Only Wisdom Awakened - Chapter 284

Chapter 284: The Three Zones
The threat that involuntarily escaped the woman’s mouth had turned the tables…

She was not the one asking the questions anymore.

What Hans asked had yet to be answered, so he decided to repeat it again:

“Tell me…

What will happen the moment I take another step?”

Hans looked like he could attack her at any moment, and the woman dared not to answer.

Those few seconds of silence seemed infinite to her…

She watched the young man in front of her perceiving him not as an intruder… but as a threat.

She wanted to scream, she wanted to call for backup…

She did not know the abilities the boy could display, and most of all…

She did not want to die.

Her trembling hand was hidden behind the table, but Hans could feel her emotions even from afar.

The woman grabbed her wrist with her other hand, ashamed of herself.

Had it really been such a long time?

Did she already forget what she had seen?… What she had done.

‘To tremble just because of someone’s killing intent…

How weak have I become?’

It had been months… almost years since the last time she had been on a battlefield…

The last time she had fought fiercely for her life…

The last time she had seen someone dear to her perish a gruesome death…

Had she really… already forgotten?

But while the woman was questioning her right to cover the role of an honorary elder, someone else in the room was just as shocked as her.

The old man’s eyes were wide open.

He stared at Hans as if he were looking at a monster…

His face slowly formed a worried and terrified expression as he gasped for air to talk…

He felt like the world was falling down on him… like he had wasted his whole life.

He barely managed to utter a few words that resounded throughout the empty room:

“Did-did you really… did you really bypass the array?”

His voice sounded like it was broken and demotivated…

Hans glanced at the old man’s face.

Because of pity, and because he thought it could help him in gaining an advantage in the mind battle that was about to begin, Hans decided to reply:

“Yes, I did, I’m assuming you’re the one who put it down”

Still frozen in place, the man mustered as much energy as he could to nod slightly.

“It was a fun game, it kept me entertained this morning.”

What he said was cruel, something like that could have easily demoralized the old man even more, but Hans didn’t care.

“Entertained…”

He murmured…

That word echoed in his currently hollow mind.

Something he had spent months creating and giving shape to was deemed as a toy…

Something he was proud of and he could hold his head high for even amongst incredible people all over the world…

It was just deemed as entertaining.

If his greatest creation was just used as a way to pass time…

Then what was he? A fool who thought he had created a masterpiece?

But more importantly, another question he couldn’t help but ask slipped out of his mouth.

“How… how did you do that? It’s it’s not just difficult, it… it’s impossible.”

As they had already stated, theoretically, breaking through the array around the MAVI was supposed to be impossible, and even if Hans could understand why some would think of it as impossible to bypass, he couldn’t comprehend how its own creator could not notice the shortcomings that made breaking through it possible.

But whatever the case might have been, Hans had no intention of helping the old man.

Who would be dumb enough to help someone who could become an enemy at any moment?

Hans decided to tell the truth, simply not all of it…

“I did it, it’s possible”

The boy replied as if it was nothing much.

The mind of Mr. Lu was going astray, he could not believe what he was hearing… and yet… it was there, right in front of him…

The proof that everything he heard was true.

Apart from the young man managing to comprehend the elliptic curve equation that served as a base for the array’s ever-changing mana code, it was incredible to think a human could ever keep up with the speed of the code…

The array wasn’t meant to be difficult to analyze, it was meant to be difficult to cross.

While the elliptic curve was a somewhat random generator of codes, it was clearly repeated many times throughout the days, guessing the equation of the previously mentioned would not be that much of a problem for any expert mathematician, the hard part on which the old man had focused more was another…

The difficulty in changing mana frequency as many times as the array…

It changed dozens of times every second, and he himself had developed this structure to make it impossible for any unwanted visitor to enter.

The only way someone could enter the island was through the passage that connected it to the ground, since in there, instead of the great array deployed on all the other sides, was deployed an array with a much more difficult equation but a much slower frequency swapping.

It was impossible to create a moving item or a vehicle with such a fast-changing frequency since it would collapse at the minimum change in the environmental mana.

Much less… do it with one’s body.

As the first expert in arrays, one of the elders of the heavenly sect, and one of the association’s honorary leaders, Mr. Lu was sure no one in the entire world would have ever managed to get through his barrier for at least a dozen years…

Up until that day at least…

The thought that someone could do that was simply alien to him…

Was there really anyone in the world like that? Anyone years ahead of the magic society that had formed all over the globe?

And that someone… was just a boy?

All these thoughts were almost enough to make the old man faint.

His breathing was heavy and fatigued as he looked at Hans with terrified eyes…

Seven…

Eight…

Nine…

Ten…

Eleven seconds of chaotic thoughts later, the old man had finally gotten a grip on his sanity.

He lowered his head as he stared at the ground…

A little head of sweat formed on his forehead and ran down his temples and mandible before falling to the ground…

Just a second passed before a long and exasperated sigh came out of the man’s mouth…

He paused and then continued:

“If it’s you, young man, you might be able to do something with this information…”

The woman just beside him looked at Mr. Lu with incredulous eyes…

What was he thinking of doing?

“There is…

Another way to enter the library”

“I’m not going to become an honorary leader, I hope you understand that I do not want to have any ties with the association again”

Even though Hans said that he would have gladly accepted the offer if it was the only way, however, since the old man had brought up the fact that there was another way… then it must mean he could afford to make that statement.

“Of course… I had predicted that much”

Mr. Lu replied.

Hans almost wanted to let out a smirk, but he held it in for the time being.

Finally… he was getting somewhere…

A path he could take to enter the library quickly…

And he didn’t have to make an enemy out of four honorary leaders to do it.

“There is one thing even most of the honorary leaders who live here often forget… we aren’t the only ones who can enter the library, and most of all… we do not have access to all of It.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me”

The woman said as soon as she heard what the old man was getting to.

Hans was also surprised to hear about it…

“You cannot access the whole library?”

“That’s right, we only have access to the first area out of three, and even eight of the leaders can only access up to zone two.

But…there is technically a way to get access to all three”

“Whether you’re an honorary leader or not, if you get permission from one of the leaders then you will gain access to the first area, and if you gain access from two, then it also doesn’t matter what position you are, you will be able to access the second area.

Finally… if you want to access the third area, you have to ask someone you might have heard of before… she’s one of the leaders, the second oldest, and probably the wisest out of them.

She’s empathic, to the point of making her otherworldly…

No one has ever seen her true strength, and she hasn’t fought on the battlefield in years…

You won’t have any problems finding her… after all, she’s right beneath our feet”

Hans’ facade almost broke down… he could not help but ask:

“You mean that… she’s-”

“Mh…

Contrary to what we have announced to the public, the one who guards the library isn’t an honorary leader.

But one of the nine leaders.