He was digging through a dumpster behind a library.
Zane's hands dragged away another trash bag from the many that lay in the bin, his legs diving even deeper into the dumpster. Beelzebub wasn't even mad at his host for doing such a thing. He was just concerned. The demon had sensed something was odd about Zane around a week ago. The two were sitting in a club of sorts in Oak. For some reason or another the young lady who was in charge of the music selection put on a certain foreign band known as "Nickleback". Upon hearing this band Zane commented that the song sounded pretty good. That was when Beelzebub knew something was up. While the demon certainly had doubts about Zane's taste in the past there was NO way that Zane had taste THAT bad. Something was wrong.
And here Zane was a week or two later in the middle of a dumpster. "Zane, I'm worried about you. Please get out of the dumpster. I know I call you a piece of trash from time to time but I do not mean it that literally." Zane stopped digging through for a moment. It seemed he finally heard Beelzebub. "There's something very, very valuable in this dumpster. I know it because I saw that dumb kid who works at the library throw it in here the other night." As Zane's hands went back to moving away garbage his fingers touched upon the cover a book. "Ah! Here it is!" Zane exclaimed out loud, not even bothering to just do it in his head as he usually did with Beelzebub. Grabbing the mostly clean book Zane's legs propelled him out of the dumpster with a rather impressive jump. It was a shame he landed on his face on the way out.
Getting up and dusting himself off, Zane looked down at the book to confirm if the symbols he saw on the cover were correct. Opening up the pages he found similar characters. "You did ALL of that for a book made of unreadable windings? Oh no... it's worse than I thought." Zane placed the book in his coat pocket and walked out onto the streets of Hargeon, talking in his mind to Beelzebub as he did so. "This book is a lot more interesting than you think, Beelzebub. Lemme tell you a little story..." Beelzebub already had a feeling this would be rather long winded. "Let me guess. You're going to start off by saying it was a day in Baska like any other, you're going to mention your childhood crush at some point early on due to the fact you still cannot let it go, you'll make mention of how you used to be an elf - a detail I still doubt - and you'll end the story on some grand moral that wasn't even the focus of the tale in the first place."
"..."
"..."
"So here's how it goes. It was your average day in Baska. I was working the fields in my family farm. I finally manage to finish up the day's quota so I decide to go into town to find the girl I liked. Anyways, there's this elven man who comes up to me in the town square as I'm heading towards where all of us kids would usually hang out. He saw my elven ears and assumed I would be more willing to help him, same race and all that." Beelzebub made a fake-snoring noise in an attempt to get Zane to think he wasn't listening so that the story could end there. It didn't work. "Anyways, this man was looking for the mayor's office. I pointed him in the direction of the place. But I was curious about the book he was holding. It had some strange symbols on the cover, stuff I'd never seen before. He explained to me that they're remnants of a lost civilization - or so scholars believe anyways - and that he knew that scholars and other rich men would often seek these kind of books out in an attempt to crack the codes they contain."
"Wait a second..." Beelzebub was starting to get an idea of where Zane was going with this. "So I guess the moral of the story is to always try to finish farm work early. And also that we need to scurry on over to the local lord's office and sell the hell outta this book."
In about an hour's time Zane had been to a few locations throughout Hargeon. He wasn't even allowed in the mayor's office - something about how his eyepatch made him look like a pirate. Apparently they didn't like pirates much here. Made sense for a port town. Zane also tried a different library but none of the people there knew about the story of the texts. All of them just saw it as nothing but scribbles and doubted Zane's tale about them being worth something. Zane had visited just about every place he could sell something like this. It seemed there was no hope. But Zane wouldn't be giving up anytime soon. He dove through a goddamn dumpster to get this book and he wasn't planning on letting this matter go.
It was the late afternoon now. A small booth stood in one of the parks of Hargeon. A blonde man with an eyepatch stood behind it, a book with a symbol on the cover right in front of him. "Come purchase these ancient texts! What secrets could they hold? The key to a lost technology that could change the world? Directions to a pile of treasure? For only a modestly high amount of jewels this valuable piece of history could be yours!" Zane cried out towards the people in the park, many of them passing by with a glimmer of some interest but not nearly enough to actually check. To most he just seemed like a snake oil salesman. A few people had come to check out the book in the past half hour or so but all of them soon turned away once Zane gave more details. "Do you really think you'll be able to sell this, Zane? Are you sure that guy in Baska wasn't just insane?"
"This is DEFINITELY worth something Beelzebub. And we're going to sell it today. No matter what it takes..."