When these bladders appeared, the sky was shrouded in a dark green glow, and the viewer's vision seemed to be permeated by a mist, becoming dull and blurry.
The auditory hallucinations in Simon's ears continuously combined, finally forming a low, slow, and clumsy monstrous sound.
"A strange mortal! He found my gaze and entered my domain with it. This truly impresses me… Do you know who I am?" The sentence was spoken with difficulty, as if it had been constantly compressed and carefully translated for mortal comprehension.
Simon was silent for a moment, then said, "The Demon of Knowledge, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Fate, Hermaeus Mora, isn't that right?"
Mora chuckled in a low voice for a while, and the largest eyeball in the bladders narrowed, seemingly a dangerous predatory signal, yet also seemingly just simple curiosity; the emotions of higher beings could not be fathomed by lowly mortals, just as a line cannot see through the scene of a plane.
"Yes, you are not wrong. I am curious about your composure. What grants you such extraordinary courage? When I peered into your destiny, I discovered a beautiful sight never before seen. Yes, it is you. Will you be my servant? I can bestow upon you endless knowledge."
Simon replied calmly, "I have courage simply because I am not afraid of death, and I do not believe you are superior to me. Why should I be your servant?"
Mora burst into laughter, as if he had seen an interesting, singing dragonfly, "Hahahaha! Mortal, your arrogance is truly rare! You cannot realize the gap between us! You are merely a fragment trapped within the boundaries of life and death, while I am complete!"
Simon's tone became increasingly indifferent, "Oh, that's quite good."
As an incarnation of a Bodhisattva, what great storms had he not seen? He was merely a small god dependent on the Yuan Stream of superior affinity, who had not even fathomed the true nature of the universe, trapped in the cycle of world creation and destruction. Yet he still wanted a Bodhisattva to be his servant, not afraid of the wind flashing his tongue.
Mora carefully scrutinized the Troll, "You are very interesting, mortal. I haven't been this pleased in a long time. As your reward, I have decided to open my library to you for one day. What you learn is entirely up to you."
"That's great, thank you." Simon nodded, indicating that he would naturally accept any benefits. "But don't watch me anymore after this."
Hermaeus Mora again instructed in his drawn-out, somewhat masculine tone, "Oh, don't speak so absolutely. Besides, there are too many mortals watched by me, for I am the Lord of Secrets, and my gaze is involuntarily drawn to excellent destinies. Heh heh, this is your honor.
"There are not a few mortals like you who come to Apocrypha, but they all eventually sink into the ocean of knowledge, unwilling to leave for a long time. Many become my retainers and servants, and many more go completely mad. But rest assured, my favor is only for one day. When you crave knowledge again, you can come to me, but at your own risk… Heh heh heh ha ha…"
As the dark green curtain-like glow in the sky dispersed, the countless floating dark bladders also receded one by one until nothing remained. The floating eyeballs and moist tentacles retracted into the bladders and vanished with them.
He left.
Simon frowned, the intense pain in his body receded like a tide, eventually becoming negligible, followed by the comfort and exhilaration brought by dopamine secretion in his brain.
He felt somewhat drained and slowly sat on the high platform, panting.
Being a weak incarnation was also a source of distress.
After Simon recovered, he stood up and wandered around the hall. Every book on the tall book pillars could be pulled out. These books appeared tightly stacked, but in fact, they floated independently, meaning one didn't necessarily have to start from the top.
Simon flipped through several books, all in unfamiliar languages. He wasn't disheartened and used the memo in his quest log to convert everything he saw into information and save it.
Some books were full of garbled text. This was because their content was beyond the comprehension of lower beings, so the projected characters were chaotic and disordered. Even if Simon saved them in his memo, they were still useless. The same page of a book looked different every time he saw it. Such texts completely transcended the concept of an information carrier; they themselves were conveying and creating information.
Hard work pays off.
An hour later, Simon found a dictionary.
It contained mutual annotations and phonetic symbols for eight languages, including Nordic, Old Nordic, Dragon Language, Bosmer (Wood Elf language), Dwemer (Deep Elf language), Altmer (Ancient Elf language), Falmer (Snow Elf language), and Chimer (Changed Elf language).
This dictionary was very thick, basically including the common vocabulary of these eight languages. Simon treasured it like a rare gem, meticulously recording every page in his memo.
He later found several more such dictionaries, and his language proficiency quest was almost complete.
In addition, some blueprints with numerous mechanical structures particularly caught Simon's attention. These should be Elven technology; some were clearly Dwemer technology, while others were even older and extremely profound.
The day passed quickly. Simon recorded about five hundred books. Because the content was too vast, the memo became extremely redundant, so he created another section in his quest log called "Bookshelf," integrating all the previously and newly collected book content into it, planning to create a catalog when he had time for easy searching.
Simon put down the book in his hand, and a deep blue-purple vortex suddenly appeared behind him. This was an Oblivion Gate, capable of time-space travel. The Troll took one last look at the surrounding hall, then stepped into the teleportation gate and disappeared.
Stepping into the Oblivion Gate, a deep gray world appeared before him, and he was pulled by a force in front of him, moving at high speed. He couldn't even tell if he was moving forward or falling.
All was thick fog before his eyes, and dark shadows constantly flashed past. The fleeting glimpses revealed terrifying and bizarre scenes: rapidly expanding bacterial cluster-like spheres instantly vanishing behind him; mountains of aggregated human figures with heads emitting silent screams; countless star-like light spheres falling and exploding on an iron ring in the void with a diameter measured in light-years; a broken, floating land with a towering Crystal Tower emitting light that illuminated its surroundings; a brass mechanical giant striding in Aetherius; the mottled, beating World Heart…
Some were illusions, some were history, some were illusions within history, some were history within illusions, some were scenes within time, some were scenes outside of time…
Simon saw many things, but couldn't remember anything. However, his quest log recorded a large number of distorted, blurry images.
At the Wolf Pack Resting Place, a teleportation gate opened, and Simon stepped out.
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