"Messing with people's lives is quite honestly a lot of fun, but it's completely unacceptable for me to be on the receiving end like this. Why can't I decide how to live my own life? Isn't my existence as an individual the least I should be able to control?"

— Carlo Zen

It didn't take long for the librarian to recapture my attention. Whoever, or more likely whatever, my visitor from below was, it could wait. If it wasn't going to make contact willingly, there wasn't much I could do about it. I could spawn in something to take a look, but it didn't seem necessary at this point, given how many other things I had on my plate at the moment.

The tall, rather lanky, wolfkin arrived at the border of my domain, did a clear doubletake at the sensation of entering my domain, and then announced her presence.

"Greetings, Dungeon Sylvanus. My name is Janelle Graysdottir, and I come on behalf of Almeidra, Goddess of Knowledge, and her central Archives. I have come to seek your cooperation in the preservation of knowledge from your original world within our archives. May I enter safely to discuss this with you in person?"

Something about her tone grated on my metaphorical ear. While her voice was clearly a bit nervous, it also seemed unwontedly haughty and a bit peremptory. She wanted my cooperation, but she wasn't off to a great start in winning me over. Still, we didn't BOTH need to be rude, and I was interested in gaining access to the archives she'd mentioned. And if nothing else, she'd probably count as one of the scholars I'd need to make contact with to advance my own scholar quest line. And maybe the nerves and my aura were making her react poorly. Who knows?

**Hello Janelle. You may enter; the traps are inactive and the creatures will not attack. I'll direct you to the second floor, where I can probably host you most effectively.**

If she could be haughty, I could be a bit stiffly formal, while calling her by her first name, and failing to advance the conversation in the direction I knew she wanted to take it. If she wanted to talk about books, she'd need to raise it directly. Otherwise, I could blather on indefinitely, deliberately missing her point; I had years of faculty meetings to hone that particular skill. It wasn't particularly mature, but I'd never really liked being bossed around.

She bared her teeth in what she probably thought passed for a polite smile. "Thank you, Senior Librarian Graysdottir is my normal address," she said, as she began striding stiffly towards the entrance.

**Senior Librarian Graysdottir. That's quite a mouthful. Well, since I can tell we're going to be great friends, I'll stick with Janelle, and you can call me Vay. Or would you prefer Jan? Nellie?** I gave it an innocent lilt, that I doubt fooled her for an instant.

She winced, visibly, clearly trying not to react to my intentional informality. "Janelle will be fine. Vay. May I ask what arrangement you have with the Redcrest clan?"

If that was her idea of small talk, she needed a bit more practice. I told her nothing more than Kragosh had. **Oh, they've recently relocated to the island. We're helping each other out for the time being.**

The carefree non-answer clearly irritated her. I've known a few librarians over the years, and they generally hate that sort of hand-waving overgeneralization. Janelle seemed to be no exception.

"I see. How wonderful for you all. When did they arrive? The dungeon inspectors' reports didn't mention them at all."

**Oh, they've been trickling in for a few days now. Most of them just got here, practically speaking. I hope they didn't alarm you as you arrived?** The innocent query here was intended to irritate, at least a little.

"No, no. Kragosh was perfectly pleasant, and they escorted us in without any issues."

**Good, good. As warchief, Kragosh is a bit twitchy about unannounced visitors.**

By this point, I'd steered her through the main entrance and past the tunnel of traps to the waterfall. She'd barely batted an eye at the sleeping grizzlies, and I admired her equanimity, even if it seemed a bit forced. I forbore having the turtle perform a jump scare, and the Shade Owl too.

"It's not exactly how I pictured it all from the inspectors' reports, but you've made great strides for a dungeon that's only been active for a few months. I'm hardly a qualified adventurer, but it seems impressive enough to me. As I understand it, this first floor is supposed to mimic the current lack of occupation at the surface level? Is that right?"

She was doing better now, offering minor and possibly sincere flattery, and showing an interest in my activities to date more broadly. I rewarded that with a somewhat more relaxed tone.

