Ellaine sat cross-legged on one of the curved marble benches in the library lounge, her boots hooked lazily around the edge as if she might slide off at any moment. The posture was casual, almost irreverent, but her eyes were sharp, focused on the translucent hologram hovering inches from her face.

  The blueprint rotated slowly, layers of runic text and schematic symbols unfolding and collapsing like a living thing.

  Valkyrie of Ragnarok (Grandine)

  The title alone carried weight. Even among Grandine-ranked blueprints, this one was infamous, not for its raw destructiveness, but for the sheer authority it represented. It was a blueprint that didn’t just enhance the user.

  It declared them.

  Ellaine rested her chin on her palm as the system readout updated.

  Blueprint Progress: 5 / 6

  War Cry (Diamond)

  AoE Buff

  ? Barbarian’s Roar (Gold)

  ? General’s Call (Silver)

  Divine Steed (Diamond)

  Summon

  ? Pegasus (Gold)

  ? Unicorn (Gold)

  Divine Aura (Diamond)

  Energy Enhancer

  ? Aura Charge (Silver)

  ? Spirit Drive (Silver)

  ? Overheat (Silver)

  Judgment Delivery (Diamond)

  Weapon Mastery

  ? Axe Mastery (Bronze)

  ? Arcadia Axe Art (Platinum)

  Valkyrie Axe (Diamond)

  Weapon

  ? War Chief’s Axe (Silver)

  ? Demonic Guillotine (Gold)

  Valkyrie’s Vow (Diamond)

  Authority

  ? UNFULFILLED

  Her finger flicked through the hologram, enlarging the final slot. The runes there were different from the others, less mechanical, more ceremonial. They didn’t describe a skill or an item so much as a concept.

  Authority-type records were always like that.

  They weren’t about what you could do.

  They were about what the world was forced to acknowledge when you acted.

  Ellaine exhaled softly.

  “It’s always the last one,” she murmured.

  Nearly a year.

  That was how long it had taken her to push the blueprint this far, three, if she counted the time since she’d first acquired it.

  She still remembered that day vividly.

  Back when she was barely scraping through early Silver rank, still uncertain of her footing in the library’s ecosystem, she’d entered a mid-tier tournament mostly for the experience. She hadn’t expected to win. Certainly hadn’t expected the reward.

  A sealed blueprint fragment. Grandine rank.

  Most people would have jumped on it immediately, chasing power far beyond their means.

  Ellaine hadn’t.

  She’d studied it.

  Then closed it.

  At the time, it had felt like trying to swallow a mountain whole. Completing even one Diamond component would’ve forced her growth into sharp, uneven spikes, dangerous, unstable. People who rushed like that either burned out… or shattered.

  So she did the opposite.

  She focused on herself.

  She refined her fundamentals. Expanded her record size naturally. Strengthened her control. Took missions that were just hard enough to force improvement, but never so hard that they relied on luck.

  Slow. Methodical. Clean.

  It paid off.

  By the time she returned to the Valkyrie blueprint seriously, she wasn’t a reckless rookie anymore. She was a recognized name, a “promising elite,” as the library rankings politely phrased it. Someone other bookkeepers watched carefully, measuring themselves against her pace.

  But progress had its limits.

  And she could feel it now.

  The invisible wall every long-term bookkeeper eventually encountered, the point where incremental improvement slowed, where effort alone no longer translated cleanly into growth.

  That was what this blueprint was for.

  Completion wouldn’t just give her strength.

  It would redefine her scale.

  Ellaine dismissed the projection for a moment and leaned back, eyes drifting up toward the towering shelves of the lounge. Endless spines stretched into the distance, each one a record of a life, a world, a decision that mattered somewhere.

  “All that work,” she muttered, “and it comes down to one stubborn vow.”

  Valkyrie’s Vow.

  An authority record tied to leadership, sacrifice, and acknowledged command. Not symbolic authority, real authority. The kind that altered how summoned forces responded. The kind that made enemies hesitate and allies align instinctively.

  And the worst part?

  It couldn’t be substituted.

  No clever material combinations. No stacking lower-ranked authorities. No loopholes.

