Nuriel bit on his words as he heard the orb's answer and cleared his throat then raised his hands to pause for a bit. It was quite the revelation, although he was a bit disappointed that things got more confusing.
The world would've been easier had the orb and the scepter been the same thing. Now he was left with even more questions.
"First of all, don't call me mom, mother, or anything else..." Nuriel spoke with an awkward expression. This led to him seeing the orb slightly reverberate. "Just call me by my name."
The orb quivered. "C-could it be! What was that word?"
The throne room quaked. In front of the throne, a vast sea of colossal file cabinets emerged from the ground, towering above him and nearly blocking the starry skies.
It was as if time had accelerated. The orb suddenly shot like a bullet, which turned its elastic and gooey exterior into a spear-like shape as it zoomed through the file cabinets.
Dozens of long tendrils emerged from its surface as it began opening the file cabinets and reading through each file in rapid motions. It crawled through the cabinets like a spider, which unnerved Nuriel.
At this point, he wasn't even surprised anymore. At first he simply didn't question why such cabinets appeared. Instead, he observed the mysterious orb flying and zipping around to look for something.
'It seems it doesn't remember a certain word... could it be that it's searching for it?' He looked at the cabinets.
File cabinets were definitely a place to store information, but obviously it was quite an inefficient method for a scepter.
Then again, Nuriel had no right opinion on how the scepter of today would even store information—whether it would be physical file cabinets or through the standard binary system used in computers.
'Could it be a physical representation of the database?' He admired the colossal cabinets that seemed to create a dense city.
Just like his body right now was a mere representation of his real body, his morphing and summoning of objects were mere representations of his ideas and imagination. Following that logic, then those file cabinets must be the representations of the orb's need to find information.
Poof!
The colossal file cabinets disintegrated into fog, just like the items he could conjure would disintegrate into fog when discarded.
Although this time, due to their size, a tsunami of grey fog gushed down toward his location.
After the fog subdued, the white orb was floating right in front of him, quivering and shaking in distress.
"I-I'm adopted, is that it?!"
Nuriel dropped his jaw. He couldn't believe the orb meticulously inspected every cabinet just to find the meaning of adoption.
Clearing his throat, he immediately replied to the quivering orb, "Wait a moment, you're jumping to conclusions."
The orb zipped left and right, up and down in a frenzy.
'It's not listening...' Nuriel worried for the orb. Whatever it was, it had some control over the throne room's properties, which meant it might've had more authority over it than him.
Since no strings emerged when he touched the untainted scepter, it also meant that it had some sort of control over the system. He worried that it might halt his progression.
The worst-case scenario was to let the orb go into depression.
The orb settled itself as if it was tired. Nuriel took this opportunity to reach out with his hands and somehow start petting it.'One thing's for sure, this being definitely has the mentality of a child.'
The orb slipped away from his pets and shook up and down. "I'm not a child! I can learn! Just give me more access to data!"
Nuriel raised his brows when the orb read his mind, but he then settled them back down.'Well, I had a hunch that the system could look through my memories.'
After that thought, he focused his mind on something else. How could he prove himself to be a mother, even if he didn't know what that title entailed? If it meant the literal meaning—that Nuriel gave birth to a white sentient orb—then it was definitely false!
But if it was a symbolic title, then he might as well be the mother.
The orb wasn't the scepter fragment itself, but they still had to be connected in some way.'If the scepter gave birth to the orb and I gave birth to the scepter… then that would mean I'm the grandma. If it's merely a connection between the orb and the scepter, then would that mean I'm the mother-in-law?'
. . .
"Why am I even using female pronouns?" he silently muttered, then hunched over toward the orb.
"Look into my memories. See that my presence gave birth to you," Nuriel said while he kept a poker face for his strange answer.
The orb compressed as if it stifled a tear, then softly reverberated, "I overreacted. I'm sorry, Nuriel."
Nuriel's face twitched.
He now felt bad for making it call him by his name, but regardless, the brewing storm fortunately dissipated.
Now, he could continue their conversation. 'Since you have control over the scepters and this space, could you tell me how this world's magic operates?'
The orb softly reverberated and pitched up and down to nod, but given its appearance, it was hard to tell if it was nodding or shaking its... head?
"I'll give it a shot!" The orb blitzed away again as the colossal file cabinets once again appeared.
After around a minute of waiting, the orb returned and bounced happily.
"I'm back! I even read some teaching-related books!" it said as it moved around like a fly near Nuriel.
Nuriel was shocked. "How many books?" he asked the orb with a concerning face.
If he compared the biggest libraries of his old world and the main library of Owhen University, then Owhen would be no slouch in terms of the amount of knowledge it held.
Taking into account the sheer size of the library he worked in, the books in the main library alone would amount to above ten million!
The orb stood still as if it was thinking, then it reverberated, "I read about 227,500 pages about magic and 19,500 pages about teaching."
. . .
"You read all of that in one minute?" Nuriel asked with a flabbergasted tone.
The orb twirled in confusion before answering in a confused tone. "No? It took me around a year."
'Alright, now I'm even more confused.' Nuriel was now over it to the point that he had to force himself not to drop his head in defeat.