Lost Origins: SS Ranked Awakening

Walking down the corridors of the camp, he felt the thin air, along with the increasing earthly smell, assault his senses. 'Is this leading underground?' Although he had already taken a few elevators heading downwards, he had no information concerning the location of the dorms on the mountain's height, so he had no idea that had come so deep.

Taking one more elevator, Kieran stepped out to see a huge carven further ahead. As he approached the cavern's entrance, he could already hear the bustling activity inside. The sound of voices, the clatter of metal and stone moving through the mountain passageway, almost swallowed his footsteps.

The entrance itself was a huge gate, tall and imposing, with intricate carvings of strange beasts and figures etched into the stone which gave off an ancient and oppressive feel. Despite its size, the gate seemed almost dwarfed by the cavern itself, its walls stretching high into the darkness above.

Far beyond the gate, he could vaguely make out beginnings of a maze of tunnels, under the bright illumination from the top of the cavern. A steady stream of people moved through the entrance, some stopping to chat or haggle with vendors, others moving with purposeful strides toward their destinations. The air was thick with the scent of cooked food and smoke, mingling with the stale, musty odor of the underground. He approached the gate, curious to see what lay beyond, and merged with the flow of people moving into the huge cavern.

Setting foot into the cavern was like entering a new city; it was similar to Crane City with the presence of skyscrapers but different. It had an ancient touch to it, some of the buildings looking like relics you would find at the museum with their simple hut-like structure with a dark shade, which stemmed from the strange rock they were built from. Each of these 'Huts' and other old structures seemed to have been carved out of a larger material that Kieran failed to identify, rather than put together from individual pieces.

The area was populated with both soldiers and recruits. Although a vast majority of the recruits he saw had a slightly different uniform from him, revealing their identities as senior years, he was yet to be able to tell the difference between years. He had only seen a handful of fresh recruits like him.

Extracting himself from his surroundings, he readjusted his focus to his goal, 'The library', checking for its location once more on the map on his watch; the library just happened to be the second tallest building in the entire place, making it very easy to get there without the aid of the watch.

It didn't take long for him to arrive in front of the library, which happened to be the second and largest library he had ever seen or been to apart from the one at school, which he considered to be fairly large, but it was non-existent compared to the library that stood in front of him.

The one in front of him according to the information he read about it from his watch, stood at a staggering height of 750 meters. It was covered with glass like other skyscrapers but it also had some of that black material that Kieran had failed to identify from the houses he had seen earlier.

"Huu...", taking a deep breath and bringing his thoughts to a still, his cold visage being reinforced, he stepped into the library. He had come here for a purpose and he intended to see it through.

The moment he stepped foot into the library, all the noise from the hustling and bustling crowd outside completely disappeared like it never existed in the first place. The lobby was sparsely populated with a few people minding their business.

At the counter stood a young lady also in recruit uniform, of a higher year as he had expected. She looked to be around twenty years of age with fair skin which had a natural glow due to the rays of light reflecting on it. She had brown hair and hazel eyes that were a blend of green and gold, complementing her hair. She had a cheerful yet calm aura giving birth to mixed feelings in those around her. At the moment she sat lazily, her chin resting on her hand, she seemed bored.

Walking up to her, Kieran started a conversation, "Good day, you must be the receptionist?"

"Yes, you're correct!" she replied, the joy of finally having someone to talk to evident in her tone.

"Umm, what's your name?"

"it's Leora, yours?" she inquired.

"Kieran"

"That's a nice name"

'Hmm? That's a first, Kieran thought; it was the first time his name had been complimented; in fact, it was the first time he had been complimented by anyone other than his mother or father. Even the doctor at school and the detective only criticized him.

"Do you know why there's a receptionist in a library like this?" Leora asked curiously, taking over the reins of the conversation.

"To welcome and guide people, presumably those new to the library like me", he answered with a serious expression.

"Funny, but that's true. A random person would easily get lost even if they had a map, so it's my job to guide newbies like you and show you the way around", she said, ignoring the awkward atmosphere his reply had set.

"Do you have the map of the library? Pull it out", she said without giving him any time to answer the question, walking out from behind the counter.

"…." Not receiving any reply to her question, she stared at Kieran with a raised eyebrow.

"Didn't know how to get one." He replied with a slight embarrassment that didn't show externally, but Leora seemed to see beyond his external appearance and smiled knowingly.

"Hmm, you can get the map from your watch's interface", she revealed to him, garnering his surprise.

'It can do that? I should pay attention to this little gadget.' There was no official guide or manual concerning the capabilities of the watch, so it was quite normal that he only knew the basic functions.

