"Not reading through all this horseshit," Faustite mumbled to himself. He stood in the entry arch to the Negaverse's library, whose shelves spanned the entirety of the cavernous area. Numerous desks were laid out as well, clearly added long after the library was built, or perhaps replacing the desks that were now long gone and rotted. Faustite skirted a few of them as he walked further into the library, his eyes drawn up toward the vaulted ceilings with their dramatic lanterns that hung from chains. It was an intimidating space, one that he had no interest or intention of visiting as a General, owing in part to his propensity to set books on fire. But beyond that, he simply hadn't had the time.

Now that he did, Faustite found himself begrudgingly trudging through the area for the library may have information available to him that wasn't collated onto the tablets. As far as he knew, there wasn't much of a project for that at present, though he had half a mind to put his Mauvians to work digitally transcribing all the legible works here so officers could keyword search without spending twenty hours looking through books that didn't actually concern them.

Faustite came armed with numerous topics on which he required information. The easier of them were, hopefully, some insights or tips on how to do his job better. More specifically, he would've liked to find a combat manual that pertained to the strangely shaped sword that was now in his possession. If he could fight worth a s**t with it, then he'd have an excellent excuse to mount some offensives in Destiny City and raise hell.

Instead, he had no ******** clue how to use the damned thing. And it hurt his wrist.

The other topic of his search was on artifacts of old, specifically anything tied to the Cosmos. Cosmos Knights had become rarer to find of late, so he couldn't coerce information out of them, but the Negaverse might already have something on this topic. If there was record anywhere of Velvet, or Velvet's shield glove bracelet, then Faustite intended to find it and learn how to modify it to better fit his purposes.

Regrettably, Faustite had no choice but to pick a corner of the library and start combing through books. He took up stack after stack, balancing them in his arms after he donned his cincher, and fairly covered one of the long tables with them. With so few others in the room to disturb his search, Faustite bogarted a second table to use as the 'discard' pile, then began leafing through the pages of each book he'd tried as he stood next to the table. Sometimes he remained in place, sometimes he paced, sometimes he collapsed into one of the chairs with a dramatic sigh and the back of a hand thrown over his eyes for how wearisome the search soon became.

But it had to be done, else he would be all but required to go to his Mauvians and ask them to do the searching. And he could already hear Tama admonishing him for not being thorough enough, or for simply being an idiot.

Faustite had gotten to filling the second desk halfway before he decided that the book in his hand would be the last one before a break. This one had promise, as it was a history book on earth's military combat and thus nothing so different from what he would find in a normal library, and it had a footnote mention on a sword that looked similar to the one in his possession. As he turned the page, however, a folded page fluttered out of the book and landed in his lap. Curious, Faustite turned the book around and laid it to rest on its open spine while he took up the page from before. As he unfolded it, he realized it was supposed to be a scroll that simply got smashed between the pages of the other book. As he skimmed through it, it became clear that they weren't related topics.

What was strangest was that it spoke of fire in a manipulable way — and not a simple way that any agent could achieve, either. Certainly no plebeian human could use themselves to generate fire like this, and though it also had little to do with his weapon, Faustite was fascinated by it. Perhaps with a little work and imagination, he could make use of such a technique.

But just as he finished reading the scroll, it caught fire and began to disintegrate in his grasp. No amount of blowing on it or hastily batting the paper had slowed it down, and soon enough, he had a perfect pile of ash sitting before him. Vexed, he decided it was time to take that break now.

He'd send a Lieutenant to clean it up later.