Elias opened his eyes to the ceiling of the Grand Athenaeum.

  He stared at the familiar stone arches, the floating motes of dust, and the endless spiraling shelves of books that disappeared into the gloom above. His neck was stiff. He cracked it to the left, then the right, the sound echoing like a dry branch snapping in a canyon.

  Slowly, he sat up from the pile of grimoires he had used as a makeshift pillow.

  "Still here," he mumbled, his voice rough from disuse.

  He reached for the porcelain teacup sitting on the table next to him. He took a sip, expecting the warming comfort of Stasis-preserved Earl Grey. Instead, he got a mouthful of cold, bitter sludge.

  He frowned.

  That wasn't right. The Stasis enchantments on the Athenaeum were powered by the Leyline Core. They shouldn't fail. Unless the Core had finally run dry?

  "How long was I asleep?"

  He rubbed his face. He felt… different. Lighter? Or perhaps heavier, in a way that didn't relate to gravity. His robes felt loose on his shoulders. He looked at his hands. They were pale. Abnornally pale. Like paper that hadn't seen the sun in decades.

  (He really should get out more. Assuming there was an 'out' left to get to.)

  He remembered closing the Great Adamantine Doors. He remembered the sky outside turning the color of bruised plums, the screams of the dying, the onset of the Calamity. He had locked himself in to preserve the sum of human knowledge. He had expected to die of starvation in a week.

  Instead, he had just… read. And practiced magic. And slept.

  "System," he said. "[Status]."

  He didn't expect much. The System had been flickering when the world ended.

  A simple, grey window appeared. No fanfare. No bells. Just text.

  Name: Elias Vane Class: [Grand Archivist] Level: 1,492

  HP: 8,924,500 MP: 642,992,100

  STR: 42,104 AGI: 38,992 INT: 1,402,119 WIS: 998,400 VIT: 55,200

  Elias stared at the screen.

  He squinted. He tapped the 'MP' value. It didn't change.

  "One thousand..." he muttered.

  The last time he checked, he was Level 60. A respectable level for a Royal Archivist. High enough to cast [Identify] on a cursed sword without melting his eyes, but low enough that he had to run from Goblins.

  "Glitch," he decided, dismissing the window with a wave of his hand. "Mana rot in the interface. Probably been a few years. The ambient magic is corrupting the readouts."

  (He ignored the fact that he felt like he could bench-press the library. It was probably just adrenaline.)

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  He stood up. His knees popped. He smoothed out his grey robes, which were dusty enough to plant potatoes in.

  BOOM.

  The sound thundered through the silent hall. Dust rained from the rafters.

  Elias froze.

  That sound came from the Great Doors. The Adamantine Doors. The ones sealed with Tier-9 Blood Wards that required the sacrifice of a royal lineage to open—or a very, very loud knock.

  BOOM.

  "They're still out there?" Elias whispered.

  The Calamity. The Hordes of the Abyssal King. They must be trying to breach the Archive to burn the books.

  He felt a flare of irritation. Not fear—he’d read too many books on stoicism to be afraid anymore—but genuine annoyance. He had just woken up. His tea was cold. And now barbarians were banging on his door.

  "I suppose I should tell them we're closed," he grumbled.

  He grabbed his staff—a simple rod of black wood—and began walking toward the entrance. He didn't rush. The walk took five minutes.

  BOOM. CRACK.

  The sound of metal shearing tore through the air.

  Elias rounded the corner into the foyer. The massive doors were glowing cherry-red. Not from dragon fire, but from… drilling? Magic?

  With a final, tortured screech, the lock—a mechanism designed by the paranoid Dwarf Lords of the Second Era—snapped. The doors blasted inward.

  Chunks of adamantine shrapnel flew into the room. Elias didn't dodge. He just watched as a piece the size of a dinner plate bounced off an invisible barrier an inch from his nose.

  (He hadn't cast a barrier. Had he? He must have done it by instinct.)

  Through the smoke, a group of figures charged in.

  Elias braced himself for demons. Or zombies. Or mutated abominations of the Apocalypse.

  Instead, he saw… people.

  Five of them. A man in gleaming silver plate armor holding a glowing greatsword. A woman in green leather holding a bow. A robed man with a staff that looked far too expensive. And two others in chainmail.

