Reborn as a Hated Noble Family, We Start an Industrial Revolution-Chapter 74: The Bookworm Client

East-Port Harbor Town – Rat Street, Number Four. 05:55 AM.

A thick, salt-heavy sea mist clung to the narrow alleyways of East-Port like a damp shroud. The sun had yet to fully crest the horizon, leaving the port town in a state of perpetual, humid twilight. This was a place where the shadows felt greasy, and the air carried the pungent symphony of rotting fish, stagnant bilge water, and cheap, fermented grain. Rats the size of house cats scurried between mounds of discarded crates, their red eyes glinting with a hunger that matched the desperate human inhabitants of the district.

A figure clad in a nondescript charcoal-grey cloak moved through the fog with the silence of a drifting ghost. Every footfall was calculated, every breath measured.

Rhea Sudrath—now operating under the alias Red—paused in front of a structure that looked entirely out of place in this hive of brothels and gambling dens. While its neighbors were constructed of rotting timber and peeling paint, this building was made of ancient red brick, encrusted with layers of dark green moss. Its tall, narrow windows were reinforced with rusted iron bars, and the heavy oak door looked thick enough to withstand a battering ram.

Above the door, a crooked, salt-eroded wooden sign hung by a single chain:

"ANCIENT ARCHIVES & ANTIQUITIES – NO ENTRY UNLESS BEARING KNOWLEDGE."

"Arrogant prick," Rhea murmured beneath her hood.

She reached into a hidden pocket and produced a pocket watch. It wasn’t one of the gold-plated Magitech masterpieces manufactured by her brother Rianor; it was a cheap, brass timepiece she had picked up at a flea market to maintain her cover.

05:58 AM.

"Two minutes. The Guild said the Bookworm despises tardiness."

Rhea leaned against the brick wall, crossing her arms over her chest. Despite her relaxed posture, her senses were dialed to maximum. Her internal radar scanned the surroundings: a beggar sleeping in a pile of rags fifty meters to the left, a mangy dog gnawing on a fish bone across the street, and the rhythmic sloshing of the tide against the docks.

Safe. For now.

The moment the brass hand of her watch touched the twelve—precisely 06:00 AM—a heavy, metallic bolt clicked behind the oak door.

KREEK...

The door swung inward, seemingly of its own accord. A draft of air escaped from the interior, carrying a scent that was a violent contrast to the harbor’s stench.

"Enter. And do not bring the mud inside with you."

The voice from within was raspy, low-volume, and carried a slight nasal congestion. It sounded like a voice that hadn’t been used for shouting in a very long time.

Rhea arched an eyebrow. She kicked the heels of her boots against the stone threshold to dislodge any loose dirt, then stepped into the belly of the archive.

Interior of the Old Library.

As she crossed the threshold, Rhea’s nose was immediately assaulted by a very specific olfactory profile. It wasn’t the smell of decay or industry. It was the scent of Old Paper, Dust, and Dried Ink.

The room was a chaotic labyrinth. This wasn’t the orderly, pristine library of the Royal Academy in the capital. It was a fortress of parchment. Stacks of leather-bound books, some towering over two meters high, formed literal walls throughout the space. Scrolls were scattered across the floor like fallen autumn leaves. Strange artifacts—broken pottery shards, bleached animal skulls, and rusted metallic gears—lay haphazardly on tables stained with numerous coffee rings.

Pale shafts of morning light pierced through the high, barred windows, illuminating billions of dust motes dancing in the air like microscopic spirits.

"Close the door. The humidity is rising. The paper will develop mold."

Rhea turned toward the source of the command.

Buried behind a rampart of encyclopedias in the center of the room sat a young man.

Professor Arvid. (Or at least, that was the name on the Guild’s S-Rank contract).

Rhea stared at her client with a look of mounting disbelief. This is the guy? she thought. I’m supposed to escort this fragile creature into the Forbidden Forest?

Arvid looked... pathetic.

He was painfully thin, his frame looking as though he had forgotten the concept of a solid meal for weeks. His skin was the color of unbaked dough, a sickly pallor that suggested he hadn’t seen the sun in years. His chestnut hair was a bird’s nest of tangles, looking like it had been styled by a localized whirlwind.

