Rushing through dozens of books, the cheapest of which priced in Mithril coins which meant we didn’t even have enough coin to buy on hand. Maybe not even if everyone pooled their savings. Information we needed and should have received if not on the very first day, at least soon after getting our bearings and tried to search for.

A library of runes and the proper explanations of how they work and interact with each other.

Bestiaries with strengths and weaknesses of every single one of the monsters we encountered to this day and more.

Books on every basic profession and class we came across. The knowledge inside is useful for everyone, even the people with rarer classes. An armorsmith may be a higher rarity than a blacksmithy, but the blacksmithy book would have all the basic information for people like us just starting on the path regardless of the specialization.

And the path we had to follow was long…

Instead, we had to muddle through in a race against the council’s trials on their timeline with little information and even worse: BAD information. Luckily although some of us may have eaten mud, none in our village took up the more outlandish challenges that were liable to get someone killed. We already had encountered a lot of death while doing things the ‘right’ way, no sense in adding to that number.

I absorb all I can from the books by marking off all steps in the bookcase. The end is approaching and anxiety creeps in. All this information is very useful and it will help us a lot, but with each book finished, the closer I’m to the end of what I can acquire.

A lot sooner than I would have liked the last page is in front of me. A few more keypresses and a few seconds to take a breath.

I go through the entire shop spreading my perception field out instead of purposefully focusing only the bookcases and their books.

The shopkeeper is as always sitting behind the narrow wooden counter and as I often see, holding a book. Just a fantasy book for his entertainment, the only one he owns, a limitation the system enforces… for some reason.

Two minutes later having gone over the entire shop in excruciating detail, I do learn a few tidbits, but don’t find any books priced in Aether or anything beyond the books we had seen from the very first day. The shopkeeper also hadn’t even hinted anything about unlocking something like with a few other shops.

The blacksmith, leatherworker and others could provide better goods and higher grade instruction. The merchant could sell better items and provide different services such as merchandise transportation and a mailing system. The town hall had special rooms with different uses, but not the bookshop. Slowing dramatically our purchases would possibly throw a wrench in the possible expansions we could acquire, but at least we could divert the money to more immediately useful uses.

I leave my hut and pass on a few of the shops for a minute as I often do n my ‘daily’ rounds until I arrive in the book shop.

“Hi,” I call out crossing the threshold and looking at him trying to ascertain if he suspects anything.

“Hi, Nash. You stopping by to say hello?”

“Yeah.” Looking at his book I blurt out: “I think can do a little something for you. I’m just surprised nobody else thought of it first.”

He groans and then says:

“Nah, thanks, I still have a long time before me, and I won’t be able to take any books to the next instance.” He says with a dejected tone.

I squint at him. “Not sure I understand your logic, but I think there are by now over a hundred of the greatest literary works from our world rewritten. They might not be perfect copies, but they should be better than reading the same one book over and over.”

“Thanks, I will think about it.” He says perfunctorily, which deflates my enthusiasm. What I’m about to do will possibly screw you over, you should take my gift, goddammit.

A minute later I walk out tentatively certain my actions went undetected until now, but that will change when I let out the information no matter how careful I’m. and if I’m going to spill the milk, I will do it as widely as possible. That is when the real danger will come in.

Sending my perception field to go over the progress inside the inner world, I look at the corner with the dozen printers with large ink containers just whirling away.

A few rabbits curiously watch the strange mechanism, but with how many times I have pulled similar stunts, the crowd is small, barely 30 watching it while most prefer to play elsewhere.

I have a feeling that the moment I let a few of these pages out, something will happen. So far it hasn’t, and it may just be a delay, but I don’t think so. What exactly will trigger it and what will happen is still in the air, but my gut says it will come after I let the cat out of the bag.

Still concerned and wanting to be as prepared for what is to come as possible, I let the printers continue stacking the paper even higher with the information they retrieve from the internal copper ‘computer’ I made.

The rest of the day goes with even more preparations for the upcoming class trial and a few of my projects I wanted to move forward before heading over. But as the hours pass and the paper stacks get higher and higher I can’t help keeping the printer’s work in mind.

What had been simply a good precaution at the start, starts to become hesitation, and I cannot have that.

Decidedly I had around the village gathering people. Burges, Merlin, Charlie, Richard, Alex, and a few other critical people. Having sent for a small group of messengers, they arrive and they all wait for my big announcement.

Nobody in the command and control room has any idea of what I will be discussing, and that is by design. Given the strange things we sometimes had to do to accommodate the limitations the system placed on us, they just shrug it off with nary a word.

There are even a few people in the other libraries linked to our network watching intently.

With everything I can think of taken care of, I plunge in and start talking.

“I didn’t want to give so much as a hint before, I don’t know what is going to happen when I let out this information, but I acquired a few books I’m not sure we are supposed to have.”

“Now, I will present to our messages a few physical copies of it and everyone else can read it in the library like all other books. It will become the new first section.”

