Primordial Expanse: I have the Strongest Talent!

Reluun explained things quite well, and had even prepared an official permit granting Alex access to the archives, which surprised Alex.

The agreement he'd received from the Grand Cartographer was only an offhand verbal agreement, so he was expecting to have to wait hours before someone contacted the Grand Cartographer to confirm Reluun's words.

But it seemed they were more competent and forward planning than he had expected.

It wasn't that he didn't trust the Grand Cartographer to honour her words… it was just that he didn't think Reluun would have thought far enough ahead to prepare things like this…

"...You're full of surprises today." Alex commented as the guard stepped aside to let the two in before returning to their station and continued guarding with their stoic stance.

Reluun puffed out his chest slightly, with his mouth flicking up in satisfaction. "I'll have you know I worked my way up to my job. I didn't get in through nepotism like some people. I wouldn't be where I am now if I wasn't good at the things I do."

Alex rolled his eyes but didn't argue. Reluun's words had some merit to them, and he wasn't going to downplay the man's achievements, which he had clearly earned through his own hard work.

In fact, he was a little jealous that the man could be so carefree in everyday life despite the things he must see when venturing into a new realm.

It was one of his most redeeming features in Alex's eyes.

As he moved inwards, the scale of the place truly hit him. Stacks of paper rose like crooked towers into the gloomy atmosphere above, with some teetering dangerously, looking like they might fall at any moment, yet strangely they never did. While others were held in place by the surrounding stacks that had already tilted over and leaned agains it, acting as a support beam to hold it upright.

The air was dry, which was to be expected when one entered a place like this. Moist, humid air would quickly ruin the papers. Instead, you could literally smell the more aged papers of the bunch.

'The knowledge held in this place is insane…' Alex thought internally, impressed by the magnitude of information stored in this place.

Despite the disorder, Alex could feel just how much history this one building held within its walls.

There was a system to the chaos. Despite how disorderly everything was arranged, everything was related to another.

"This place is an old relic." Reluun commented in a slightly bored tone. It seemed he didn't share the same sentiment about the place as Alex did.

But then again, he probably knew all about the Solari realm's history off the top of his head already, so this place would just be feeding him information he largely was already aware of.

Alex took a deep breath inwards, deepening his concentration, before he stretched out his awareness using his spatial sense.

He told Reluun earlier that his thought comprehension speed was scarily fast, but even he would have to put in quite a bit of effort to read each and every single piece of paper in the building.

'I'd need a few days to cover everything at the minimum.'

A few days might seem long to some, but when considering the sheer scale of information stored in the building, it was actually nothing.

If the guard at the entrance could know Alex's thoughts, they would be frightened at the scale he thought at.

Alex had no intention to memorise and store each and every tidbit of information that was held in this place, since most of it was useless to him anyway.

The Solari weren't stupid enough to store their most valuable information about their technologies in such an ancient, inconvenient method – in the Primordial Expanse no less.

Although, the security it offered for the most sensitive information was much higher than storing it digitally in the outside universe, since digital archives could be hacked, while information that was only stored physically could only be stolen physically.

The only reason the Solari, and any other civilisation, didn't store their information like this was because of the inconvenience of retrieving it should they ever need it.

They'd have to send someone into the Primordial Expanse, and they would only be able to bring the information back when – or if – they increased their rank.

All while being absolutely trusted and loyal.

It just wasn't worth it in their eyes.

Even if they did, they would have removed it before Alex headed over to this place.

A trade deal for technologies was something they had set up through their talks, so it wouldn't do them any good if Alex could just learn all of them anyway when he went to search through the archives.

Instead, all of the information that was stored in this place was culture and history related, which was exactly what Alex was looking for anyway, so neither side lost out on anything.

Since Alex had something specific to look for, and didn't intend to store any of the information he didn't need, he needed to narrow the search parameters.

With his concentration working in overdrive, he sifted through all the sheets of paper his mind could handle for anything even remotely related.

'Forge… forbidden designs… Mikhail… silenced… missing smith… human smith… mysterious smith… legendary smith…'

Even narrowed down, the list of parameters Alex had set was quite long.

And with that, Alex sat down and carefully examined every single piece of information the archive had to offer for hours on end.

No matter how long it took, even if it took longer than the few days he had predicted at the start, he wouldn't stop until he had examined everything.

If even after searching through everything that filtered through his parameters, he still wouldn't stop.

There was no guarantee he could find what he was looking for while sticking to what he knew, since the exact thing he was looking for was what he didn't know.

If nothing came from his narrowed down search, then he'd just search through the entire damn archive.