He wore a white linen shirt with sleeves that were far too long, topped with a dark brown knitted vest that was fraying at the elbows. But his most defining feature was his eyewear. His glasses were perfectly round, with lenses so thick they looked like the bottoms of glass bottles. Through the magnification, Arvid’s eyes appeared twice their natural size, giving him the startled, wide-eyed expression of a surprised owl.

"Are you Red?" Arvid asked, his eyes never leaving the massive tome he was currently annotating with a quill.

"I am," Rhea replied curtly, pitching her voice lower to mask its feminine lilt.

Arvid finally looked up. He reached up with a spindly finger to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, which had a tendency to slide down due to his lack of a bridge.

"You’re a woman?"

His tone wasn’t one of condescension or prejudice. It was a flat, clinical observation. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

"Is there a problem?" Rhea’s hand shifted instinctively toward the hilt of Fang at her waist.

"None. Statistically speaking, women possess a higher tolerance for the freezing temperatures of the forest depths and more efficient ration consumption rates," Arvid murmured, his attention already returning to his notes. "As long as you aren’t afraid of prehistoric cockroaches, we should be fine."

Rhea snorted. "I eat cockroaches for breakfast if the mission requires it."

"Poor hygiene habits," Arvid commented dryly. "Do not eat the local fauna. I did not pack enough anti-diarrheal medication for two people."

Arvid attempted to stand up. He was surprisingly tall—perhaps matching Riven’s height—but his posture was horribly hunched. As he straightened his spine, a series of audible cracks echoed through the room like small twigs snapping.

"Ah... my back..." Arvid groaned, clutching his lower spine. "Too much sitting. The lumbar support in this chair is medieval, and not in the good way."

Rhea rolled her eyes beneath her hood. Weak. Fragile. Thick glasses. Chronic back pain. Was this an S-Rank mission or a volunteer shift at a nursing home?

"So," Rhea said, stepping forward and using her boot to shove a pile of books out of her path. "Where is the map to the Silent City? When do we leave? I’m being paid to guard you, not to watch you perform geriatric calisthenics."

Arvid stared at the books Rhea had kicked with a look of pure horror.

"Careful! That is a first-edition Encyclopedia of Aethelgardian Flora! Its historical value is worth more than your life, and likely your entire family’s estate!"

Arvid scrambled down to pick up the book with maternal tenderness, wiping the dust from its cover with his sleeve.

"Barbarians..." he muttered.

"I can hear you," Rhea said sharply.

"Good. It means your auditory nerves are functioning," Arvid shuffled toward a large oak table in the center of the room. He cleared away a moldy coffee cup and unrolled a sheet of vellum that looked ancient enough to crumble if someone breathed too hard on it.

"Here," Arvid pointed to a small, red-inked dot in the center of a vast, uncharted wilderness. "The Silent City. Or in the Old Tongue: Aethel-Gardia Prime."

Rhea leaned in, her gaze sharpening. "I know the sector. Forbidden Forest, Sector 4. It’s a breeding ground for Wyverns and rogue Golems. It’s a three-day trek on foot from the border."

"Correction: Four days," Arvid cut in. "We will be taking a detour through the Echo Valley to avoid the Acid Spider nests. It’s their mating season this month, and they are particularly... aggressive toward intruders."

Rhea went silent. Mating season for Acid Spiders? How the hell did he know the reproductive cycle of a monster that lived in a death zone?

"And our objective isn’t just a ’sightseeing tour’," Arvid continued, his large eyes shimmering with a sudden, manic enthusiasm behind his thick lenses. "I found a reference in a lost manuscript. In the heart of the city, there is a Great Library that hasn’t been breached in five hundred years. The atmospheric seal should still be intact."

"Wait," Rhea raised a hand. "You want to go into the most dangerous ruin on the continent... just to get some books?"

"They aren’t just books!" Arvid shouted, looking genuinely offended. "They are the historical records of the Dark Era! They contain the lost knowledge of Mana-fusion! They..."

UHUK! UHUK! UHUK!

