"Do you want our robes?" Lip asked.

"Yes," Firana replied. "And Jax's glasses."

"Okay."

I was starting to see the outlines of Firana's plan. She intended to trace the origins of the Energy Boost Potions from the Library. I couldn't help but feel proud. After all, the Library housed far more commoners than the Knights Academy ever did.

Lip took off his robe and unceremoniously passed it to Firana.

Hidden underneath the loose robe, he wore a slim-fit black shirt laced across the front, baggy pants with hidden pockets, and soft leather shoes. Hidden among the folds of his pants, I caught a glimpse of a short knife. Considering the red stripes in his robe, he belonged to the Academic Circle, but his physique didn't remind me of the lanky Scholars and Scribes at Abei's study. Lip's frame was slender, but his shoulders were broad. He reminded me more of a boulder climber than a bookworm like Lyra Jorn.

"You didn't mention you were friends with members of the Academic Circle," I pointed out as Jax handed me his robe and glasses. No questions asked.

Lip shot Firana a theatrical wounded look.

"I told you I was studying a lot!" Firana defended herself.

She had said as much in her letters, but I had assumed she was exaggerating to keep us from worrying—or to make herself sound busy enough to excuse the long silences on her end.

"Aren't you going to introduce your friends?" I asked.

Firana sighed.

"This is my study group. Lip, Cass, Jax, and Lena. All of them Scholars. All of them unmotivated novices waiting to get their diploma before skedaddling back to their hometowns."

One by one, they raised their mug as Firana called their names and hit me with an 'it's an honor to meet you, sir' that felt more candid than their carefree appearances seemed to allow. The whole situation was way too suspicious for me not to get interested. For starters, Firana wasn't the type to show much interest in academic pursuits. The Wolfpack fitted her a lot more than Lip's group.

"Aren't you going to get in trouble for giving us your robes?" I asked.

Lip shrugged.

"Not if you don't get caught, and considering all the things Firana has told us about you, I would bet you aren't going to," he said, sipping from his tankard.

I gave Firana a sideways glance.

"Really? What exactly have you told them?"

Before Firana could answer, Lip jumped in.

"Would it be outrageous for a humble Scholar to offer a beer to someone with a Prestige Class?"

Firana snatched my arm and yanked me away from the table.

"Yes! Absolutely outrageous! Maybe next time! We are busy right now!" she said, pushing me towards the door.

The Scholars waved goodbye, and a moment later, we were back on the boulevard by the side of the Library. Without saying a word, Firana handed me Lip's robe—the boy was almost as tall as me—and grabbed Jax's in return. Draped in the robe, her athletic build vanished, and she looked like any other Scribe. She pulled the hood low over her eyes and adjusted the hem to hide her fencing boots.

"How do I look?" Firana opened her arms, looking like a church choir girl.

The new attire softened her mischievous expression to the point she almost looked like a proper goody-two-shoes Scribe. I didn't let her new look deceive me. The interaction between Firana and the Scholars had left me with more questions than answers.

"Just to clarify, Lip isn't your boyfriend, right?" I asked.

"Rob, I'm seventeen! I'm too young to date! Levels are what I need. Now put on the robe!"

My fencing attire disappeared beneath Lip's robe. For someone who was drinking before noon, the attire was reasonably clean. Jax's glasses were enchanted. The lens was made of a translucent, malleable material that curved when applied with magic. [Identify] told me they were made from a special kind of Slime. I toyed around with them until I managed to keep the edges straight, as my eyesight didn't need correction.

If I had to guess, the enchanted glasses were worth a small fortune.

I made a mental note to arrange a meeting with Lip and his friends at a later date.

"So… are we spying on the librarians?" I asked.

"That's the plan. They pop Stamina Potions like candy. They might be our best lead," Firana proudly said.

It was a great plan.

Without another word, we melted into the current of robed figures heading towards the Imperial Library. Firana blended so well with the other librarians that, without [Foresight], I would have instantly lost her among the crowd. Even her stride seemed to shift to match the librarians. The difference was slight, but combatants and non-combatants moved differently.

"Are you sure we won't get caught?" I asked, leaning close to whisper in her ear.

