Li Mei inhaled the scent of old books with a satisfied sigh. Sneaking into the manor's study on the top floor was impossible for her during the day with staff walking about doing their jobs, but at night darkness and silence ruled the big house. Sneaking around at night was easy.

After thirty consecutive days of rigorous exercise her body recovered enough to not collapse after five minutes of walking, so she expanded her range of operation. Jogging up and down the stairs at night was great exercise, and she was able to access parts of the house previously outside her reach - including the laundry room, where she pilfered a few spare pieces of clothing.

Nothing fashionable, nothing that fit well, just a few large shirts that went down to her knees. Better than a torn and bloody burlap sack dress, anyway.

Knowledge was power, so of course she loved books. Adalrich Agilo apparently agreed. His study was full of books, wide shelves as high as the ceiling lining most of the walls. An antique wooden pedestal desk bearing an ornately carved modesty panel sat in the center of the room like a silent monolith, accompanied by an enormous rolling armchair. On the desk was a cluster of potted mushrooms illuminating the whole room with a strong blue glow, and a shiny magitech computer.

Transparent quartz crystal plates an inch thick made up the keyboard and monitor. Circuit-like gold patterns engraved the backs of each plate in appealing designs. The keyboard lay flat on the desk, small and narrow compared to the wide and tall vertical monitor. There didn't seem to be anything resembling a computer mouse.

Li Mei ran a finger across the surface of the keyboard panel.

Cool to the touch and smooth as silk! She took a moment to dream of a day when she had a fancy magitech computer of her own, in a lovely office with big windows and a nice view. Then she pulled a random book off a shelf and cracked it open.

44 never learned to read. That would require being taught, and no one bothered with such a tedious task for slaves like her. Li Mei could speak the local language because she inherited memories of 44 learning to talk, but the books held unintelligible squiggles of lines as far as she was concerned.

She stared at the first page with a frustrated scowl.

To add a whole book to the Archive she had to glance at each page separately. Li Mei sat in the big armchair and flipped through more than 300 pages, desperately hoping the book she grabbed was some sort of encyclopedia and not a romance novel or autobiography. Her feet swung several inches above the floor, her small figure dwarfed by the intimidating size of the chair and desk together.

The Quest to get EXP for recording books was repeatable. Since she didn't have to read the contents it took less than ten minutes to skim the entire book, so she reached for another.

And another.

And another.

She sighed heavily as she glanced absently through a book with color illustrations of various weird plants. 'Congee, char siu, baozi, dim sum, beef chow fun, mapo tofu... I wonder if they exist in this world?' Her stomach growled, clinging to the idea of a homecooked meal. She barely even saw the beautiful illustrations, images of steaming hot dishes and delicious sauces dancing through her head in their place.

Li Mei was choosing another book when she heard a sound that sent a chill down her spine.

The doorknob rattled.

Li Mei spun on her heel, glancing around in panic. Other than the desk, bookshelves, and chair, the study was bare of furniture. There was a lone window behind the desk, but it was ornate stained glass and didn't open or have a curtain in front of it.

The door opened inward, and with no other choice Li Mei dived under the desk. Her knees and palms burned from sudden friction against the rug but she didn't dare cry out. A slave who was missing for thirty days shouldn't be found in her Owner's study in the middle of the night! Especially by someone who also wasn't supposed to be there!

The study door clicked shut. Muffled light footsteps hit the carpeted floor in a steady pattern - whoever it was, they weren't nervous.

A pair of long legs wearing black slacks moved leisurely into view. The person sat in the armchair, their knee just inches away from Li Mei's pale face, which was reflected oddly in the polished surface of some very shiny dress shoes. Slaves didn't get nice slacks or fancy shoes, and the regular staff were all normal people with proper working footwear.

Who in the world wore such shiny shoes while sneaking into someone else's study in the middle of the night?

Li Mei squeezed herself against the modesty panel, covering her mouth with a hand to prevent exhalations hitting the person's leg. She focused on the nearest leg but Scan didn't activate to tell her the person's name. Instead, it just told her the pants were indeed black slacks.

'Are you kidding me? Do I need to see their face?!' She stifled a few creative curses, drawing the only reasonable conclusion she could think of.

Shiny shoes tapped an awkward impatient rhythm, while above her head she heard faint beeping noises and the unmistakable staccato of typing fingers.

Seconds stretched into minutes. Li Mei felt her heart attempting to escape through her throat, pounding so loud she feared the intruder would discover her presence. Sensation drained from her extremities, replaced by a fuzzy feeling of static.

After more than thirty minutes passed the person stood up and walked to the door. Li Mei relaxed, tension easing out of her shoulders. Flexing her fingers and rubbing her wiggling toes, she tried to ease feeling back into her numb limbs.

Until she realized she didn't hear the door open again.

She glanced up to see a pair of eyes staring back at her.