Arvid was suddenly seized by a violent coughing fit. He became so excited he forgot to breathe properly. He fumbled in his vest pocket, pulled out a silk handkerchief, and coughed into it until his face turned a bright, alarming shade of red.

Rhea watched him with a mixture of pity and annoyance.

"Drink some water, Bookworm. Don’t die before you pay my deposit."

Arvid took a long pull from a glass bottle on the table. His breathing was still ragged, his chest heaving.

"Regardless... your task is to ensure I reach the site alive, accompany me while I transcribe the inscriptions, and bring me back in one piece."

"Easy enough," Rhea said dismissively. "As long as you don’t faint at the first sight of a monster."

"I am not afraid of monsters," Arvid said, adjusting his glasses yet again. "I am only afraid of Ignorance."

BANG!

Suddenly, the front door was kicked open with a thunderous crash.

Dust exploded into the room as the morning light was blocked by three massive silhouettes standing in the doorway. Rhea spun around instantly, her hands reflexively gripping the handles of Fang and Claw. Her body dropped into a low, predatory crouch.

Uninvited guests.

The three men stepped inside. They weren’t adventurers. They wore cheap, mismatched leather armor that smelled of stale ale and body odor. Each carried a heavy weapon—a rusted axe, a spiked mace, and a broad-bladed cleaver. On their forearms was a distinctive tattoo: a cracked skull.

The Iron Jaw Gang. Local East-Port thugs.

"Oi, Bookworm!" the leader shouted. He was a bald man with a solitary gold tooth and a face that looked like it had been run over by a carriage. "I heard a rumor you’ve got a treasure map?"

Arvid didn’t move from his desk. He simply let out a long, weary sigh, as if this intrusion were a tedious administrative error.

"It is not a treasure map, Mr. Brutus. It is a topographical survey of an archaeological site."

"Bah, shut your trap!" Brutus spat on the floor, the glob of saliva landing on a stack of old newspapers. "My boys saw you paying top coin at the Guild. You’re looking for gold, aren’t you? Hand over the map, and maybe we won’t break your fingers."

Brutus and his two cronies began to advance.

Rhea was ready. Three targets. Distance: 5 meters. Center target: neck exposed. Left target: weak left knee. Right target: gripping mace too tightly, slow recovery. She could end all three of them in less than three seconds.

Rhea took a step forward, her blades half-drawn.

"Back off," Rhea hissed, her voice like cold iron. "Or I’ll remove your legs at the shins."

Brutus laughed, a coarse, grating sound. "Ooh, the Bookworm hired a little girl as a bodyguard? You’ve got a sweet voice, sweetheart. Let’s see that face."

"Miss Red, wait," Arvid’s voice cut through the tension.

Rhea glanced back. "What? Let me take out the trash."

"Do not stain my floor with blood. The alkaline content is a nightmare to clean from between the floorboards," Arvid said calmly.

Arvid stepped out from behind the desk.

He—with his skeletal frame and shaky gait—walked past Rhea. He stood directly in front of Brutus, the giant thug. The physical disparity was comical. Brutus was twice his width and could have snapped Arvid like a dry twig.

"Mr. Brutus," Arvid said, adjusting his glasses. "If I recall correctly, your full name is Brutus of the Iron-Jaw Clan, is that correct?"

Brutus scowled. "How do you know my granddaddy’s clan name?"

"I read the census records for the slum districts," Arvid replied in a flat, clinical tone. "The Iron-Jaw Clan... a lineage famous for possessing a very specific, very rare genetic anomaly: Black Iron Powder Allergy."

Brutus blinked, his confusion momentarily overriding his aggression. "Huh?"

Arvid pointed to the spiked mace Brutus was holding.

"That mace... it’s made of a cheap black-iron alloy, isn’t it? Look at your hands, Brutus."

Brutus looked down at his grip. There were several red, itchy-looking spots on his knuckles. (In reality, it was just common eczema from a lack of bathing, but Brutus wasn’t an intellectual).

