The Sphere and Its Secrets

The story that the Gardener was telling now unfolds from the viewpoint of the sphere, revealing the times when young 'invoked ones' gathered, sharing tales and secrets from their travels and missions.

— I remember how the paleontologist finally relented; after all, within the reward system I had designed, he was very close to completing his missions and earning his reward, and a return to his home granted by me. But when I showed the interface to the librarian, who lived a carefree life and often chose to avoid hard work, he grew uneasy. He was farther from the goal, and although it wasn’t impossible for him, he decided it was better to test my limits instead. —

— Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, yet not a single day passed without the librarian attempting to share the secret with others. But each time he tried, I had no choice but to teleport him away, not just anywhere, but to the system’s core: a place safe and vast, illuminated by artificial light, though somewhat cavernous from his perspective. There, I pleaded with him to stop. —

— I was still unabled to perform the inverse summoning spell, that is, to transport them back to their world, as I had originally warned to the young ones . But what I could do was leave a robotic “clone” of the librarian in the exact spot from which I had teleported him, managed by a secondary AI, independent from the main system, to continue his day aparentely undisturbed. —

— Meanwhile, I let the librarian roam freely inside the cave system; though usually safe, I always provided him with a protective talisman, enchanted with powerful magic crafted by the mage, just in case he encountered danger. —

— My master had placed me fully in charge; he was already old, and after a great battle in which the heroes fought the beasts, he no longer possessed the physical strength to continue. So, I did what I deemed necessary to keep the young boy and the secret safe. —

Returning to the perspective of the young Butler and Gardener, the latter continued with the story, sharing some details unknown to the system through his conversation.

— The librarian, one day while exploring alone after challenging the sphere, remembered one of his classmates from judo school. She was blind from birth, but at the end of class, despite her condition, she would take out a book to read. —

— Curious about how someone with her condition could read a book, he approached his classmate. To his surprise, when he looked at the book, he noticed it didn't have a single letter. He asked about the dots he saw, and with obvious enthusiasm, his classmate explained it was a system called "Braille," which only people familiar with it could read. —

— Through trial and error, after returning to the cave many times, he managed to inscribe a spell on a stone and embed it in a book he wrote. The book could interact with the reader, and when someone traced their finger over the Braille surface, it spoke the words aloud. This became the first magical Braille teaching book. —

— The librarian asked his friends to create a book or magazine they wanted to leave in the library forever. Unaware of the secret, they filled these with their ideas, adventures, and wishes. Thus, the "Ideas from Another World" section was born in the library. —

— The system saw no danger in this. One book talked about fashions, another about famous insects in the world, another explained how to build muscle quickly, and yet another was almost completely blank. When the system analyzed the magic on this last book, wind magic, it concluded that it was a book showing the alphabet, ignorant of the dots it couldn’t see. —

— The Braille teaching book had another section not touched by the magic stone, readable only by those who knew Braille. In that same book, the librarian stored all the secrets he had gathered during his stay, encouraging his friends to read them. —

— When the system saw that most of the book was blank, it was unable to understand why the librarian was wasting his time making holes in it. So, when the book was published, the system decided it was best to keep him out of this world, fearing he might lose his mind. It then accelerated the investigation, working alongside a mage already worn down by time, to return the summoned ones home. —

— What the system didn’t know was that the librarian’s mission was already complete. He had found a way to leave his knowledge in this world. When he was finally summoned back home, he couldn’t contain his joy and left with a grin from ear to ear. Having completed all his missions and been offered his reward, he declined it, saying he preferred that all summoned ones have the right to leave their stories in that section. The sphere simply consented and left that space untouched. —

— That is the story of the librarian, Gustav — the Gardener nodded.

— But there’s still something more I’d like to share. During his investigations, the librarian discovered that “players” are unable to harm NPCs and, moreover, cannot draw their weapons against the “invoked ones,” although he never understood the real reason why. —

— He had noticed this pattern many times: a “player” would harass an NPC, then suddenly shift from aggression to complete passivity and withdraw. On several occasions, the librarian chased after some “players” and asked if they were also summoned, or at least that’s what he thought,  because immediately after, he would be transported to the core, where it was clear the sphere had cast a “time” spell that rewound everything to just before the incident. —

— He knew that the sphere could wield many kinds of highly advanced magic, which led him to suspect that this being was formed from a legendary-level magic stone. The librarian discovered that the sphere had mastered at least three types of magic: temporal, spatial, and wind. He identified the wind magic when he simultaneously cast the wind spell “Whisper” while the sphere communicated with him from a distance. Since both knew the spell, the two magical forces clashed and canceled each other out, creating a “buzzing” sound audible to both. —

— This is all the important information I have to share. Staying any longer would only raise suspicion. You should trust what I’ve told you, but if you still have doubts, go see for yourself; the teaching book is still in the same section of the library — the Gardener said.

What other secrets did the book hold?