PAF 12

Chapter 12

“Keuk…!”

Arsil reached frantically for the heavy dagger embedded in his shoulder, his fingers trembling as he prepared to yank it free. The moment his palm touched the hilt, I cried out in sheer panic.

“W-Wait! Don’t pull it out!”

I whipped my head around toward the three idiots who were still tearing the room apart in a senseless brawl.

“Knock it off!”

Yet they continued their violent clash as if my voice held zero weight. Their chaotic exchange knocked over another massive bookshelf, sending hundreds of priceless historical volumes scattering across the marble floor.

“Those absolute bastards…”

A searing heat rushed straight to my head, my eyes burning with pure, unfiltered rage. I was on the absolute verge of losing my mind.

Instinctively, my hand clamped around the heavy spine of the Archive. A heavy sigh escaped my lips as a bizarre resistance blocked my efforts.

My body remembered the exact high-tier spell sequence required to instantly subdue all three of them. My subconscious muscles shifted to execute the technique, but the very second I attempted the movement, my conscious mind—stripped of its operational memories—hit a complete dead end.

My instincts knew the path, but my hollow mind couldn’t provide the missing keys.

[Stop.]

A terrifying, ancient voice echoed throughout the entire cylindrical library.

The deep, resonant tone vibrated through the very air, rattling the bones in my chest. Instantly, all three men froze mid-strike, their weapons hovering in dead silence.

“…Kaellariatus.”

The Head Librarian’s flawless, celestial face manifested across a massive tapestry lining the atrium wall.

The stiff, rigid posture of the three fighters proved that even in their unhinged state, his sudden presence rattled them to the core.

The volumes stored in the Dimensional Library were not ordinary paper and ink; they were the absolute, delicate records of human existence. It was only natural for the entity who managed destiny itself to step in before his sanctuary was reduced to rubble.

“Ha! What, are you ordering us to stop fighting?”

Raibel Nicalis let out a loud, mocking scoff, pointing the dripping edge of his blade directly at me.

“If you stood by with your arms crossed and watched until she ended up in that pathetic state, doesn’t it make sense for you to stand back and watch us too?”

…Surprisingly, as twisted as he was, the bastard actually had a point.

[There is no flaw in your reasoning,] Kaellariatus replied softly, his lapis eyes remaining closed. [Therefore, you need not cease your struggle. Only that which is precious to your own souls will be destroyed in the crossfire.]

“…”

For some inexplicable reason, those cryptic words struck a heavy chord. The three men exchanged dark, bitter glances, clicked their tongues in annoyance, and simultaneously lowered their weapons.

Once the immediate threat of total destruction passed, Kaellariatus’s apparition faded seamlessly from the tapestry.

‘They wouldn’t listen to a single word I screamed, but one vague sentence from him makes them stand down…‘

Seeing how obediently they yielded to Kaellariatus’s presence made a bitter coil of frustration twist in my stomach.

But I didn’t have the luxury to dwell on it.

“Hey!”

I scrambled over to Arsil, finding him completely drenched in a cold, heavy sweat. His broad frame was trembling violently, his jaw locked tight as he endured what looked like excruciating agony.

“Librarian… I’m… I’m fine…” he squeezed out through gritted teeth.

“How on earth could you be fine?!” I shouted, my voice cracking. “When something like that comes flying directly at your throat, you dodge it or block it!”

I snapped my head toward the side.

“And you!”

“…I’m completely unharmed.”

Adnihil calmly, almost casually, pulled the second dagger straight out of his own chest.

I gasped in horror, expecting a fountain of blood, but as I looked closer, there wasn’t even a stain on his clothes where the blade had penetrated.

For a terrifying second, I wondered if his flesh was forged from stone, but the next moment, he unbuttoned his library coat and retrieved a damaged object from his inner pocket.

It was a thick, leather-bound book with a deep puncture hole through the center where it had successfully caught the blade.

“…A book?”

What was wrong with this guy?! Just minutes ago, he had frantically claimed he wasn’t a librarian, yet he carried a heavy administrative book stuffed against his ribs like a shield! He was utterly impossible to read.

Setting his weirdness aside, I rapidly flipped through the pages of the Archive. Arsil was clearly in critical condition. There had to be a systemic function or spell page to treat a deep puncture wound.

Stab wound… severe bleeding… rapid hemostasis…

In my prime as the Azure Flame Mage, I could have closed a wound like this with a flick of my wrist. An injury of this scale was absolute child’s play to a high-tier caster.