**Well, kind of. Realistically speaking, I didn't have a lot of options when I was just starting out. This sort of reflects the kind of resources I had available at the time; mostly, the creatures here are ones I earned as rewards for basic dungeon quests. As we get deeper, I started to have more options, as a result of my explorations in the surrounding area.**

We were starting to work around to topics of greater interest to her, and it showed in her line of questioning.

"Oh, I noticed that the latest inspector had identified the theme of your second floor as mimicking the manorial estate of an Aubesan Imperial house. He didn't really seem to question why, though, much less how you'd learned enough about that era to recreate it. Does that mean there's ruins of an Imperial Aubesan manor somewhere nearby?"

**Good eye! Norfoth was a bit restricted by the light communication system he was working with. We really didn't have a way to convey that kind of information, so I think he just let it go as relatively unimportant. But yes, there are some ruins a little bit north of the stream we passed by. There's evidence of several other occupations of the island as well, that I'm hoping I can turn into additional dungeon levels. Might be a while, though.**

"You've clearly been very busy. I think I envy your ability to go without sleep. Is that why most of the books you produce come out in the middle of the night?"

Not a bad segue, but one I could repurpose to my own ends. **How in the world do you know when I create books anyways? I'm pretty sure no one I've given a book to was likely to report it to your archives. Is the Goddess of Knowledge keeping tabs on me, for some reason?**

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She smiled fondly at the mention of her goddess. Despite her rather stiff approach, the woman clearly was devout in a directly personal kind of way. Her mouth quirked. "Nothing so direct or sinister, I assure you. The goddess, and by extension her archives, has a direct interest in the dissemination of knowledge, particularly in the written form. Over the last several thousand years, the archives have developed contacts with all the major and most of the minor publishing houses to secure copies of their new works. To fill the gaps, an artifact was commissioned nearly 500 years ago that provides a list of all extant works that have not been secured or copied by the archives and the time and location where they were first registered. That doesn't include books that have been secured against divination, in some manner, but over 500 years we've secured copies of all but a few hundred works. That's why, when you started adding new titles to the list in batch lots, I got sent out to see what was up!"

**Fascinating. That must be an unusually intricate piece of work. I suppose I should apologize for accidentally forcing you out of the archives. I take it this isn't something you have to do all that often?**

She grimaced, ever so slightly. "It is part of my regular duties, and it's typically quite the chore. When it's something publicly available from a new publisher, that's handled by some of our regular agents. I, and other senior librarians, only get sent out for the unusual cases – which most commonly involve negotiating with rich merchant families who've decided to sell things from their hidden, private collections, or from adventurers who have retrieved things from ancient ruins, or from wizards and necromancers who've accidentally revealed the existence of their arcane grimoires. As you can imagine, negotiating for copies of those works is generally a sensitive, often frustrating and time-consuming process."

I pondered that briefly as she descended into the second floor, and I started steering her towards the manor house.

**I suppose that WOULD explain the overly formal, vaguely irritated approach. Well, hopefully, we can come to a rapport fairly readily. I take it from our discussion so far that you're looking for not only copies of the books I've already brought into this world, but also copies of ones I might produce in the future?**

She stopped, abruptly, and cast her mind back over our earlier interactions, before wincing and consciously adopting a much more natural, conversational tone.

"Ughh. I must apologize. I'm afraid that I fell back into habits I've developed for dealing with the sorts of people I described before. I tend to have more success negotiating with recalcitrant sorts when I convince them that upsetting the church of the Goddess of Knowledge, sponsor of most Universities and private Academies around the world, is likely to have negative ramifications for them. They don't respond as well when I come off as just an interested academic who wants to nose through their collection. You are a rather special case, and I clearly didn't give that enough thought. I will say that I was worried about the dragon and didn't even know you existed a week ago, but that's not much of an excuse. I'll try to do better. No, I'll try to BE better."

Well, now that was interesting. I'd been vaguely annoyed, but not really upset, so hadn't really been expecting full on introspection and an apology. That was rare in my experience. She was well on her way to recovering from the first impression, as long as this wound up being sincere.