  They looked healthy. Clean. The knight’s armor was polished to a mirror shine.

  "Breach successful!" the Knight shouted, his voice booming. "Fan out! Secure the artifacts!"

  "Careful!" the Mage yelled. "The mana density in here… it’s suffocating! I can barely breathe!"

  The five adventurers froze as the dust settled, revealing Elias standing alone in the center of the massive hall.

  He looked… unimpressive. A pale man with messy black hair, wearing grey robes that looked like rags, holding a stick. He stared at them with dead, tired eyes.

  "Halt!" the Knight roared, pointing his sword at Elias. "Foul Lich! Your reign of silence ends today!"

  Elias blinked.

  "Lich?" he asked. His voice was dry, flat. "I am the Archivist. And you are tracking mud on my floor."

  "Lies!" the Mage screamed. "Look at his mana aura! It’s pitch black! He’s consumed thousands of souls!"

  (It wasn't souls. It was just dust and lack of sunlight. Elias wanted to explain this, but he was very tired.)

  "Attack!" the Knight commanded. "For the Glory of the Kingdom!"

  The Knight charged. The Archer loosed an arrow glowing with green energy. The Mage began chanting a [Fireball] spell.

  Elias sighed. A long, weary sigh.

  He didn't want to fight. He just wanted them to stop shouting. It was a library. There were rules.

  "Quiet," Elias said.

  He raised his hand. He intended to cast [Silence]. A simple Tier-3 utility spell to mute sound in a localized area.

  He pushed a little mana into the spell. Just a drop.

  But he forgot that he had spent the last three centuries cycling mana in a vacuum. He forgot that his 'drop' was now an ocean.

  "[Silence]," he commanded.

  The world turned grey.

  The spell didn't just stop sound. It stopped force.

  A ripple of transparent distortion exploded from Elias. It hit the incoming arrow and erased its momentum instantly; the projectile dropped to the stone floor like a dead bird.

  It hit the charging Knight. The man didn't fly backward. He simply… stopped. Instantly. The kinetic energy of his charge had to go somewhere, so his fancy silver armor crumpled inward like foil, folding around him with a sickening crunch of metal.

  It hit the Mage’s fireball. The fire didn't explode. It was snuffed out, the mana stripped away and dissolved into nothingness.

  The shockwave hit the adventurers. They were slammed into the ground, not by wind, but by the sheer weight of the heavy mana pinning them to the floor tiles.

  CRACK.

  The stone floor of the foyer—which had survived the Second Era—spiderwebbed, sinking a foot deep into the earth under the pressure of the spell.

  Silence fell. Absolute, crushing silence.

  Elias stood in the center of the crater he had just accidentally made. He looked at his hand. Then he looked at the adventurers, who were groaning on the floor, their weapons shattered, their armor ruined.

  "That was..." Elias muttered. (Too much. Definitely too much.)

  He lowered his hand.

  He walked past the groaning Knight, stepping carefully over the twisted remains of the greatsword. He walked to the broken doors and looked outside.

  He expected to see a wasteland. Ash. Ruin. The gray sky of the Apocalypse.

  Instead, he saw green.

  A lush forest stretched out down the mountainside. Birds were singing. The sky was a painful, brilliant blue. In the distance, he saw smoke rising from a chimney in a village that definitely hadn't been there when he closed the doors.

  The world… hadn't ended?

  Elias stood there for a long time. The sunlight hurt his eyes.

  "Three hundred years," he whispered, though he didn't know how he knew the number. It just felt right.

  He turned back to the adventurers. The Mage was looking up at him with terror, blood trickling from his nose.

  "P-please..." the Mage wheezed. "Mercy, Great Lord... we didn't know the dungeon had an active boss..."

  Elias stared at him. His face was blank, betraying none of the internal screaming he was currently doing.

  "I am not a boss," Elias said flatly. "I am the Librarian."

  He gestured vaguely at the debris, the broken doors, and the crater in the floor.

  "And you have broken the door," he added. "That comes out of your deposit."

  He turned around and walked back into the gloom of the archives.

  "Don't touch anything," he called back, his voice echoing in the terrified silence. "I'm going to make more tea. If you're still here when I get back... try to be quieter."

  Status Update Mana consumed: 0.0001% Condition: Mildly Annoyed