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Indeed, you had been studying the monsters of the wastelands, from the awe-inspiring Conspirators; a race of genius, AI-engineered spider-like beings of flesh and bone that the ancient robot overlords had copied their knowledge to, to the most mundane races of human mutants that lived ferally in the wilds. You also knew how to forge weapons and armor, and you were aware of that melee combat was on the rise. Most creatures that could be defeated with the typical hit-and-run ranged tactics of humanity with bows, crossbows and methane-based muskets have already been driven to extinction, and those who have survived have either learned or evolved to subvert those strategies with measures like armor, rushdowns strategies and stealth.
You also knew quite a bit about the Monoliths, the 'nukes' of the AI war which had been invented and deployed by the warring AIs themselves. Scattered in the millions across the entire Earth, their field causes long-range electric signals to scramble as they travel, and all electronics (and electric interactions of sufficiently small size) to scramble too and stop working. At closer ranges, they even start to affect the brains and bioelectricity of organic creatures. Some exceptional monsters have adapted to this, having developed a modest level of tolerance to the Monolith Field's effects, and some even weaponize it somehow, able to increase its power in a small area like human epileptics can. You also knew that scientific consensus largely agreed on that decreasing the strength of the field itself is just impossible unless the nigh-indestructible, unmoveable Monolith itself is removed somehow.
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You decide to help the librarian, a silent, serious and pliant young man who let you assist him. The two of you didn't talk about anything besides the process for making books, which you found to be interesting and relatively easy to grasp. After the experience, you believed that you could now perhaps rebuild the book-pressing mechanism and make your own books if you wanted to, in the future.
