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GUNTER AND I CAME RUSHING through the portal back to the Grand Library and smacked straight into Professor Booker! The momentum knocked the three of us to the floor in a tangled heap of arms and legs.
“Oooff! Professor,” Gunter exclaimed, trying to unwind himself from our human knot. “Have you been standing here this whole time? We've been gone for hours!”
“Oh! Well, I,” the professor sputtered, fumbling for words. “I was just so worried about you two that I was about to head into the portal myself and check on things!”
“But... the Easterbury Canal isn't a dangerous place. Why would you have been concerned?” I asked, quizzically.
“Why, the dragon of course! I wanted to be sure you made it out alright!” the professor answered, clearly becoming flustered.
Neither Gunter nor myself responded, but we exchanged puzzled glances that seemed to ask the same question: how did Professor Booker know about the dragon? We hadn't mentioned it to him. But before we could ponder the matter any further the professor spoke again.
“Come now fellows, we have more important things to worry about than this! What were you able to find?”
“Well, as you already know, we barely escaped the dragon. I'm also sorry to say that I think your house on the canals has been leveled. But, we were able to find another large section of the stained glass egg!”
“Excellent,” exclaimed the professor. “Come, let's add it to our collection. I've been assembling it while you two were gone!”
We followed him back into his office and saw that he had already reconstructed the base of the egg from the fragments we had found in the Ruins of Wookong. Taking the piece that we found atop the tower at City Hall, the professor carefully fixed it to what he had already built. Once this was done we were looking at roughly three-quarters of a repaired egg.
“We're making progress on this egg, but I don't see a connection between it and the Dominus Venari or the Wings of the Pathfinder,” I said.
“I agree with Jon,” Gunter added. “Maybe we're looking in the wrong direction?”
“Don't lose faith just yet boys, I think we're making progress, and that the egg is somehow connected to all of this. I was examining some of the dirt that the dragon left in the main hall and I managed to trace it to another server!”
“Really? Which one?” I asked.
“It's called the Undernest. If the dragon had been there before, it's possible he returned the stolen items to that location.”
“I'm not familiar with that server, but we'll head there next,” Gunter said.
“Well, you'll be pleased to know that the Grand Library maintains a connecting portal to the Undernest! I'll take you there immediately!” the professor said.
Once again, I exchanged a curious look with my companion and considered how odd it was that so many of these servers had private portals within the library. But Gunter only shrugged his shoulders and we followed the professor. At least with the dragon busy in another server, we wouldn't have to deal with that problem!