"If the librarian robe can hide Talindra's massive ra—" Firana bit her tongue. "I mean, of course we will not get caught. With a novice robe, we are practically invisible. Not even the adepts will give us a second look."

We moved aside as a carriage drawn by Skeeths passed.

"Lip seemed like the kind of guy you ask if you want to find shady potions," I pointed out.

"Not going to lie. He probably knows. But if the Energy Boost Potions relate to our yellow friend, the fewer people who are aware of our movements, the better."

I put my arm around Firana's shoulder and pulled her against my side.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"Strong, smart, and wise is a good combination," I said.

"Don't tell anyone I have tricks up my sleeve," she replied.

Ilya and Firana had more in common than they wanted to admit.

We spent the rest of the walk chatting about trivial things—or rather, I let Firana do the talking. She'd met Lip during her first year at the Academy. She had come to the Library to improve her understanding of air currents and wind magic to perfect her [Aerokinesis]. What she hadn't anticipated was how difficult it would be to access the tomes she needed.

Even with a small army of Scribes at the Library's disposal, some books had only one or two copies available.

So, like many others, Firana had to resort to not-so-legal means to acquire the books she needed. One of the most common tactics was to station a permanent scout at the library, ready to get the books as soon as they were returned. To keep a permanent set of eyes at the library around the clock, novices formed tight-knit cliqués with others researching unrelated fields. That way, they covered more ground without stepping on each other's toes.

Firana was interested in wind magic, Lena was a historian, Jax was an astronomer, Cass was a spectrologer—a Scholar who studied spirit monsters and similar creatures—and Lip was an economist. None of them was particularly interested in climbing the ranks of the Library, so their adherence to the rules was superficial at best. Lip had collected sixteen admonitions already, which ruled him out of the adept rank, but it was far from enough to get him expelled.

Firana didn't explain how a novice got admonitions, but I had an idea.

"You stole books from other novices before they were returned, didn't you?"

"Academic sabotage is an unforgivable sin, but just like in the wilderness, only the fittest survive," Firana said solemnly.

We reached the Library's central spire a few minutes later and crossed the main doors. The guards at the entrance didn't even look in our direction. Firana jogged to the balcony and glanced at the citadel of bookshelves and desks a level below. It was hard to estimate how many books there were, but it had to be in the high hundreds of thousands.

Instead of climbing into the elevator I had taken with Vanira a few days before, we reached the edge of the balcony and climbed down the widest marble staircase I've ever seen in my life.

"Heart pocket," Firana muttered as we approached the checkpoint—a wooden handrail guarded by two tired librarians. She pulled a small piece of enchanted paper and flashed it before the attendant.

I did the same, and a moment later we entered a corridor flanked by house-size bookshelves. I gave the enchanted paper a swift glance. There was no picture or identifier other than a cryptic code that resembled a mix of Sumerian cuneiform and braille.

"If you have overdue books, you can't enter," Firana explained in a whisper. "Everything on this floor is general knowledge. The more specialized sections are stored in the domains of each Circle. You need extra permissions to access those. Word is, there's also a forbidden section that only Archivists and those above can enter. Cool, huh?"

Forbidden knowledge was an appetizing fruit.

"I didn't think you'd become so excited over books," I pointed out.

"It is an acquired taste, I suppose," Firana replied as we walked the avenues between bookshelves.

After a minute, we emerged into a small clump of desks. A pole with a cluster of old Lightstones was on each corner of the study area, casting a steady amber glow over the ink-stained wood. The place was quiet, as if the bookshelves themselves seemed to work as sound sponges. A few novices from the Academic and the Nature Circles read silently, scribbling notes and looking around with tired eyes.

Firana looked around and nodded, satisfied. "This section's barely monitored. There aren't many good books in this area, so novices don't cause many problems. There was this one novice who brought a book here instead of checking out, and nearly had a mental breakdown when it went missing."

"Firana?" I asked, eyebrows raised.

"He found it after an hour. I don't know why he was that bothered though, it wasn't that good of a book. It didn't even cover convection currents or thermals," she shrugged. "Anyway, let's pick a book and wait."

"Wait, that's it?" I asked.

For a moment, I thought we would be the ones doing the search.

