Erengil Library was the biggest in the entire galaxy.
It boasted books from all kinds of cultures, even some that dated all the way back to the Ancient Ones. They were old and tattered. Made of paper or leather or other crude materials, and they stayed locked behind force fields in the back rooms. Holo copies were available with included scholars notes, but they could never compare to the real thing.
Still, the young woman had to make due with them. She'd never be able to get a pass to the back rooms and certainly wouldn't get the chance to hold those precious artifacts in her own hands.
"It's so strange," she muttered, aimlessly scrolling through the projected images of an ancient book. "The brightest minds in all of Cinder Rock have been studying these for centuries and still have less than half of it translated."
But then again, if the book had been fully translated, it would be bad for her. All the Demons in the galaxy would have been found by now, and what good is a [Demon Hunter] without any Demons to hunt?
Looking away from the book, the woman activated her system log and pulled up her stats. She'd awakened at twelve years old with the [Demon Hunter] class, which meant she'd had a system for an entire decade now. And yet, she was only level 3.
"Studying can only get me so far," she sighed, resting her head on the steel table. "I need to be out there. I need to be out hunting Demons myself."
Another sigh escaped her lips as her fingers accidentally brushed against the message chip strewn among the study materials next to her. The chip's contents were short and straightforward.
'Varyna Rhine'
'C.O.P.S. Demon Division Application Status: Rejected'
Again.
This was the third time she'd been rejected from the Demon Division. Not enough experience. The excuse was always the same.
"But how can I gain experience when I'm stuck patrolling the Capitol streets," Varyna grumbled.
A [Demon Hunter] system should be a shoo-in for the Demon Division, right? But she was too low level for them to pay attention to. And she couldn't raise her level without hunting Demons. And she couldn't hunt Demons unless she was in the Demon Division, which brought her right back to the original problem.
Life is so unfair, she thought to herself. Everyone said she should give up. Her family, her superiors, even her classmates at the COPS academy. Experience would come with time, and even if the Demon Division never worked out, she would be far safer in the Crime Division. She knew they were right. She knew it and yet...
"I'm going to get some more books," she resolved, rising from her seat. "If I can just find a Demon location that I could get to by myself…"
As Varyna found herself perusing the Demonology section once again, she nearly bumped into a boy who seemed equally distracted as he stared at the books in the 'Rare Demon' shelves. He was a Human, like her. He had dark hair and tan skin that had clearly seen radiation from many stars. An adventurer? The girl moved on quickly. It was none of her business what a young adventurer was doing studying rare Demons... though she hoped he wouldn't beat her to finding any yet undiscovered Demon locations. She was the one who would save the galaxy from Demons, after all. Varyna Rhine, the [Demon Hunter].
"Excuse me..."
Just as she'd stepped around the boy, he called out to her.
"Can I help you?" she asked, whirling back around.
He wasn't exactly handsome, but he wasn't ugly either. Sort of the rugged type, but with clear eyes and smooth skin. Too smooth. I hate him, she glared.
"I'm looking for some books that will help me impress my crewmates," he explained, scratching his head. "You see, I've been recently assigned as my ship's chef and, well, I'm terrible at it."
"... did you say chef?" Varyna narrowed her eyes. She knew adventurers sometimes used silly titles to refer to their positions in the group. Was he in charge of 'cooking up' Demon locations? Or maybe even harvesting captured Demons?
"Ah..." the boy cleared his throat.
Here it comes, Varyna frowned. He was going to look down on her for not understanding his lingo. He'd call her a 'suckling' who lived her life in luxury, stuck on Quosh's pristine surface and far away from the bleak realities of the galaxy. She'd faced people like this before, and it was always an unpleasant experience. Mainly because… she couldn't exactly say that everything they said about her was wrong.
The boy went on, "Yeah... I accidentally got our chef killed. And we can't have dozens of hungry Kremels running around, so I tried to cook up a simple stew but-"
"Stew? You meant chef as in a food cook?" Varyna cut him off, raising an eyebrow. Of all the things she expected to come from his mouth, this wasn't one of them.
"Uh yeah, what other kind of chef is there?" the boy's cheeks flushed and he reached to scratch the back of his head again. It must have been a nervous habit.
Varyna shook her head. "Look, I have no idea what a chef who cooks food would gain by looking in the Demonology section. You should try cookbooks two wings over."
The boy's cheeks became even pinker, but his eyes lit up. "Oh! This says 'rare Demons', not 'rare dishes'. My bad." He waved both hands and started to step back. "Anyway, thank you for the help!"
Then he turned and ran, yes he ran, out of the demonology section.
The girl stayed frozen in place for a few moments, her eyebrows knit as she tried to piece together what had just happened. Then, she shrugged, forgot (nearly) all about the weird adventurer/chef/idiot and went back to her book hunting.
Throughout the rest of the afternoon, as the stack of books on the table grew, so did her frustration. She'd scrolled through all of them, but couldn't find a single hint about Demon locations—well, not ones that weren't already hunted.
She pulled out one last book before deciding to call it a day. The library would be closing soon, and she needed sleep before her early morning at the Crime Division tomorrow. The title of the book, etched in glowing symbols on the cartridge, read 'Historical Methods of Hunting Demons'.
"This should be... not in the least bit useful," she sighed, but activated the holo anyway. "But it will at least be a little entertaining," she murmured while scrolling to the first page.
She skimmed through the majority of it, already familiar with most archaic Demon hunting methods, but one section in particular caught her eye. It was about USBs, dated tech devices that could store data and be plugged into computers via specialized ports. Apparently, for a short while, USBs had been experimented with for imprisoning and storing Demons. The project had ultimately been abandoned because of the risk of Demons escaping into CinderX, the galaxy-wide network, and causing a mass catastrophe.
The entire section was an interesting read, but one part at the end stopped her in her tracks. The single successful entrapment of a Demon in a USB. It was at an old research facility called Ulterai-1-B7. And if she wasn't mistaken…
"Aha! I thought I recognized that name!" Varyna grinned as she reactivated another book from the stack. It was an old demonology text book that cited sources from various research labs. Including Ulterai-1-B7, located on Gamios—a small planet in the Helios sector.
She was giddy with her discovery for only a moment.
"Most old labs have been raided many times over," she reminded herself glumly. "I doubt a USB-trapped Demon would be left untouched."
She yawned and deactivated the holo. She should leave her pile to the eager cleaning golem waiting nearby and go get some sleep. Today hadn't yielded any fruitful results after all.
—was what she thought until she clocked into her shift at the Crime Division the following morning.