Ava said something that sounded pretty ominous. I thought that it looked a little odd when I peered through the window earlier. “What do you mean Ava, what is going on with the rest of the world?”

The little orb bounced up and down. “Why, the Great Reset of course. All electronics and machinery relying on them have been destroyed as well, the only reason your cell phone remained is because of the system knowledge available to you.”

My heart dropped; this was devastating to hear. There was so much information that I hadn’t been able to consume, and now I would be missing out on it forever.

Ava bopped in front of my face “That’s exactly why you were chosen by the system to be a host. You have an insatiable thirst for knowledge, transcending all thoughts of anything else around you. Just imagine what this is going to do to your world aside from the loss of knowledge and culture.”

I guess she was right, I hadn’t thought of that at all when she told me. Most of the world revolves around technology to operate. This would interrupt supply chains for all major goods in the world. Power grids would be out everywhere, stopping utility distribution across the world. Hospitals and emergency services would be shut down, effectively killing millions of people across the globe. What about all of the planes and vehicles operating within the world when the reset happened?

The world is probably a mess out there right now, I’m sure people are scrambling around trying to get some semblance of normal back to their lives while attempting to figure out what’s going on, all with no media communication to rely on.

I had just thought the power went out from the storm earlier, but this was much worse. I had no idea how to survive in a world without technology any better than anyone else I’ve ever met. What was I going to do now?

“Excuse meeee, Earth to Robert! Are you forgetting something? You have a system that lets you manipulate and create anything that you have a high enough understanding in True Knowledge on.” Ava floated around me in a circle, reminding me of the blessing I had just received and providing me with a revelation.

I was in a much better state than anyone else in the world right now, and could take advantage of that opportunity. However, I need to think about this and plan before I head back out into the world.

I will need to go scouting to get an idea of how bad things are in civilization right now. That should give me an idea of what I can do to assure my safety. I will need some supplies for a few days, but I can create most things. I should do some testing to see how much things cost in mana and what the limitations of my creation are.

“Ava, how much slower do things move inside the Library World compared to outside?”

“Time flows at a tenth of normal speed when you are in the Library World. This applies relatively across any dimensions or planets you visit in the future, as long as you are in the Library World.”

Well, that’s good, it should provide me with a significant buffer to practice and test a few things before the world completely goes to shit. I checked the updated cell phone I created earlier. It’s been roughly two hours since I blacked out and I’ve probably spent 20 minutes or so in here. Luckily it was fairly late at night when the reset happened, so some people probably haven’t noticed anything is going on yet. Like me, they probably assumed something happened with the storm if they’ve noticed anything at all. It won’t take long for everyone to figure out after morning comes though, so I will need to get everything done and set out before they do.

I pulled up the system menu and checked, my mana had refilled now so I could run some tests. I attempted to create a loaf of bread, picturing the familiar yellow plastic encasing my favorite white bread. The bread appeared in front of me as expected, but it seemed to drain 20 mana just for a loaf of bread. That wasn’t all that significant as it would recover in 4 minutes, but with only 100 mana points I could imagine something more substantial would use most if not all of my points. It seems modifications and complexity affect how much mana it costs to create an item.

A loaf of bread might not seem all that complex when you’re purchasing it at the store, but there are a lot of steps that go into turning wheat into a packaged and sliced loaf of bread. The creation skill must take into account each of the steps required throughout the process as their own knowledge level. Luckily, I had gotten into cooking and saved a ton of books on the processes of creating food just for something like this. I always secretly hoped my paranoid collection of knowledge would be used in a situation like this.

I decided to wait for my mana to refill before I attempted my next test. Walking over to one of the shelves containing my books, I placed a hand on the familiar bindings displayed on it. Another screen appeared in front of me, providing me the option to query through the available knowledge contained within all of the shelves. It seems I can search for specific books, authors, categories, or even words and phrases in any of the texts available.

Well, that should make things pretty handy when I need to reference any knowledge or read a book that I haven’t gotten the chance to enjoy myself. I have the knowledge from all of the data available in my head now, but nothing beats sitting down to immerse yourself in a good story. I mean, not like I haven’t reread a fair amount of the books in my collection prior to this anyway.

By the time I completed that exercise, my Mana had refilled and I wanted to try something a little more complex. I would need to get power up and going again, so I tried to visualize a solar panel with the knowledge I had available. I felt a strain on my whole body, much more than the previous attempts I had made when trying to create. I saw the solar panel starting to appear on the ground in front of me as my body got heavier and things started to blackout once again. I passed out just as the panel completely came into existence and I collapsed on the floor for the second time today.