Leaving the hut, Kentei and the lioness guard were outside waiting for Yakti.
"Oh! I didn't know you two were waiting for me! Is something the matter?" He asked.
"I'm very sorry, miss Yakti, I didn't get the address of this child's house, and he doesn't know where the bakery you sublet is. Would you mind telling me before you go out?"
Yakti subconsciously squinted his eyes: something seemed suspicious about her. He knew that she had to be at least somewhat suspicious of him, yet she was just letting him go? Just like that? What reason did she have for it?
He was too suspicious to feel comfortable with her in the bakery now. Plus, Kentei could let her into the basement, and if that happened... Yeah, he can't let her go like that.
"Oh! I can even guide you there! I actually was going to head there myself. After all, I should be there if my friend is going through something as important as what could be their last Renewal Event!" He faked a cheery smile as the guard faked one back.
"Of course! Then we'll follow suit if you don't mind." She replied.
"Oh, not at all! But I will tell you: I do need to stop by a bookshop before heading to the bakery. Don't worry; it is on the way to the bakery, so it shouldn't take a while."
The guard nodded as Yakti guided them to the Lira per Pound Bookshop. While the bookshop might appear standard, there are hints of its abnormality. Its location is highly disadvantageous for business since it sits in front of the Royal Library of New Raastia, a much more popular place to pick up books. Additionally, it has a tiny catalog of books despite being a store that sells books by the pound as its name implies.
With everything against it, many have asked how the store makes even a single vingtund. The answer is that it legally doesn't, well, at least that's what the owner of the shop claims. It's a losing business, and she regularly needs to take out loans to keep it afloat.
In reality, it's a front. While he didn't know the exact details of how distribution worked, he did know that supposedly he was at the lowest level, with the owner of the bookstore at the third lowest level in their organization for the distribution of the Devil Horns. What organization he was distributing for and what rank was between him and the owner were two mysteries he would contemplate now and then.
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After almost getting lost and missing the intersection between the Bridge Road and HM Conch intersection, they were in front of the Lira Per Pound Bookshop.
Once they entered, a sweet, almost nutty aroma hit the trio.
The shop was very cramped, despite only having an absolutely tiny amount of books split across two full-height shelves and four half-height ones.
The two full-height shelves were on the lefthand and righthand walls with reference to a person who walked into the store. In the middle would be the four half-height shelves. The half-height shelves came in pairs of two that were perpendicular to the two full-height shelves.
Two aisles separated the full-height bookshelves from two half-height ones, another would separate the two half-height shelves perpendicularly, and the final aisle would provide a path to go from one full-height shelf to the other. Resulting in a cross-shaped path in the middle of the shop, flanked by additional paths to let one fully explore the full-height shelves.
Beyond the shelves, diagonal to the entrance, was a raised platform in which an L-shaped desk sectioned off a small square in the corner of the room. Behind the desk is a flight of stairs and the cashier who was carefully observing the lioness guard.
A small collection of tables was in the back of the store, next to the raised platform.
This suboptimal configuration of furniture and bookshelves was entirely for protection. The extremely narrow aisles of the store forced anyone trying to raid the shop to go through a very cramped corridor, hopefully slowing them down enough for the cashier to run upstairs. If they didn't go through the corridor and tried to jump over the half-height shelves, they risked knocking them over, creating a loud ruckus that would be audible upstairs. Finally, if they tried to continue to go to the upstairs room, the raised platform made it impossible for them to vault over the desk unless they were extremely tall, meaning they had to enter the desk through a small gate on the side, which would further slow them.
It was honestly quite an ingenious setup. He wouldn't have ever thought of using the floor plan of the bakery to do something like this. Granted, the difference is that he can't defend his bakery if it gets raided, and there isn't any real place to escape. The person upstairs, however?
Well, it doesn’t matter now. What does matter is if he got the path right.
He began by walking to the desks, pretending to search for books on the righthand aisle. Upon reaching the desks, he rapped his finger across them and stared at the cashier.
The cashier finally noticed the rapping and looked directly at him. The two nodded once they made eye contact, and then Yakti began to walk down the central aisle to the store’s front. When he reached the front, he turned around and walked back down said aisle before turning on the aisle connecting the wall-to-wall shelves, letting one see the offerings on the half-height shelves.
He grabbed a couple of books from both sides before walking down the central aisle again.
But, before he reached the back of the store, he 'hugged' the half-shelf directly to his right before walking to the full-height shelf, turned around, and walked directly to the lefthand full-height shelf, taking great care not to step into the table area or the cashier line. Finally, now next to the cashier, he would turn to him.
"You know, I didn't find any works by T. Banachstok. Do you perhaps have any works from him, perchance?"
