My summon to another world was even weirder than I expected

Zack and the rest of the group were having breakfast in the small dining room, surrounded by the servants who had guided them there.

"Ahh, the same thing every day," Austin complained as he angrily chewed his breakfast, thinking about having to go back to the library to study.

A few days had passed since Zack started meditating, and his routine had already been established. In the mornings, the servants would knock on his door and wait for him to come out so they could guide him to the dining room, where he would meet Austin and the others for breakfast.

Once breakfast was over, the group would head to the library with the servants following them, where they would study the list of books Albert had given them.

Around lunchtime, Austin, Shun, and Miyu would get up from their seats to go eat, while Zack would ask the servant assigned to him, who was waiting by the library door, to bring him something to eat.

After a few hours, Shun and Miyu would return to the library until sunset, after which they would leave to who knows where. Zack would stay in the library until nightfall, reading. Once the sun had disappeared from the horizon, Zack would leave the library and return to his room, where he would meditate until dawn.

Even Austin had realized that the servants weren’t there to serve them, but to watch over them to ensure they didn’t do anything suspicious or contact anyone without permission.

"Shut up already! You're not the only one who's not happy with this situation!" Shun shouted loudly, startling everyone present.

Austin complained every day about their situation, but this was the first time Shun had said something.

The last few days had been very stressful for them. Not only had they been taken to an unknown place, far from their homes, but they also hadn’t even been able to read half of the books on the list. The feeling of having no control over what was going to happen was stressful.

"WHAT DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO?!" Austin shouted. "Every day is the same. We wake up, study things that don’t make sense, and go to bed. This isn’t life; it’s torture!"

Just imagining the mountain of books awaiting them, Austin couldn’t help but scowl.

Zack could barely hold back a laugh. Among the four of them, Austin was the one who had dedicated the least time to studying. Even when they were studying together, Austin was mostly distracted.

First of all, Austin wasn’t the type to appreciate a good book, so he showed a visible reluctance to learn the information they contained, even if it was the way to something as wonderful as magic. In fact, Zack thought that was probably the only reason Austin kept pushing through every morning.

While those two argued, Zack ignored them and looked at his status.

Status

Name: Zack Mayima

Age: 18

Race: Human

Title: Bookworm

Class: Mage

Level: 5

Stats:

Strength: 9

Endurance: 8

Wisdom: 14

Luck: 10

Agility: 10

Intelligence: 18

Charm: 11

Mana: 8/8

Skills:

Fast Reading Level 4

Memorization Level 2

Universal Translation

Zack had already finished the list of books Albert had sent them a while ago. Currently, he was mainly reading magic books found in the library, along with a few books on general knowledge, history, and geography. Unfortunately, there were no books on politics; it seemed the nobles of this world preferred to learn on the go when it came to governing their territories.

That wasn’t a good sign.

Except for the magic books, the other books weren’t in the mage building’s library, but in the central library of the castle. Although the servant assigned to Zack watched most of his movements when he wasn’t in his room, she didn’t limit him at all. Zack was able to visit the central library after informing his assigned servant and receiving approval from her supervisor.

Unfortunately, since the mage building was located at a corner of the castle's perimeter, and the place was too far, the time it took to walk through the palace halls made it impractical to visit the central library frequently.

Despite everything, Zack had learned a lot in his brief stay at the library.

In this world, there was a universal currency for trade, which was divided into copper coins, silver coins, and gold coins.

100 copper coins were equal to 1 silver coin, and 100 silver coins were equal to 1 gold coin.

Copper coins were used for daily transactions, like buying food or regular clothes. Silver coins were used for more valuable transactions, like buying weapons or medium-quality armor. Gold coins were used for large transactions, like buying a house, works of art, etc...

Contrary to what Zack had imagined at first, there was no adventurer’s guild here. However, since everyone had a class and some form of administration was needed, there were guilds based on the class one possessed to defend their interests. There were blacksmith guilds, carpenter guilds, artist guilds, and although there were no guilds for people with combat classes, there was a mercenary guild where they could develop their class and make money.

Normally, these guilds (except the mercenary guild) trained people with tier 1 classes who showed potential, and once trained, they would work for the guild.

The entire society in this world was built on the idea that everyone had a task or duty to fulfill when they acquired their class. Someone with the Tailor class had no desire to be anything else. The gods wanted him to be a tailor, so he would be a tailor.

This made society so tightly structured that it was easy to control.

Reading was fascinating, and Zack wished to investigate the topic more. Unfortunately, Zack had more important things to attend to than reading about social structure, like researching his own class.

Although Zack enjoyed reading about various topics, magic was always where he put his maximum concentration. Fortunately, all the book covers were more or less the same, so his companions hadn’t noticed that he had been reading books outside of the list.

In the few days Zack had been studying magic, he had noticed mainly two things:

The first was that the study of magic was a very broad subject. Forgetting the existence of magic exclusive to specific classes like shamanism or summoning, there were countless branches of magic: elemental magic, necromancy, space magic, etc. Some were less complex than others, but that didn’t mean they weren’t complicated and deep.

The second thing Zack had noticed was that the information they were offered was limited. The mage building’s library had three floors. Zack and the others were only allowed on the first floor.

Although Zack had only read a small portion of the books they had access to, most of them only touched on certain topics superficially. Subjects like creating your own spells, advanced magical theory, or knowledge of complex spells basically didn’t exist in the area they could access.

It wasn’t that there weren’t books teaching how to cast spells, but anything more complicated than a fireball simply seemed to not exist.

If Zack wasn’t mistaken, the area they had access to was for tier 1 magic users. They probably wanted them to learn the basics before attempting anything more complicated. It was impossible that they were only teaching tier 1 knowledge, otherwise, they’d be wasting their tier 2 classes.

While Zack was imagining how powerful a tier 2 class must be, his fantasies were unexpectedly interrupted:

"STOP FIGHTING ALREADY!!!"

Miyu’s voice echoed through the room. Even the servants, who had been expressionless the whole time, seemed surprised.

"We're all nervous and tired! Zack and I have gone through the same thing! Stop acting like you're the only ones with problems!" Miyu continued, while Austin and Shun watched her vent.

"We all know the task we were given is impossible. It doesn't matter if we stayed awake for seven days and seven nights, reading all the books was impossible. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us. The only thing we can do is try our best."

Miyu finished and went back to eating her breakfast. Although the way her hands trembled showed that she wasn’t as calm as she was trying to appear.

When Miyu finally stopped speaking, Austin and Shun looked at each other in silence for a moment, then both went back to focusing on their food.

That’s it. The reason everyone was so tense was because the one-week deadline to read the book list had already passed. Today they were going to meet Albert again, and none of them were looking forward to that meeting.

Zack finished eating and looked at his companions. No matter how much money or influence their families had, they were just teenagers who didn’t know exactly what they were supposed to do. Zack included.

Zack might have even more doubts than they did.

Zack hadn’t told anyone any of his secrets: not his reading speed, nor his ability to increase his mana.

Under normal circumstances, Zack could tell that pathetic excuse for a teacher they had and acquire more resources, but that would mean they would conduct tests to discover the cause, and they would surely find out about his class.

He couldn’t imagine benefiting from that situation.

When the group finished eating, one of the servants approached and asked them to follow her.

They all knew where they were going, so they stood up and followed her in silence.

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