The two walked in silence in the long library.

As granny Tacha walked behind the younger man, she was thinking hard on how to get out of the place smoothly. A fight breaking out would be the worst outcome for her.

Surerly, she was confident in her fighting skills, but she wasn’t confident enough to actually escape without consequences. For starters: a fight would mean that the librarian’s comrades would be alerted and she would no longer be able to gather information peacefully.

Moreover she had to worry about her cursed Mark, which keeps her at a constant 3 Hp. She wasn’t that arrogant to think that she would be able to avoid all of her opponent’s attacks without even knowing his fighting style. If he was more of a sneaky style, just catching her off guard would be enough to reduce her Hp to 0.

And if she were to die, she would lose a full 30 hours of game time. This would be enough time for the relevant NPCs to destroy all clues and run away. She had already seen how the NPCs countinued on with their life even while she was not logged in. It wasn’t impossible that they would just disappear and consequently, make her quest fail.

Well, not really fail. But she wouldn’t be able to get the best outcome out of the quest. She would simply forced to tell the poor kid that his mother was dead and that she let her murderers escape.

How would that be any good?

As she was still contemplating on how to get out of this sticky situation, the two reached the reception desk and the librarian sat down with a straight face.

Taking out a big book and some ink and plume, Caius dutifully noted down the title of the book, author and year of release.

The plume swayed in an orderly manner, and without looking up he started asking the relevant questions “Name?”

“Tacha Macha”

Nodding, he noted down the name in the row below.

“Affiliation?”

The granny paused for a bit. There were only two places that she knew the name of. One was Midwarth, the big city that traded with the village and where the librarian Caius knew a few people. A big city like that would definetly have some ways to identify its citizens, but if she were to lie and say that she lost it she would be able to gain a few days time before they could check.

That is, if it wasn’t something that could be checked right away. Maybe he wouldn’t even need a couple of days, but just a few hours.

The other option was the sacred city of Kash’ri Lah, but seeing as this sneaky trio didn’t see the White Order in a good light, she didn’t think that declaring herself to come from the same place as their bitter enemies would garner a good reaction from them.

When he cast his gaze on her, Tacha felt like she couldn’t delay her answer anymore.

“...None”

He looked silently at her for a bit, maybe thinking about her identity “The place you were born in then?”

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Tacha’s eyes wandered sideways. She figured that saying something like ‘I’m a player!’ wouldn’t be good either. The NPCs didn’t seem to be able to comprehend the game terms that were thrown at them “I’m not sure...?”

The librarian narrowed his eyes, his fingers unconciously rolling the plume in his hand. Tacha looked at him, starting to feel nervous.

Did I mess up? Would’ve it have been better if I just said that I came from the city? The granny steeled herself. If the librarian was going to show any hostility, she was ready to hit him with a radish as a preemptive strike.

Caius frowned. Tacha was ready to summon her radish at a moment’s notice. Then, his brow relaxed and he wrote down something beside her name.

Granny Tacha waited a bit more, then relaxed. It didn’t seem like he suspected anything at the moment. Internally, she was relieved. The worst did not come to pass.

After a minute she heard his voice again “Any Central Affictionado Association Card?”

“No”

She didn’t know what it was, but it was pointless in lying at this question. At best this card was going to be something similar to a library card back in the real world.

The man nodded, as if he expected such response “That will be 10 bronze coins” as he said that, he wrote the number 10 at the margin of hers and the book’s info.

Tacha froze. She didn’t think that borrowing a book was going to cost her something. And it was 10 bronze coins too!

That would mean that one had to hunt four to five monsters and sell their material intact. The economy in this game wasn’t newbie friendly at all.

In other games just hunting a couple of monsters was enough to buy a couple of pieces of equipment or a few potions. But here healing potions were really expensive, and although a couple of knives were less expensive, they would still be sold for at least 40 bronze pieces.

In front of those prices, Tacha preferred to hit people with a vegetable. It was very cost effective!

With a heavy heart, the granny took out the 10 bronze pieces from her inventory and handed them out tot he librarian. Now she only had 52 coins left.

Tacha sighed to herself. If only quests gave some coins as a reward…

At this rate she was going to be dirt poor!

Caius took the coins and put them inside a drawer in the desk. After he was done scribbling some more, he gave the book to the sulky grandma “The deposit is valid for two weeks. If the book is damaged, the compesation will be deducted from the deposit. If the book is lost, the deposit will not be returned”

At those words she felt better. As long as she could return the book she was going to get her money back. She thanked the librarian as she hurried out.

When she closed the door behind her, she thought of a problem. It they were going to turn out to be enemies, wouldn’t her coins be lost?

Upset, she looked at the book with the smiling cat with blame. She was tempted to throw the book to the ground, but she thought better of it. She threw it instead in her inventory, hoping to forget this incident.

If the book were to be damaged, she would get less than 10 coins back.

ᴥᴥᴥ ≈ ° ≈ ᴥᴥᴥ

After the granny had left, Caius closed the book. He took off his glasses and placed them neatly on the desk, right beside the register.

He stood up and headed towards the end of the library. When he reached the aisle where the secret hatch was hidden, he looked around.

He checked the books on the shelves and those that were on the ground. It didn’t seem like they had been moved, but he couldn’t be sure that the vagrant had come here with a different objective in mind.

It might’ve been an old one, but all of the vagrants that he had seen up until now had been behaving weirdly and seemed a bit crazy with their tendency to interact with the air.

Only a couple of them had come inside the library, but none had stayed for long or had actually borrowed a book yet. They had however pestered him with their requests to help him in menial tasks.

He sighed. They were annoying, but after giving them something to do, they never came back again.

Caius looked at the piled books for a long time. Then he started moving them. It’s better to make sure, he thought. There was no harm in checking that everything was alright. And even if his suspicions were unfounded, he could update the journal with the latest happenings.

When he was done moving the books, he stopped himself from heading down the hatch right away. Instead, he went back to the reception desk to put a ‘Coming back soon’ sign.

Since it may take some time, it was better to prevent people from snooping around too much while he was away.