Yet no matter how frantically I flipped through the Archive, the system refused to display a restoration page.

No… it wasn’t that the book was glitching.

The Archive automatically responded to my active intent. If it remained silent despite my explicit keywords, it meant the spell records had been permanently burned away during my soul’s recovery. The realization was sickening, but I had no choice but to snap the useless tome shut.

“Listen, we need to get you to first aid immediately… there’s a medical logistics manager in the lower district—”

The words caught in my throat.

Arsil’s physical state was deteriorating at a terrifying, unnatural speed. His face had gone from deathly pale to a sickening, translucent blue. His lips trembled, turning from pale blue to a dark, bruised purple.

“Cough…!”

As his mouth worked to form words, he violently coughed up a thick spray of dark blood. His strength gave out entirely, and his broad frame collapsed forward straight into my arms.

Catching him by surprise, I stumbled backward onto the floor, my mind going completely blank.

“A-Arsil?!”

“Cough… khk!“

Arsil couldn’t speak. Another violent heave forced a stream of dark, coagulated blood past his lips, splattering across his chin and staining the front of my clothes.

“Hey! Stay with me!”

Panicking, I laid him flat on the marble floor and forcefully tore open his dark shirt, ripping the fabric away from his shoulder. When his bare skin was fully exposed, the sight was so horrific that my stomach churned.

The puncture wound where the dagger remained embedded was surrounded by a dark, rotting purple bruise. Ugly, fluid-filled blisters were rapidly swelling around the edges of the blade, their color a sickening shade of deep violet.

Judging by the speed of the necrosis, it was a high-tier hemotoxin.

The kind that didn’t kill instantly, but systematically melted the target’s blood vessels and internal organs from the inside out.

“You crazy, psychotic bastard!” I whipped my head toward Raibel Nicalis, screaming at the top of my lungs. “You used a poisoned blade?!”

Raibel merely leaned back against the wall, offering a casual, infuriating shrug that practically screamed, Did you really expect anything less from a guy like me?

I ground my teeth so hard my jaw throbbed, but I knew arguing with a lunatic was a waste of precious seconds. I whipped around to face Adnihil, who was standing beside us like a lost puppy.

I desperately needed the specialized profile information I had scanned off him earlier.

“Y-You! Can you purge this poison with your healing magic?!”

“What? M-Me?!” Adnihil blinked in total shock, pointing a shaking finger at his own chest.

“Yes, you! Hurry!”

Adnihil stared at me as if he couldn’t process the request. “…You’re actually entrusting a life to me?”

“Sweetheart, have you completely lost your mind?” Raibel jeered from across the lounge. “What the hell are you entrusting to an incompetent fool like him?”

How many damn times was that pink-haired bastard going to call me crazy?! I shot him a murderous glare, but refused to waste a single breath arguing.

Instead, I locked eyes with Adnihil and spoke with absolute authority.

“Please. Save him.”

At my solemn plea, something shifted in Adnihil’s golden eyes. He dropped to his knees beside Arsil without another word.

His large hands showed zero hesitation as he clamped down on the dagger’s hilt and yanked the poisoned blade free in one swift motion.

“Graaaagh!”

Arsil, half-conscious from the agony, let out a gut-wrenching scream as a fountain of dark, purplish blood erupted from the open wound.

As if confirming his earlier claim that he wasn’t a standard librarian, Adnihil didn’t summon a book or recite a chant.

A radiant, sky-blue aura of pure mana began to pour directly from his palms into Arsil’s mangled shoulder. The waves of dense energy swirled around them like a gentle tide, causing Adnihil’s light-blue hair to float weightlessly in the air. In a multiverse where pale blue mana was recognized as the highest purity of holy restoration, his aura was proof that his soul had been bathed in divine light for centuries.

Adnihil’s divine healing was every bit as extraordinary as the Archive’s profile had stated. In fact, it was breathtaking.

“Ugh…! Cough! Wait—stop! Huk…! Keuk!“

However, the very second the divine mana made contact with the dark hemotoxin, Arsil thrashed violently, groaning in agony as he desperately tried to shove Adnihil’s hands away.

“Hold him still!” Adnihil urged, his face slick with sweat.

“Cough…!”

Arsil gagged, coughing up another mouthful of black blood. Thick, dark blue veins were bulging rapidly from his shoulder, crawling up his neck like a spiderweb of pure agony.

