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Levi stood amidst the corpses, blood soaking his coat, breath slow but steady. He clenched and unclenched his fists, willing his heartbeat to slow. The last few minutes had been a blur of violence and adrenaline. Now, only silence and the soft creak of bloodied floorboards remained.
Calm. He needed to stay calm. Velgrin was on his way, and until then, he had to deal with the other issue in the room.
The girl.
Princess.
Potential Patron Number Two.
And a guaranteed migraine wrapped in royal velvet.
Levi closed his eyes, exhaling. The moment the rebels mentioned her title, he felt the stress clamping behind his forehead. Royalty meant complications. Politics. Newspapers. Wars if handled poorly. And worst of all, she was now looking at him like a knight from a bedtime story.
He turned to her.
She was still kneeling on the ground, forehead bleeding slightly from her earlier bow, but her posture was rigid. Respectful. Hopeful.
"I need to ask," Levi began, his tone carefully even. "Why do you want to become my disciple?"
Celine raised her head, her violet eyes filled with fierce resolve. "I want to become stronger. Strong enough to protect everyone."
Levi blinked.
What? What the hell is going on in this girl's head? She's a princess, right? Shouldn't she be trained in proper knightly logic and basic politics? Did no one teach her nuance?
He frowned slightly. "And who exactly is 'everyone'?"
She didn't hesitate. "Those who are weaker than me."
Levi stared at her.
Ah. There it is. That idealistic, knight-in-shining-armor delusion.
He folded his arms and took a slow step closer. "So if those rebels were weaker than you, would you have protected them?"
Celine's expression cracked. "No, I—"
"Then who do you truly want to protect? The people who benefit you? Those who worship you? Or just the ones that fit into your neat little image of 'good'?"
"I—" Her voice faltered. The words caught in her throat like splinters. For the first time, doubt flickered behind those violet eyes.
Levi watched her struggle for a moment, then shifted his weight. "You know what your problem is? You think strength is about being able to save everyone. It's not. That's a fantasy. A really stupid one."
She looked up at him, confusion mixing with hurt.
"Let me ask you something else," Levi continued. "Say you're strong enough to save a hundred people. But saving them means sacrificing one innocent person. Do you do it?"
Celine opened her mouth, then closed it.
"Or here's another one," Levi said. "Two people are drowning. One's a child. The other's a doctor who can save a thousand lives. You can only save one. Who do you pick?"
"I'd save both," she said quickly.
"You can't. You're not strong enough. That's the point."
Her jaw tightened. "Then I'd get stronger until I could."
Levi let out a short, dry laugh. "Yeah, that's what everyone says. But the world doesn't wait for you to level up. People die while you're training. They die while you're sleeping. They die because you chose to save someone else instead."
Celine's hands curled into fists. "So what, I should just give up? Stop trying?"
"No. You should stop lying to yourself about what 'protecting everyone' actually means." He gestured at the corpses around them. "These guys? They had families. Friends. People who cared about them. And I killed them. Does that make me evil?"
She hesitated. "They were trying to kill you."
"Exactly. Context matters. But you didn't say you wanted to protect 'the innocent' or 'the deserving.' You said everyone. That word means something."
Celine looked down at her hands. Blood from the ropes had left red marks on her wrists. "I just want to be strong enough that people don't have to suffer."
"That's not how the world works. Someone's always suffering. You can't fix that."
"Then what's the point?" Her voice cracked slightly. "If I can't save everyone, why even try?"
Levi sighed and let the silence settle for a moment. Then he walked over to one of the corpses and picked up a broken sword, snapped at the hilt, stained with gore. Without fanfare, he used the jagged edge to slice through the ropes binding her hands.
She flinched slightly as they fell away.
"There. You're free," he said simply.
Celine stood slowly, rubbing at her wrists. She winced, but her eyes remained locked on his.
Levi dusted off his coat, which didn't help much. The blood had already dried into the seams. "Let's start over. Formal introductions."
