PAF 05

Chapter 5

“Ah…”

Suddenly, a broad palm blocked my field of vision, forcing me to freeze mid-step. It was the Crown Prince’s large, calloused hand covering my eyes. Startled, I batted his hand away and looked up. His clear, jewel-like turquoise eyes were fixed on me with an intense, unreadable gaze.

“You’re taking me with you, right?”

Having correctly read my expression, he smiled brightly as if permission had already been granted, long before I could utter a single word. Then, without warning, he gently clasped my right hand in his.

That hand held my gaze for a long time. It was a hand mapped with heavy calluses—an impossible sight for a pampered royal who had lived a life of absolute luxury. Here and there, his skin was marked by faded scars.

As I stared blankly at a particularly prominent burn scar near his wrist, I failed to react in time to stop him from lifting my hand and pressing his warm lips against the back of it.

He held me like something impossibly fragile—something precious he never intended to let go of.

His touch was so ridiculously gentle it was almost ticklish.

“Wh-what are you doing?!” I stammered, my heart skipping an embarrassing beat.

The Crown Prince looked up, his lips lingering just millimeters above my skin, a soft smirk gracing his features. “Why? We’re in the same boat now, aren’t we?”

“Don’t touch me like we’re close!”

My face flushed bright crimson, and I yanked my hand back as if I had been burned. The exact spot where his lips had touched tingled with a lingering heat that made my breath catch.

“I have zero business getting cozy with the villain who interfered with my work at every single turn!”

“Villain?” He chuckled smoothly, tilting his head. “Ah, but I’m not the Crown Prince you knew.”

While frantically flipping through the pages of the Archive to initiate our extraction sequence, I shot him a sharp glare. “You were the one who claimed you were just role-playing for your job, weren’t you?”

“…”

“Besides, even if I were the real Crown Prince, I didn’t actually do anything to you in this timeline, did I?” He stepped closer, towering over me with an effortlessly charm. “Isn’t that right?”

The bastard actually had a point. Back when I was playing the Azure Flame Mage, the original Crown Prince had put me through absolute hell before I reached the climax. But in this reset life, this man—whether he was the real Crown Prince or a random possessor—hadn’t even committed the initial slum massacre. The narrative had flowed on with complete, tranquil peace.

“So, does that make us friends now?” he asked softly.

“Well, we’ll at least be closer than those librarian colleagues of yours,” he added, his voice dropping an octave into something darker.

“…”

“Closer than those traitors, I mean.”

His blunt words left me completely speechless.

If I returned to the Dimensional Library, there was a high probability I would run straight into the very colleagues who had betrayed me.

I didn’t know if it was just one of them or if all four had conspired against me, but one thing was certain: they would be utterly horrified to find out I was still breathing.

I still hadn’t decided how I would act if I saw their faces again. Having been trapped in that book for so long, maybe it was better that my memories of them had faded into blurriness.

“…I don’t know,” I muttered, shaking my head. “First, I just need to get out of here. I refuse to stay in this world for another second.”

The Crown Prince smiled faintly and offered me his arm—a perfect, textbook posture of an elite royal escorting a noble lady.

It was utterly absurd given my grimy beggar background, but I decided to humor him and lightly rested my fingers on his forearm.

✦ ✦ ✦

The Archive’s pages rustled loudly, locking onto our extraction coordinates before shooting a massive pillar of divine light directly toward the high ceiling.

The surrounding bedroom scenery began to ripple and warp, like stone pebbles tossed into a clear, mirror-like pool. The physical walls melted into fluid cylinders of light, expanding outward in dizzying geometric patterns.

At the far end of the shifting cylindrical vortex, a completely different reality unfolded above us. It was a vast, endless cosmic expanse—a void that signified the true boundary between dimensions.

Along with the bizarre sensation of gravity vanishing entirely, I felt the heavy pressure in my chest vanish as our souls were lifted upward.

A fierce, protective grip clamped around my fingers. I glanced sideways at the Crown Prince, only to find his clear turquoise eyes staring intensely at my face. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me for a single second.

‘Right… Well, that’s not what’s important right now.‘

For some strange reason, holding his gaze felt strangely embarrassing, so I quickly looked away and focused my mind on the dimensional transfer.

✦ ✦ ✦

As we crossed the threshold between worlds, my vision was momentarily washed in a blinding, pure white.

Like a sudden, agonizing headache that gradually recedes, a completely foreign dimension materialized before my returning sight.

It was a realm that resembled a vast, timeless night sky, stretching out into infinity. Between the deep blue nebulae, infinite points of light twinkled like distant stars—each one a bound human destiny.

Yet, this space was not an outdoor cosmos. Hanging high above, where a moon should have resided, hovered a massive, illusory hourglass. Grains of pulverized moonlight slowly trickled down through its center, measuring the flow of reality itself.

“My dear librarian.”

I was blankly calculating the remaining time in the giant hourglass when a deep, resonant voice shattered the stillness. I whipped my head around.

Standing in the exact center of this cosmic sanctuary was a towering, majestic figure.

“Thanks to you, my dear librarian, I truly never suffer a dull day.”

His voice alone possessed an immense, weightless authority that made the ambient atmosphere feel suffocatingly heavy.

His cascading hair, which swept down to the floor, was a surreal, ethereal sky-blue. His eyes were a flawless, striking shade of lapis lazuli, carved like pure gemstones. He was so impossibly tall that he created the optical illusion that the starry ceiling above was pressing down on us.

