I had considered going back to my old name again, but that person was long gone. It was also very likely that every person who had ever known him was gone too. So in honour of Elde who had taught me so much, I decided to use the name he gave me from now on and use his own name as well to carry him with me.

After our introduction Kara and I talked some more about my responsibilities, the requirements I needed to fulfill and the standards she demanded if I wanted to keep my job. She also asked me about my housing situation too and when I told her that I was currently without permanent residence, she offered me a room in the building as there were plenty of unused ones going to waste due to the lack of several key staff members. Already satisfied with the job, the added on offer of rent free board topped the cake for how I was feeling about starting my new job.

When we finished our discussion she took my bank document and signed it off before writing out another for me to hand in to the Institute main branch. It bore her signature also and informed them that a new staff member would need to be added to the payroll and a financial record set up for me with the Bank, as they did for all Coalition employees.

After that, she showed me around the building. It was two stories tall with the library section opened up between the levels, the bookshelves ordered all throughout the ground floor and the surrounding balcony upstairs. The whole library actually took up about two thirds of the building's space with the rest taken up by a classroom, a faculty area and some other miscellaneous rooms.

I went through the building together with Kara until I finally decided on the attic for my living quarters. It was big, empty, and it was a distance away from Kara’s room as well so that afforded both of us some privacy. After having been given the full tour she gave me three days to sort out my affairs and get some furniture and other necessities for my lodging while she made a strict outline of my duties, the order in which she needed them done and how she wanted me to do them.

While she was doing that, I went to the Bank and dropped off the form she signed and then headed over to the Institute to hand in her other set of documents.

I had seen it from afar before of course, but this was the first time I was actually going into the building myself and I was eager to see what it was like inside. Thankfully, it lived up to the hype as I ventured my way up the stairs and made my way inside.

To paint a picture, the city branch for the Scholar Association was huge. The biggest building in the square, much bigger than the Bank or any of the other associations because it was filled to the brim with books, books and more books and some other things I was sure were just waiting to be discovered. But alas, I didn’t get the chance.

Walking in, the building was just as resplendent as the bank except with a purple colour scheme instead of the former's green and books were everywhere and ever so inviting. Unfortunately, the receptionist was blocking the way in and caught me before I could sneak over and have a look at the shelves all by myself, bringing me to my business before I would have liked to. I gave her my speech about my reason for being there and she took my documents with a little bit of surprise but was very professional about it all and sorted everything out smoothly. She informed me that an account in my name would be set up at the Trade Association on my behalf and I only had to take the document that she handed back to me over to them in the next few days to complete my registration.

That done, I walked a couple more hours until I got back to the inn and got some lunch. From there I went around the docks and into the city looking for shops that sold furniture, blankets, pillows, candles, rugs and whatever else I could think of that I might need for my new living quarters. It took two days deciding on what I wanted and making sure that all the stores delivered until I finally upgraded my new room to looking fairly hospitable.

All this done, by the third day I was all prepared to move into my new lodgings as soon as I negotiated some reimbursement from the barkeep for the nights I was no longer staying but unfortunately, he was having none of that.

The argument got pretty loud and heated but it was soon clear to me that I was not getting a Bit of my money back. So, when he was convinced that I had given up, I grabbed one of the finest bottles of liquor he displayed from behind the bar, a fine sample from the Bordello, and when he turned away hightailed it out of there before he could stop me.

I had lived on the streets for decades. So I was at least a little bit criminal.

Resolving myself to stay away from that part of town for the foreseeable future I made my way to the side branch and settled in for a final night of easy living before I started work the very next morning. When it came, I walked downstairs to find Kara in what I now knew was her spot, the centre of the building where I had first seen her. Seeing me coming she wasted no time in waving me over to her before she gave me her list of instructions.

There was… a lot. Two full pages, back to front, of what I had to do to bring the building back up to a state of “required respectability”, to use Kara’s words.

To start with there was a general dusting and removal of cobwebs, followed by sweeping, mopping, polishing, reorganizing of bookshelves, repainting, re-lacquering, repairing broken floorboards and the like, reshingling the roof, removing mold from inside and outside the building, weeding and some more chores on top of that. This was just the baseline to get things back to normal though. I also had other errands to run such as collecting water, regular cleaning, buying food and other necessities, cooking, washing clothes and bedsheets…

I think you get the full picture.

It was hard work, and a lot of it at that, but I didn’t mind it really. I was actually kind of happy. It was sort of like doing one of those renovation shows in the beginning for a while and then it just settled into daily and regular upkeep.

