Ascendance of a Bookworm

“Fran, could you go to the workshop and bring three gray priests, and then all the attendants except Wilma?”

“What about Myne-sama?”

“I’ll go to the library to look over the catalog entrusted to me by the high priest and think about the classification.”

Upon entering the library, Fran stacked the scattered materials to make a path to the desk. She helped me sit down, placed the two wooden tags from the high priest on the desk, and then quickly left the library.

After seeing Fran’s back disappear, I began to look through the high priest’s catalog in the now empty library. The wooden tags were written in a cramped, fine script with the attitude of “it’s fine as long as you know what it is.”

“Let’s see… What things did the high priest bring to the temple…? Wow, that’s a lot!?”

The amount was huge — almost half the chained books and more than one shelf’s worth of materials were the high priest’s personal belongings.

…Who exactly is the high priest!?

At the very least, I understood that he was incredibly wealthy. He mentioned before that he had entered the temple due to circumstances, but his family must be extremely upper-class and rich. Otherwise, there’s no way he could have brought five books into the temple, each costing several gold coins just to purchase.

Books with leather covers adorned with gold and jewels would normally be family heirlooms, not personal property. Yet the high priest brought five such books as personal items into the temple and even chained them up for public viewing. Just knowing this boosted my admiration for him significantly.

“To bring so many books and show them like this, the high priest is way too kind…”

After assigning tentative classification numbers based on the catalog, I intended to think about shelf classification ratios. But suddenly, I hit a wall.

“…Where should materials related to magic be classified?”

The problem was that the japanese decimal classification system had no category for magic. However, perhaps because it’s a field only nobles can handle or because it’s an area needing research, materials related to magic were the most numerous among the high priest’s personal items.

I wrote out the japanese decimal classification on my writing board:

0 General works (libraries, books, encyclopedias, general essays, periodicals, organizations, journalism, collections)

1 Philosophy (philosophy, psychology, ethics, religion)

2 History (history, biography, geography)

3 Social sciences (politics, law, economics, statistics, society, education, customs, national defense)

4 Natural sciences (mathematics, physics, medicine)

5 Technology (engineering, industry, home economics)

6 Industry (agriculture, forestry, fisheries, commerce, transportation, communication)

7 Arts (fine arts, music, theater, sports, various arts, entertainment)

8 Language

9 Literature

If I think about magic tool creation, should it be under 5 Technology? Or should it be treated like 4 Mathematics and physics? Even introducing a classification system is challenging when conventions differ.

“Well, I’ll decide after looking at the materials. It should be among them…”

I stared at the scattered materials on the floor and couldn’t help but smile with excitement.

Because it’s magic, right? Real magic books I’m seeing for the first time? Just imagining what’s written inside makes my heart race with excitement!

For materials unrelated to magic, classification seemed straightforward. Once everyone arrived, I planned to stack materials to create a foothold, then assign first-level classification numbers to the shelves and roughly arrange materials by those numbers. I wanted to finish that much today.

Later, I would carefully summarize bibliographic details into a catalog and arrange them according to finely subdivided classification numbers. The second-level classification would likely need heavy modification before usable.

“Geez! What is this!?”

Hearing a familiar shout, I looked toward the door to see Delia glaring angrily. Delia’s job was keeping my room clean, so if things got messy, she’d get mad. For someone like her, the disaster in the library was unforgivable.