Hitting the Books

John jumped out of his chair to have a better look at the desk. While it was covered in graphs, charts, and other data, he simply couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Let me guess, yet another weird thing that shouldn’t happen?”

Faith just nodded, “Yeah… This thing is listing this ‘item’ to have no identifiable creator, despite all of the dating techniques we know about registering it as only like 14 minutes old. Normally, it’d be much greater than that. Due to, you know, things existing and time.”

“For clarification, if you analyzed just anything mundane and naturally occurring, would there also be no detectable creator? If that’s true, that likely means they were directly created by Gaia, or something else that could just hide that really well? I’m just assuming there’s magic for most things, really.”

“That seems to be the case, but… this means that you’re a tad bit more special than I thought. While like with every late bloomer, Gaia gave you your powers, either she or another entity powerful enough to do this straight up magical bullshittery has taken a particular interest in you for whatever reason.”

This didn’t phase John in the slightest; he was used to these rapid revelations of amazing power out of nowhere. Hell, he could even substitute as a protagonist of a story mostly about wish fulfillment, but that was impossible, right?

John discarded this thought, thinking about something that he couldn’t disprove would just give him a complex or something. He had a much more pressing matter once he realized Faith was just waiting for him to respond.

“Oh, yeah. That seems to be both good and bad. I will quite honestly be fucked if anyone learns about that. I’d probably be used for some sort of experimentation or profit…” Saying this out loud made it all too real for John, who began realizing the implications of it. Panic began to set in immediately. “But uh, you guys will help prevent that, right?”

After a moment of hesitation, Faith responded, “We will, we literally did just sign a contract that guarantees that. So you don’t need to worry about that. In fact, I think your biggest issue is other people inside the company who might have access to this data.” A brief pause passed as she took out her phone and tapped on it a few times. “Buuut, because you seem like an alright guy and I don’t want to put you in harms way or anything, I won’t put it into our database and will only notify my father about this.”

John relaxed visibly, “Thank god. Thank you for doing that for me.”

“Eh, no big deal. I take safety precautions very seriously. In addition to that, I’m interested in making an off the books deal about something.”

A tad bit of skepticism rose within John, along with a slight bit of inner hope that she would proposition him or something. He was very much still a horny nerd at heart, after all.

A moment of hesitation ensued, as if Faith was trying her best and failing to put what she wanted to say into words.“Weelll, it seemed as if you could use some support during that dungeon. And since we could both potentially have something to gain from this… I’d be glad to help you out with them. As long as I get some of the loot that I’m interested in, though.”

Quickly ripping his mind away from what she might look like under those clothes, John considered his options here. Well, I have been experiencing a lot of difficulty with these dungeons. Getting some outside help may pay off, even if I do lose some loot in the short term, I suppose the experience I’ll get will likely make up for it.

“Sure, I guess I could use the help with the not dying part of dungeons. I suppose we both have something to gain from this.”

“Good to hear, any chance we could schedule one for tomorrow after school and go from there? If you don’t have anything that would conflict with that, of course.”

With as straight of a face as he could muster, John replied, “Yes, tomorrow after school works for me. If you hadn’t noticed from the whole ‘reclusive nerd’ thing, there’s almost no real chance of having anything resembling a day plan besides raids, and I haven't had one of those on weeks,” before cracking a smile and chuckling at his own self deprecating brand of humor.

Faith laughed a little, “That makes this quite convenient. Anyways, since our examination is now over, you’re free to go. Do you need something to get back home, or have you got it covered?”

“Depends, let me check.” And after looking at his phone’s map, he saw a library that he had used to go to, back when he had read books more than playing video games. An idea popped into his head, “Yeah, I think I’ll just walk to the library and catch the bus back. I’ve been meaning to go there sometimes anyways.”

“Alright, just make sure you don’t get murdered or something on the way there.” After a glance from John she added, “I’m joking! People don’t get murdered here, often at least,” with a mischievous grin on her face.

In response, all John had left was to roll his eyes and make for the door of the office. It opened without so much as a squeak of its hinges, and he began the process of walking down the stairs before reaching the front door and walking outside.

It was a cloudless sunny day. John couldn’t remember the last time he had appreciated one of these. The intense and vivid colored flowers dotting the neighborhood. It was a nice day; there even were birds that were chirping somewhere in the distance.

John tried his best to appreciate it, but something inside him just felt… detached from it all. With the constant threat of ****, ****, or worse looming over his head despite the recent deal he had just made, he supposed that he might as well appreciate everything and anything he could get going for him. Dwelling over that fact just wouldn’t do him any good. Accepting this risk that now came with everyday life was just something that he’d need to get used to.

Needless to say, he hurried as quickly as he could to get away from the thoughts and paranoia that ate at him despite his best attempts at alleviating this.

Once he entered the library, John found himself surrounded by both new and old. A plethora of things that he remembered and things that had been added since he had last come here sat before him. But he knew what section he was going to, mainly because it was the one he had attempted his best at avoiding.

Upon arriving at the section of the library set aside for informative and scientific texts, he rifled through the selection at hand until he found a couple books on topics that he thought he might need, like programming, chemistry, physics, and even one on quantum mechanics that he got on a whim. As it turned out, math and science was a lot more fun when you could apply it in ways to not die in.

Using the library card that he fortunately still had in his wallet for some odd reason, John checked out all of the books he could, making a mental note to return them when he was done with them. And to donate something to this library. Free knowledge was something that he was finding more and more scarce in this world as the years went by; there was even news about potential budget cuts that would have to made because of some bullshit or another.

Books in hand, John quickly walked outside once more. This was, of course, incredibly inconvenient for someone with his strength score, so he immediately put them into his inventory when he was sure nobody would see, except a stray two books that were fairly thin in comparison to the rest that just couldn’t fit.

Upon arriving at the nearby bus station, John quickly checked the schedule to make sure he wouldn’t have to wait for an hour or something. But he instead found that there was a mere 9 minutes before the next one came.

So he opened his phone and checked the listing for the sword he had put up earlier.

Upon seeing the price that it had eventually gone for, John sighed.