Tapping a leather-bound book against his palm, he slowly glided toward me. Even in that simple, effortless walk, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

It wasn’t because his divine appearance was intoxicating—it was pure, primal survival instinct. With every step he took, every fine hair on my body stood straight up on end. It felt as though I were standing directly in the path of an unstoppable natural disaster—a roaring tsunami or a collapsing mountain. An animalistic voice inside my head screamed at me to stay frozen.

The Crown Prince, who had been standing half a step behind me, immediately shifted his weight, stepping up to stand flush beside me in a protective stance.

Noticing how tightly the Crown Prince was tensing against this new entity, I opened the Archive and displayed the system record to calm his nerves.

[ View Information → Target Entity Profile ]

Identity: Head Librarian Kaellariatus

Details: Watches over all destinies within the Dimensional Library, but strictly refrains from direct interference.

It was a vague description that a normal person might skim over, but the Crown Prince stared at those words for a very long time, his jaw clenched tight.

“…It’s the Head Librarian,” I whispered.

“That’s… the Head Librarian…?” he repeated, his golden-green eyes narrowing as he evaluated the divine threat before us.

The Crown Prince was visibly tense, having been dragged into a bizarre cosmic realm and confronted by a terrifyingly powerful entity.

And I was equally tense—though for a completely different reason.

Before I could even process his approach, Head Librarian Kaellariatus glided forward with terrifying speed and pulled me into a suffocatingly tight embrace.

“My sweet librarian!”

“Ugh! Get off me!”

I slammed my hands against his firm chest, shoving with all my might until I broke free from his crushing hold.

The Crown Prince stared at the two of us in absolute, wide-eyed horror. Seeing his stunned expression made me feel an absurd wave of embarrassment. As I brushed off my dirty beggar clothes, the Head Librarian let out an insufferable, melodic laugh.

‘He has the face of an angel, but his laugh is so thoroughly infuriating.‘

“My, my,” Kaellariatus purred, his lapis eyes curling into amused crescents. “It has been a remarkably long time since I last saw you in the flesh.”

“I’d imagine so,” I snapped, folding my arms. “I was rotting in a book.”

“I truly thought you were going to perish in that story, you know?”

“If you knew I was dying, why didn’t you come down and save me?!”

“Oh, you know I am forbidden from doing that,” he replied smoothly, waving a dismissive hand.

As the administrator of the Dimensional Library, Kaellariatus was bound to this central rift. He couldn’t physically step into target worlds, though he could watch every librarian’s struggle from his high throne like a twisted theatrical play.

Knowing his rules, I didn’t care about claiming my mission rewards or debriefing. There was only one single piece of information I needed from his divine mouth right now.

“The bastard who betrayed me,” I demanded, taking a step forward. “Who was it?”

“Who knows~?” he sang out softly.

“Come on! Just tell me!” I shouted, dropping my composure. “After all the centuries I’ve dedicated to your damn library!”

“Hehehe…”

Kaellariatus covered the lower half of his gorgeous face with his book, snickering continuously as if my absolute fury were the most entertaining joke in the cosmos. He had zero intention of giving me the name.

Ha. A long, bitter sigh escaped my lips.

If that was how it was going to be, then I had only one logical conclusion left.

“Fine. I understand.” I threw both my hands up in the air and took two big steps backward. “Then I hereby tender my resignation. I quit.”

I knew that taking on high-tier library missions carried the risk of death.

But I refused to continue working in an environment where my own colleagues had stabbed me in the back, where those traitors were still casually walking around the breakroom, and where my boss knew about my horrific betrayal but refused to lift a finger to grant me justice.

Sure, let’s say my colleagues betrayed me because they were blinded by the immense mission completion reward. And let’s say Head Librarian Kaellariatus was simply an unfeeling divine entity who couldn’t interfere with human choices.

Even while I was trapped in that novel, eating straw and starving in the slums, I had held onto a tiny, pathetic shred of hope. At first, I thought maybe it was an accident. Even if someone had genuinely poisoned me, unless all four had conspired together, at least one of them would surely come back to rescue me.

But during the years I lived as a pathetic beggar, waiting and praying day after day, no one came.

Not a single one.

To make matters worse, the four librarians on that team were juniors I had personally trained, protected, and looked after. After all those years of hard work, bonding, and shared memories in the Dimensional Library, I was left with nothing. My existence was simply scheduled to be quietly erased from reality.

“I’ll just take my standard retirement package and leave,” I declared firmly. “I’m done with this place.”

As I said that, I motioned toward the Crown Prince, who was standing awkwardly beside me in his regal imperial uniform.

“I even brought my official replacement,” I added, patting the Crown Prince’s arm. “He explicitly stated he wants to become a librarian too.”

“Ah.”

Only then did Kaellariatus bother to glance over at the Crown Prince. It was a completely hollow, perfunctory look—as if he had only just noticed a human standing in his domain.

“That would present quite a problem,” the Head Librarian mused softly.

“Why?” I frowned. “He’s an S-Rank Bookworm anomaly! He’s more than qualified!”

“Unfortunately,” Kaellariatus smiled, his lapis eyes devoid of all warmth, “our dear librarian will be dead very soon.”

“…What?” My voice cracked. “What the hell are you talking about? Who’s going to be dead soon?!”