 | Name | A Thousand Nights (IV) |
| Type (Ingame) | Quest Item | |
| Family | Book, A Thousand Nights | |
| Rarity |  | |
| Description | A wandering researcher once walked through rainforest, desert, and city during a time of great catastrophe, collecting these stories along the way. It is said that the original work truly did contain countless tales and that naught but a fragment of that is still extant today. |
Item Story
| The Tale of the Researcher Once upon a time, there lived a researcher, upon whom all the hallmarks of the haughty man of letters might be seen, though he himself — and we shall be generous to him here — was not the best amongst his peers. Knowledge is like a fruit, after all, and time quickly whittles its freshness away. If he cannot eat it all while it is still juicy and full, the rest shall taste like sweet decay. "Time," the young researcher said, "you truly are my hated foe — even more so than I consider my colleagues." Alas, innate characteristics such as laziness cannot be so easily shaken off. Thus did winters turn to summers and back again, bringing his "hated colleagues" glory and praise, while he was left with the scars of the bygone years. Perhaps this was some trick of fate, but our main character would indeed discover a way to make his wish reality — quite by accident, in fact. "Time seems fair, though it is but a veneer. That I am not as quick-witted as others is not due to a lack of talent. Nay, 'tis but the cruelty of time..." So thought the researcher, now no longer young. "Now that my chance has come, I must use it well." And so he made this wish to the injured Jinni: "I wish for time to be just... so that I might write better theses." The Jinni understood him quite easily, saying: "All things come with a price." "Well, yes, and I have clearly paid part of that toll," he said, shrugging. "I have wasted my youth on pointless pursuits. Now that things have come to this point, I no longer desire common joys. I only wish to leave behind a work of stunning brilliance, that my name will be praised for generations. Nor do I wish for my work to be left on perishable ink and paper, but it shall instead be carved into stone. Thousands of years on, my marks shall still be left upon this world... and this way, I shall have my justice — I shall triumph over time." "If that is your will," the Jinni replied noncommittally, fulfilling the researcher's wish nonetheless. But whether that was truly a Jinni or some demon in disguise was quite the matter of contention, especially in hindsight. Leaving this matter aside, the researcher whose wish was fulfilled found that everything had now become slow compared to his thinking. "Good, good. Now then, my agility of mind shall not be a problem." At first, the researcher was most pleased. Now that he had ample slack, so to speak, there was much time for thoughtful consideration. The time it took for a sand grain to fall to the earth was not sufficient for him to raise his left hand to touch his forehead, but his mind could sprint during this time — from forest to desert, from vast plain to snowy tundra it could run indeed. He cursed that all the pages of a book could not be laid out flat, but had to be flipped one by one. But even had they been laid out before him, his eyeballs would have failed to move quickly enough. By the time his eyes had finished resting upon a single word, he would already have exhausted all vocabulary related to that word, and all imagination pertaining to that vocabulary. "I think too much and write too little," the researcher thought afterward. "I must use the most elegant words to write the most academically rigorous paper." But when he had penned the first word, his thoughts had already leaped to the conclusion. And so he had to constantly repeat the essay to himself, and as he silently dictated the text, it would become more and more refined. Yet, this could only happen in his mind — when all was said and done, his right hand had yet to even write seven words. And thus was this great work, comprised of the finest lexicon and the stoutest logic, compromised by the researcher's own body. Every passage came out tattered, as if someone had shredded every page and put them back together haphazardly. The words that were connected felt like fragments randomly selected from a complete text, and no one could really grasp the connection between them. It was on a starless night when he, with all his strength, like one completing a centuries-long exodus, managed to leave his study, arriving at the courtyard downstairs. "Perhaps speaking shall be more direct than writing," he said, a single bare thread of hope remaining in his heart. But his very voice seemed to stumble after the weave of his thoughts. His syllables came out disjointed and fragmentary — as if the intent behind the words had changed even as they were being said, and so they came out as mere mumbling and whimpering. "Alas, poor old fellow! One might almost think he has been possessed!" So said the well-dressed young folk who looked upon him with sympathy. "But at least he still has the moon." They left after saying these words, leaving the researcher alone in the moon-bathed courtyard, trapped in the prison he once called a body. Then the mere husk of a mortal man began to recall a story that he had once read... |
ok bro