Chapter 26

I left right after that conversation, heading back to the Guild to visit the library. Cecilia had texted me a list of books to check out while I was biking over, and I was going to gather all of them.

Walking into the library, it felt eerily abandoned; classes hadn't ended for the day, and yet, there weren't any students studying at the tables or picking through the shelves. There was nobody in here, in fact, aside from the librarians, myself, and maybe three other patrons, in this entire vast space that was clearly designed to handle somewhere on the order of a thousand people at a time. But... well, to an extent, it kinda made sense. The Guild's Mystic Artificers hadn't invented the internet and smartphones from nothing; their first prototype, thirty years ago, had been an enchanted slate tablet that could be used to read any book on a paired bookshelf, without the book itself being present or even moved.

"This shit is for reading books" was the foundation of the internet, and all of the richer functionality of the internet has been developing from an elaboration on that theme- obviously, books had to be written by someone, and were often shared between people, and that transfer of information between people is what makes the internet the internet. And, well, once you don't have to deal with bookbinding, what's the real difference between a codex of knowledge and a letter you send to a friend? Also, obviously, mundane books often have pictures in them- and in fact, many enchanted books before the internet had contained moving pictures.

And so, these days, the "books" people were reading on their phones mostly consisted of, like, social media and porn, but Guild novices especially are probably very much supplementing that with academic tomes, as the technology was originally intended for.

"And yet it prints," I murmured to myself as a big terminal spat out book after book at me after I was done putting in the list Cecilia gave me. Just because they'd invented e-readers thirty years ago didn't mean people didn't still read actual paper books. And in this case, since some of these were books I was expected to keep with me for my entire career and annotate rather heavily, they had to be printed out, in a way that belied a shortcoming in this world's data processing:

Information was, ultimately, stored on paper. My phone didn't have a hard drive, it just had a pocket dimension full of paper. That elf who put her boobs on the internet and kept me sane the first time I recovered from stab wounds? Somewhere in the world, there were original paper photographs of her boobs, that could be physically held in one's hands. The photographs, not her boobs- boobs are, by default, quite holdable.

I tucked my new books into my phone's pocket dimension, and quietly hummed to myself. I would, at some point, try to introduce the concept of computing as it existed back home, but chances are, I'd have to reframe it in a way that ties in with working with text, otherwise nobody would give a shit. Not that it would be difficult to do that, if only because I used to be a web programmer and "dynamically format and re-format text according to user preferences" is something I am intimately familiar with doing.

I shook my head, and made my way to the Alchemist section of the library, and started perusing the shelves. One particularly promising tome was the Alchemical Encyclopedia, 8th Edition, Volume 1... whereupon I learned that it was the last print edition, and pointed me towards the online editions; checking on my phone, the most recent edition was 11th Edition, produced ten years ago, and representing the point where they stopped doing discrete edition updates and just added new shit as it was submitted. I bookmarked the link, and moved on to another part of the library, beginning to just aimlessly wander.

I wonder, would these Rancher books have any information Haruna could actually use, and did not already know? Probably not; Akane's been a Guild novice for four years, and 'checking out library books my parents might want to read' feels like something that would have occurred to her.

"Ah, pardon me," an elf said, breaking me out of my internal ramble.

"Hm? Oh, sorry," I said, backing out of the way. "Or did you need to get past me, or..."

"Well, there is a book right there I want to check out," the elf said, pointing at a book I was standing in front of. "But... just in case, I don't suppose you know anything about monstergirl ranching, do you?"

"A decent amount, and I live with a Level 6 Rancher," I said, backing away further and allowing her to grab the book. "Why do you ask?"

"Well," the elf said, pulling the book from the shelf, "I just hit Level 5 a month ago, and now that I've gotten a bunch of other transitional things settled down, I wanted to get familiar with my new Rancher class, and learn how to use it."

"Ahhh, I see, I see," I said, nodding and taking in the sight of the elf.

She was dressed very casually, with a stretchy light blue tube top, a simple silver necklace of thin, unadorned chain, and black leather pants that had to be enchanted if they clung to her that tightly. This revealing outfit, naturally, was being worn on a body well worth revealing; the elf was a beta exemplar, with the attendant tall stature, fat tits, and big dick. Above the neckline, the elf was... honestly, fairly typical for an elf, as far as I'd seen- delicate yet pointy features, eyes that were just big enough to be noticeably bigger than normal for humans without looking freakish, and, of course, the long, pointy ears, pale skin, and golden-blonde hair. Golden-blonde hair that was, incidentally, tied back with a red bandanna patterned with white outlines of flowers.

