Sporemageddon - Book Five - Psilocybin One

Rewrote this one a bit, the original was... not a good opening to a new volume. So this is it, reworked to have a bit more action and movement and less... big skill lists.

Psilocybin One

Summer break was going to start in three days, and I was planning on using it to sell a lot of drugs.

The Eden-Powell Academy year had carried on relatively safely and easily. The death of one nouveau-rich man at the school early in the year had raised some suspicions, but it was quickly overshadowed by the sudden deaths of four members of the nobility in one night, the night of a student here’s birthday no less...

So far, no one had pinned the assassinations on me, so I must have done a decent job covering up my tracks.

Which is why I decided to take the risk I did, so close to the end of the school year.

The Academy library had a strict rule with regards to who could sign a book out. Second years could have one signed out at all times, the upper years more. Firsties like myself? Not even a single tome, book, or pamphlet could be snuck out of the library.

Seeing as how the library had a number of books that I really wanted, and how the year was ending, I didn’t see much harm in... procuring a few of those for myself.

If I was willing to kill then a bit of theft, especially from an organization instead of a person, was well within my moral bounds.

I did feel a little bad about stealing books though, and tried to return those that I could. Fortunately, lazy upper-year students were quite common, and they often returned books late or not at all. It would cost the Academy something to replace the books, but they could afford it.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t afford these books. I’d looked into it. They went for a few pounds each, and that was the cheaper, less interesting ones that were still mass-market prints. 

To build a proper bookshelf would cost me more than what I made in a year.

Stealing it all would cost me an afternoon.

The plan started simply enough. I brought a large bag with me and placed it within an empty room just next to the library’s entrance. It was one of those dusty little spaces used for the occasional elective.

I think this one might have been used for debate club? I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t being used at the moment, so it was as good a place as any to stash the bag.

Then, I went to the library. 

The librarian was out sick today, and their replacement was a younger man 

The usual librarian was an eagle-eyed man who would snap up the moment you touched a book with ill-intent. I was pretty sure there were some skills involved, probably from the Uncommon Librarian class or something. Stealing from under his nose would be damned near impossible.

Fortunately, the mushroom soup that the kitchens served last night happened to disagree with his stomach. Poor man was probably glued to his toilet at the moment.

I’d made sure that it wasn’t lethal. Just... very inconvenient and a little embarrassing. 

So, I walked into the library with my head up high and my back straight, the confident pose of a young scion of one of the many noble families that went to this prestigious academy.

The library smelled of old books, dry air, and spilled ink. I liked the smell.

I didn’t waste any time just sniffing around, however. I had a mental list of every book I wanted from this place. A physical list would have been nice, but it would also have been evidence, and I wasn’t that stupid.

There were only a couple of books on biology that I wanted to grab, both of them reference manuals that no one had ever checked out. Apparently they’d been donated to the academy by a nearby hospital, which was neat. They were dated, even according to the medical knowledge of a early-industrial world, but some things were good to have on hand as references.

Another text was a compendium of alchemical ingredients. It had a long list of mushrooms within that I found fascinating. Then there were some halfway decent history texts that I wanted as well.

All in all, there were ten books I wanted to grab, so I moved around, out of sight of the temporary librarian, and stacked them up. Then I grabbed two at a time and started to sneak them out of the room.

In the last few months spent at Eden-Powell, I’d had a lot of time to exercise my more social skills. It wasn’t so good for my more nature-related abilities, but this was a place that subtly trained its students in lying and in the fine art of playing games with power and influence, and I found that it was perfect practice to become better in that subset of skills.

As I moved through the exit, I pushed as much will into my Unnoticeable skill as possible. 

Recently, it had slipped up a few levels, enough to get me a new subskill. 

[Forgetful Presence]

Those who do notice you will more rapidly forget your presence once you are out of their sight and active thoughts.

The young librarian looked up as I moved past, but his eyes barely focused on me before he returned to reading from a newspaper.

When I returned with no books in hand, he barely acknowledged my presence.

I left again, and this time his head came up and he frowned very slightly, but didn’t stop me on the way out.

I’d gained another useful subskill, [Microexpression Reader] which was triggering at the moment. 

[Microexpression Reader]

You have an innate ability to read a person’s expressions and tell what they’re feeling as they express themselves. 

As strong as it seemed, it only really helped on the rare occasion when I ran into someone entirely unfamiliar with expressions I hadn’t yet grown accustomed to reading. I could only ask so much of a sub skill of an Uncommon skill, and this one came from [Lie Detection].

What it was telling me was that he had grown a little suspicious. No idea.

So when I returned, I walked right up to the counter and stared at him. I had levelled up my Social Manipulation quite a bit, until I unlocked a new sub-skill called [Thread the Needle] which helped, especially when combined with some other social skills, like my [Guileless Eyes].

[Thread the Needle]

You know how to say just enough, never too much, never too little. You can navigate conversations with precision, dropping subtle cues, leading people toward your desired conclusion without them realizing it.

A new sub skill for Social Manipulation, and one that felt like someone whispering in my ear. It took some getting used to, but it made handling social situations so much easier.

Was I growing charismatic?

Maybe, but it was only artificially so.

“Sorry, sir,” I said. “Where’s Mister Tomes?”

“Out sick,” the man said.

“Oh, shoot. I was supposed to bring some bio textbooks to the Herbology and Botanical Magics classroom. Some of them are pretty heavy. I don’t know if...”

“That's not my job,” he said. “I’m supposed to watch over this place, that’s all.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. I smiled sweetly at him, then darted off and grabbed the last few books, making sure that a boring biology book was at the top. I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to pick me out from the crowd. When the actual librarian came back and found some books missing, he’d probably be sent down a rabbit hole chasing them down.

I’d be long gone by then.

In no time at all, I had all of the books out, and was stuffing them into my bag. It barely fit, which was annoying, but hey, a wealth of free literature and books to cross-reference, and all for free. 

I... had liked my time here. 

My time at the Academy from the point where I’d done my work until the end of that first year went by relatively calmly. There was drama, and maybe a few close calls, but I kept my head down and did my best to grind the more academic skills I had access to. 

My goal was to grow as much as I could while I had access to the privileges that these other students were taking for granted.

There was a gulf between the speed of growth that a common-born person had and the scions of the elite gained just on account of being born in the stations they were from.

And now that was coming to an end.

Oh well. My ultimate goals didn’t require a good education and contacts amongst the nobility, just enough knowledge to cause trouble.

***