Mage slate- this is a tablet made from magestone. It is used by enchanters to store rune craft that is used for repetitive commands and the runes can be programmed or crafted to represent certain characters or symbols which enact certain mundane or magical actions either immediately or after a preset delay.

Catalogue of Inventory for Yondouk's Magical Emporium of Arcane and Mundane Goods

That the guild master would attach a personal liaison to some run of the mill noble who seemed to have barely grown into the trappings of power was not lost on Nevine. He was smart like that; he could dissect the situation as he could a work of fiction or a journal to find the undertones therein or else he wasn’t a [Book Worm]. Yes, Nevine had such a class with the glasses to go with it; though the glasses came later. His consequences from straining his eyes reading under poor lighting while he grew up—but his eyes had never been sharper thanks to [An Eye for Detail] that always got him what he was looking for in a book.

Books could not hide their innards from him; he was the bookworm who devoured all the juicy bits of writing however deep they were tucked into the spines that held their leaves together— the book worm was an apex predator and his turf was the maze of stacks where he prowled.

Sometimes he’d turn feral if he didn’t have his daily concoction of night owl’s brew but that was neither here nor there; though one thing for sure, he would never let anyone disparage his drink by calling it mud—uncultured, the lot of them. Books and night owl’s brew went together!

Anyway, Nevine’s job as liaison was cut and dried. The man and his maid did not make things difficult for him whatsoever. They even said that the gate was wide open for him if he wanted to come on Guild business. Which he’d almost forgotten when he saw his senior from work—Hanna Lalilab.

Of her peers among the merchants' houses in Aldmoor, Hanna was the most well-known. She was down to earth and her parents didn’t mind that she associated with the proletariats; he knew what that word meant—the working class. There were no plebeians in Aldmoor; for one, the people were well read and loved to wash too.

At first, like the crew of worker’s he’d brought had been disappointed to see that someone had already beat them to cleaning duty. It was supposed to be the guild’s gesture of goodwill for helping save some of their own people. The guild hands were rather ecstatic and starry eyed to meet the man who saved their favorite front desk person; though she herself didn’t know it.

But sometimes, when he didn’t have his nose buried in a book, [An Eye for Detail] could on hone in on things that he would have otherwise missed. The way the skill worked outside of a library was inadvertent but it helped him spot that the cleaning on the portico had been a hastily done job as there were rivulets of turbid water between the grooves of the pavement. It’d simply been washed out of the front veranda. Not long after, the maid of the house did confirm that they’d only cleaned the ground floor when she’d come to get the door.

While Hanna left to go meet the man of the house Nevine had a job to do. ‘Man,’ Nevine sighed as he directed the workers where to start cleaning like an orchestra conductor; all the while doling instructions from his note-parchments, ‘he can’t be that old can he? The thing is, with mage-born and mages you could not hazard a guess, the higher levelled or more powerful they were, the longer they took to age.

Maybe he was a forty-year-old in a twenty-year-old body. And that elven maid of his with the plum colored bob might have been more powerful if not as powerful as him. While her maid uniform would have elicited tuts from a noble madame, Nevine read between the lines. The maid was the housekeeper and the bodyguard all in one; an ankle length dress would simply impede mobility. ‘Yes that is it,’ Nevine nodded to himself as pushed up his glasses like a bespectacled sleuth stumbled upon a clue in a case.

From the bottom to the top, workers scoured the house clean of cobwebs, dust bunnies and other refuse. Ordinarily, cleaning a mansion of that size might have been a stretch for a dozen workers but they had classes and skills and the guild was way bigger than the mansion.

Some of the cleaning enchantments in the house were in disrepair but there was no mold under old shag carpets or in the corners. That the house was stripped of any furniture might have been a good stroke of luck, since there were less nooks for bugs to hide in. And neither were there opportunistic rats; a certain feline surreptitiously hunting from the shadows made sure of that.

Unfortunately, one of the worst hit areas of the mansion was the library. The enchantments there were long dead and every book he touched either outright crumbled to dust or housed a colony of booklice. One of the two levels of the library was also missing books going by the gaps in the shelves. It looked as if someone had deliberately made sure come what may, the library would be the most derelict of all the places in the house.

[Curator’s Intuition] gave him hints of what? sabotage? He didn’t know…he was not a high enough level like the [Librarian] at the town’s library and archives. Nonetheless, he was going to get to the bottom of this, no one could desecrate a library and get away with it. Perhaps he’d get help from the man of the house? It didn’t seem like he was aware of it seeing as some areas of the house were left untouched.

As the day wound on, the mansion was starting to look more like a habitation than an abandoned haunted house. The glass panes were unclouded, the curtains were fresh from being laundered and the smell of freshly cut grass could be felt wafting from the open windows. Overall, the guild hands looked well pleased with their work.

In fact, the mansion’s residents had come to meet with them. The man was elated, terming the job done as meticulous and said that he’d reimburse them for services rendered. The guild hands protested that they’d done it out of their own volition, with permission from the guild master. It would have turned into a back and forth were it not for the maid who stepped in suggesting that they would employ them for future services if they were up for it.

