Chapter 75: A New Study Group
"Come on, let’s get up there before Lana gives a student one of our dark magic books."
Rita chuckled when Percy said this, and she finally allowed him to get off the bed. Rita and Percy moved towards the bathroom, and they took their bath together. They could’ve easily used magic to clean themselves up, but they preferred to use the shower instead since it felt better! Once they got out of the bathroom, Rita walked over to Percy’s closet to pick out one of the black gowns that she always kept there, and Percy simply used magic to put his clothes on. Percy still didn’t understand why Rita preferred to put her clothes on herself rather than using magic to make them appear on her, but the last time Percy asked about it, Rita just said it was a woman thing, and Percy decided not to bother anymore!
Right now, Percy was sitting at his desk and looking through some of the rune paper he had been working on. Each of the rune papers had one segment of the whole rune that he was trying to create, and Percy had divided them like this to make it easier to work on the individual segments. Once Percy was done with the individual segments, he would join the rune segments into one whole rune that would cover the entire library.
"Hey, baby. Did you find out anything about the dark organization you were talking about?"
Rita spoke up from the side while putting on some lipstick in front of the mirror, and Percy frowned! The dark organization that Rita was talking about was the same people Percy suspected were behind the recent Time Paradox incident that allowed the vampires to come here and cause problems for them. Percy knew that there had to be someone more powerful who backed Zaran and allowed him to find and use the pendant the way he did, and Percy needed to find out who these people were to ensure they don’t cause problems in the future!
But all the investigations that Percy had been doing recently had been coming up fruitless! Percy had called in favours from a few of his past acquaintances and asked them about any organisations in the kingdom, but none of them were able to find an organisation with the magical knowledge and power to do something of this scale. So Percy was right back to where he started!
"I think we’ll have to call in the Phantoms."
Rita’s hummed in surprise, and she turned to Percy curiously.
"Really? Is it that serious?"
Percy hummed in confirmation!
"Even the Mercenaries weren’t able to find anything useful. If we really want to find something, then we have to use them."
Rita let out a long breath, and Rita could only nod to Percy’s decision! The Phantoms that Percy was talking about were a group of shadow spies that lived on a world more than fifty dimensional leaps away from their own world. Percy and Rita had run into them during their decade-long journey, and Rita knew it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the shadow Phantoms were the greatest group of spies in the world!
The Phantoms were notorious across multiple worlds for their abilities to gather information and expose secret plots, and they were always being hired by one organization or another for what they could do! If Percy was thinking of hiring them for this case, then that meant Percy was really serious about taking down this organization before it could become a bigger problem!
Rita finally put on the last of her makeup, and she stood elegantly from her seat and walked over to Percy. Rita draped her hands over Percy’s shoulders and leaned on him while caressing his chest.
"I’ll ask some of the ghosts and ghouls around to help me search as well. I’m sure we’ll get them soon, baby."
Percy rubbed Rita’s arm softly, and he smiled as Rita put a kiss on his cheek before pulling him away from his table.
"Come on, you can do your research some other time. I don’t like how silent things are up there."
Percy just laughed at Rita’s words, and he didn’t resist as she took him away from his room.
....
The two of them quickly made their way up to the library, and thankfully, Lana hadn’t caused any serious problems yet. The bubbly dragon girl was standing behind the librarian’s desk and telling a student who came in how much Madam Rita trusted her to handle the library on her own! From the expression on the student’s face, anyone could tell that she did not want to be hearing about any of this at all!
Percy and Rita took over from Lana, and they finally began to handle the students that were coming into the library. Today was a Monday, so a lot of students were coming in to get textbooks and journals that they would need for the rest of their classes that week. Percy was standing behind the librarian’s desk now, and he greeted students with a smile and helped them to check out any book that they wanted to borrow. Rita was busy organizing books on the shelves, and she was always more than happy to guide students towards the books that they were looking for. There were a lot more female students asking Rita for help since many of the young boys were too intimidated by her beauty, and Percy didn’t mind helping out the boys when they came to him instead.
The door leading to the library opened up a few minutes later, and Percy looked up and hummed curiously when he saw a few familiar faces entering together. It was a group made up of two boys and a girl. The boys were people that Percy recognized immediately. Harold, the final-year student who had come to Percy for help with his Earth-Wind dual Affinity a few weeks ago, and James, the young boy who had an obsessive love for potions! The two boys were talking animatedly with the only girl in the group, and Percy was actually surprised when he saw her! This was the same red-haired girl that had been under the control of the Vampire soldier during the Time Paradox Incident a few weeks ago.
’How the hell did those three become friends?’
Percy smiled in amusement, and he just waited for the three of them to reach his desk before they all greeted him kindly.
"Hello, Mr. Percival."
"Hello, Mr. Librarian."
"H-Hello."
The two boys greeted him with enthusiasm, but the girl blushed and stammered as she bowed to him. If Percy remembered correctly, her name was Raya, wasn’t it? Percy gave them a nod and spoke calmly.
"Hello, kids. I see you three have become quite close."
James nodded quickly, and he was almost bouncing in excitement as he told Percy what happened!
"We formed a Study Group together! Since we always come here, and we see each other a lot, we decided to start studying together too!"
Percy’s smile became softer when he heard this, and he felt a nostalgic feeling go through him as he was reminded of some students that he had tutored in the past! Just like those students, Percy already knew that all three of them were very bright students who could change the world in the future if they continued down their chosen paths, so he was really happy that they decided to bring their talents together like this!
Percy turned to Harold, and he asked him how his training was going. Harold answered excitedly!
"It’s great, Mr. Percy! I’ve almost broken through to the third realm! I can’t believe how fast I’m improving with that new mana flow technique!"