Darius Supreme

Darius stood before the terminal and raised his HoloBrace. "Miranda, connect to this terminal and download as much information as you can."

Miranda's image popped up on the hologram display of the bracelet, her twin-tails shaking about as she jumped in excitement. "Okay, Daddy! Leave it to me!"

The AI manifested a connection to the terminal as it spawned some wires that plugged in. Unfortunately, despite these repositories being of relatively high tech, they had no wireless capabilities.

Miranda closed her eyes as she began the downloading process. Then she opened them and gazed at Darius with a strange expression. "Daddy, the amount of information here is so great! It is enough to fill up 10% of my storage capabilities!"

Darius' face greatly changed when he heard that. While 10% of the storage space sounded like nothing much, it was a fact that due to the combination and subsequent Transmutation, this AI was literally the greatest version to exist on Faust.

As Miranda herself had stated upon creating the Supreme Portal, the amount of space was almost endless to the point where she couldn't easily put it in Petabytes or higher measurements.

So one could tentatively say that the amount of space was Pseudo-Unlimited. It was finite, but so large that it might as well be infinite. Yet upon downloading everything from here, a whole 10% would be filled!

Just how much goddamn information was that?!

Darius felt a great respect burgeon within him for the God of Knowledge Krona. Just how much did the deity have to go through to gather all of this? Not only that, how open-minded must one be to offer up all this to the public for mere money?!

In fact, Darius guessed that it wasn't about the money at all. It was likely that the God of Knowledge simply wanted to see a more educated world with people who learned all there was to acquire.

In fact, taking it one step further, one would have to say that the God of Knowledge must simply love knowledge to the point he wanted to share it with others. Such a take on it, wouldn't surprise Darius.

However, what was interesting was that there was still an element of selfishness and self-interest even in this. After all, there was still the restricted knowledge section that even Miranda could not access.

To acquire what was there, money could no longer be used. One had to trade unique information with the library according to what Darius had learned.

By doing this, the God of Knowledge was able to strengthen himself by gaining new information while trading away special information that others needed. It was clear that new information was of utter importance to Krona.

Darius had a plan for that. He turned to the focused Miranda and asked: "How long will it take you to download everything?"

Miranda showed a frustrated look. "Despite plugging in the network directly, the terminal has a flat download bandwidth. At the current rate, it will take 65 hours, and that's even with my ability to bypass the majority of its limitation by simultaneously browsing within the network."

Darius was not shocked by this. If any fellow from Gravitas could bring their tablet here and simply download everything, who would need to come to the library anymore?

Gravitas would have long since had their own version of this library with maybe one person coming over periodically to update the knowledge.

Of course, putting aside the huge data requirement that no small device could manage, there was also this download speed limit so that those who visited could only acquire what they needed over multiple days, allowing the Great Library to milk them of cash.

Darius could be said to be lucky to only need a week. With how the God of Knowledge likely structured it, this should take months since most people would wisely opt for membership.

As such, Darius remained plugged, browsing through what had already been downloaded while patiently waiting to reap even more rewards.

........

Gunner reached his destination, the Colosseum of Blood. It was a brutal arena of death for fighters worldwide who thought they were worth something to come and pit their strengths as well as lives against others for the entertainment of the masses.

Gunner had coincidentally heard about it during the time Darius had been at the temple of Thor. As a half-giant, Gunner enjoyed battle a lot, so he had felt extremely stifled all those years in the Divine Glade.

He came to the entrance of the arena and found that it was quite packed. He frowned as he disliked the idea of waiting too long, but luckily he noticed that there was a separate line for prospective fighters.

The one he had been staring at was the one meant for spectators. Moving over to the right place, the line was far shorter, almost close to non-existent. Yet the aura here was denser, as the few men and women standing apart in the line radiated intense killing intent.

After all, no one who was willing to risk it all would be a newbie that had just stopped suckling their mother's teat. They were either ex-mercenaries, murderers, or warriors of all kinds who wanted to either gain fame, money, or rewards from the arena.

They were free to gain as much as they wanted as long as they were able to survive their fights and come out on top. The winner awaited endless glory and power, whereas the loser only awaited death!

Gunner's eyes gleamed as it reached his turn. A young man was seated there who had various forms laid out before him. Seeing that there was another one, he raised his head to look at Gunner.

Given the half-giant's height, he had to crane his neck to meet those powerful green eyes. The clerk's expression changed as he felt the weight of Gunner's presence in a way no other had before.

This was no easy feat, as he himself was also an Adept! Even when Master-stage experts came here to sign up, he hadn't felt this bothered, making him wonder just who Gunner was.

Eventually, he shook off his discomfort and registered Gunner's details. Upon completion, he took 50 Dius which was the registration fee for Journeyman level fighters which was what Gunner registered as.

The Adept clerk was a bit skeptical, because he could sense that Gunner had at least gained Explosive Strength. However, he knew that non-human races had higher life levels compared to pure humans.