The library was way bigger than Paley thought. It towered over them at around thirty meters and the walls were made of pale yellow limestone with a wood framework. Large windows in the shape of arches were indented on the walls.
Paley and Teerom made their way in, trying to act like everyday citizens visiting the library. The interior felt sterile and had a red, fluffy carpet flooring the hardwood below to maximize silence. Tall bookshelves were spread out evenly and separated in the middle, leaving a path towards a staircase. The doorway leading to the stairs was filled with a yellowish magical essence that acted as a barrier.
"Well, I guess we start looking," Teerom whispered to maintain the quiet atmosphere and they started going through every book in the library.
Towards the end of the room, a book stuck out to Teerom. "Hey!" He whisper-shouted to Paley.
"What?" Paley rushed over after checking the last row on his shelf. "This is the last book in the series that Jurie's reading. She's been wanting this since we were kids." Teerom said.
"Wanna get it for her?"
"Yeah, but we're here for you to learn healing magic." Teerom began moving on by Paley stopped, "Come on, she'll be happy." Paley took off his cloak and made it into an improvised bag. He took the book and put it inside along with the toys he stole earlier.
"You're one pesky kid," Teerom pinched his cheeks. "But I agree. I can't wait to see the look on her face when we give these to her."
"These?"
"These all have the genres that she loves, might as well get them all, right?" He grinned and dumped fourteen more thick books into the impromptu rucksack.
They quickly finished searching through the last few shelves and found themselves in a predicament. Every book they had checked was either fiction or an autobiography of some rich, self-important noble.
"Some kind of *great* library this is," Paley complained.
"Wait, maybe we're just looking in the wrong place." Teerom began, "Why would they just have magic books out for everyone to read? Then everyone could just learn dangerous spells."
Paley caught on quickly.
"That's why they have a magic barrier blocking the stairs to the higher floors," Paley concluded.
"So the question is, how do we get in there?"
They spent a few moments thinking, getting more and more frustrated with every second that passed until three teenagers in uniforms approached the magic barrier. Students. They were about fifteen years old, not much older than Paley.
They each pulled out a stone with a glowing blue symbol etched on it and held it out in front of their heads. The magic barrier dissolved as they neared, letting them pass through, and closed again once they'd gone through.
"Looks like that stone is the key to opening that barrier," Teerom commented.
"When they come back out, can you try and steal two of them? I'm all out of mana." Paley requested.
"Hmph," Teerom smirked, "Leave it to me. After all, I was a pro thief back in the day."
"Pro thief?"
"Yeah, I used to live in- well, you know. I managed by stealing."
"I thought you said it's not right to steal," Paley teased, recalling when Teerom opposed him after he stole the toys from the neckbeard.
"It isn't. I was twelve when mom took me in. Just like you. She's the one who taught me my values and morals, so they're very precious to me. Though I made an exception for you this time, 'cause everyone's gonna be happy."
"Well, looks like you're gonna have to make another exception." Paley heard footsteps coming down the stairs and pushed him forward.
"I'm kinda rusty, so don't blame me if I get us arrested." Teerom cleared his throat and walked away from the doorway until he was nearly at the entrance. The students came down the stairs, holding a book each, and took the stones out of their pockets to get through.
Teerom observed the students to see exactly where they put the stones. The one in the middle put it in the outer pocket of his black trenchcoat, the one on the left put it in an inner pocket, and the one on the right put it somewhere in his private area. Clearly a boy of great caution.
Teerom was unfazed by the difficult positioning of the stones and began walking towards them as if he was headed towards the stairs. Once he got within one meter of them, and they began to move out of the way for him, he tripped on his feet and fell into the two on the left.
He regained his balance convincingly and spun to conceal himself, putting the stolen stones in his cloak pockets. "I'm so sorry!" He bowed at a perfect 90-degree angle, "Forgive my clumsiness!"
"Watch yourself, commoner." The students retorted. They were from the middle class.
"Ironic," Teerom mumbled with a smug smile as they left the library, "You should've been the ones watching yourselves." He turned to Paley and showed him the stones between his fingers.
