The book was titled Human Possibilities: A Study of the Unfinished.
I stared at the cover for a long moment. To be honest, I felt a slight pang of disappointment. What human wouldn't? I had just discovered that magic was real, that I was in a literal tower of infinite knowledge, and yet the first book I picked up wasn't a "How-to" guide on throwing fireballs or flying.
Not a mana manual, then.
I let out a short, dry breath. My disappointment didn't last long. In fact, after a few seconds of thinking, I realized it was better this way. Jumping into magic without knowing my own body would be like trying to run a high-end software on a computer with no operating system. It would just crash. Probably literally, in this world.
I needed to know where I stood. I needed to see the floor before I tried to reach for the ceiling.
I turned the first page.
The ink on the parchment flickered, adjusting itself to my gaze. The handwriting was neat, almost clinical.
[Species: Human. Classification: The Unfinished.]
"Unfinished," I whispered. The word felt heavy in the silence of the library. It sounded much better than 'weak' or 'bottom-tier.' It implied that the story wasn't over.
I kept reading.
Unlike the species inhabiting the Upper and Lower floors, humans were not born with a fixed "Essence." A Dragon was born as a Dragon—it had its scales, its breath, and its pride. Its path was a straight line toward becoming a larger, more powerful Dragon. An Elf was born with an affinity for spirits; they could never truly become a creature of pure mechanical stone or abyssal darkness without destroying their very soul.
They were locked in. Specialized from birth.
But humans? Humans were different.
According to the text, a human was a "Void-Type Vessel." We started with nothing, which meant we could hold anything.
[Human Advantage: Multi-Directional Adaptability.]
I paused, leaning my shoulder against the dark wood of the shelf.
"So, the reason we're on Level Zero isn't because we're the weakest," I mused. "It's because we're the center point. We're the only ones who can choose to go Up or Down."
The book explained the process of growth with brutal logic:
Analysis: Understanding the nature of the power.
Repetition: Training the mana circuits to remember the flow.
Application: Using the knowledge in the correct context.
It sounded like studying for a degree, only the final exam involved staying alive.
If a human studied the "Holy" texts of the +20th floor, their soul would gradually align with that frequency. If they practiced the "Unholy" arts of the -20th floor, their biological structure would mutate to handle the corruption.
We were the only species that could change our own "Starting Level" through nothing but sheer effort and information.
"Mastering a direction through correct knowledge and application..."
I looked at my hands. They were the hands of a librarian—pale, slightly calloused from paper edges, and certainly not muscular. But if this book was right, these hands weren't a limitation. They were just a blank page.
I wasn't locked into being a 'healer' or a 'warrior.' I wasn't born with a 'fire' attribute that prevented me from learning 'water.'
I was Aren. A human. A blank canvas in a library full of infinite paint.
A small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
"Alright," I whispered to the empty, torch-lit aisle. "Let's see what else this 'unfinished' body can do."
I put the book back in the shelf from where I took it and took another to read.