  It had to be authentic.

  Which meant Valkyrie generals.

  Which meant specific worlds.

  Which meant timing she didn’t control.

  Her gaze flicked to the small system notice hovering unobtrusively at the edge of her vision.

  Library Token Request Status:

  Approved

  World Access Window: 3 Months

  Ellaine clicked her tongue.

  “Three months,” she repeated. “Of course.”

  Ruined worlds didn’t open on demand. They rotated, shifted, destabilized. Even with a library token, something most bookkeepers never touched in their entire careers, you didn’t get to choose when reality cooperated.

  She understood that.

  Didn’t have to like it.

  For now, all she could do was wait. Prepare. Optimize everything else so that when the window finally opened, she wouldn’t waste a single moment.

  Her fingers tightened briefly against the bench.

  She hadn’t come this far to stall at the finish line.

  And somewhere, far below her current level, in a completely different story, new variables were already moving.

  Ellaine didn’t know it yet.

  But the library was beginning to shift.

  And when it did, she intended to be ready.

  I gritted my teeth as the nurse stitched my wound, the dull pinch of the needle dragging me back into my body every time my thoughts threatened to drift. The antiseptic smell hung thick in the air, mixing with smoke that still clung to the ruins of the base. Somewhere down the hall, someone screamed, whether from pain or grief, I couldn’t tell.

  The attack was over.

  The base was still standing.

  But it felt wrong to call this surviving.

  Rows of injured agents lay on hastily assembled beds, some unconscious, others staring blankly at the ceiling as medics moved between them. A few beds were empty, sheets folded neatly at the corners. Those were the ones that hurt to look at. They meant the occupants wouldn’t be needing them again.

  A lot of agents had died.

  A lot more were wounded, some badly enough that they might never return to active duty.

  Reinforcements and rescue teams had arrived too late to stop the initial assault, but early enough to prevent total annihilation. The cultists had been wiped out or driven off, their ritual disrupted, their Frade god torn apart under concentrated fire. Even so, the damage was done. Entire wings of the base were caved in. Communication arrays were shattered. The armory was gone.

  The SDA base in Sector 7 wouldn’t be operational anytime soon.

  The nurse tied off the final stitch and pressed gauze against my side. “Try not to move too much,” she said, her voice tired but steady. “The wound isn’t deep, but you pushed yourself.”

  Before I could respond, a familiar presence stepped into my peripheral vision.

  “You good?”

  I looked up to see Dmitri standing beside the bed, his uniform torn and stained, one arm wrapped in a sling. He looked exhausted, dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes, but he was still standing. Still here.

  “I’ll live,” I replied.

  It wasn’t bravado. It was just… fact.

  Dmitri studied me for a moment, then gave a slow nod. “You did well,” he said. “Most recruits would’ve panicked in a situation like that. Some of the seniors did. But you fought back.”

  I let out a quiet breath, my gaze drifting past him to the ruined wall beyond. “Well,” I said, “I’m not afraid of dying.”

  He frowned slightly at that.

  Of course he would.

  He didn’t know what dying meant to me.

  To him, death was the end, names etched onto memorials, medals delivered to families, empty beds in infirmaries. To me, death was… an exit. A return. Back to the Cross-World Library. Back to safety, in a twisted sort of way.

  That didn’t mean I wanted to die.

  But fear? No. Fear didn’t work the same way for me anymore.

  Dmitri didn’t press the issue. Instead, he straightened. “You’ll be given enough time to recover. Higher-ups already approved leave for all surviving agents from this base. Focus on healing. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  He gave me one last look, something unreadable passing behind his eyes, then turned and walked away, disappearing into the chaos of medics and stretcher teams.

  The nurse finished bandaging my wound and stepped back. “You’re cleared to move,” she said. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

  I almost laughed at that.

  Once she left, I swung my legs off the bed and stood slowly, testing my balance. Pain flared, sharp but manageable. My slime stirred faintly within my shadow, responding to my condition, its passive healing already knitting the worst of the damage together.

  I was alive.

  But when I stepped outside the infirmary tent, reality hit harder than any cultist’s attack.