"Hmm... Did you not find any on the main floor?" The cashier responded while walking to the gate.
"Little bit, but nothing that was just him by himself."
"Alright, come with me then; it might be in the back." The cashier opened the gate while Yakti lifted his skirt and tried to walk up the step with grace. Sadly, while he did figure out quickly that when walking with heels, you walk with your heel first most of the time, he did not know this rule doesn't apply when walking upstairs, and he misplaced his foot, forcing him to lose balance.
Before he fell onto the ground, the cashier grabbed him by his arm and lifted him back up.
She is quite a beauty. He thought while hoping that the 'woman' in front of his eyes wasn't in any particular relationship. His face began to blush.
It was immediately clear to Yakti that he started to fall in love with him.
Seriously? Love on first sight just from me tripping? Was this man romantically challenged his whole life? Internally, he began to chuckle at the thought of the face the man would make once he removed the reconfiguration.
The cashier would open the door that led upstairs and let Yakti go first before carefully closing the door, trying not to make a loud bang.
While this was happening, the guard watched the interaction and mentally kept note of Yakti's behavior and where he went. She quickly realized that Yakti could've potentially taken this time to run away! Shit! I can't let her do that! She thought before trying to find a solution to the problem at hand.
Remembering the Royal Library was right across the street, she realized there must be at least a guard or two... Right?
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
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The stairs to the upper floors were quite rickety and were dangerous for him to walk up as they were all floating. It especially doesn't help that he doesn't know how to walk upstairs in his heels quite yet.
Only now did he begin doubting the idea of turning into a woman just to get the guards off his trail.
"Say... You're quite pretty, even for a noblewoman. If you could, may I know your name?" The cashier asked.
Yakti quickly cast a spell that formed a dagger near the cashier's throat as the two stopped their ascent.
"Perse should have told you more than to pry into the details of a dealer. If Perse didn't train you to do that yet, then maybe I should do it myself." He said with a tinge of frustration before quickly decasting the spell once he saw the cashier, frightened for their life, with their hands raised.
At the top, was an ornate mahogany door with a golden handle. Upon opening, it led immediately to a living room.
On the lefthand wall was a bookshelf the size of the entire wall. In the corner closest to him and the wall was a set of two chairs with leather cushioning and bronze buttons dotted across it, forming diamonds.
Between the two chairs was a lamp, the base of which was a deep red with some gold inlaid with a lampshade colored with a variety of yellows and beiges, depicting a scene of a variety of races all coalescing on one table with one person of an unknown race holding a dagger above a cup.
In the middle of the room was an intricately woven round rug, also with a red and gold color scheme, similar to the entirety of the room.
The right wall was painfully bland, just some brick and a fireplace. Not much else there.
Finally, all the way in front of Yakti was a floor-to-ceiling window with a desk behind that, and even behind that was a woman with blonde and purple hair that fell all the way to the floor and long, dagger-like earrings sticking out.
"Miss Perse? Are... Are you perhaps busy right now?" The cashier sheepishly asked.
The woman's ears flicked before she spun her chair around to face the two.
Her skin was lightly tanned, with light green eyes that lacked pupils. Instead, the eyes were closer to snow globes, with each eye having black particles floating around, swirling with any movement.
She coyly smiled at him before stating:
"Yakti, please take off your reconfiguration. We can talk about the guard downstairs once you do that."
Yakti obliged as his skin and body began to contort in the awful way of a reconfiguration. His tail once again came out from under the dress, the hair shrank back into its normal side part with pink-colored hair, and his skin tone deepened to its normal brownish hue.
The cashier went slack jaw, watching the reconfiguration happen before his eyes as Perse would chuckle a bit.
"I'm quite surprised. You never once came off as someone willing to wear dresses, Yakti." She started before her smile quickly dropped into an expressionless face, "Especially as someone who would use said dress to track mud into their employer's room."
He gulped before answering. "I-I'm sorry for my carelessness, Miss Perse." His voice began to shake as he stopped looking at her directly in the eye and looked towards the corner of the room.
Perse rolled her eyes before turning to the cashier, who was still reeling in shock that the beautiful woman he saw earlier was a beastman in disguise.
"I can’t even be bothered to remember your name yet, sir. You just go downstairs and tend to the new customers we have. Beware, they are not here to buy anything. Don't comply with any requests they might have."
The cashier jolted once he realized she was talking about him before bowing and heading downstairs.
Perse's eyes would lazily turn to Yakti's face, which still wasn't looking at her eye to eye.
"If you are not going to look me in my eye, then at the very least, take a knee. I won't accept the disrespect of you not looking me in the eye and still being proud enough to stand. Pick one."
