Find this book (Solo job)

Spoiler:

Peace village huh? Nao thought to himself as he arrived after taking a particular job that he thought would be pretty simple. Finding and locating things was something that Nao was pretty good at doing. His magical eye ability, the one that he had developed from his family heritage, was pretty powerful and in fact the more he thought about it the more he thought he would be able to develop new spells. So far he was pretty good at seeing things, tracking people, implanting horrible thoughts into people’s heads through his eyes and was able to harness the light absorbed by his pupils into a flash.

Walking from the mission job board, catching a ride to the village and then finding the library was the easy part. What the hard part was going to be was finding a book that seemed to be in the middle of a collection of all these other similar looking books. The book, A guide to ancient ruins and the treasures that may be found, had been out of print for about half a decade. It details lost ruins that may have existed, and the ones that were found have never been broken into. The book was questioned on its authenticity but when it went to trial the author disappeared into one of the ruins never to return. It seemed at least the author believed her own work so why wouldn’t it be as authentic as any other literature.

Nao had deemed this to be an easy quest but as soon as he walked into the hall of the library, where it contained thousands of books he knew that it wouldn’t be easy. It was untidy, unkempt from all the mages using the library to gain more knowledge. However not all mages really knew how to clean up everything that had been reading up on and this was going to make Nao’s job even more difficult. Especially when he was going to be looking for a book that may make a huge number of mages curious since rare temples and ruins were probably ways to make people famous if they could crack the traps and puzzles. Maybe the person looking for the book was also one of those mages looking for this certain book but just couldn’t be bothered to find it.

Nao stepped in, his eyes darted back and forth , looking for a good place to actually start in this library. There were three floors and it was for sure going to be on one of those. He knew it was in this library because he had asked previously about a similar book about ruins and heritages.  This meant that if he was going to look for it then he better start from the very beginning. It was, as they said, a very good place to start.

Starting at the ground floor, Nao would be begin to number the rows of bookshelves that could contain what he was looking for. His turned his eyes on, making them go from a dull brown to a full spectrum of light and vibrant colours. This meant that Nao had activated the Eyes of Providence ability passed down through the generations. He was just the next in line to receive such a power and develop it even further. However the great thing about this ability? Was that he could actually zoom in to ten times the magnification of a perfect eye. He was really glad to have it for these occasions where he was either looking at specific people, or for specific objects.

He began to magnify his vision, slowly reading every book title to try and find what he was looking for. They weren’t all in name order, or in the order of the authors who had written them. There were titles about magic, artifacts of legends, and even a bestiary on Vulcan types from all over Earthland. These were not the kinds of things that Nao was looking for in this section. Instead he moved onto the next aisle but that contained literature from famous poets and playwrights, and the next aisle was all about combating certain kinds of monsters and how to treat different venoms and poisons. It didn’t look like the book was going to be in this section.

He walked over to the next area and began to look again. It contained all kinds of cool information on treating wounds, applying magic to weapons and even famous magicians that everyone should know about. But to no avail was he actually finding the book that he really needed. At least he could find interesting books that he could take note of. He really needed to get himself a pet sometime to follow up his ancestry of being able to tame beasts.

Nao sighed softly as the sight of all these books was starting to tire him out a little bit. He decided to take a sit on one of the desks and look through the piles of books there. Nothing there was actually useful at all and instead all Nao found himself doing was falling asleep holding onto a book that he was about to look at. He could look for the book later and he would be just fine. The book wasn’t going anywhere right?

He would awaken thirty minutes later under a pile of books. He was pretty sure that he hadn’t fallen asleep in these books, and instead he was being joked with. Looked like the book he was holding onto was gone too. He guessed it was time to look for the book again. Maybe the second floor had what he was actually going to be looking for. He hoped that it was there then.

He reactivated his eyes and began to scan through some of the books. It looked like it was the same books… Had… had someone moved them while he was asleep? Who was doing this?! He decided to run back down to the first floor and have a look there and try and make his way. He would have to run, just in case they started moving the books around. He hadn’t felt the presence of anyone nearby, but maybe they were hiding all this time.

Sure enough, as he expected the books from the second floor were now downstairs. This was strange yet perfect since he had a pretty good memory of what the upstairs contained. This aisle contained information on the history of Earthland, recorded events of catastrophes and demonic invasions. And the next aisle contained just what he was looking for. Ancient ruins and artefacts, and right in the middle of it all was the book that he was looking for. A guide to ancient ruins and the treasures that may be found, was there in the middle of the mess of books on the shelves.

He began to walk to it, smiling and he went to grab the book, until it seemed to disappear from the shelf. He figured it fell through the back but as he looked he could see a kid grabbing it and running off with it. That wasn’t something that he had expected to find in this place. Maybe he was one of the people who was moving the books around the library and making his job very difficult.

”Hey! Get back here with that!” Nao called, watching the boy run around the bookshelves as Nao narrowed his gaze on him, trying to make sure he caught a scan of how fast he was going and where he could go. Nao also placed a mark so he could see where the boy was going.

He then chased after, pulling out his bow out and notching an arrow as he ran after the child. His eyes would keep searching around, hearing the footsteps of the kid and then suddenly stop. He knew then that the kid had stopped running about twenty of thirty metres away.  This time Nao had got him, this time he was going to get the book and get out of this place.

He pretended to run past the place where he knew the boy was hiding (in a cupboard by one of the tables full of books), and waited for him to get out of his cover. This was the perfect time to land a perfect arrow just past him to show who was boss and not to fuck over Nao. The kid crouched in fear, shaking as he almost died to the novice mage. He sighed softly and shook his head.

”Next time you try and take a book, just make sure it’s someone who isn’t magical ok? You could get yourself hurt by messing with a library that so many different kinds of mages use. What if one of them decided you were just an annoyance huh? You’d be putting yourself in danger.” He put his bow away and crossed his arms.

”Now I don’t know why you keep messing with the books in the library. It might have been pretty funny putting a load of books on top of me when I was taking a rest, but people need to use this library from time to time ok? Go play elsewhere instead of using this book as your practical joke ok?” The boy nodded and began to walk away, clutching the book in his hand. Nao coughed a loud cough, making the child freeze, turn around, drop the book and run off instead.

Nao walked over to where the boy dropped the huge book and picked it up. He was surprised that the kid could carry it just fine because it was a little bit heavy. But never the less the novice mage had managed to get the book from the library and could now complete the job that he was doing. He hoped that eventually someone would tidy up this library because he would really have liked to pick up a book on beats and where to find them.

Satisfied with the result that he managed to get from this job, Nao strolled out of the library with the book in hand. Hopefully those kids wouldn’t dare mess with the library again. Did he have to check the book out from the library? Didn’t really matter as long as the mission was completed he didn’t care at all.

Total wc: 1731 words