And yet, for all her typicality, she looked oddly familiar.

"Well, I'm Roxy," I said. "You look familiar, for some reason- have we met?"

"How much porn do you watch?" the elf quipped, smirking at me as she bent over to grab another book, then turned to offer me a look down her shirt.

"...So that's where I know you from," I said, snapping my fingers. "You're Neloteth Tanelye, right?" If I hadn't been using her tits as an internally-rhetorical example earlier, I might not've recognized her.

"Oh my god I was joking," she whispered, her bearing switching from 'flirtatious' to 'mortified' in a deliciously schadenfreude-flavored instant.

"In the sense that you were lying, and are not a porn star, or in the sense that you were being humorous, and didn't expect the conversation to go this way?" I asked.

"I'm- yeah, I'm Neloteth," the elf said, straightening up and swallowing. "So, uh. You've seen my boobs already?"

"Yes, but I'm willing to pretend I haven't if it makes you feel better," I said.

"...That depends," Neloteth said. "If you say something to stroke my ego, then I'll allow it."

I hummed and tapped my chin.

"So," I began, "I got mugged a few months ago, and had to confine myself to bedrest for a week while I recovered from all the stabbing. And during that week of bedrest, it was your habit of putting your tits on the internet that helped keep me sane, and even gave me something to look forward to when I joined the Guild- the idea that I might meet you."

Neloteth considered this for a few moments, tilting her head to the side.

"Not quite what I expected," Neloteth said, "but I'll still say it counts. So, this Rancher you live with?"

"Middle-aged omega from the Sunset Kingdom," I said. "She has sixteen cowgirls, and I have to milk them twice a day, when I'm not recovering from being stabbed. Her daughter is a good friend of mine-" Who I'd creampied about twenty four hours ago. "-and she seems to like me too. Wanna meet her?"

"After I check out these books, sure."

"I see you made a friend," Akane said to me quietly as she returned home from class.

"Yeah, met her in the library," I replied, watching Nel and Haruna talk shop, with Nel scribbling down copious amounts of notes. "She's Level 5, and taking a break from delving to try her hand at Ranching. Apparently it's got some useful synergies with Ranger, which is her main class."

"She's also pretty hot," Akane remarked.

"Well, yes," I said, before Akane continued.

"So, if you can, I'd seriously recommend getting a piece of that," Akane said. "Because, uh... well, even if you did have a change of heart, and decided you would like to date me? Iiiiii... am not going to be able to do that until after I graduate, because finals are taking a lot out of me."

I blinked.

"I mean, okay," I said, quietly. "That's... kind of a weird thing to say, but... I guess I get where you're coming from. Although... you... aren't worried that Nel and I might become a long-term thing without you?"

"My tits are bigger than hers," Akane said with a shrug to emphasize that fact. "Also, we've known each other for a lot longer, and I'm not worried about losing you as a friend."

I snorted. "Well, fair enough."

"Anyway, I really have to go study, now, so... Good luck with whatever happens!"

"Good luck to you too."

Akane walked off to her room, and I walked back over to the table, where Haruna and Nel's conversation was starting to wind down.

"So," I said. "Nel, you settled on a shopping list of stuff you'll need yet?"

"No, but," Nel began, "I do have a much better idea of what I need to figure out before I begin. Mrs. Sakurai is the most annoying kind of knowledgeable, that pokes all sorts of holes in your initial plan."

"Ranching for all your life will do that to you," Haruna said with a grin. "Roxy, I trust you'll be helping her carry out her plan?"

"If I can," I said with a shrug. "I'm not a Rancher, and the only ranch work I can really teach her how to do is milking cowgirls. All the same, though... I won't say no to making new friends."

"And I won't say no to knowing someone who can brew potions," Nel said. "When's a good time to talk shop about what potions I'll need?"

"I got stabbed yesterday, so I'm probably going to crash again pretty soon and require painkillers to get back up," I said. "But I'll give you my phone number, so just text me whenever you feel like it and I'll get back to you when I'm awake."

The whole 'the internet is just a new kind of bookshelf' deal had done interesting things to the development of phones, incidentally; at first, someone realized they could use the same infrastructure to send letters to people, and so the text message came first. Then, about five years later, someone noticed that their friends were always carrying their phones already, and that it might be fruitful to add in an enchantment to allow for voice and video calls.

"Fair enough," Nel said. "Take care, Roxy."

"I'll try, but I make no promises."