Hestia's library in the Hearth Mansion was like a labyrinth of books – Hestia enjoyed reading human books and, despite her colossal debt to Hephaestus, she had found money to buy hundreds of them as well as time to read them. From the floor to the ceiling, everything from leather-bound tomes to single sheets of parchment were piled high. There didn't seem to be an obvious rhyme or reason to the ordering of the books, it was really as though she'd just dropped it after she'd read it.

But Bell knew what he was looking for.

Back in their old home under the church, Bell had noticed Hestia's poring over a particular book that was clearly a translation tool from when she first descended to Gekai. In the early days of their partnership, Hestia was still using it to transcribe the hieroglyphs on Bell's back into Koine so he could read his status. She had managed to rescue it from the catastrophic ruins of the church, and Bell had finally decided he had need of it.

All at once, he spotted it; large and very thick with a purple leather cover. Without a second thought, Bell grabbed that book, shoved it into the satchel at his hip and left the mansion in some haste.

It wasn't that Bell was angry, no, quite the opposite in fact. He could never resent his Goddess – after all, Hestia had given him everything. But the fact was not lost on him that while he was trying to catch up to her level, she was still growing too. Perhaps he would never be able to close the gap between them. This knowledge was forging his mindset into one of impatience and impetuousness, like so many High Smith hammer blows. He was determined to find out why he was able to grow so quickly, so as to allow him to harness it and accelerate his growth even more.

And he was sure that his first skill slot had something to do with it.

He had believed his Goddess the first time she claimed to have slipped when transcribing his status, leaving a smudge in his first skill slot. However, when she hesitantly asked Bell if she could tell him his status without writing it down, coupled with the consequent occasions that her penmanship had failed her, Bell's suspicions were very much aroused.

The problem he faced, however, was that he couldn't understand a single hieroglyph, so even if he was somehow able to read the status on his own back, he wouldn't be able to make sense of what he saw; hence his borrowing of Hestia's book.

Bell took a shortcut through an alleyway, and made his way up the main street to the Guild HQ, all the while imagining how he was going to ask his advisor to assist him.

"Miss Eina WOULD help me, right?" he wondered aloud.

"I would help you what, Bell?" a softly-spoken voice from beside him asked. In his bubble of thought he had failed to notice the very girl in question approaching him to his right.

Eina was dressed in her guild uniform, and, judging by the ungodly hour of the morning that Bell had skulked out of the Hearth Mansion she was on her way in to work. She looked as pretty as ever, Bell thought, her ears ending in a slight point poking past her brown hair – a clear indicator of her half-elven blood.

"W-well, y-you see, Miss… Miss Eina…" Bell began in earnest, tripping over his words as he went. "I need to ask a favour!" he continued, earning a series of quick successive blinks from his advisor before proffering the translation book to her.