Chapter 4: Chapter 3: The three legacies
Looking at the map at a low angle of about 30 degrees from the direction of the employee's building, the words "Mbmstlib13" appeared when lining up the gaps in the shading of the map.
Dividing up the words, he got M, bmst, lib, and 13. The only text that had some semblance of a clue was "lib", which likely meant that the location is somewhere in the library. As for M, bmst and 13, he had a feeling he would understand when he arrives at the library.
He went to the dining area, grabbed several pieces of flavored bread and headed to the library.
Everything in the library looked like before; a long wooden table split the library into two sections. In the two sections, there was a table in each corner. There were three floors, and one can look down from the second and third floors to the central area. All the walls were filled with books, parchments, and scrolls of various materials, shapes and sizes. Some of them even had chains that bound them to the shelves.
Xylos had some suspicions that the steganography might be pointing to one of those books. From the memory he received, the library had a variety of books many were magical in nature only readable to those that have a matching core; some are even antagonistic causing harm to those of the opposing magic system; some could even pull in a reader (both figuratively and literally) into the book and try to convert or scare them.
Xylos really hoped that the thing he was looking for isn't one of those. He felt that the words "bmst" was an abbreviation for a book. He searched the library for most of the afternoon. Whenever he felt hungry, he would eat half of the bread and keep going.
At the end of the day, he found three potential books. The first one was a book called "Bryant's mystical spectral tarots", the second was a hardcover book with the words "bmst" written on all surfaces with a keyhole illustrated on the front cover, and the third was a chained book called "Beryl's musical scores and travels."
The only reason he recalled those books was that the authors seem to have tried really hard to come up with meaningful names using B, M, S, and T as the letters for starting a word.
He went through the first book and it was a personal illustration of all the major and minor arcana of what looked like a tarot deck each depicting a personification of worldly constants such as Death, Stars, Sun, Moon, Key, Mana, and Life.
It was a beautiful art book that seemed to encompass all aspects of life. Each card also had a rune near the bottom of the page. When he touched an image, it had a texture relative to what was drawn. For example, the moon would feel cool and solid to the touch, grass can either feel rough as if they are drying up or flexible as if it was fresh and vibrant. For a moment, Xylos even felt that he smelled something from one of the images. He even had a moment, where he could swear that he saw one of the more provocative female personifications winked at him as he was flipping through the pages.
He was completely engrossed in the artbook; drawn in by the texture and the feeling that the image is alive. He didn't notice that every time he flipped a page, the rune on the back page would fade out for a moment before appearing again slightly dimmer than before.
When he finished reading the book, he felt a rush of heat flow from his chest. It surprised him at first but on further inspection, nothing seems to have changed about his state. It felt similar to a rush that happened when a person pulled themselves out of a state of concentration and just realized that the room was hotter than before.
He put the artbook aside and opened the book titled "bmst," the moment he touched it he felt mana flow into him and reflect back after reaching his core. As it happened, he almost threw away the book out of fear. This was one of the magic books that checked if the reader had a matching magic system before it would show its contents. Luckily, it wasn't one of those books that attacked the reader if he or she wasn't.
As he expected, when he opened the book every page either had a single word "bmst" on it or was blank. The illustrated keyhole on the page looked suspicious and a thought came to his mind that maybe if he drew a "key" rune depicted in the previous book and pressed it against the lock the contents would appear or something would happen.
Thus, he took a piece of rune paper, folded it four times so it could fit in the palm of his hand and then drew the "key" rune from the artbook on it. Sadly, he didn't feel anything when the rune was drawn. Regardless, he pressed the piece of paper at the keyhole hoping for something to happen. He waited for a few minutes...
and then some more...
but as he somewhat expected...
nothing happened...without a second thought, he drew the words "Key" vertically on another folded piece of rune paper. The moment he compiled the spell using his system, the piece of paper started glowing; at the same time, the "bmst" book seems to glow with the same color.
Xylos cautiously pushed the glowing "key" rune into the illustrated keyhole. It went right in and created an audible click before the paper dissipated into the air.
Xylos watched the book for a moment before hesitantly opened the book. He flipped to a random page noticed a blank page, however this time something that looked like an ink figurine appeared on the page. It performed a series of eloquent movements; some looked like a dance; some looked like a stage performance, and some even looked like fighting and grappling moves. Each action caused the page to fill up with various things such as fire, stars, spirits of various colors and shapes, plants, and small to large animals. Once the page was filled with things the page would automatically flip over.
The ink figurine performed from page to page, creating all sorts of things until it stopped unwillingly at the final page before it looked up and looked at Xylos with an abstract smile...then it abruptly jumped out of the page toward his face. Xylos reeled back in surprise only to see the figurine vanish before reaching him. He immediately inspected himself to make sure that nothing happened to his body or core. To his relief, everything was the same.
It didn't seem like a coincidence that both books were magical in one way or another. He promptly put the "bmst" book away; he had a feeling it was like those mischevious books that liked surprising incompatible readers.
He made his way to the chained book titled "Beryl's musical scores and travels" on the second floor of the library. Standing some distance away, he inspected the book. Slowly but surely, some sort of music started coming out of the book. It started with a slow flute melody before the sound of a piano, a trumpet, and a violin joined in and built a fast-paced epic; it sounded like a person setting out for a grand adventure for the first time.
The longer he listened to it, the louder the music became until it drowned out everything in the library. He tried to pull away but the felt the music resonate comfortably inside his body and he closed his eyes to take in the feeling. He only did so because he felt his body rejuvenating with each beat, tone, and rhythm from the music. Finally, it seemed to evoke the image of rhythmically dancing figures and calm shifting landscapes in his mind-eye. He felt powerful and unrestrained, indulging in a feeling of comfort and boundlessness.
He didn't know how much time passed but when the music faded he opened his eyes, he found himself standing in the center of a large clearing surrounded by tall trees on all sides.
"Where am I now...?"
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
eextreme
eextreme Trying to engage all five sense in the story. Let me know how I'm doing with it (^_^)