**Apology accepted. In return, I'll stop trying to tweak you as well. Would you REALLY prefer me to call you Senior Librarian Graysdottir? It is a bit unwieldy?**

"Ha! I wondered... No, Janelle is good, at least for now. My good friends do call me Elle, but let's work up to that. Oh, and to get back on topic and answer your question, yes. Ideally, we'd love to leave you with a minor divine artifact that will transmit copies of each of your new works to our central archives."

She had arrived at the manor house, and I directed her to the dining room, figuring that this was the closest I had available to a reasonable meeting space outside of my core room. I had a good feeling about the librarian, but I wasn't about to suddenly reveal my new secret core room just on that basis. Not much point in a secret room, after all, if you went around showing it off. I easily fought off the completely unreasonable urge to show off what amounted to my own personal panic room.

In any event, once she'd been comfortably ensconced in a padded chair in what amounted to a small formal dining space, I invited her to make her pitch.

**This is my version of an Aubesan manor house, as I assume you guessed. It's pretty close to a reconstruction of the real thing a few hundred meters away; I'm increasingly aware that a number of minor details are wrong, but it should be accurate in the broad sweeps. Can I offer you something to drink? I have a few forms of tea and alcoholic beverages, as well as the purest water you'll ever drink.**

"Oh, how civilized of you, Vay." She teased me with a smile. "Stereotype though it may be, I do love a good cup of tea."

I gave her the mental equivalent of a shrug. **I'm afraid my selection is a bit limited, unfortunately. Would you care for a cup of Pinor Tea, or a Spikemint Tisane blend? Sugar? Butter? I'm afraid I don't have any cream, per se.**

"Pinor with a bit of sugar would be lovely, Vay. To be honest, I could use the pick me up. The flight was fine, but sleeping on deck wasn't my favorite."

I materialized a simple ceramic tea cup and her tea, as specified, then turned to business.

**I'm interested to hear about the transcription process and how it's likely to work. I think I'm provisionally willing to come to an arrangement, but I'd like it to have a reciprocal basis. There's a LOT I don't know about this world, and I don't think I can afford to remain ignorant.**

"Oh, excellent! I was really concerned as to what we might be able to offer you in exchange. Obviously, our normal contracts tend to focus more on direct financial support – which you fairly clearly don't need. However, if you want knowledge – well, then – you've come to the right church!"

**So, if I were to ask for payment in books, or at least borrowed access to books, in exchange for my own works, that would be acceptable?**

"Certainly in concept. Though of course, it depends on the rate of exchange you're looking for and the number of books you will be able to offer us. The more knowledge you make available to us, the better the terms you are likely to get. In principle, at least. Any deal I make with you will require endorsement by senior priests of the goddess, but that should be fairly quick in coming if your current rate of production is something you can keep up for a while."

That all sounded pretty reasonable to me, though of course, the devil was in the details. What exactly would I get access to? How would that happen? How quickly could I get those works?

**Hmm. That all sounds reasonable enough, though as you no doubt know, a lot depends on the specifics of the deal. I suppose there's no real reason to keep my capabilities secret here. Maintaining the current pace of production is something that I can likely do nearly indefinitely. As part of my conversion to a dungeon core, I was blessed with a perfect memory that enables me to recover, word for word, any document I have ever read. And since I was an academic for decades and an avid leisure reader, that's a lot of books. Currently, the major bottleneck is in the transcription process, as well as a lack of ability to effectively reproduce images or to translate into languages of this world. I expect as I work on those skills, they're likely to improve – which will make the works I produce more useful for scholars in this world.**

Janelle's breath caught at that disclosure. This would likely end up being the single largest addition to the world's collection of books in decades, if not centuries. "To be clear here, we're talking several hundred books, at least?"

**No, no. Several thousand, maybe over 10,000? As well as newspapers, magazines, various ebooks, webpages, and the like?**

She paled a bit and took a sip of her tea with a shaky hand. "I don't even know what some of those terms are. Between whatever translation skills we're using, they aren't giving me a description I recognize. Still, at your current pace, that's going to be decades of production. This is going to be a trickier negotiation than I'd thought, but you'll almost certainly be able to get most of what it seems like you want if we can strike a bargain."

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