6 Preparation

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. 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 all the necessary materials, Li Mei was ready to begin 44's revenge.