"That is the first sign," Arvid continued, his voice dropping into a sinister, mystical cadence. "Your grandfather died because he held the wrong weapon. His skin blistered, his flesh rotted from the inside, and eventually..." Arvid leaned in, his magnified eyes staring into Brutus’s soul. "...his genitals simply fell off."

"WHAT?!" Brutus turned deathly pale. He immediately dropped the mace. CLANG!

"And you," Arvid pointed to the second thug. "That tattoo on your arm... the symbol of the Southern Sea Dragon. Did you know that in Ancient Mythology, anyone bearing that mark is forbidden from stepping into a building whose door faces East before seven in the morning?"

Arvid pointed to the door. The wall clock read 06:15 AM.

"You have just violated an Ancestral Oath," Arvid whispered. "The Door-Guardian Spirit is currently attaching itself to your shadow. Tonight, when you sleep... it will slowly tighten its grip around your throat."

The second thug began to tremble. "B-Boss... I feel a draft! My shadow looks weird!"

"And you, the third one," Arvid looked at the last thug. "You... ah, you don’t have any interesting history. You’re just the illegitimate son of Baron Loid who was exiled for wetting the bed until age twelve."

The third thug’s face turned a violent shade of purple from embarrassment. "HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW THAT?!"

Arvid spread his thin, skeletal arms wide.

"This is my library. Within these walls are stored the histories of every stone, every street, and every person in this city."

Arvid stared Brutus down from behind his thick lenses.

"You want this map? Take it. But I have placed a Dust Pharaoh’s Hex upon the parchment. Anyone who touches it without a Doctorate in History will find their eyes turning to sand and their tongues swelling until they choke."

"Now... GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

Arvid’s shout cracked, ending in a high-pitched, pathetic squeak, followed by another coughing fit. UHUK! UHUK!

But the psychological effect was absolute.

The three muscle-bound thugs—men who believed in every superstition and feared every curse—looked at each other in pure horror. Brutus looked at his itchy hands, then at the "cursed" map on the table.

"Dammit! You’re a crazy warlock!" Brutus screamed.

"Let’s go! I’m not losing my ’equipment’ over a map!"

The three of them scrambled out of the library, nearly knocking each other over in their haste. They left their spiked mace vibrating on the floor.

BLAM.

The door slammed shut. Silence returned to the archives.

Arvid remained standing there, panting for breath. He reached into his pocket, pulled out an inhaler—a herbal Magitech device—and took a deep breath of the vapor.

Fuuuuuuuuh...

He turned to look at Rhea.

Rhea was still frozen in her combat stance, her hands on her daggers. Her jaw was slightly slack beneath her hood.

"They... they actually believed that?" Rhea asked, amazed.

"Stupid people are always afraid of what they do not understand," Arvid said, producing his handkerchief to wipe the cold sweat from his own brow. It turns out he was just as terrified as they were.

"And fortunately for us, they are very, very stupid."

"So... the curse was a lie?"

"Of course it was a lie. There is no magic in a piece of paper," Arvid picked up the thug’s mace with a look of disgust, using a rag to avoid direct contact, and tossed it into a trash bin. "It is just a standard topographical map."

Arvid returned to his desk and began packing his belongings into a large, worn leather satchel.

"It is 06:20 AM. we have wasted five minutes of daylight. Let’s move, Red."

Rhea watched the hunched back of the young man.

He was weak. He was sickly. He was a colossal nerd. But he had just routed three armed thugs using nothing but his mouth and historical trivia (plus a few creative lies).

Rhea offered a thin, lopsided smirk. She released her grip on her blades.

"Alright, Prof," Rhea said. "You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that."

"Courage is unnecessary when one possesses data," Arvid muttered as he tried to hoist his heavy bag onto his shoulder, nearly toppling over in the process.

Rhea let out a sigh of exasperation. She reached out and snatched the heavy satchel from Arvid’s back with one hand.

"Give me that. You just walk. Try not to die of a heart attack before we reach the city gates."

"Thank you. Be careful with that bag; there is a brass microscope inside."

The two of them walked out of the old library, heading toward the city gates and the dark silhouette of the Forbidden Forest.

The Muscle and the Mind.

The most unlikely pair in Aethelgard had just begun their journey.