"Maybe if I had Talindra's bookshelves, I might be more popular among librarians, but alas," Firana said, frowning to the point her eyebrows almost touched. "Maybe, if the robes were a bit more tight-fitted, Talindra might be more popular."

I walked to the bookshelves, wondering when Talindra's social life had taken a wrong turn. It was strange to see a high-level magical class being a pariah, even in Cadria. Nobles made sure to keep talented people happy. I grabbed a copy of Mathematical Principles of Heavenly Spheres and sat at the desk in the corner.

Firana picked an untitled book and sat by my side.

I didn't get through the introduction before she looked at me over her book.

"Ilya caught me up on the deal about Byrne. The fact that he's teaching you all the runes is extremely suspicious. We shouldn't trust him—he's openly going against the Man in Yellow," Firana whispered.

I summoned a [Silence Dome] around us and put a hand over my mouth.

"I'm not sure the Man in Yellow is reliable either," I replied.

Firana gave me a quizzical glance. "What do you mean? We have to save the world! You have to fix the System!"

I massaged my eyes. Since the moment the Man in Yellow appeared before the kids during their class assignment ceremony, they were bound to know the truth. Still, I couldn't bring myself to tell them the world as we knew it was coming to an end. My gut told me they deserved a few more days of peace. A few more nights, believing their greatest worry was getting stronger to help me fight the corruption.

I looked at my hands over the edges of the book. The cracks on the leather cover were starting to show. Maybe I was doing things wrong. Maybe, I was supposed to prepare them for the truth. Perhaps, I was supposed to prepare the whole continent for it. But how do you prepare children to watch the death of magic?

This was way above my pay grade as a teacher. Even if I manufactured thousands of guns with millions of pieces of ammo, and dug the deepest bunker, I didn't know how long the Corruption would last. I didn't even know if the runes would remain operative if the System failed.

What else could I do? Amass a blasphemous amount of gunpowder? Turn into the prophet of the end of times? Even if I wanted to turn Ebros into a technology-reliant society, that change could take decades, if not centuries.

The answer seemed to spring from the depths of my mind.

A good teacher always bets on their students.

What else was teaching for if not to prepare children to face life?

"The System is manmade, but magic isn't," I said, extending my hand. Firana placed hers in mine without a second of doubt. "Natural magic follows a cycle of stability and Corruption. The System is showing problems because we are reaching one of those moments of great Corruption buildup. The Lich knew it, which was why he sought power. We can't stop it. It's the natural cycle of magic."

Firana squeezed my hand. Her body trembled like a leaf. Every single person in Ebros knew what great accumulations of Corruption meant.

"E-every problem has a solution," Firana muttered. "If it is a cycle, that means it has happened before the creation of the System. But we are here. Humans, elves, orcs, beastfolk, and even gnomes. There have to be ways of surviving."

I didn't want to say it, but surviving wasn't enough. Before the creation of the System, humans had survived in small tribes hiding in caves, but that wasn't life. That was endurance without purpose or freedom—the opposite of what I preached.

"Every problem has a solution," I echoed her words. "How would you deal with the Lions, Tigers, and Bears?"

Firana didn't hesitate.

"I'd hunt them down. My fangs will be sharper than a Lion's, my claws faster than a Tiger's, and my arms stronger than a Bear's, even if it means becoming a monster myself," she said. "But what will make me win is my mind, which tells me not to trust Byrne. If I were him, I'd assume you are a Runeweaver. I'd try to control the flow of information, even if I have to feed you a few—ultimately inconsequential—runes."

I couldn't help but smile. Firana was well on her way to surpassing me both in resolve and bravery, and strangely enough, it made me feel more self-confident. I kissed her hand.

"You are the best daughter I could have ever hoped for."

Before Firana could answer, someone knocked on my [Silence Dome]. I raised my head to find a lanky adept of the Nature Circle that looked like an off-brand Shaggy from Scooby Doo. With a thought, I dispelled the dome.

"I'm sorry to bother you, lovebirds, but you look tired," he said.

"W-we are family!" Firana blushed.

Discount Shaggy rolled his eyes.

"Look, I don't judge. I just wanted to know if you wanted to buy some potions."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.