Thinking about the unbelievably sweet loot drop he'd gotten for squashing the "undying" cockroach last time, Kaelen searched beneath the shelves carefully once more, entirely unwilling to give up on his fantasy.
A few minutes later, Kaelen slumped back into his chair, utterly dejected.
He had practically crawled through the entirety of Sector 1 and Sector 2, only managing to mercilessly swat two unlucky house flies lingering near a window.
But crushing them didn't trigger a single System notification or grant any rewards.
In the end, Kaelen could only arrive at one logical conclusion: this paranoid AI was spouting absolute nonsense again.
An Emperor-Tier Beast in the library? How was that mathematically possible?
What exactly was an Emperor-Tier threat?
It was an apocalyptic existence even more terrifying than a Beast King!
In terms of sheer destructive output, an Emperor-Tier Rift Entity was a monster powerful enough to rival—or even brutally suppress—a human Grandmaster. If a creature like that actually sneezed inside this library, the entire city block would be leveled, and no one would escape alive.
At this thought, Kaelen couldn't be bothered to entertain his stupid-ass System anymore.
If there really is an Emperor-Tier monster sitting next to me, I wouldn't be able to escape with my current Half-Step stats anyway. We'd all be vaporized.
The more Kaelen thought about it, the more exhausted he became. How did he cross dimensions just to get stuck with an AI that had severe anxiety issues?
[Ding! An Emperor-Tier Entity has been detected. Host, why are you not fleeing for your life? Do you possess a death wish?]
[With the Host's current microscopic power level, you are completely unable to contend with an Emperor-Tier Beast!]
[Host, you must not overestimate your own pathetic abilities and throw your life away for nothing!]
Seeming to notice Kaelen's blatant refusal to run screaming from the building, the System's robotic tone grew intensely anxious.
It urged him on relentlessly, its digital voice even carrying a distinct hint of frustration at his suicidal lack of initiative.
Fucking dramatic moron...
Kaelen rolled his eyes, unable to stop himself from cursing inwardly.
Because of all the mental sirens blaring in his head, he had lost all focus and interest in reading. He angrily snapped the Seven-Star Void Step manual shut and tossed it onto the desk.
Seeing Kaelen close the book, a flash of crimson light glinted in the eyes of the small purple spider dangling silently on its thread just above his hair. As if disappointed, it swiftly scurried back up its silk line and vanished seamlessly into the dark crevices of the ceiling.
It finally shut up...
Kaelen walked out the back doors for a smoke break. When the System's alerts finally flatlined, he let out a heavy sigh of relief.
If that dumbass System had kept nagging him for another five minutes, he really would have suffered a mental breakdown.
In the blink of an eye, it was noon. Kaelen made a beeline for the cafeteria. If you weren't passionate about subsidized food in this economy, you had a few screws loose. As a dedicated slacker, Kaelen was almost always the first in line.
That degenerate Xander actually didn't show up for work all day.
Looks like he really went on a bender last night...
Kaelen didn't see a single trace of his wealthy coworker all the way until their shift ended late in the afternoon.
[The next morning.]
Xander finally appeared.
"What happened to you? Did you get your kidneys harvested in an alley?" Kaelen couldn't help but ask as he watched Xander literally limp through the library doors, looking pale as a ghost.
Don't tell me he actually fell for a corporate honey trap last night?
Xander had a look on his face like he had completely lost the will to live. "Don't even ask, man. I have the absolute worst luck in the universe."
Slumping over his desk, Xander explained exactly why he had been MIA the day before.
The night before last, Xander had indeed gone to The Platinum Mirage and even rented out a premium VIP suite with a very pretty hostess.
But before he could even order a drink, the entire club was violently raided by the Aether Enforcer Bureau.
He was dragged out in zip-ties, spent the entire night shivering in a cold holding cell, and it wasn't until the next afternoon that Chairman Vance—his furious father—personally came to bail him out.
After dragging him back to the family estate, the Chairman took off his Aether-infused leather belt and gave Xander a very thorough lesson in what "deep fatherly love" truly meant.
"My old man is ruthless! He reinforced the belt with Aether! He nearly beat me to death!" Xander grimaced, rubbing his back, his face a mask of pure misery.
"Tough love builds character, you know..." Kaelen comforted him verbally, putting a hand on his shoulder.
But inwardly, he was sneering. If I were your dad, I would've hit you even harder!
Xander's tragic weekend was just a minor, amusing interlude in Kaelen's laid-back life at the archives. Afterward, his routine returned to its usual peaceful rhythm.
