Note that Obsidian parses all the files and uses the browser's built in database to store indexed metadata and links between note files. It's how they have a responsive search function. You could either use sqlite, ad-hoc your way with flat-files.

Of course, you could parse, walk links, and search through all files on the fly all the time. Text files at personal-notes scale should cache really well, and it might still be faster without the browser-tech overhead, but it's a toss-up