Teaching him how to use this function while fiddling with his watch for a while, she spoke up, "The map costs cp and it seems you have none, so we'll be using my map for now", whipping out a holographic image from the watch around her wrist she turned around preparing to move.

"Let's go, I'll fill you up on the features of the watch and some other tips as well as we walk." Hearing this, Kieran hurriedly followed her as they both disappeared into one of the corridors of the large library.

Walking to the end of the corridor which they were currently in, they met a dead end.

Staring at the map and the wall in front of them several times, his brows furrowed slightly in confusion.

"Is there perhaps something wrong with the map?"

"No, it's correct!" she replied with a smile on her face.

"Back when this camp was created, there were some series of events which led to the management rebuilding the library this way." She explained, but Kieran still didn't understand.

"You don't need to know about that now. Well, due to the incident, some important documents and precious materials went missing, so the army decided to adopt a protection method used by the nobles."

"Since most people admitted into here are nobles, they never needed help navigating through the library, and among the commoners we admitted, only a few bothered to visit the library. The rest resorted to buying the information they needed."

"Don't go telling people about this though. Most don't know about the incident; they just thought the camp was upgrading its facilities, including its security details, which is true", she added, throwing him a wink.

"If the incident was concealed, how come you know about it?" He asked eyeing her suspiciously.

"Hehe", she giggled mischievously,

"Now now, don't go suspecting and questioning everyone you see."

"Any more questions?"

"No, but how are we supposed to get past this wall?"

With a bright smile, she replied, "We wait!"

Kieran stared at her for a second before deciding to listen to her and wait, his ever-so-bland expression still plastered on his face. Not long after, the faint sound of gears turning could be heard and the wall in front of them moved to the side to reveal a passage at the former dead end.

"it's time. Let's go!" Leora beamed, taking a step into the newly appeared passage, followed by Kieran.

Walking a few meters, the passage opened up into an open space. A vastly spacious room, no! A huge hall with rows after rows of massive and tall bookshelves arranged orderly with some built into the walls appeared before the both of them. Several holoboards could be seen carrying people to the higher levels of the hall, he couldn't even see the top of the hall from his current position.

Looking to her side, she expected to see a surprised expression on his face, but she was met with the same uninterested expression on his face.

He didn't seem to be surprised. What she did notice though, was the faint light shining in his eyes when he took a look at the massive amount of information in front of him.

"This is section twenty-six. It spans over a few categories but that isn't our current concern, we'll have the full tour and class later. For now, let's keep going."

'I heard of structures more advanced than those back at crane city, but this is beyond what they all said, even the nobles had never discussed about something like this in front of me.' He thought, looking around the huge hall that Leora had called section twenty-six, which meant there were around twenty-five more sections of this size. But he quickly noticed a problem.

"Umm, Leona."

"Yeah?" she answered whilst walking forward.

"How many sections like this are in this library?"

Quite a lot, this is an extensive library with a vast collection from various sources dating from human civilization ages before the war till date and here at the military, we were able to separate them into 120 categories which were further grouped into 56 sections like this one"

'That's more than I thought, then….'

"Are they just as big as this one?"

Leora was taken aback by his strange questions but quickly came to a realization and smiled in understanding.

'He noticed.'

"Well, of the 56 sections, this is ranked 20th in terms of size. There are others smaller than this, but not by much. The largest sector, sector 45, is around 5 times the size of this one, it's located underneath this building along with some other sectors."

Leora looked at Kieran who had paused, cracking his brain, trying to process what she had just told him.

"If that's true then how-"

"-Pfft, hehehe." The sound of Leora trying and failing to hold in her laughter interrupted his question.

"I'm sorry. It's just funny to see you standing there looking like a broken toy." She quickly apologized.

"You were going ask how this building can take sections of such space since even though it looks big from the outside; it still isn't big enough to house all I just mentioned?" She completed his question for him.

"Exactly!"

"Unfortunately, I can't tell you why. It's classified." She had him know, her smile constant on her face.

"I see…." He muttered to himself, deciding to let it go. Although he didn't get the answer he wanted, he had also learned some other things; she had helped him quite a lot. He wouldn't like to complicate things.

"Hmm? I just remembered I didn't ask what you were looking for in the library." She said scratching her head with a silly smile.

"Information." He replied with a single word, still looking at the vast number of books around him.

Staring at his face, which still had a cold, disinterested expression, she asked in a deadpan tone.

"What kind of information?"

"Anything I can get my hands upon."

"You'll need to be more specific than that, there are hundreds of thousands of books available to a level one freshman like you." She answered unbothered by his detached aura.