"Yes," she said quickly. "My name is Celine von Revola. I am the second daughter of King William von Revola the Third. I'm a first-year student of Henderson Academy's Warrior Department. My primary weapon is the sword."
She straightened, then bowed. Perfect etiquette.
Levi raised an eyebrow at the mention of royalty.
Yup. Headache confirmed.
He responded with a nod and the faintest smile.
"My name is Levi. Levi Warwick. I am the Librarian of the Library of Noctis."
Celine froze.
Her eyes widened. Her breath hitched. "You... a Librarian?"
She clearly couldn't hide her shock.
Levi watched her internal struggle with mild amusement.
Here we go.
A divine warrior who fights like a calamity, casually slaughters rebels, and carries himself like a battle-hardened general calls himself a librarian.
Celine looked like she was trying to do math while being struck by lightning.
"A Sixth-Tier Grandmaster Warrior runs a library?" she asked, blinking.
Levi's lips twitched slightly. He didn't correct her misunderstanding. Let her think what she wanted. At this point, it would be more work to clarify than to let the legend build itself.
Still, he sighed internally.
System, what kind of ridiculous play are you writing here?
He glanced back at the corpses strewn around the room, the slowly congealing pools of blood, and the shaken girl who now swore loyalty to a job title he barely understood himself.
He had killed five men with a shoe.
Now a princess wanted to be his disciple.
And Velgrin, his resident fire wizard, was on his way to cremate the evidence.
Yep. Another normal day at the library.
Levi exhaled slowly, letting the last remnants of tension drain from his shoulders. The silence between him and the girl, Princess Celine von Revola, was thick but not hostile. Still, she kept stealing glances at him like a student trying to decipher a riddle far above her level. Levi knew that look. He'd seen it often enough back in the day.
A day he hadn't revisited in a long, long time.
She's watching me like I'm some kind of living ideal. I should clarify that I'm not. But if I break the illusion now, things will only get more complicated.
Levi moved to the one clean chair left in the room, kicked some blood-soaked cloth off the seat, and sat down with a sigh. He rested his elbows on his knees and looked at Celine again.
She was still standing. Straight-backed. Formal. Her blood-smeared face calm, but her eyes betrayed the swirl of thoughts behind them.
Levi pinched the bridge of his nose.
Alright, how the hell did I end up here?
He traced the events backward in his mind. One minute he was following a glowing arrow through garbage-smelling alleyways, the next he was shoe-bludgeoning rebels and receiving a reverent bow from royalty.
The absurdity of it all might've been funny if not for the blood drying under his nails.
He rubbed his temples.
He couldn't kill her. That much was clear. She was a Second Patron. The System had flagged her as such. That meant she was tied to the Library now, in ways even Levi didn't fully understand.
More than that, he could sense something in her. A fracture. Not just the physical bruises, though those were bad enough. Something deeper. A splinter of doubt in the middle of all that righteous noise she called conviction.
He'd seen that look before.
Back in his old life.
Before he was Levi the Librarian of Noctis.
Before the black coat and sarcastic System and dimensional murder-shoes.
Before all of it.
He was a therapist.
I haven't thought about that in years.
Not a fancy one. Just licensed. Certified. He'd worked at a clinic in a mid-sized city, the kind of place with peeling paint in the waiting room and motivational posters that nobody read. His clients were the usual: abused kids, veterans with PTSD, mothers who'd lost children, addicts trying to stay clean for the third or fourth time.
He'd been good at his job. At least, people told him that. He knew how to listen. How to validate without fixing. How to sit with someone's pain without flinching.
But nobody tells you what it does to you.
The first year was fine. He'd felt useful. Important, even. Someone would come in shattered and leave with a little less weight on their shoulders. That felt like enough.
The second year, he started noticing patterns. The same stories. Different faces, same trauma. Fathers who hit. Mothers who drank. Boyfriends who raped. Wars that never really ended.
By the third year, he stopped being surprised.
By the fourth, he stopped feeling much of anything.