Li Mei bit her tongue to prevent a scream, covering her mouth with both hands. The shoes were once again in front of the desk, her own face distorted in their shiny reflection. Long fingers reached towards the girl's face, turning around to press a palm against the bottom of the desk's sliding drawer the instant before the hand brushed her nose.

Inside the desk a mechanism clicked followed by a melodic string of chirps. The person sat down again, forcing Li Mei back into the corner.

"The Comm Circuit is encrypted?" A hoarse voice croaked, slightly distorted and muffled.

"It's insulting you feel you have to even ask that," the person in the chair answered. The legs were long and slender but the voice was undoubtably masculine in nature, a heavily accented lazy drawl that didn't exist in 44's memories. Li Mei had no idea who the man could be.

"Then report. Quickly."

"The situation remains stable. Several subjects of the recent batches are testing positive for the latest serum. Casualties have been reduced by 32% compared to last quarter. Production's in the red, we need more Salamandris extract since the mishap with the Reddus moths."

"Testing positive? Finally. What is the success rate?"

"R&D is focusing on lowering the casualty percentage."

"The success rate!" The hoarse voice snapped.

Li Mei saw the man in the chair clench his fist until his knuckles turned white. "There hasn't been a viable success since the 108, if we could recover the files-"

"We cannot have a repeat of that disaster! Sector 13 was destroyed, I'll not have mine follow suit. That damned research will stay buried. Casualty rate can be lowered once there's a foundation of success, change your priorities."

"As you say." The man hit his fist against his knee, leg trembling in agitation, but his vocal tone showed no hint of distress. Li Mei would have been impressed under other circumstances. If she wasn't stuck under a desk doing her best impression of empty air.

"Don't disappoint me."

Silence reigned for several minutes. Li Mei saw a spark of yellow light and smelled fragrant smoke, her eyes widening in panic, but then the man leaned back and let out a deep sigh. She saw what was clearly some sort of cigarette held delicately between his fingers. Ash dropped on the carpet, but the man neither noticed nor cared.

Once the cigarette burned to nothing, the man got up and left. Li Mei heard the door open and close, but she still waited another ten minutes before she dared to move. To her left, a floating holoscreen alerted her to a new Quest which she immediately accepted:

-----

[Clue]

★★★★★

Find out more regarding the 108, Sector 13, and the strange night intruder.

Reward: 5000 EXP

-----

Once Li Mei accepted her first five star Quest, a window appeared below the minimap and shortcut icons displaying the quest name and its progress percentage. 0% in bright crimson text glared at her like an accusatory eye, taunting her with its lack of completion.

Her nose itched from the cigarette smoke lingering in the study, but she didn't let herself sneeze just in case the intruder was lingering in the hall. She edged out from under the desk, stretching one tingling limb at a time while listening for any noise that would send her back into hiding.

Hearing only silence, Li Mei kept her vigilance while returning to a life of book piracy. By the time she left the study more than two dozen books were copied into the Archive. She earned 280 EXP total, just for downloading books! And nearly getting caught.

Li Mei slipped through the dark hallways, only to stop at a certain corner. She stared at a door in the corner, and after a moment she looked inside.

The storage closet 44 died in.

Someone cleaned it. No blood, no stained bedroll, no sign a child was killed there. Li Mei clenched her fists, mauve eyes flashing with a sinister light.

She hurried back to her hiding spot, her mind spinning. Someone else was sneaking around the house at night! Staff kept to such strict schedules she thought night was a safe time, but apparently not. And whoever killed 44 knew her body was gone. Did they assume someone else knew what they did and were hiding their guilty conscience from everyone else while wondering who took the body?

On top of everything, she barely had any general knowledge about the planet Elysium - just the basic stuff 44 knew. Magic existed, there were three moons, half the sky was occupied by the view of a large ringed planet, the sun was orange and the sky was periwinkle. There were 30 hours in a day, 10 days in a week, 40 days in a month, 16 months in a year. Elysium had four seasons just like Earth, summer and winter lasting five months each while spring and autumn both only lasted three.

That Li Mei could quantify everything she knew revealed how much she didn't know. Having so little information was infinite levels of frustrating.

Too much adrenaline rushed through her veins for her to sleep. Opening the Archive, she saw a list of books with foreign titles. Translating each book would cost 5 EXP, half of what she earned for downloading them.

Considering that earning the EXP itself was pretty easy putting aside the unlucky close call, she only hesitated for a moment before setting all of them to translate. Books were knowledge, and knowledge was power.

A tooltip explained book translation was limited by her base INT score, her comprehension of the written language being translated, as well as how common the language itself was. It would take fifteen hours to translate 100 pages of the saved books - and that was without her knowing how to read the language.

With an average page count of around 230 spread across 28 books, that was an estimated 6440 pages. Unless her math was horribly wrong it would take just over 14 of Elysium's 30 hour days to translate it all. Much faster than doing it manually, but still a long wait.

140 EXP to download all the books, meaning she had a remaining profit of 140. Along with EXP she earned from the last ten days of Quests, she had 213 EXP total. The Interface used EXP like currency, having more could never be a bad thing. And seeing a number in the triple digits was a satisfying feeling!

