I looked up at the sun as I emerged from the bowels of the underground bookstore. By the looks of it, it was past noon already, which meant I had been browsing through the new deliveries of my favorite store for over three hours. I was supposed to buy some fresh vegetables and mushrooms but I hadn’t done any of that yet. But today’s book haul would definitely please Kai.

I’d found three books filled with tales of the gods of the north continent, something which was extremely hard to find this side of the Endless Sea. What’s more, I’d stumbled on a book with some of Magaer’s adventures that Kai had not read yet.

Magaer was his favorite mythological hero, a spellcaster of untold powers who was supposed to have lived even before The Divine came to Elysia. The book would have been among our first choices at the bookstore had it not been accidentally filed away in a cabinet filled with cooking recipes.

Most importantly though, I found a book which might prove to be the next step in my quest to restore The Divine and get rid of whatever was inside Kai. This book had been specially delivered to me by the adorable bookstore keeper, Mister Ebon.

Even though I regularly visited all of the stores trading books in Yubna and the rest of the villages in the jungle, Ebon’s Books was the oldest store and my favorite, partly due to its owner’s profound love for knowledge.

I realized that he was bringing books from all around the world and, since I’d developed a friendly relationship with him, I asked if he would be able to start bringing me books containing information on The Divine. And so he did, not minding the fact that I was not a Yubna local, and even though I was pretty sure he immediately understood I was a mana wielder. This particular book, however, proved to be very hard to find, and even when Mister Ebon tracked it down, it took more than three months to arrive.

The book itself was heavy and needed to be laid on a table in order to be read. The red leather cover of the book looked as if it had been bound around it only hours ago, though there was no doubt it was magically conserved. But the most important thing about the book was the writings inside of it.

This thick tome was actually a catalog of all the books related to The Divine that had been approved as canon by the Order. A list of books on its own would not be enough to fill the large pages of the book, but a comprehensive summary of each of the books listed had been appended as well. What’s more, the book was continuously magically updated by the Order as to the location of each of the books on the list.

I hadn’t been able to spend much time studying it since Mister Ebon handed it to me, but from the few moments I spent on it, it looked like there were books specific to the restoration of The Divine that we didn’t have a copy of. Mister Ebon had left no stone unturned in searching for books on this subject, but unfortunately could not find any and so we had decided to instead get our hands on one of the several catalogs like this.

***

I walked through the streets of Yubna, the largest city in the vast jungle where Kai and I had been living in for the past thirteen months. My bag felt light on my shoulders due to its enchantment even though I was carrying quite a load of books. There was still a lot of space left in there to buy the vegetables and mushrooms before I took the road of return toward our hideout.

Kai would probably already have read half of his daily book dosage and would no doubt be anxious to see what I would bring him. The first few months of our living in the jungle by ourselves, he tried to convince me to take him with me when I visited Yubna or any of the surrounding villages, despite the risk.

A mana wielder visiting the city alone would look strange, but not unheard of. The same would apply to a teenager without mana, even one who wasn’t part of the Jungle God’s religion that was prevalent here. However, a manaless outsider and a mana wielder would quickly become news in the tightly knit community of the jungle and that was something I wanted to avoid.

“Hello, Brie,” said one of the vendors as I walked through the market. “What can I get you today?”

Name : Molan Heid

Race : Jungle Dwarf

Class : Spirit Summoner

Level : 23

“Hello, Molan,” I replied, responding seamlessly to the name I had adopted since we’d started living here. “I’d like some fresh mushrooms please.”

“But of course,” the man replied, and he produced a container made of dried leaves, while his monkey began gathering mushrooms from one of the shelves behind them.

The people of Yubna may be part of the nation of Leka An, but they were very special in the fact that they had their own religion and traditions. Where the city of Zakara had no official religion as the major trading port of the known world, citizens of Yubna were followers of the Jungle God.

They were easily identified by the fact that each of them had a monkey that was always by their side, most of the time sitting on their head. Some of the monkeys were bigger and so sat on their shoulders or next to them, but they never too far away.

Each and every one of these lovely animal companions was a physical manifestation of their god’s power and lived with them throughout their whole lives. I had even noticed some of the priests in the giant temple of their god being followed by huge gorillas, though I never lingered long enough to examine them up close.

“Here you are, Brie,” Molan said and handed over the mushrooms.

I paid and thanked him before continuing my way down through the market in search of another friendly merchant I often visited whenever I wanted to buy vegetables.

Once I had everything I needed, I took the street which would lead me to the east exit of the city and onto the path toward the location of our magical chest-home. As soon as I was some minutes away from the city and quite deep into the jungle where I was unlikely to be seen, I summoned my magical steed and started riding through the thick vegetation.