Yakti nodded before obliging by taking a knee in front of her.
"How come there was a guard following you? And why did you guide them to my humble bookshop?”
"I... I had recently obtained a tier 9, no, now 10 individual whose class is unknown, once they recover from their Renewal Event.
“Sadly, when I went out to find a grimoire to inscribe spells onto them, they underwent a Renewal Event and the son of the KMK.MP that I was keeping had made their child go out and find medicine on her behalf, making the guard highly suspicious of me."
Perse shook her head. "You know very well I'm aware of everything you just said."
She cast a wind bullet that zoomed past Yakti's head and slammed into the door with great force. "I do not care about what Kentei might have or might not have done, only about how you blundered."
He hadn't even told her Kentei's name yet, and she already managed to divulge his name from him. That ability she has, whatever it was, must be the most powerful information-gathering-related ability in the world.
If she wasn’t disillusioned with the Dredatski Civil War, she probably would have worked under the government, either as a spy or some kind of scout for the military.
Thank the gods for the conflict because if that had happened, there truly wouldn't be any horn-dealing businesses in the Western continents.
Inhaling deeply to calm his nerves, he tried to think of a good answer to give her. While she probably knew the contents of his answer, there could be the chance that the way he delivered that information was unknown to her. She could be looking for a version of the answer where he pins the blame entirely on himself.
"The error I made was not properly planning in this scenario. I should have kept some amount of medicine for a Renewal Event in my home, and I had not. And, in my greed for empowering the tier 10 individual, I had left myself wide open for trailing.
“Now I am suffering the consequences of my incompetence..." He said, this time turning his head to look her in the eye.
The elf lady blinked slowly before leaning backward in her chair.
"About as satisfactory an answer I can get from a man like you. As for delaying your horn delivery, I'll approve it, but you will have an additional client to deliver to."
She already knew that he would need to ask for a delivery change this quickly. Abilities really are powers beyond his comprehension.
"Your next delivery will be to Viscount Zazudon after the Royal Smithy."
"...Is that all?" He shouldn't have spoken out then. The feeling of her glare burned through his head.
"I would normally say so, but that'd be too cruel even for me. You see, some of our informants and aspects of my ability have all hinted towards this commission being a sting operation.
“Sadly, our relationship with the Viscount is too strong, and he already knows many of our dealers by their name and has stated before that if a commission is too late, he will leak them."
It was obvious she had no intention of keeping Yakti around any longer. If she had any intent, she would've forced a newer horn dealer to take on this job instead of him. This is how she tells him that unless something spectacular happens, he's a dead man.
He simply nodded at the command and got up to reconfigure into the blonde woman again. He is now certain his arrest is imminent. He began thinking of ways to escape from any prison he’d be assigned to before remembering he still had Mihe to rely on.
"Before I go downstairs, could I take a magic casting book or two from you?"
The elf woman nodded without saying a word, turned to her desk, and began writing once again.
Yakti examined the shelf and eventually picked two books. "Introductory Spellcasting with Focus on Inscription Theory" and "An Introduction to Linear Algebra with Applications in MFT."
"T. Raphael's books are usually hard to read, especially if you don't have strong mathematical knowledge." The elf woman spoke up without turning to him.
Looking at the covers of both books, he noticed they were both written by T. Raphael. Flipping open the books, he saw that the table of contents covered utterly terrifying topics. Even he didn’t know much about the topics, despite having spent almost all of his free time the past few months studying MFT.
"I like his works. While he struggles to give the prerequisite knowledge for the subjects at hand, if you have a guide to that knowledge, there is plenty of valuable insight in his works. He is one of the founding fathers of MFT and Inscription Theory, after all."
Yakti cocked his eyebrow as he flipped the two books to read their back blurb. "Really? A founding father? Never heard of him in my life."
She sighed. "Sadly, by the time we had found applications for his two theories, Uton was blighted by the Great Plague, and he had presumably died.
"Truly, it was a great tragedy the plague was." She shook her head.
"Without it, though, we would be out of a job, wouldn't we?" Yakti responded in a half-joking tone as she chuckled with him.
Finally, he began to head downstairs as Perse spoke up once more:
"The Royal Library guards will be dressed in plain clothes and are tracking you. Luckily, they lack training for tracking, so it'll be very obvious who is or isn't a plainclothes guard. Just make sure that you get them off your trail.
"If I were you, I would probably head to the intersection between HM Conch and Bridge Road in about three hours. You should be able to remove your reconfiguration and hide in your bakery again. They won’t be able to follow you home if you do that."
He checked the clock while nodding. Finally, he would place the two books in a small bag he had carried with him before walking downstairs.