  The base was unrecognizable.

  Collapsed structures littered the grounds. Burn marks scarred the concrete. Defensive turrets lay twisted and broken, their barrels melted from overuse or torn apart by Frade claws. Agents moved through the wreckage in silence, some helping the wounded, others just… standing there, staring.

  My dormitory wing was gone.

  Not damaged.

  Gone.

  All that remained was a crater and fragments of reinforced steel.

  I stopped walking.

  So that was it.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  No room to return to. No familiar space to anchor myself. I felt oddly hollow as I turned away, my feet carrying me forward without direction. I wandered through the wreckage, past broken hallways and shattered training rooms, past places where I’d laughed, trained, complained, and grown.

  I may have survived.

  But I’d been powerless to stop any of it.

  That truth sat heavy in my chest.

  I clenched my fists as I walked, nails biting into my palms.

  I needed to do something.

  Simply growing stronger, slowly, safely, wasn’t enough anymore.

  This attack had made that painfully clear.

  I stopped near what remained of the shooting range, its walls half-collapsed, targets burned clean through. Without thinking, I summoned my book.

  The familiar weight settled into my hands, the purple cover warm beneath my fingers.

  I flipped through the pages until I reached the one that always made me pause.

  Hero’s Ring.

  A powerful artifact.

  And completely useless here.

  This world couldn’t support it.

  Artifacts like that had no anchor in this reality, no myth, no system, no conceptual foundation to justify their existence. Which meant the record was locked. Inactive.

  It wasn’t just the ring.

  Depending on the world, I could be stripped of everything.

  Weapons. Skills. Summons.

  All it took was the wrong set of rules.

  I exhaled slowly and closed the book.

  Up until now, I’d relied on records to bridge the gap. On borrowed power. On optimization and efficiency. I recorded abilities, learned them just enough to make them usable, then moved on.

  That approach had worked.

  But watching the base burn… watching agents die while I struggled just to keep up…

  It wasn’t enough anymore.

  If I wanted to survive, not just this world, but any world, I needed more than records.

  I needed fundamentals.

  I needed to learn how to fight.

  Not as a bookkeeper.

  Not as someone who could always fall back on an ability.

  But as myself.

  I looked out over the ruins one last time, committing the image to memory.

  This wasn’t just a setback.

  It was a warning.

  And I wasn’t going to ignore it again.

  Now that I was finally alone, with the low hum of the library’s ambient wards filling the silence, I leaned back into the lounge chair and pulled up the interface.

  Out of curiosity, I searched for Jayden Brise.

  I told myself it was just that, curiosity. Zoey rarely respected anyone, let alone a newcomer. If someone managed to earn even a fraction of her approval, there had to be something there. And besides… the library really did have far fewer men than women. It didn’t hurt to look.

  A holographic image resolved in front of me.

  “Huh.”

  He wasn’t bad.

  Not the frail, pale nerd archetype that seemed to make up half the male population of the library. His features were sharp enough to stand out, and the thin scar just above his right eye gave him an edge, something rough, almost dangerous. Like someone who’d been dragged through things he hadn’t walked away from cleanly.

  His build was decent. Lean, functional. Not someone who trained obsessively, but not weak either.

  “A bit thug-like,” I murmured. “I can see why he doesn’t fade into the background immediately.”

  I flicked my fingers, cycling through his basic profile, then his highlights.

  Story-dive footage played in accelerated fragments, ruined cities, burning skies, monsters collapsing into ash.

  He wasn’t a coward.

  That much was clear quickly.

  He hesitated sometimes. Second-guessed himself. But when it mattered, he moved. Took risks. Improvised when plans fell apart. He wasn’t elegant, and he definitely wasn’t a trained fighter, but he survived through sheer adaptability.

  Resourceful.

  Annoyingly so.

  Still, I frowned slightly.

  “That’s it?”

  Compared to others I’d seen rise quickly in the library, he lacked something obvious. No overwhelming talent. No absurd starting advantage. No absurd bloodline or pre-built combat doctrine. Even his demon lord phase, while visually impressive, felt… borrowed.

  I paused on a frame of him seated on a ruined throne, demonic aura coiling around him.