Li Mei stared at the Quest tracker with a searing gaze that would burn right through lesser programs. 5000 EXP, 5000 EXP... But how in the world was she supposed to make any progress? Luckily there was no time limit on the Quest, indicating the Interface expected it to take awhile.

The five star Quest was put aside in favor of information gathering she could actually complete. At night she slipped back to the study to copy more books while keeping alert for the intruder's return, and during the daytime she started sneaking through the passageways, creeping around corners and listening in on conversations between staff members. With 44's memories Li Mei was very familiar with the manor house and her body was recovering well, it wasn't a challenge to stay hidden from people who weren't looking for her.

Most of what she heard was boring gossip. Who slept with that one guy again, which jerk was skipping work, who swapped shifts and why. Housekeepers discussed ways to remove stains and mold. The steward scolded people for wasting food or supplies and going over budget. The cooks discussed recipes, which got added to the Archive. Sometimes they mentioned places or events that also added themselves to the Archive.

Listening to small talk was boring, but sneaking around without getting caught was exciting. She started getting Quests for it: following behind someone while they cleaned the halls, going outside during the daytime, spending a night in the stables.

Occupying the stables were creatures Scan insisted were horses. The basic shape was similar to Earth's horses, being four-legged creatures with broad backs and wedge-shaped heads, but that was all. Elysium horses had clawed feet, branching antlers, bat-like ears and four eyes situated in a way to give them nearly 360-degrees of vision. Thick furred ruffs protected slender necks from attacker's bites.

In addition to their physical defenses they had the inborn ability to sense hostile intent, attacking anything that came near with malicious thoughts. Li Mei frowned the first time she saw them in the stable, lazily consuming shredded feed that smelled of mint hanging from nets in the rafters. Elysium horses sure evolved a lot of defenses, which made her concerned about what kind of predators could eat them.

Before she knew it, Li Mei spent two months sneaking around the manor. She made good improvements in several regards but her physical base stats remained stubbornly difficult to raise.

-----

NAME: Li Mei

HEALTH: 90%

AGE: 12

SPECIES: Human (? ? ?)

JOB: Slave

MANA: 0/0

M. QUALITY: ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

EXP: 896

STR: 1 (4.9%)

CON: 1 (3.7%)

DEX: 1 (5.1%)

INT: 4 (9.7%)

WIS: 8

TITLES: [Experiment 44] [Illegitimate Child]

TRAITS: [Enslavement Bind] [Sickly]

SKILLS: [Archive] [Hide Lv.2] [Scan Lv.2] [Stealth Lv.2] [Storage Lv.1]

SPELLS:

-----

She earned an INT point by reading translated books in the Archive when she wasn't training her body or sneaking around. Some of them were fiction novels which she ignored for the moment, while others were useful encyclopedias like she hoped. Learning about Elysium's flora and fauna served to reveal just how fantastic and dangerous the world really was.

Hide and Stealth leveled up through excessive practice, while most of her EXP was spent translating books and upgrading Scan to show more information. She was no longer classified as Malnourished or even Undernourished, but the Sickly trait had yet to vanish.

Li Mei was satisfied with some of her progress, but she still had no clues regarding her five star Quest or 44's murder. Collecting information without being able to use surveillance tools or ask questions was really difficult! It wasn't like murderers stood around discussing their dark deeds while lurking in conveniently shadowed corners, after all.

Everyone behaved as they did in 44's memories, the same habits and work schedules, nothing suspicious at all. No one even talked about 44. As though she never existed. They just carried on with their lives, uncaring of the missing slave child.

Li Mei snarled. Hatred for these horrible people burned her belly pitch black. Condoning slavery was bad enough, but their treatment of a poor little kid...

None of them were innocent.

Her body was almost completely recovered. All books in the study were copied into her Archive, including a big atlas she was excited to read the translation of.

She no longer needed to be subtle.

Facing a bunch of grown adults directly was beyond her abilities, especially since she didn't know if they had access to weapons. The guards and their hounds could cause trouble for her too.

So, a heavy-handed yet indirect approach was required.

Li Mei stole several liters of vinegar, bleach, rubbing alcohol, and ammonia from the kitchen and cleaning closets. Large sacks of charcoal were stolen from the garden sheds. Charcoal was used to keep soil moist and suppress weeds, and increase carbon content of compost piles so they didn't smell of ammonia. The manor had vast gardens, so of course they had plenty of charcoal on hand along with copious amounts of fertilizer.

There was a drawer holding flame lighters in the kitchen, to light the old-fashioned wood stove used for baking bread. Inventory of them was taken every day, but Li Mei no longer cared about that. She stole a handful of the non-magitech lighters. Several bags of flour went into her inventory after checking to make sure the flour on Elysium was as combustible as the stuff on Earth, singing off her eyebrows in the process.

Finally, with her storage packed full of materials, Li Mei was ready to begin 44's revenge.