demon Lord could handle it.
As for him? Not worth the trouble.
For now, he was wandering around the world, slowly analyzing the planet's various factors—trying to determine whether the root of the problem came from here.
If it truly did—
Then one of his backup plans was to destroy the entire planet in order to force the cause into the open.
But that would only be a last resort.
Doing so would likely earn him a brutal beatdown from the Universe's Will.
And he wasn't entirely sure he could survive that.