  “…I definitely preferred you like this,” I admitted quietly.

  As a demon lord, he had presence. Weight. The kind that made others hesitate before breathing too loudly in his presence. Stripped of that, he felt smaller. More ordinary.

  I scrubbed forward.

  More footage.

  Nothing stood out.

  If he didn’t make a move soon, if he didn’t change, people would forget about him. The library was ruthless like that. Attention was currency, and mediocrity, no matter how hard-earned, was invisible.

  With a faint sigh, I switched to his current story-dive.

  Modern fantasy world. Spectrum energy. SDA recruitment.

  “Let’s see what you’re doing now…”

  At first, it was boring.

  Training drills. Lectures. Shooting ranges. Getting beaten around by instructors and seniors alike. Nothing special. No explosive growth. No shocking moments that would make spectators lean forward in their seats.

  I was just about to close the feed when something caught my eye.

  I slowed the footage.

  Then slowed it again.

  “…What?”

  I leaned forward, eyes narrowing as I replayed the moment.

  Jayden stood alone, battered, bleeding slightly, fresh from a base-wide attack. Instead of resting, instead of chasing immediate power or recording something flashy, he opened his book.

  Not to activate a record.

  Not to summon anything.

  He was thinking.

  Scrolling. Reviewing. Comparing limitations.

  Then...

  My lips parted slightly.

  He looked… frustrated.

  Not the petulant frustration of someone failing.

  But the quiet, dangerous frustration of someone realizing the rules themselves were the problem.

  “What’s this idiot doing?” I muttered.

  I watched as he stared at an unusable artifact record, then closed his book with deliberate finality. As if he’d just come to a conclusion that scared him more than the attack itself.

  He wasn’t trying to grow faster.

  He wasn’t trying to cheat the system.

  He was questioning his entire approach.

  That made my fingers still.

  “…Oh.”

  I leaned back slowly, studying the feed with renewed interest.

  This wasn’t the mindset of someone trying to survive the next fight.

  It was the mindset of someone preparing for a future where survival wasn’t guaranteed, no matter how many records he owned.

  A wild card.

  Not loud. Not flashy.

  But dangerous in a way that didn’t announce itself.

  I exhaled softly, a faint smile tugging at the corner of my lips.

  “Zoey,” I murmured to myself, “you didn’t respect him for his strength, did you?”

  I glanced back at the screen, eyes sharp.

  “You respected him because he’s about to do something stupid.”

  And in the Cross-World Library...

  Those were always the ones worth watching.

  “Is this idiot serious?”

  Zoey’s voice was flat, but the way her eye twitched betrayed just how much restraint she was exercising. She leaned forward in her seat, elbows resting on her knees, a half-eaten slice of cake forgotten on the table beside her. The holographic screen in front of them replayed Jayden’s recent actions on a loop, him closing his book, turning away from the ruined base, and walking off alone with an expression that was far too calm for someone who had just survived a large-scale attack.

  Giselle, seated beside her, tilted her head slightly and watched the same scene with a far more neutral expression. “Serious?” she echoed. Then she shrugged, casual as ever. “Maybe going rogue is his thing.”

  Zoey shot her a sharp look. “Don’t say it like that makes sense.”

  Giselle gave a small smile. “It kind of does.”

  Zoey scoffed and leaned back, crossing her arms. “He’s in a structured world. Military chain of command. Clear progression paths. Trainers, missions, resources. And after one setback, he decides to brood dramatically and question the system?” She gestured at the screen. “That’s not ‘thinking ahead.’ That’s how you get yourself killed.”

  “Or how you stop relying on borrowed power,” Giselle replied calmly.

  That made Zoey pause.

  The screen shifted angles, showing Jayden wandering through the damaged corridors of the base earlier, agents being carried away on stretchers, walls blackened by scorch marks, bloodstains half-cleaned but still visible. His gaze lingered on none of it for long, but he didn’t look away either.

  “He survived,” Giselle continued. “But he couldn’t change the outcome. He couldn’t protect anyone. And worse, he realized that even with records, even with preparation, the world itself can decide what you’re allowed to use.”

