Lucy was still working with enthusiasm like before. She didn't seem to be startled by the sudden absence of Trevor, as if she only cared about reading old documents of old cases.
"He left last night, left a note for the two of us," she was burying her head in the middle of lots of scrolls, didn't even raise it while speaking to him, "it's in a red envelope out there. Just go and read it and you'll understand."
Thomas looked in the direction she motioned with her head, and there he found a red envelope over a large batch of old case scrolls.
He knew he'd get nothing from Lucy if he kept asking. So he grabbed the envelope and started reading the letter inside.
It was a small scroll, one that didn't have many words in it. Trevor said something happened back at the place of the train incident and the team investigating it. He had to leave and inspect what was going on there.
He asked the two to keep studying old cases and the reports sent from the team strictly prohibited them from following him.
"Why do I feel that warning was directed at me?" Thomas sighed while feeling like he missed another great chance to go there and get his artefact, "It seems fate doesn't want me to go there right now, tsk!"
He couldn't do anything about this missed chance, so decided to not think much about it. "As I have nothing else to do, it's better to spend time in the library then…"
He knew he'd not find anything useful in the old case documents and scrolls Trevor left for them. The only valuable place was the Vault, and he wouldn't be able to visit there without the help of Trevor.
Accepting such facts, he decided to head by Trevor's advice, go to the library and try out his luck to find something valuable to convince Trevor and the Vault leader to let him visit there.
The day went by without much happening. Lucy was still immersed in her delusional happiness and excitement by being here, and Thomas tried to keep his distance from her. He was reading through the scrolls, ending up finding nothing of value.
Before leaving, he made sure to notify Lucy about his absence tomorrow. The library was an official place, with working hours like anywhere else. So if he wanted to go there, he had to take a day off. And with Trevor's absence, he informed his only mate here, who simply didn't care about that.
The next day Thomas went towards the library while thinking about different stuff. He wanted to go and see what happened in the past twenty years in this sector, trying to find anything that was similar to the incident he experienced.
He didn't want just to find intel about this incident, but also about the wallet he found back there. He was sure such an incident happened before, and there must be traces somewhere to find.
He also wanted to see if there was any other way to upgrade his powers. He tried during the past nights to train but felt like he was missing something.
He had lots of techniques, yet the speed of his progress was quite slow in his eyes. He didn't know that he was just rushing things up, didn't know that rising power even for the slightest was a dream to anyone.
He was lacking something indeed, which was a high-concentration environment of Qi energy. He wanted to visit the library, hoping to find any clue to help in solving such a dilemma for him.
He already knew where the library was, and still decided to rent a chariot so he wouldn't end up lost or anything. The library was a grand building that spanned over a huge area of land, looking red in colour from the outside, with a low levelled fence surrounding it.
Thomas felt how familiar this was to the Earth's libraries when he went inside. There were tons of shelves with endless scrolls stored inside. This world didn't seem to like books this much and loved to depend on scrolls instead.
"So there are two sections here, one for the common people and the other is for the superheroes…" Thomas got this knowledge from a sign hanging on top of the reception desk.
"Excuse me, I want to visit the superhero department."
"Your badge sir," the young female working here looked at him with respect and admiration. Thomas knew if he wanted to invite her out, she'd instantly accept the invitation without any hesitation.
Yet he wasn't here to fool around. He showed his badge and got another from her, one that would permit him to go into the restricted area of the superhero department.
As he walked inside the library, following the instructions of the young female, he noticed how crowded this place was. He heard many discussions from people walking around and learnt that many work facilities asked their workers to come here and expand their knowledge.
He liked how normal people dealt with this place. When he went into the restricted superhero department, he couldn't help but feel the striking contradiction between here and the rest of the library.
The section was secured by two strong-looking guards. They got muscles built up, wearing tight suits and such, but they gave him the impression they were normal people.
The section wasn't huge like the rest of the library, but it was much bigger than the Vault room he stayed in for many hours. It was enough to accommodate ten of his department spaces, enough to accommodate hundreds of superheroes together.
Yet he was all alone! There wasn't a single superhero here. "Tsk! Training one's mind is far more important than just focusing on raising one's power," he muttered to himself, feeling dissatisfied by such a situation.