"Nice." Paley rushed over discreetly and high-fived him.
"That was exciting!" Teerom whisper-yelled. "But we should never do that again." He cleared his throat and killed his excitement.
"That was the last time," Paley took one of the stones and began walking towards the barrier with Teerom. They held the stones in front of their faces and passed through.
"We should give these to one of the librarians and say we found them. I wouldn't want those students getting in trouble for losing something as precious as this." Teerom put the stone back in his pocket.
"They were bad people." Paley's voice turned monotone, "I could tell."
"Yeah, speaking of which, how can you tell that people are bad? like that lady that we ran into." Teerom was talking about when they were on the road to the city and a noblewoman approached them with malicious intentions.
"I don't know either," Paley's tone went back to normal, "But I'm pretty sure it's something to do with mana. I can see this black aura around bad people. Maybe it's corrupt mana or something. We might find out now either way."
They made their way up the creaky wooden stairs and found that the second floor was identical to the first. The difference was that the books were glowing slightly. It was less crowded too, with only a few students and rich home-schooled nobles wandering around. Paley and Teerom immediately got to searching.
Paley was overwhelmed by the number of priceless magic books on every single shelf. There was a hovering shelf in the middle of the room that turned endlessly. It held huge thick books about the four elemental magics.
Every other possible type of magic had a book of its own on the rest of the shelves. He skimmed through a few books as they searched, discovering two things.
First, he discovered that everyone used a premade spell, like Firebolt - which all had a page of their own in their respective elemental books.
Second, he found that you must actively focus your mana on the area of effect that you desire. The exception here was that you must breathe a certain way to maximize mana efficiency and focus, whereas Paley generally didn't have to. The technique was called Dyaahn ( it's similar to Buddhist monks' meditative techniques ).
"Hey! I found it!" Teerom whispered from the other side of the room. He found the healing magic books, five of them, different only in their covers' shade of green.
"Which one do we take?" Teerom asked.
"I got some more space, let's take them all." Paley put the books in his bag, leaving space for only two more books.
"Alright, let's get out of here," Teerom started walking towards the stairs, but Paley stopped him.
"Don't you wanna explore the third floor?"
There was no barrier this time, so they went straight up to the third floor. It was even less crowded, with only a librarian and two girls wandering the shelves. The sun's light streamed into the room from above, creating cozy white glares. This floor was based on history - specifically on the history of magic.
The content of the books progressively aged until the other end of the room, where three books sat in glass containers punched into the wall. Paley approached them curiously, but naturally.
The one on the left was named 'A Hero, Aneros'. "Teerom," Paley called, "Check this out."
"Huh?" Teerom tried to hold back his surprise at his fairy tale hero being in a history book. "I need this," Teerom said. He was about to touch the glass cage but Paley slapped his hand.
"What if it triggers an alarm when you touch it?" Paley cautioned and began inspecting the other two books.
The one in the middle caught his attention. It was simply called ' Demons '. He stared at it for a moment, hesitantly, before moving on and pausing on the last book titled ' Manoha Buul, The Fourth Quimnia '.
"I got an idea. Let's open the ones that we want at the same time. If an alarm goes off, we jump out of that window." Teerom suggested.
"The first part of your plan is good, but I am not jumping out of a window from this height."
"Have a little faith in me, buddy. Look," Teerom pointed out the window at a thick rope running from the library roof to another roof. It had red banners hanging from it, much like the red banners in the bazaar.
"You want to ride that weak rope? What happened to your fear of heights?"
"Trust me, man." Teerom rolled his cloak up and bent it to make an improvised zipline tool.
"You better not get us killed." Paley prepared to break the cage with his fist.
"Use a book or something, I don't want you getting hurt." Teerom passed him a random book from the shelves, taking one for himself. Paley nodded and wound up to destroy the glass. Teerom watched the librarian disappear behind a bookshelf and gave the signal.