This all took months but after some time passed the building started looking properly respectable, definitely the best looking building for miles around in this area. Seeing how it turned out I remarked to myself that I had ‘leveled up’ from bum, to janitor.

Progress at last.

Kara was very happy with it, that's for sure. We had been living next to one another for some time now and though she consistently let me know who was boss, with the new and improved look of the building her feelings towards me warmed considerably.

Now, after all the hustle and bustle of the first couple of months, life settled into a regular routine of upkeep and cleaning throughout the whole building plus a few errands that I had to carry out now and then.

But with this settling down came some quiet spaces in the day all to myself and during these moments of reflection, some major concerns that had been floating at the back of my mind arose, now rearing their head and making me think.

I was immortal. Or maybe not. At the very least, I was unageing.

I had survived in those slums for a very long time on miniscule amounts of rotten food where disease and plagues ran wild and still I had not once gotten sick. But on my body scars from some of the troubles I had encountered still remained fresh. So while this world's mana was supposedly boosting my body's capabilities to such a degree that it stopped aging, it wasn’t all powerful.

With time, some of my scars had faded, but if I was wounded and happened to lose a part of my body, like a finger or something, I wasn’t confident that it would grow back. Or what if I cut a major artery? Or fell from a great height? Or drowned?

Yeah. I was fairly confident with my conclusion.

I was unageing. But I wasn’t immortal.

I’m like one of those immortal jellyfish who live in the Mediterranean Sea. I’m small and completely harmless, but I just happen to live forever if nothing too disastrous ever happens to me. But if I am that jellyfish, then I live in a small pond connected to a very large ocean. An ocean filled with a great many magical sea beasts that are as smart as they are powerful who, unlike me, are still bound by the confines of life and death.

I know full well what it's like to be caught by one of them. If anyone finds out, I’ll be grabbed and taken away to some magical laboratory to be experimented on, possibly forever, until they find a way to make themselves unageing just like me, no matter the pain and suffering I might have to endure.

It’s practically an eventuality. If nothing too disastrous happens to me I’m going to still be here, the same as I always will be, until eventually my youthful skin becomes too preposterous to be believed and someone starts asking questions.

That can’t happen.

I could grow out my hair and my beard just like I did before to obscure my unchanging state a bit but I can only keep that up for five, maybe ten years, until I am going to need to disappear.

It didn’t take me long to come to this conclusion when I took the time to think about it. I had maybe a decade, maximum, to save up enough money, come up with a new identity, plan a route to a life somewhere new…

And then what?

All...All I really know of this world is this city, and I don’t even know that too well. I’m only really familiar with the slums and besides that I only have some rough knowledge about this world and that might even be outdated now!

Thinking back, the famous military strategist of Earth Sun Tzu said “If you know your enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

Well I know myself. Now… I must know my enemy.

Luckily for me, I have the resources available to get started.

Elde had told me that every single side branch of the Institute had the exact same number of books made up of the exact same reading list. The reason for this was because of the Scholar Association's mission to spread truth to everyone around the world, primarily through the side branches. However these branches could only be so large and contain so many books.

In light of this, what must have now been some 400 years ago, the leading heads in charge of the Institute decided on a reading list that would consist of all the books that were deemed necessary and sufficient to hold the right amount of knowledge to educate almost anyone to the level where they had, what was considered in their opinion, a complete grasp of the most basic and fundamental knowledge pertaining to every facet of the world.

This reading list would then be made the required catalogue for every side branch under the Institute across the world. But of course, there’s a lot of knowledge in the world and as the world progresses new knowledge is learned and more history is made and so an already gargantuan amount of books gradually grows over time to become even more gargantuan.

Also, due to the complexity of the Cali written word, the majority of people can’t even read and you would need years of serious dedication to make your way through all of these books anyway.

As a result of these factors, the books deposited in every Institute side branch were basically never read in their entirety. By anyone. But instead, they stood as testament for what the members and factions of the Scholar Guild considered the foundation of the accumulated knowledge of all of Calzyn. Rather than the means to educate the world the side branch catalogue actually became the battleground for the various fields of research and their acolytes to fight for the significance and importance of what they may devote their entire lives to studying.

I may never see it, but I’m sure the meetings to update the catalogue must get ugly.

But this didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that I was probably going to be in this world for a very long time and if I wanted to survive, I needed to learn and know about it.

And so, outside of my regular duties and other miscellaneous activities, with the foundation of this world's accumulated knowledge now at my fingertips, that’s exactly what I set myself about doing.