As he was alone, he knew he was going to enjoy the privilege of seclusion and secrecy. No one would interrupt him, or ask useless questions here and there.
With this place's vacancy, it meant all the scrolls were here, not taken away by any superhero. That meant he'd find everything this library could offer to him, without missing a valuable scroll here or there.
Just by looking, he could tell there were more books here than what he found at the parts he passed by back there. He grabbed random books and started reading fast through their content, taking a general idea about what this section contained.
"It's like a research department…" Thomas realised after grabbing dozens of books and scrolling the real value of this library. The books and scrolls he grabbed all contained information about Qi energy, training, the history of superheroes, the history of the world, maps of different sectors, details about many famous families, and lots of theories about how superpowers even worked.
These might be considered nothing in the eyes of any superhero in this world, but to him, it was a treasure. He lacked even the basic intel of superheroes, and this place would fill lots of gaps there.
Thomas decided to come here frequently, starting a deep reading and researching spree through all this valuable knowledge. Yet he didn't do it right now.
He wanted first to see if there were newspapers out there or what. Trevor told him to find these, and he wanted to read what happened in this sector in great detail.
He started looking until he found an entire shelf dedicated to newspapers. He was delighted to find newspapers coming from different places in this sector, speaking about various events that happened in places far from here.
"There are many missing editions there… What a waste!" He grabbed a few newspapers to find out there were huge gaps between these editions, some even exceeded a year, "wasn't it supposed for newspapers to be launched weekly? At least monthly, right?"
Just before he'd be disappointed by this, his eyes shone brightly as he spotted a gem. "The Shining Day… We shine light over the superheroes' weekly affairs… At last!"
He found an entire section on the nearby shelf with scrolls holding the same name. Just from the number of scrolls, he was sure there were hundreds of them. That meant the newspaper's full editions were gathered up here in total.
He didn't hesitate and grabbed these scrolls, took them to a nearby big oval-shaped table, and left them there. Then he started to arrange them by date.
The newspaper scrolls were dated starting from twenty years ago, considering this as the real date of this sector.
As he expected, the newspaper editions were full and complete. He grouped them according to years, and things looked quite great until he reached the earliest three years in the age of the sector.
"Weird… The newspaper editions are gathered here in order, without missing a single week… Why does it lack editions of the first three years?"
Thomas thought back to the knowledge he gathered and heard so far about the history of the sector. He knew the early three years were hectic, full of chaos, and things weren't that great. But that also meant lots of crimes and battles happened during this period.
Journalism always sought intense events and brutal incidents. It was weird that during the first three years, there were just five editions there when there should have been over a hundred of them!
"Something sounds fishy…" Thomas knew this couldn't be true. The newspaper had a long introduction about its history at the beginning of each scroll. It was one which was established for over a thousand years, had a long history and rich heritage, and was quite famous for its validity and credibility.
It was illogical for such a newspaper to miss the early years of any sector. And that meant someone must have abolished the editions speaking about what happened back then.
"It's like someone is trying to cover up his tracks…" Thomas sighed, knowing the more he dug into this world, the uglier this world looked to him. Yet he was powerless to unveil the truth, or even pursue it. Not to mention he got nothing to gain from doing any of that.
Out of curiosity, he decided to start reading the five scrolls of the first three years. Each scroll was long enough to exceed one metre in length, and half in width. It was arranged into sections, like columns in Earth's newspapers.
Each article was written by a journalist, having his or her name written just below the title of it. The five editions spoke mainly about the battles that superheroes won against villains, and how they were glorious and magnificent wins. Few articles spoke about the expansion and exploration of the new sector, and the building process of many cities and towns, without missing to mention the great role the good superheroes did to make all this possible.
The more he read, the more he became sure of someone's behind all this. It felt like someone was trying to enforce the great picture of superheroes, how they crushed the villains all the time.
Thomas didn't like it, felt as if someone was trying to control the minds of others, directing and manipulating superheroes by using these articles.
"It'll take forever to read through all these…" When he grabbed the editions after the three year period, he found that the size of them doubled. That meant the content increased, and he found many scrolls having sections written on their backs as well!
