Rey De-Heavens (English)

2.2

The floor was made up of corridors of slabs with complex symmetrical patterns and railings. The walls on the sides were not solid, but shelves with hundreds of holes crammed with objects, the medium and small walls looked the same, even though they formed a labyrinth. Stairs went up and down while the ceiling had luminous squares and majestic drawings that were difficult to look at. The pillars, the same color and size as the trees of the Ever-Changing Forest, were also hollow. From the entrance nothing was distinguishable, but up close you could see them better, inside were hundreds of neatly organized books. How did the young man know they were books if he had lived through almost nothing? Well, his training master always carried a book that caught his attention, and "The Great Wise Wizard" had used a book to tell him the story of how his parents came to be here. In his so short life Rey had seen two books, and heard that books held knowledge. However, he could not read. He knew he had knowledge in front of him, but he had no idea how to interpret it. Deciphering unknown characters was not easy. Figuring out how they worked wasn't either.

Browsing than browsing, pulling out books and scrolls, questions came to the distracted little boy's mind.

"What does each sign represent? An idea? A syllable, or even a sound?" he wondered as he flipped through the pages of the last book on the first shelf. "Well, for food I don't have to worry. For time either... I've got forever," he said to himself.

After attacking the air-conditioned box for the 300th time, Rey returned to the interior of the library. The floor was no longer a floor, as it seemed to be made up of open books. In the past, his teacher, Heroclades, had told him, "Reason and draw your own conclusions." However, Rey had always had difficulty making his deductions. No matter how much he thought about it, so far, after all, he could not remember ever being able to draw a conclusion that did not have to do with the death of another being. In light of this, he said to himself over and over again:

"Get it. To the end. Keep moving forward. Don't stop..."

Between books and a lot of concentration, Rey collapsed on the floor.

"What's wrong with me... I'm weak."

He sat up. He began to reflect, to think about why his muscles failed him despite having eaten every time he felt hungry. He remembered the figures of his father, Hero and Mijan.

"How is it that they could have such toned and muscular bodies? How did Fang and Hero do it? Because of how much they moved. All the time they spent working out and training. Of course, they don't stay in the same place doing nothing for a long period of time, unlike the one I've been sitting in. The only muscles I've used are my eyes and my fingers to read."

Taking a deep breath the little boy laughed out loud. He reached an accomplishment, he had come to a conclusion after reflection.

"But I have to move. Even if I still don't understand the words and I have a long way to go, I have to move from time to time."

With twice the time, Rey was finally able to come to understand the patterns the letters followed. He still had a long way to go, but in the meantime, he had to exercise the muscles from his fingertips to his head.

Rey would read and for every page he turned he would immediately perform ten jumps, or ten swipes with his claws. At that moment, an idea came to his mind when he saw his fist raised.

"Fist. It's a word. It has four letters and sounds like the combination of two different syllables."

But that wasn't all, there were books with figures of beings making use of their fists. After discovering what the word "fist" looked like, then it was the word "finger", "arm" and so on until he understood all the parts of the body that he could verbalize. Rey had an extensive vocabulary. Having listened to the elders talk for so long without any word being forgotten was a great advantage. The book he had first been able to understand dealt with the different melee arts and there was one word in particular that caught the little boy's attention, fascinated to be able to read after so much effort. "Specialist rank" The same word that had been used by Silvia.