  Zoey clicked her tongue. “That’s something every bookkeeper learns eventually.”

  “Yes,” Giselle agreed. “But not this early. And not this… clearly.”

  Zoey’s eyes narrowed as she watched Jayden open his book again in the replay, scrolling past abilities and items he couldn’t activate in that world. The Hero’s Ring flickered briefly on-screen before disappearing.

  “…He noticed the restriction,” Zoey muttered.

  “Noticed?” Giselle corrected gently. “He internalized it.”

  Silence settled between them for a moment, broken only by the low murmur of the library lounge. Other bookkeepers passed by, laughing, arguing, celebrating small victories from their own dives, none of them paying attention to the screen Zoey and Giselle were focused on.

  Zoey leaned forward again, chin resting on her knuckles. “Most people respond to that realization by hoarding. More records. More redundancies. Stronger artifacts.” Her lips curled slightly. “He didn’t.”

  “No,” Giselle said. “He responded by deciding he needs to learn how to fight.”

  Zoey let out a short, humorless laugh. “As if that’s easy.”

  “Nothing about him has been easy,” Giselle replied. “Not his start. Not his first world. Not the blueprint he chose.”

  At the mention of the blueprint, Zoey grimaced. “Don’t remind me. Demon Lord of Calamity.” She shook her head. “A Grandine blueprint for a Silver rookie. He really thought he could brute-force that.”

  “And yet,” Giselle said softly, “he didn’t abandon it.”

  Zoey fell quiet again.

  On-screen, Jayden exited the base entirely, disappearing into the city beyond. No dramatic music. No declaration. Just a quiet decision, made alone.

  “…He’s not chasing power,” Zoey finally said. “He’s chasing competence.”

  Giselle nodded. “That’s what makes him dangerous.”

  Zoey’s fingers drummed against her arm. “Or forgettable.”

  “Do you really think so?” Giselle asked, glancing at her.

  Zoey hesitated.

  If Jayden failed, if he stayed average, stayed cautious, stayed invisible, then yes. The library would move on. Someone else would clear a ruined world. Someone else would pick an absurd blueprint and actually complete it.

  But if he succeeded…

  “…No,” Zoey admitted quietly. “If he pulls this off, people won’t shut up about him.”

  A slow grin crept across her face, sharp and predatory. “Which is exactly why this pisses me off.”

  Giselle chuckled. “Because you can’t tell whether he’s about to crash and burn or rewrite the rules?”

  “Because he’s doing it without asking permission,” Zoey shot back. “I hate that.”

  Her gaze locked back onto the screen, eyes gleaming with reluctant interest.

  “Going rogue, my ass,” Zoey muttered. “This idiot’s laying foundations.”

  And in the Cross-World Library, foundations mattered far more than fireworks.

  There was no better way to learn how to fight than by fighting.

  That was the conclusion I arrived at after hours of pacing through ruined streets, stepping over cracked pavement and scorch marks left behind by Frades and Spectrum users alike. Training rooms were clean. Structured. Safe. They were designed to teach fundamentals, not survival. What I needed now wasn’t another instructor barking orders or another controlled exercise with rules and boundaries.

  I needed chaos.

  And chaos, in this world, was easy to find.

  Cultists preaching nonsense on street corners before detonating red energy in the air. Frades slithering out of dimensional ruptures in abandoned districts. Gangs of thugs emboldened by low-level Spectrum enhancers, thinking a little yellow energy made them kings of their block.

  I sought them out.

  Not recklessly, but deliberately.

  The first fight happened two days after the base attack. I tracked a group of cultists who had been marked as “low priority threats” by the SDA due to their lack of coordination. Five of them. Two red users, one blue, one yellow, and one who clearly didn’t know what he was doing but compensated with enthusiasm.

  I approached from the rooftops, heart pounding, red energy humming faintly beneath my skin.

  I didn’t plan.

  I reacted.

  A red beam tore past my shoulder the moment they noticed me. Instinct screamed, and I rolled off the ledge, barely cushioning the fall with yellow energy. Pain flared through my legs, but my body moved before my thoughts caught up. I fired back, wide, unfocused shots meant more to force movement than to hit.