Clock in, read forbidden martial arts, eat cheap food with gusto, practice swordsmanship in an alley after clocking out.
All on his own initiative—a true model of slacker self-discipline!
...
One quiet afternoon, Kaelen was reading a thick encyclopedia in Sector 1.
He was holding a heavy, holographic-bound book titled The Grimoire of Rift Entities.
According to the text, Rift Beasts came into being in a way similar to human Awakened: ordinary earthly animals would absorb ambient Astral Flux, forcibly activating a latent cosmic bloodline. This triggered a violent mutation, granting them a variety of terrifying, logic-defying abilities.
These abilities were bizarre and varied wildly in destructive scale.
There were fearsome beasts born with innate control over supernatural forces like hyper-winds, plasma fire, or void lightning. Some of the most horrifying high-tier beasts could even shapeshift into human form, possessing hyper-intelligence that allowed them to easily blend into human society and manipulate politics.
But the ones humanity feared most were the colossal beasts that possessed pure, unadulterated destructive power and hyper-violent temperaments. The appearance of such an entity near a human settlement invariably led to a mass-casualty disaster.
If a Star Beast at the King-Tier or Emperor-Tier breached the city shields, unless a human Grandmaster personally intervened, not even humanity's heaviest mechanized weaponry could stop them from turning the city into a graveyard.
"Hey, are you okay, sir?"
"Sir? What's wrong?!"
"There's... a spi... der..."
THUD!
"Kaelen! Hurry, get over here!"
Just as Kaelen was fully immersed in the terrifying lore of his book, Xander's panicked, high-pitched voice suddenly echoed from the adjacent Sector 2.
What did that idiot break now?
Kaelen frowned, dropped the heavy grimoire onto his desk, and quickly sprinted over to the next aisle.
"Sir, can you hear me? How are you feeling?!"
A middle-aged man in a business suit was lying flat on his back on the floor, and Xander was crouching beside him, shaking his shoulders in a total fluster.
Kaelen rushed closer and immediately saw that the man's face was turning a horrifying, necrotic shade of purple. He was violently foaming at the mouth, his eyes rolled back, and his entire body was convulsing uncontrollably.
Is he having a severe medical episode?
An Aether-overload seizure?
"Spi... spider..."
The middle-aged man managed to force out a single, raspy word before his eyes rolled completely back and he passed out cold.
Spider?
Kaelen froze for a second. His gaze instantly sharpened as he looked closely at the middle-aged man's neck.
Right on the man's jugular, there was a dark, pulsing purple patch of skin. The veins surrounding it looked like black webs creeping up his jawline. It looked incredibly unsettling.
Was he bitten by a mutated venomous spider?
Is this guy gonna wake up shooting webs like Spider-Man?
"What the hell are you spacing out for?! Call the medics!" Kaelen barked, kicking the dazed Xander in the shin to snap him out of it. He immediately hit the emergency comms on the wall to notify the library's medical and security staff.
A few tense minutes later, an emergency med-evac team arrived, loaded the violently seizing man onto an anti-grav stretcher, and rushed him to the central hospital.
After the chaos died down, the library's Enforcer guards cordoned off Sector 2 to interrogate them about the specifics of the situation.
"I have no idea what happened! He was just standing over there reading a history textbook. One minute he was totally fine, and the next he just hit the floor, convulsing and foaming at the mouth... It nearly gave me a heart attack," Xander explained to the security captain, his face pale and troubled.
"Aren't there security cameras on this aisle?" Kaelen couldn't help but interject, pointing to the ceiling corners.
The security captain's expression turned incredibly ugly. "The exact spot where he was standing is in a complete blind spot for our optical sensors."
The captain wiped sweat from his brow. He could only pray to the stars that this incident had absolutely nothing to do with the library's negligence. Otherwise, if the corporate management blamed him for a patron dying on site, he wouldn't just lose his cushy job—he'd be exiled to the wastelands.
"Kaelen, you don't think that guy is gonna croak, do you?"
After the guards left, Xander looked thoroughly shaken. The man's sudden, violent collapse had clearly terrified him.
The incident had happened right in his designated sector. If the man actually died, Xander would definitely be held accountable, and even his father's money might not save him from being fired and blacklisted.
"You're asking me? I'm an archivist, not a doctor," Kaelen rolled his eyes. "But he collapsed on your turf, so you better pray he has good insurance."
As he spoke, Kaelen's sharp gaze slowly swept across the dark corners of the library's vaulted ceiling.
A spider?
Did the man hallucinate from a stroke... or was he actually bitten by a spider?