They swung; Paley even used an improvised Strength Magic spell. But the glass didn't shatter. Instead, the books and their hands phased right through. The room turned red and the librarian sprinted towards them.
"Hey! You two!" He shouted.
"Screw it," Teerom reached his hand through and took his book. Paley did the same and ran to the window, but he quickly turned back to shove the ' Demons ' book into his bag.
"Get on!" Teerom crouched down and Paley jumped onto his back. He ran forward, holding his arms in front of him, and broke through the window. They soared through the air for a moment that seemed to last way too long before they began to drop.
Teerom quickly took the impromptu zip line tool and put it over the rope, grabbing the other end with his left hand, and shut his eyes tight to not even glance at the ground twenty meters below.
The rope bent violently under the weight of two boys and a bag full of books. Teerom screamed in pure terror as they approached the ground at an alarming speed. "I didn't think about this part!" He was about to tear up, but their momentum died out as the rope snapped.
They fell to the ground from a height of five meters, enough to slightly shatter the skin under Teerom's heel.
"I'll heal it later, run." Paley looked back at the library, where a platoon of knights had now appeared. Teerom pushed through and sprinted forward.
The gods must've forsaken them because right in their path was the neckbeard that Paley stole the toys from.
"There he is! Knights!" The man shouted, furious and eager to get Paley punished, with five knights at his side.
"Crap! I told you stealing's bad!" Teerom took a step back, but he was completely pincered.
"Keep running." Paley took a loud breath and exhaled even louder. "I can't, we're done for!" Teerom panicked.
"Just do it." Paley's body turned hot as if he was sucking in all the heat from everything around him.
"Okay, I'll trust you!" Teerom sprinted forward, ignoring the pain in his heel as he slammed it against the ground. Though, every step got less painful. In fact, it almost felt like he wasn't even touching the ground. Now that he thought about it, he actually wasn't.
He looked down and saw that his feet were no longer on the ground. Paley was making them fly.
"PALEY! I'M SCARED OF HEIGHTS!" He shrieked. "Well, it's time to get over your fear," Paley's body was getting hotter and hotter as he continued to use the Dyaahn breathing technique. It was to be used for easy mana transfer, but Paley could somehow use it to regain lost mana by sucking it out of everything around him.
Teerom's flight didn't last long though, Paley ran out of mana just in time to put him down safely on the other side of the neckbeard and knights. He mumbled weakly in Teerom's ear: "The rest is up to you." before he passed out.
"Your sacrifice will not be in vain, Paley!" Teerom gathered all of his strength and burst forward into a full sprint. The knights began chasing him on white magic essence in the shape of a horse. One of them generated a white bow and shot a frighteningly fast arrow at Teerom.
Luckily, Teerom was too far away for it to be accurate. But the arrow's deafening impact into the ground terrified him nonetheless. He spotted the bazaar ahead and began formulating a plan. The bazaar was squashed between two rectangular buildings made of stone. If you turned left at the entrances of the bazaar, you would find yourself in an alleyway leading to the streets on either side.
Wooden pillars were placed against the stone bazaar building, which Teerom could easily climb. He made sure to turn just before he got into the bazaar, making the knights' horses overshoot and take a bit longer to stop and turn to chase him.
He entered the alleyway and jumped up to grab the ledge of one of the horizontal logs between the pillars. Just before his grip slipped, he kicked off the house behind him and grabbed onto the next log. With one more kick, he found himself on top of the bazaar roofs.
The knights had just entered the alleyway, but he was already running away, jumping from roof to roof into the distance.
After making sure that he lost the knights, he made his way back to the gates and got past the guards, by making sure he looked as confident as possible. Once he was out of sight, he put his hands to his knees and panted.
"Oh my god," He laughed, "You're one crazy kid, Paley." He patted Paley's hair as he slept. Despite being unconscious, his grip had been tight enough to keep him on Teerom's back.
Wiping the pounds of sweat on his face, Teerom looked at the sun setting with the vivid orange sky before night.
"Now then, let's get back home," He continued on the road back to the orphanage, with Paley and the heavy makeshift bag on his back.