PAF 10

Chapter 10

“I really didn’t know…”

Was he being naive, or just pretending to be?

I asked again, keeping my voice dangerously flat. “You were a librarian who was deployed with me, yet it never occurred to you to check on me even once?”

“Librarian? What… what do you mean? I’m not a librarian or anything…”

I was already thoroughly annoyed by the dazed nonsense he’d been spouting from the moment I walked in, but I never expected to hear someone ask what a librarian was inside the Dimensional Library of all places.

I was tilting my head in complete bewilderment when a harsh voice cut through the air.

“Hey!”

One of the three men who had been sitting quietly in the back barked at him for me.

It was the sharp-featured one slouching on the far end of the velvet sofa.

I’d noticed him earlier, but he possessed a truly striking appearance. So much so that even though the prim-looking guy who had rushed over to me was undeniably handsome, my eyes were naturally drawn toward the sloucher instead.

For starters, his hair was a sweet, vibrant shade of cotton-candy pink, paired with vivid light green eyes. On top of that, he had a section of his hair braided short and draped over his right shoulder. Based on his color scheme alone, he looked like a delicate princess straight out of a fairy tale.

And yet, despite his idol-like looks, he wore a fierce, terrifying expression, and even sitting down, he looked broad-shouldered and impressively well-built. His posture was pure delinquent, and his face had been sour from the second I stepped onto the lounge floor.

“You’re fucking frustrating to listen to, so just shut the hell up,” the pink-haired man growled, glaring at the blue-haired guy. “What do you have stuffed in that head of yours, huh? Kaellariatus already explained the situation to us before we stepped through the portal. You heard the exact same brief, so why do you keep spouting such useless bullshit?”

His way of speaking, more than anything, was extraordinarily rough.

“Y-Yes…”

The blue-haired man who had approached me first instantly hung his head, looking utterly crestfallen. He looked pathetically miserable, as if he were actively trying to hold back tears.

…This isn’t quite the intense confrontational atmosphere I was expecting.

I thought this was supposed to be my grand moment to step up and tear into my backstabbing colleagues, so why was someone else stealing my thunder?

Thoroughly bewildered, I glanced up at Arsil, only to find his turquoise eyes fixed on the group with an expression even colder than mine.

“All of you worked alongside this librarian,” Arsil said, his deep voice carrying a sharp, regal weight, “and yet not a single one of you addresses her by name.”

“…Hah.” The pink-haired man scoffed at Arsil’s intervention, as if finding his very presence absurd. “You don’t know shit, pal. We were explicitly instructed by the Head Librarian that it would be dangerous to speak the name we know until her soul recovers enough to remember it herself.”

“Ahem.”

Clearing my throat loudly a couple of times to draw their focus back to me, I took a firm step forward and raised my voice.

“That’s right. If you already heard the debrief from Kaellariatus, we can skip the tedious explanations. I suffered severe narrative corruption after that poison incident and lost my memories. My real name, whatever history you all shared with me—I don’t remember a single thing. So I’m going to run a system check on every single one of your profiles. And I am going to drag the traitor out into the light.”

I paused, scanning the four faces before me and offering them one last, solemn grace period.

“Before I start scanning, does anyone want to step forward and confess? Who was it? Which one of you is the traitorous bastard?”

“…”

The moment I finished speaking, the four men merely turned their heads to shoot suspicious, glares at one another. No one spoke. No one stepped forward.

“Fine. I figured as much,” I said, a bitter smirk touching my lips. “Then I’ll just root you out the hard way.”

“What? What do you mean ‘the hard way’—”

“…I’m just going to hit each of you once.”

With a quick flick of my wrist, I summoned the Archive into my right hand. While the Archive automatically logged system data, pulling up specific entity profiles required exact name keywords. Without my memories, I couldn’t query their records verbally.

That was precisely why Kaellariatus had set up this physical meeting—so I could bypass the search restrictions through direct physical contact with the tome.

Gripping the Archive—a heavy, leather-bound volume as thick as a municipal encyclopedia—I wound back and swung it squarely into the ribcage of the blue-haired man standing awkwardly beside me.

Thud!

“Hyeok?!”

Hmph. What a absolute baby.

Though… I admit I did put a little extra personal resentment into that swing.

Shhhhk.

The moment the heavy tome collided with his ribs, the Archive’s pages began to spin frantically, displaying the user data I needed in glowing, translucent ink.

“Name: Adnihil,” I read aloud.

[ View Information → Target Entity Profile ]

Name: Adnihil

Evaluation: Not particularly competent relative to the raw abilities he possesses. Kind-hearted, but completely clueless about reading the room.

Note: Best to be patient with him, as he fundamentally lacks basic social intelligence. I keep him around mostly out of pity, though he frequently proves to be an operational burden.

Specialty: His divine healing ability is tier-one, so he can be fully trusted with medical recovery.

I stopped reading there, choosing not to vocalize the final system line stamped at the bottom.

(Warning: Exercise caution, as his magic is strictly limited to healing and possesses zero offensive capabilities.)

It didn’t seem like a detail that would do any good to broadcast out loud.

“…Are you reading my file?” Adnihil stammered, his golden eyes wide with hurt. “Is… is that really how you viewed me back then?”

Well, given your current reaction, my past self wasn’t wrong.

Avoiding the crushed, wounded gaze of the blue-haired healer, I merely shrugged.