I frantically bit my nails, my heart pounding against my ribs.

The question of which one of my former colleagues was the traitor was a massive, life-or-death mystery to me, but Arsil had zero connection to their past sins! He was an outsider who had sacrificed his own lifespan just to pull me out of that book, only to be dragged here and caught in the crossfire of my mess.

The open flesh was visibly knitting together under the blue light, but Arsil suddenly threw his head back and shrieked in unadulterated torment.

“Ugh! Aaaaargh! Huaaaah! Ack! Aaaaaaaargh!”

His agonizing screams sent a freezing chill down my spine. I instinctively grabbed Adnihil’s wrist, forcefully pulling his hand back.

“Stop! Why is he reacting like this?! Are you sure you’re actually healing him?!”

Adnihil shot me a frantic, apologetic look, his golden eyes filled with distress. “W-Well… normally, high-tier restoration magic performed with raw holy power requires heavy systemic anesthesia! I… I only know how to force the tissue to regenerate!”

“Are you completely insane?!” I yelled, shoving his hand away entirely. “This isn’t medical treatment, it’s literal torture!”

Still, I couldn’t deny that his raw restoration ability was terrifyingly effective. The physical puncture wound had completely closed. But closing the skin while the hemotoxin was still burning through his bloodstream was useless.

I scrambled to my feet and marched straight toward Raibel Nicalis.

“You.”

“…Why don’t you call me ‘Rai’, sweetheart?”

He was lounging across the only undamaged velvet sofa in the ruined atrium, his legs spread wide like a arrogant emperor taking his ease. He carried himself with the smug confidence of a man who knew he held every single winning card in his hand.

And why in the hell did this bastard keep calling me ‘sweetheart’?!

I ignored his pathetic flirtation and cut straight to the core.

“You used a slow-acting hemotoxin. Which means your intention wasn’t to kill him instantly.”

Raibel didn’t offer a verbal answer. He merely smirked, his light green eyes glinting with dark amusement, but I read his posture as an outright confession.

In fact, the pieces were finally connecting in my head. Poison was the single most efficient administrative weapon to deploy in a volatile situation like this.

When four hotheaded suspects are threatening to rip each other apart, provoking a fight and landing a poisoned blade on an ally forces everyone’s hand. And if the trick works, you create the absolute perfect leverage to extract whatever you want.

The traitor, unable to watch an innocent die or enduring the threat of poison themselves, would eventually break and reveal the truth.

And even if the victim was the traitor, poisoning them instantly stripped them of their combat capability.

He was infinitely more cunning and ruthless than his pretty, cotton-candy-pink hair suggested.

“Which means you have the specialized antidote on you right now,” I said, extending my hand. “Hand it over.”

“Why?” Raibel tilted his head, his smile widening into a predatory line. “You’re so certain that pretty boy isn’t the traitor? I could run a few more tests on him for you if you’re feeling unsure.”

“The probability of him being the traitor is zero,” I stated firmly. “I was poisoned after sharing a private drink with the four of you, remember?”

“Aah… but do you really believe that narrative, sweetheart? Even though you don’t remember a single damn detail from that night?”

He wasn’t entirely wrong. Strictly speaking, my lost memories meant I couldn’t grant absolute, blind trust to anyone—including Arsil.

I shouldn’t.

But even if my mind was logically cautious, using a human life as leverage was a line I refused to cross.

“I refuse to use your sadistic mind games to clear suspects off my list,” I said coldly.

“Keuk… Well, fine by me.”

Laughing as if he found my moral outrage thoroughly amusing, Raibel casually reached into his coat and tossed a small glass object through the air.

I snatched it out of the sky, opening my palm to reveal a tiny, crystal vial filled with a shimmering, clear fluid.

“Then how about this test?” Raibel murmured, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “If I tell you that liquid right there is the true antidote… can you actually bring yourself to trust my word?”

I glanced down at the crystal vial resting in my palm, then slowly lifted my gaze back to meet Raibel Nicalis’s glinting green eyes.

Slowly, deliberately, I unstoppered the small glass cap. His sharp eyes tracked every millimeter of my movement, a dark curiosity dancing in his pupils.

His arrogant ‘let’s see what desperate foolishness you pull next’ expression was utterly infuriating. What kind of naive idiot did he take me for?

Without a single second of hesitation, I tilted my head back and downed the entire contents of the vial in one single gulp.