It wasn't one moment. No dramatic breaking point. Just a slow erosion. Like water wearing down stone.
He'd sit across from someone sobbing, telling him how their uncle touched them when they were seven, and he'd nod. Say the right things. Offer the right validation.
But inside? Nothing.
Just a hollow space where empathy used to be.
He remembered one session in particular. A teenage girl, maybe sixteen. She'd been cutting herself for two years. Deep enough to leave scars that would never fully fade. She sat across from him, sleeves rolled up, showing him the evidence like she was confessing to a crime.
"Do you think I'm crazy?" she'd asked.
And Levi had looked at her with eyes that felt like glass. "No. You're coping the only way you know how."
The words were right. The tone was right. The response was textbook perfect.
But he felt nothing.
No sympathy. No sadness. No anger at the world that had failed her.
Just empty professionalism.
She'd left that session feeling heard. She told him so. Thanked him.
And Levi sat in his office afterward, staring at his hands, wondering when he'd stopped being human.
He quit three weeks later.
Sent his resignation email at two in the morning, turned off his phone, and sat in his apartment for six days straight without leaving. His colleagues called it burnout. His friends called it a breakdown. His mother called it a phase.
None of them understood.
It wasn't that he couldn't do the job anymore. He could. He was still technically skilled. Still knew the right questions to ask, the right validations to give, the right silences to hold.
But he'd become a machine.
A therapy robot running on autopilot while the person inside him slowly died.
So he left.
Took his savings. Moved across the country. Started writing fiction instead. Web novels. Romance, mostly. Melodramatic fluff about people who loved each other and saved each other and lived happily ever after.
It was the opposite of everything he'd done before.
And for a while, it helped.
Until the Library found him.
Or he found it.
He still wasn't sure which.
Levi blinked, pulling himself back to the present. Celine was still standing there, waiting. Patient. Respectful.
He studied her face.
The way her jaw was set. The way her fingers curled into fists at her sides. The way her eyes kept darting to the corpses and then back to him.
She's holding it together by sheer willpower. But she's cracking.
He knew that look. He'd seen it a hundred times before.
Someone trying to be strong when everything inside them was screaming to break.
Levi leaned back in the chair, crossing one leg over the other.
"You're in shock," he said quietly.
Celine blinked. "I'm fine."
"No, you're not."
Her expression tightened. "I said I'm fine."
Levi didn't argue. He just watched her.
After a moment, her shoulders sagged slightly. "I've never seen anyone die before. Not like that."
"That's normal."
"I should be stronger than this."
"Also normal."
She looked at him, confusion flickering across her face. "How are you so calm?"
Levi gave a faint, humorless smile. "Practice."
He stood slowly, brushing off his coat. Blood flaked onto the floor. "Listen. You're not going to process this right now. Your brain won't let you. It's too fresh. Too raw. So for now, you're going to compartmentalize. Push it down. Deal with it later."
Celine's eyes widened slightly. "How did you—"
"Because that's what everyone does after their first real violence. You lock it away. Tell yourself you're fine. Keep moving."
He walked toward the window, looking out at the alley below. "And later, when you're alone, it'll hit you. Could be tonight. Could be next week. But it'll come."
She was quiet for a moment. "What do I do when it does?"
Levi turned back to her. "You let it happen. You don't fight it. You don't try to be strong. You just let yourself feel it."
"That sounds weak."
"It's not."
Celine frowned. "You sound like a therapist."
Levi's lips twitched. "Yeah. Funny how that works."
Before she could ask what he meant, the sound of footsteps echoed from outside. Heavy. Deliberate.
Levi straightened. "That'll be Velgrin."
Celine tensed. "The Grandmaster?"
"Yeah. He's here to clean up."
She looked at the bodies. "Clean up?"
"Fire. Lots of it."
Her face went pale.
Levi walked past her toward the door. "Stay here. Don't touch anything. And when he asks, you were unconscious the whole time. Got it?"
"But—"
"Got it?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "Yes."
"Good."