Then, I focused my eyes on a secondary piece of floating system text—the specialized stat granted by Kaellariatus.

♥ Favorability: 60%

Sixty percent was comfortably above average.

Surprisingly, that wasn’t a bad baseline at all. Would the actual traitor carry an abysmal, single-digit favorability score?

“See? This is how I’m going to audit all of you,” I declared, turning away from Adnihil.

Passing by the two men who had remained completely silent—merely observing the chaos with unreadable expressions—I marched straight toward the pink-haired delinquent on the sofa. I figured it was best to clear the loud ones first.

As I strode toward him with the heavy book raised, he uncurled from his slouched posture, his light green eyes narrowing. I brought the Archive sweeping down toward his shoulder.

Clack!

His broad, calloused hand shot up with lightning speed, catching the edge of the Archive mid-air with a firm grip.

“…You just threw the word ‘traitor’ around,” he said, his voice dropping into a dangerous rumble. “I’d like you to explain what the hell you mean by that first. Are you claiming that the person who poisoned you back then was one of us four? Not an Imperial royal or a high noble from that world?”

“Obviously,” I replied coldly. “You think I’m making this up?”

“Are you absolute certain?”

“It’s a fact confirmed directly by Kaellariatus.”

“Ah… Kaellariatus.”

He had grabbed the book to block the strike, but because his bare skin had made direct physical contact with the Archive, his profile was already generating across the glowing parchment.

His handsome face twisted through various shades of red and pale white as his eyes inadvertently scanned his own system record before I could even read it aloud.

And for good reason. The notes my past self had left behind were far from flattering.

[ View Information → Target Entity Profile ]

Name: Raibel Nicalis

Evaluation: A piece of criminal trash that should have been avoided at all costs.

Note: I tried to keep my distance from him as much as possible, but operational constraints forced us onto the same team. Every word out of his mouth is a lie. Possesses an extensive criminal record. Holds a firm mindset that any problem can be solved with sufficient violence.

♥ Favorability: 20%

A dismal twenty percent.

I was certain he would explode over the abysmal favorability rating, but his silence suggested that Kaellariatus had rendered that specific stat visible only to my eyes.

I yanked the heavy Archive from his grip and looked down at him with a frigid expression.

“Right. Based on your profile and your dismal favorability rating, you seem like the single most likely suspect, Raibel Nicalis.”

“…Is that the kind of trash you wrote about me in your little book?” Raibel let out a harsh, derisive laugh, suddenly snapping his gaze sideways and pointing a finger directly at Arsil. “Then what about that bastard? We’re being lined up as potential traitors, so why does this random guy who just showed up get to stand by your side and play judge and jury?”

“Arsil is—”

The second I spoke Arsil’s name, Raibel’s expression soured even further.

Aha. Now I understood why he had brought up Imperial royals and nobles as potential culprits earlier. He clearly remembered fighting the Crown Prince during our original mission, so seeing a man possessing the exact same face standing intimately beside me must have looked completely insane to his eyes.

“Arsil isn’t the Crown Prince from that novel,” I explained patiently. “He was a fellow transmigrator from another world who happened to get caught up in that vessel. That makes him infinitely more trustworthy than any of you, considering one of you poisoned me.”

“Haha!”

Hearing my calm explanation, Raibel threw his head back and laughed savagely, his light green eyes flashing with wild amusement.

“You’ve gone completely out of your mind, haven’t you, sweetheart?”

Raibel stood up smoothly from the sofa, taking a few deliberate steps back to create distance between himself and our group.

Flip! Flip!

In the span of a single heartbeat, two gleaming objects materialized in his palms with a metallic click.

They were heavy, razor-sharp military combat knives, their silver edges glinting under the lounge lights.

At the sudden manifestation of lethal weapons, every man in the room went on high alert, their postures shifting into defensive stances.

“What the hell are you doing all of a sudden?!” I demanded, holding the Archive like a shield.

“I was wondering how this pathetic reunion was going to play out,” Raibel sneered, twirling the military knives effortlessly between his fingers. “But you’re such a total wreck that you don’t even remember your own name, and now you’re spouting insane garbage about librarians and transmigrators.”

He flicked his wrists, aiming both gleaming blades directly toward our cluster.

Except he wasn’t aiming at me. As his wild gaze raked over Arsil, Adnihil, and the other two silent team members, Raibel bared his sharp teeth in a predatory growl.

“Fuck it. The situation is already this shitty, so who gives a single damn whether there’s a traitor hiding among us or not?”

“…What the hell are you talking about?” I frowned.

Raibel narrowed his eyes, his smile turning downright psychotic.

“I’m saying they claimed to be your trusted squad, yet they let you end up in this pathetic state. That makes every single one of these bastards no better than a traitor in my book, sweetheart.”

Wait… what in the world is he blabbering about?!

I was so utterly flabbergasted by his bizarre logic that I didn’t even have the brainpower to protest being called “sweetheart.”

While I stood there completely bewildered, Raibel Nicalis suddenly flicked his wrist and flicked one of the heavy combat knives through the air, sending it embedding deep into the marble floor directly at Arsil’s feet with a loud THUNK!

“If we just slaughter every single bastard in this room,” Raibel barked, a maniacal grin spreading across his face, “then there won’t be any need to waste time hunting down a traitor, now will there?”

His completely unhinged attitude was that of a man who couldn’t care less—as if he already knew with absolute certainty that he wasn’t the traitor.