Soon enough, or perhaps not that soon actually, I made my way back to the Side Branch wet, shivering, yet resolved.

But also exhausted.

So after washing the stench of the slums off of me I immediately went to bed to get some rest.

But even as sleep overcame me, my resolve still remained.

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For a time after my trip down memory lane, nothing much changed at all.

I still did my job and kept up the maintenance of the Side Branch, chatted and looked after Kara, (though sadly with each passing day it became clearer that she was really starting to decline) and kept on reading through the library, still hopeful to finish it all.

But beneath all of that, I was planning.

I had never stolen anything in my life, with the exception of a few colouring pens from some other kids in the classroom when I was very young, but nevertheless, I had no real grasp on what I was planning on doing.

Luckily though, I had seen enough heist movies and though they are probably way outside of the realms of reality with the inherent Hollywood spin they have, they did lay out the four basic steps.

Research Planning Execution Escape

For the research step, I started staking out the Institute Main Branch as regularly as I could.

In this time, I’ve made sure to cover and observe every open hour of the day for every day of the week at the Institute, repeatedly. I’ve walked around the entire layout of the building available to me several times and memorised every route and pathway that lies within. I’ve taken special attention to observe who is usually around; who works the reception, what staff comes in and out replacing and rearranging books and what other regular individuals are around browsing or reading.

After almost four months of this reconnaissance, I’ve noticed some very glaring issues if I want to pull this off.

Number one. There is only one way in and one way out, the main entrance, which is always manned by a receptionist who is always watching the entryway. That means that if I want to steal my books, then the only way I can bring them out is via the main entrance, and I can by no means sneak them all out at once. The best I can manage is perhaps one or two books at a time.

The second issue however is the real problem. The problem being that the place that I’m trying to rob is as a matter of unavoidable fact a Scholar Association Main Branch, and with that unavoidable reality comes the regular appearance of Warriors and Sorcerers.

I had actually seen one walking through the library on the very first day of my stakeout. I had sat in an alcove frozen in fear that they may suddenly stop and look at me, seeing through all my secrets in one glance. Instead though, she went right through onto the restricted section only available to anointed Coalition members.

As my surveillance continued I saw this happen again and again. One time even seeing a Sorcerer walkthrough, whom I very promptly hid away from and prayed fervently they didn’t notice me, do the exact same thing.

With these occurrences, I began to realise what was really happening. The Warriors and Sorcerers that visit the main branch… hold absolutely no regard for the peasants. If they can’t sense mana around or within anyone, they will disregard them instantly, barely even considering them people.

This was… a blessing. It meant that the only people I had to worry about were the regular people who were hanging around the public section, because although I can’t avoid the perception of Warriors and Sorcerers, they are by no means paying any attention to me or even even looking at me, so low and common as I am.

With this realisation I felt some sense of relief, but not completely. All it would take is only one moment of idle curiosity from these monsters for me to be found out so I still need to be very careful with how I pull this off and remain as inconspicuous as possible.

This doesn’t change the fact however, that who I still really need to worry about are the commoners like me. The low level staff, the kids that come in to be taught Cali everyday and some of the regular patrons. All of whom appear to be wealthy individuals who live in the city centre but are likewise dismissive of my less than civilised presence, another boon for me in the grand scheme of things.

The third problem is that the bookcases are routinely looked over.

The people who read books at the Institute Main Branch, in the public section at least, are all generally wealthy citizens of Mellawin and are all usually connected in some way to the Trade Association via their connections to the large city businesses that work under their oversight. They may not be any better than the staff at the Institute but are far more wealthy and elite, and so naturally look down on them.

Due to this, when taking books down to read they rarely if ever put them back, and if they just happen to, they jam them into the closest available space with no real forethought for the library’s book organisation. Therefore, at the end of the day, the staff always spends the closing hours collecting the books left out and reordering them back into their correct positions.

This is obviously a problem for me seeing as how books are never allowed to leave the library and are also under constant review. It would be easily noticeable if one, not to mention the 45 books I want to smuggle out go missing.

So all in all, if I want this to succeed, I need to remain as inconspicuous as possible to avoid attention, smuggle the books out undiscovered, and have the absence of a whole row of books go completely unnoticed.

With the base research done and my obstacles identified for the first stage, I now started working on phase 2… Planning.

This wasn’t an issue however as I had the most reliable and classic heist plan of all.

The old Switcheroo.

With the rules of the Main Branch in place I can’t just take a book from the building, and because of their regular inspection and organising of the bookcases I can’t hope for a book to go unnoticed for long if I do smuggle one out. Plus, I’ve got to get out not just one but 45 books over the course of several weeks.

So, this means that I have to steal the books without their absence being noticed. And the only way to do that…is to smuggle in books that look exactly the same and switch them out with the real ones.

Looking over the plan I had formulated for my first and greatest heist, I found that my plan… was actually quite feasible. The reason being…logistics.

As a result of the shipping costs and logistics nightmare of transporting hundreds of thousands of books everytime a new settlement was set up, over time, the Scholar Association devised a way to transport all the knowledge required for each new branch to set itself up without all the hassle that went along with tons and tons of paper.