He got only six hours to read through what he wanted here. After that, the library would be closed. The library allowed them for lending their content to others, but they had to pay a high fee for this.
He didn't want to pay any price to read what he could read for free. As for taking copies of these, the tech of this world was quite retarded to allow for such a thing in the first place to exist!
"I'll read from the fourth year, hopefully, I can finish half of the scrolls before the library closes," he spent two hours so far, and that meant he just had four hours left.
As he started reading, he found lots of useful articles, ones that didn't glorify the role of superheroes anymore. Yet there were still few who sang praise about the superheroes.
He spent the remaining hours reading less than one-fourth of the editions. He had to read every single article out there, to not miss any valuable incident or clue hidden somewhere between the lines.
He did find a few incidents that were interesting, speaking about weird happenings in different towns in the sector. According to the journalists, these incidents involved the use of superpowers, and many were against normal people without any proper reason.
Yet each and every article of these ended up with the same phrase: [The investigation was closed without reaching a definite conclusion. According to our resources, the case was locked up at the secretive Vault in the related SA]
"It's the Vault again…" Thomas began to feel the real treasure trove wasn't here but was out there in the Vault. The newspaper covered the entire sector, and the incidents mentioned there came from various towns and places, far away from this town.
And that meant anything stored there would be inside the vaults of the corresponding SA of these places. Yet that also meant the Vault here contained such mysterious cases.
Thomas didn't believe that the investigation ended without reaching concrete results or finding important clues. He still recalled the blackout phrases and even entire paragraphs in the cases he read inside the Vault.
"I need to revisit the Vault… But finding anything here will be like finding a needle in a haystack… Only department leaders can gain access there, should I kill Trevor then?"
He knew this was something impossible to do. First of all, Trevor was a good man, didn't do anything to him, always supported and stood by his back. Not to mention there was a hierarchy in taking leadership in any department.
There was a vice for Trevor, and there were other older members there as well. Not to mention he was too weak compared to Trevor.
He didn't know that there was another stricter rule about appointing department leaders in any SA. They had to be at least C-grade superheroes, not a single stage lower than that.
"Time to go, sir," as he got lost in reading through the scrolls, he was nudged awake from all this by one of the two guards standing outside. He took almost one hour to finish returning the scrolls back to their places, before heading out from here.
He was the only person inside the library aside from a few workers there. The place looked much lonelier than what it looked like in the morning, and he didn't like seeing it empty and dimly lit like this.
"Isn't that… Lucy?" Just when he went out from the main door of the library, he spotted someone that looked like Lucy walking a few blocks away. She was moving fast, and took a few turns before vanishing from his sight, "She is living nearby… It will be a bad idea to ask for her help, right?"
He didn't like how she spoke too much about useless stuff, and how she was hyper-reactive to anything out of her excitement. She wasn't a good detective in his eyes, lacking even the basic traits for one.
He decided against asking her for help and decided to keep coming here frequently, hoping to find anything of value before Trevor's return.
He will head back to his apartment, and meet Jax who will shower him with many questions about his today's absence. Thomas casually selected a reason, a desire for him to visit the town that day, and Jax bought it!
After speaking a little with him, knowing that nothing much happened today, he retreated to his room. The first thing he did was to look for any scrolls and ink to write down what he found so far.
Even if he didn't find something of value, he decided to write down his own thoughts about what he read, a thing that would start to be a habit in the future for him.
Thomas wrote something that could be best described as a brief for everything he read so far, it didn't take more than one hour to do so. Then he ate a meal that he prepared last night, one that didn't taste that good at all.
"I need to practise more on my cooking skills," he inwardly sighed, feeling he was eating something that might end up him sick or something, "it'll look hilarious if I ended up killing myself by the food I personally cooked."
After such a miserable meal, he started his routine check over his tree. He hoped his tree would absorb Qi from the air, turning it into fruit or something. But after all this waiting, he ended up with nothing. And that meant without superheroes releasing their superpowers around, the tree wouldn't yield any fruits at all.
The last thing he did was to train, spending a few hours before finally giving up and sleeping. He didn't feel any rapid progress, only slight improvement in controlling his superpower, nothing much.