The messengers already had instructions to take the information and head out of the village, so even as I open a portal and pull out dozens of stacks of paper, I finish the connection of my private data storage box to the network and allowing everyone to instantly have access to this information.

Delivering the stacks of paper throughout the room even as the messengers get on their flying vehicles, the mages come to realize what I have delivered to them.

New runes, more runes than we had seen. Each with proper explanations about their usage and effect. Theories and technics for how to use them and even methods to develop and optimize current and future runic formations.

A pair of smithies get another book on how to improve their craft. Half the village gets a spear wielder class manual sectioned off with what I found to be the most important to remedy our shortcomings and provide more immediate gains, though there are also a couple of copies of the entire spear manual.

With everyone reading at a furious pace and the hundreds of people watching remotely spread over the connected dozens of villages coming to realize what I must have done their faces range through just about every emotion they are capable of showing, though most tend to be shock and disbelief.

Even with all that, they continue reading and calling more and more people to join in absorbing every smidge of information they can as quickly as possible in the chance that it might all be taken away any second now.

The head librarian from our village realizes what I have done and starts an automated copying to the library’s network along with a few scribes that pencil copes of my stacks.

The seconds pass at this rushed pace, then minutes as everyone fully focuses on what may be taken any second now.

Still, nothing happens just yet. But even as no warning arrives, something deep in my gut tells me I’m right about my first instinct, trouble just hasn’t come yet, but it will.

====================

Milk-way’s branch of the Information Licensing Bureau

“Bloody hell, this klaxon is giving me a headache.” Complains my partner as we try to find the source of the contract violation.

“Stop that and work faster,” our supervisor with his deep set face gets even more angular against the dark red cor of the alarms intermittently lighting his silhouette.

Taking a deeper breath trying to take the edge of my nerves, I ignore the possibility he is going to complain about how I’m going about and run through what we know with my partner in a fairly low tone.

“Let's go over it again. The system informed us of a class-A data breach without proving any more information.”

“And it didn’t even inform the timeline or any more information that leaked,” he answers

“Wait, it’s a data breach, not a contract violation. Usually, a breach is preceded by a violation, but this hasn’t happened here. It was just the data breach by itself.”

“But if it isn’t about someone violating the contract and only a data breach why would the system inform us about it?”

Our supervisor who before was barely paying attention to us until now stands up startled.

“Ohh, shit. It’s in one of the new instances.” He says.

I can sense the build-up of mana as he tries to connect to the comm network and pass the information along, but in the blink of an eye I feel an impossibly powerful restriction field all around and the connection he was just about to complete snaps with tremendous prejudice.

Without being able to move even a finger we are pulled into the void by the system and are dragged along somewhere. I don’t have a high enough understanding of spatial magic to be able to navigate by myself. I wouldn’t be the Info Bureau’s minion if I was talented like that.

The consequences of what he told me begin to unfold in my mind.

The only way a data breach to have occurred in this particular situation that I could think of was if someone had gotten access to the information without the system realizing it and we were warned only when it saw the information released later.

If it happened during an integration, somebody had been messing with Aether or they discovered some other large loophole and managed to hide the information somewhere the system didn’t or couldn’t monitor.

The way the system took control of the situation when our supervisor tried to inform others of even the little we learned as a direct action of the system, it got pissed and sequestered us can only mean one thing.

That is as close to a confirmation that it has something to do with the ongoing integration of this backwater galaxy. There is nothing else around here that would warrant this level of attention.

Seeing the infinite void with no end in sight and the only other two people with knowledge of what really happened along with me I shake my head.

Why did he have to open his big fat mouth? Now we would be sequestered by the system forever.

Learning that we had been taken by the system would let the others know we had stumbled on restricted information, but they wouldn’t know what exactly.

I let the drive for me to sleep induced by the travel in the void take hold as I close my eyes.

=================

Automaton POV

This is better than the absolute best of holo dramas. This is REAL.

And the wrenches this kid likes to throw in others’ plans are so marvelously constructed and placed.

The pull for me to pull Nash out of the instance gets stronger and stronger, but I can put it off until the Bureau’s employees are here, or nearly so. After all, I have more important business to attend to before then, like watching the progress and dissemination of information he got his hands on.

The pull gets stronger faster and faster as they approach traveling the void at a faster pace than I ever saw the system move someone in the void, but I ignore the pressure.

My will is iron and I’m unbending while I desire it to be so.

A minute or two before they are due to arrive I reach just about my absolute limit and start pulling Nash to my side. Bending the system's rules and nudging it is one thing, outright breaking them should be done with care and only for very good reason.

I step through reality and enter the system’s courtroom. A different visual aesthetic than most I have seen and instead of following Earth’s aesthetic.

Still nothing outrageous.

Sitting behind the bench, however, is the only person of import here and even I bow my head in a sign of respect.

“You took your time.”