  They scattered.

  That was when I realized something important.

  I wasn’t afraid.

  Not of them. Not of the pain. Not even of dying.

  Death here was temporary. Failure wasn’t.

  That realization stripped away hesitation in a way training never could.

  The fight devolved into a mess of half-formed strategies and raw reactions. I rushed one cultist, missed my shot, took a yellow-enhanced punch to the ribs that knocked the air out of me. My vision swam. My book burned hot against my chest, begging me to rely on recorded power.

  Instead, I growled and shoved back.

  When one of them nearly caved my skull in with a blue construct hammer, I summoned my slime for the first time outside of training. It burst from my shadow like living tar, wrapping around the cultist’s arm and yanking him off balance. I finished the fight seconds later, hands shaking, lungs burning.

  I won.

  Barely.

  I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt awake.

  From that point on, it became a pattern.

  I’d hear reports, unofficial ones, whispers on the street, chatter from scavengers and informants, and I’d move toward trouble instead of away from it. Sometimes it was a lone Frade prowling the edge of a district. Sometimes it was a pair of cultists trying to perform a summoning ritual in a basement that smelled like rot and incense.

  Sometimes it was just thugs.

  Those were the most dangerous, in their own way.

  They didn’t fight like agents. They didn’t telegraph their attacks or follow doctrine. They fought dirty. They fought desperate. And when they realized I wasn’t an easy target, they fought to kill.

  Each encounter forced me to adapt.

  When I fought from a distance, I learned quickly how unforgiving red energy was. Miss once, and the enemy closed the gap. Miss twice, and you were on the ground. I started adjusting my breathing, timing my shots with my pulse instead of panic. I learned to fire after dodging, not before. To aim where the enemy would be, not where they were.

  When I fought up close, yellow energy became my lifeline. It wasn’t enough to be strong, you had to know when to commit and when to disengage. I took more hits than I care to remember. Bruised knuckles. Cracked ribs. A concussion that left me seeing double for hours. Each injury taught me something training never did: my limits, and how close I could dance to them without falling off the edge.

  Hit-and-run tactics felt safer at first. Strike, retreat, reposition. But they demanded stamina and awareness. One wrong turn, one blocked escape route, and you were surrounded. I learned to read environments instead, where debris could be used as cover, where narrow alleys favored my smaller frame, where open ground meant death.

  Through it all, my slime was my anchor.

  I didn’t rely on it constantly. That was the rule I set for myself. It was a safety net, not a crutch. When things spiraled beyond control, when a Frade adapted faster than expected, or when cultists revealed abilities I hadn’t accounted for, I let it intervene. It dragged me out of kill zones. It absorbed blows I couldn’t. It healed me just enough to keep moving.

  Each time it did, I felt a mix of gratitude and irritation.

  I didn’t want to be saved.

  I wanted to understand.

  Obviously, learning a proper fighting style would have been more efficient. A trained instructor could have analyzed my movements, corrected my stance, optimized my energy flow. That would come later. I wasn’t rejecting that path.

  I was postponing it.

  Because before style, before technique, before optimization, there was something more fundamental I needed to uncover.

  My instincts.

  What came naturally when I stopped thinking?

  What movements did my body choose when my mind froze?

  What decisions did I make when there was no time to weigh options?

  Each fight was a test. Each victory or near-death experience peeled away another layer of uncertainty. Patterns began to emerge. I favored adaptability over specialization. I reacted faster when switching between ranges instead of committing to one. I trusted movement more than raw power. I didn’t dominate fights, I outlasted them.

  I wasn’t a striker.

  I wasn’t a tank.

  I was something in between. A survivor. A problem-solver. Someone who endured until the enemy made a mistake.

  And with every fight, every scar, every narrow escape, that realization settled deeper into my bones.

  This wasn’t reckless wandering.

  This was reconnaissance of myself.

  By the time I finally slowed down, breath fogging in the night air as I leaned against a shattered wall, I understood one thing with absolute clarity.

  When I finally chose a fighting style.

  It wouldn’t be one taught to me.

  It would be one I’d already bled for.