The method they came up with was the development of a storage device called memory crystals. Objects that could hold mass amounts of knowledge, in this case entire bookcases of words, and transport them all ahead to new settlements in one easy shipment.

When they got there the new city or settlement would go about developing their own paper manufacturing and book making facilities within the city whilst in conjunction with the new Trade Association Branch’s to likewise build up the new local economy.

So fortunately for me, all the materials that were used to make the volumes of the Warriorhood Baptismal Technique Compendium that I need are all currently available in this city. As long as I get the same kind of leather and enough paper to make up the right thickness, I can easily switch a real volume for a blank fake with no one ever noticing unless they take a closer look, which is unlikely given the sheer rarity of an event it is that anyone even looks at those books.

Living and working with Kara for almost a decade had made all of this very possible for me, as along the way she had imparted onto me some of her book making and maintaining skills through the years.

So, after spending a week going through the city to find the right type of leather and enough paper stock with the right dimensions, when Kara went to sleep at night, I started sneaking down to her work station and started assembling empty books.

The process was very similar to what I knew about book making back on Earth but I think the one major difference was the glue. Glue can take ages to properly dry and set but the stuff they use here makes the whole process much easier and quicker for book makers, and for myself in this particular instance.

So fast it was that after three nights of book making skulduggery all my prep was done and my fakes were all prepared, neat and ready.

This now brought me to the third phase of the heist formula, and by far the most delicate and stressful. Because now, I had to actually go through with my rough and amateurish plan which I basically made on the fly and could go catastrophically wrong at any moment.

Here’s how it went.

***************************************************************************************************************

As I walked up the stairs of the intricately stylized purple edifice, all I could feel was the sweat pouring out of my skin under my clothes. I had however taken preventative measures to avoid this possibility, and so I was wearing dark and multilayered clothing to conceal my perspiration, so thankfully I wasn’t standing out too much.

Besides my sweat the other thing that was holding my attention was the leatherbound book, (which was completely blank by the way) tucked into the back of my pants and held tight by my belt as it rubbed against my bum and lower back.

All these sensations didn’t matter though. All that mattered was the fact that I keep my breathing steady, keep my eyes forward but not staring at anything and make sure I’m not walking too stiffly.

These are the only thoughts I try to maintain as I approach the receptionist coming up in front of me, using them to batter down all the others that will surely make me lose my cool if they surface. Eventually, I made my way to the receptionist.

“Your business today, sir?” she asked flatly. I had seen her a couple times and while she was somewhat pleasant to look at, her attitude barely complimented her face.

“Accessing the Library. Here is my badge.” I somehow managed to get out clearly.

She took one look at the badge and waved me in before her attention went back to watching the entryway, bored as ever.

…Thank God.

With her permission I didn’t dawdle. I made a straight beeline to where I needed to go, the bookcase at the farthest right of the first row and one of the few bookcases that lay in one of the few shadowy spaces within the library. It was even more shadowy at the moment as I had arrived at the end of the mid-afternoon, when people's attention was lax, the students had left for the day and the staff hadn't yet begun to sort through the bookcases before closing.

When I got there I took a few sweeping glances around before I finally pulled up the ladder and climbed to the top shelf.

In all the time I had been surveying this place, besides me, I hadn’t seen anyone else looking over this section. Admittedly some of the other titles listed here were very dull sounding but I was conscious of the fact that at some point, someone will look through these books, and I have to hope to delay that moment for as long as possible.

So, contrary to the convention of starting at the beginning, I went for the end instead where no one really bothers looking, the Baptisms for the Force strata.

After taking one more thorough glance around, I took Volume 45 of The Warriorhood Baptismal Technique Compendium off the shelf and then made my way down off the ladder.

I then walked through a few more bookcases, picking up a few more books along the way, all the while keeping an eye out for who might be watching, until I made my way to a secluded alcove and sat down. I opened up a book and started reading. Well, I pretended to read anyway.

I flipped through some pages, I stretched, I yawned, I cracked my back a few times and when I was confident that absolutely no one was watching, I reached down to my lower back, pulled out my empty forgery, switched it with the real one, and settled back down and pretended to keep reading.

I continued my charade for a little while longer, up until I saw the Institute employees come out of their hidden away offices and start to put books away.

Using this opportunity I walked back the same way as before from my alcove to the first bookcase, being as visible as possible (Though I have no idea how one tries and does that). Once there I climbed the ladder, put the fake on the shelf and climbed back down… only to find someone waiting for me at the bottom.

For a moment of pure panic, I froze. The man looked up at where I had been and then pulled his gaze back down to me, and for an utterly silent moment, time froze…

…before he smiled and nodded at me.

I still wasn’t capable of thought, but thankfully my unconscious mind was looking out for me and took over, so I smiled and nodded back to the man before watching him continue on his way examining the rest of the bookshelves.

I turned. I walked. I passed the receptionist. I made it down the stairs. I walked across the city square until I exited it.

Only then did I breathe.

Somehow, I had done it.