After helping move new furniture to the billiard room to the upper floors, directed by the maid, the guild hands left and Nevine stayed back to talk to the young noble.

“Milord Sturmdrache, may I have a moment of your time?” Nevine posed.

“By all means, let’s talk in the drawing room, you must have been on your feet for hours,” he said, leading them back into the house.

“So what can I help you with?” he asked once they’d settled into their seats. “Tea?” he motioned.

“Don’t mind if I do,” ‘Well tea does have the kick it once gave me but maybe mana infused tea is okay’ Nevine took a sip of the well brewed tea. His eyebrows arched—it was good. And the honey made it sweet without overbearing the taste of the tea. It was noticeable because that prompted a reaction from his host.

“Like it?”

“Yes.” Nevine replied. “It’s been a while since I felt this much stimulation from a cup of tea.”

“ Oh, you’re not a tea person then? Are you a coffee person then?” he asked, curiosity visible on his face which had been neutral until that time.

‘ko—fee? Does he mean cavea? Is that how it’s called where he was from?’ Nevine blinked owlishly.

“Yes,” Nevine was quick to catch his interest. “Though it goes by a less cheery name around these parts.”

“I take it is not popular then? Never mind,—you wanted to see me about something?” he relaxed, one arm on his cheek and the other on the wing chair’s arm rests.

Nevine was tempted to degenerate into a spiel about the glory of night owl brew but he bit his tongue. Convincing people that it was sacrilege to call cavea, night owl brew was sacrilege. It sounded like the name a witch would dub their concoction. He exhaled; unlike Hanna, he had nothing in the subtleties of dancing around conversational topics without knowing where to stop. He had no way of knowing how the man would react. Nonetheless he bit the quarrel and came out with it,

“Milord Sturmdrache, I have reason to believe that the mansion’s library ruin might have been deliberate. Of all the rooms we cleaned, it showed the most signs of damage like someone had intentionally destroyed the library’s magic.”

His host’s face was unreadable, impassive even. Nevine almost thought that what he’d said had flown over his head and wanted to repeat what he’d said.

“We believe that to be the case—”

‘Then why on Eryth’s dirt aren’t you mad about it?’

“—a good furnished library would have been godsend but it is understandable that the mansion has been in a state of disuse for a while now—”

‘What?!”

“—however, we’re decades too late to do anything about it.”

“But Sir!”

“Master Arthur,” the maid interrupted like a bolt out of the blue. “You have a guest.”

“My pardons mister Nevine, it seems I have a very important engagement.” He said, looking to his elven maid.

‘And this is not important? I can practically smell a mystery!’

Nevine clenched his fists till they were as white as a bone willow’s bark. He tried very hard to school his expression but he was rapidly turning into a tea kettle. But he remembered who his host was and barely just managed to thank him for his hospitality before he stood up, gave a curt bow and made for the door.

As he passed onto the ante hall adjoining the drawing room, he saw who was waiting outside; one of the town guards. His armor was unremarkable and save for the silver badge that had the city’s insignia, he could not have been anything more than an ordinary guard. He nodded in greeting as he walked past, eying the sculptures of animals that decorated the foyer before reaching the main doors.

When he’d put the gate to the mansion grounds behind him; his shoulder’s slouched. From defeat or disappointment, he had no idea; he thought that perhaps he was taking things too far. People always said that, branding him a purveyor of tall tales; they didn’t say that to his face though, his mother would smack them to Vesper’s hells if she ever heard her darling son was being treated the way he was. He sighed, ‘her only son’.

Off Founders’ Street, he walked past the gates separating that part of the town realty from the rest and hitched a centaur carriage, “Copperworth street”, he supplied, watching the scenes pass him by.

The gate to Founder’s street was just there as a boundary, not an impediment. No guard stationed there; another reminder that Aldmoor was not under the noble’s thumb. As for security, the town Guard were rather efficient in what they did and stealing from the Founder’s quarter was one way to get yourself banished. They simply didn’t care for holding people in prisons when their money could be spent elsewhere. That was a merchant town for you.

Nevine got off the carriage paying the centaur his fare. Hitting the cobblestone street, he grimaced at the muscle cramp he’d gotten from standing too long during supervision; he seemed to be in a dour mood that day. He bought vegetables for the evening meal at the neighborhood grocers with his guild bonus as a liaison. It wasn’t much, but as an intern it was something. His face brightened up as he got close to the house seeing the chimney smoking; his mother seemed to be home earlier.

“Evening Ma’” he called, entering the house.

“Oh, evening dearie!” Peeked a freckled motherly face from the kitchen doorway. Her visage brightened on seeing Nevine’s haul from the market.

“Owh bun bun you didn’t have to,”

“Ma’ I am too old for bun bun!” he protested.

“Shush, you’ll always be my little bun” she pinched his cheeks.

It felt good to be home.And on that one night he managed to sleep, worn down by the tedium of the day;

[Sleuth Level 5!]

[Skill-Insight Acquired!]

[Bookworm] wasn't his only class.