The books in Kisaragi Library were not properly categorized by type, perhaps to make the readers' task more challenging. When Reno saw a few Lost Dreams of the Red Chamber, Rural Common Disease Prevention and Treatment Guidelines Advanced Mathematics, and all other books arranged in a jumble, he had already given up on searching the books by type.
Even though the books were not classified by type, the shelves were sorted by the 26 English alphabet letters. They were hiding within the "W" section, between bookshelves 27 and 28, in the many bookshelves under that letter.
Initially, none could fully grasp the concept of millions of books mentioned in the rules. Once a number is too huge, its true meaning is hard to process, making it hard for people to properly understand the numbers.
They were only compelled to fully make sense of their current situation when they had finally searched the entire bookshelf 27. "How many bookshelves are there in the "W" section?" Reno asked innocently. It was a reasonable question as the three people spent more than an hour before they finished searching through bookshelf 27—and that was primarily because, as posthumans, their speed and reaction were much faster. There was a rough estimate of about 1500 books on bookshelf 27, and there seemed to be about the same number of books on the other shelves.
The answer to his question was on a Reader's Guide pasted at the side of the bookshelf.
They read the Reader's Guide quickly, and their face turned pale.
"There are 100 bookshelves under each letter section? Is there something wrong with this?" Rena had the worst impression of them and continued muttering, "There are 26 letters, so there are 2600 bookshelves. Suppose there are about 1500 books on each bookshelf. There are close to about 4 million books?"
She couldn't help raising the pitch of her voice as she spoke; her voice even started sounding quite ear-piercing. This was a simple arithmetic problem. Even if they don't sleep and rest, considering that they need one hour to check a single shelf, they would need 2600 hours to check all the shelves.
That was 108 days.
Even if they included the total number of lives everyone in the building had, it might not even come up to 108.
"No, this isn't right. There must be another way to tackle the task in this library," Reno stuttered slightly, "It goes without saying that searching through every shelf is the stupidest method. Let's examine the situation and think about other methods we could use to finish this quest."
With a pale face, Rena froze momentarily before uttering, "Rob others?"
The problem was that they didn't know where the other teams were, let alone if they had found the required books. Reno evidently didn't think too carefully about the situation as he was tongue-tied after hearing what Rena said. He looked down and started thinking hard.
They had too little information. Lin Sanjiu looked up and saw Siri not far from them. If they could walk over to her and ask her some questions, they might be able to get some clarification about their problem. However, even without thinking, she knew that the other four teams were definitely eyeing the area where the librarian was sitting.
The central hall was square-shaped. Siri's service desk was on one side of the hall. The multimedia section was in the center, with a working area with tables and chairs. On the other side of the wide hall were the bookshelves of 6 sections, from "U" to "Z." A total of 600 bookshelves, or 900,000 books, filled half the central hall.
At the corner of the square-shaped building were staircases to the library's north, south, east, and west wings, respectively. As there wasn't a second floor in the central hall, someone standing on the second floor of each wing could look down and see the central hall clearly.
However, there was a limitation to what a person could see from above. As the bookshelves in the central hall were very tall and because the space between each of the shelves was very small—only one man's width—it was basically very hard for someone on the second floor to see what happened between the shelves, as the gaps between the shelves were too dark.
However, if Lin Sanjiu and the siblings were to walk out from bookshelves, they would definitely be spotted easily by the other teams. Lin Sanjiu couldn't help regretting a little. When they first came here, they didn't observe the building layout as they were focused on the borrowing rules. Without much consideration, the three of them hid between the bookshelves in the central hall. Now that they wanted to leave this area, it seemed very difficult.
Looking for Siri or searching for the remaining four teams would mean they would first have to expose their positions to the four enemy teams. They had no solutions to their current problem, so they could only sigh. They started searching through bookshelf 28 somewhat dejectedly. Their previous intense drive to do something else was replaced with a helpless resignation to at least do something. After searching through two bookshelves, nightfall came upon Kisaragi Station World.
In just an hour, the light beaming through the windows from outside had faded, and darkness enveloped the entire library. The tall bookshelves blocked the little light from the night skies. Along with the central hall, the four wings were also embraced by darkness, as they had no windows. It was so dark that someone would even suspect they had become blind.
"Aren't they going to switch on the lights at night?" Rena asked in a slightly trembling voice. She was a little startled by the darkness. "If it's this dark, anyone who dares to use any generating device would immediately become everyone's target, right?"
Thankfully, this situation did not continue for long in Kisaragi Library. After a few minutes, the fluorescent lights lit up with loud snapping sounds, and the people in the library suddenly found themselves surrounded by light once again. Though it wasn't as bright as the day, they could at least see the things around them.
When the siblings could see the shelf in front of them again, their faces couldn't help turning bitter.
"Agh," Rena threw a cursory glance at the books around her. She tapped the bookshelf with her hand, "I am sure we can't find the book in bookshelf 29. I don't even have to look at it. The probability is just too small."
Looking up, she found Lin Sanjiu standing stiffly on the spot, without moving at all. The woman wasn't looking at any of the books. Lin Sanjiu's muscles, organs, fats, and blood vessels in her upper body were all fully developed by then. Rena was shocked when she found herself face-to-face with Lin Sanjiu.
"Do you think searching through the books one by one is a little too stupid?" Rena understood what Lin Sanjiu wanted to express, "But, we have no choice. This is our only option right now."
The siblings were very startled when the skinless person in front of them opened her jaws, and suddenly, they heard a sound from her mouth.
Unbeknownst to them, Lin Sanjiu's vocal cords had actually somehow developed.
"No." Her voice sounded cold and collected. Even if she was delivering bad news, others could feel a sort of strong resilience from her calm voice. The siblings were taken aback, but they also couldn't help having the faint feeling that they could depend on her.
"Get ready," Lin Sanjiu said calmly, though there was a faint trace of urgency in her voice. "Someone is coming."