Chapter 22
I had sensed that a day like this would come someday.
It was the day I would have to point a blade at the characters I cherished, under Pandemonium’s orders.
Only the timing had come sooner than I had expected.
I could not refuse this offer.
Just refusing would have been enough for him to suspect me.
Berid’s proposal was that hard to turn down for a Demon of Pandemonium.
So what I could do now was simple.
“Fine. I’ll play along with your plan.”
I took his hand.
A deep smile spread across Berid’s face.
“Thank you. I will actively cooperate when you need my help later on as well.”
“However, there were conditions.”
He could not do this without conditions.
Although the scenario had started faster than I expected, I could not just stand by and do nothing — I had to set up a response system as quickly as possible.
“Conditions?”
“For now it would be difficult. The investigation of the Gate Fragment was urgent. It seems the organization was waiting for news as well.”
He nodded as if he understood.
“Of course. We needed our own preparations too. We can wait that long.”
What I could do now was buy time and, during that interval, prepare a way to thwart his plan.
“Then I will prepare the plan. I will come back when you finish investigating the fragment.”
As Berid was about to leave after saying his piece, I stopped him.
“Oh, and when you come to see me, at least tell me you’re coming. Since we were on the same student council now, there was no reason to sneak in and hide.”
He looked disappointed at my words.
“It was kind of fun. That’s a shame.”
“My room wasn’t your hideout.”
I had to make that clear.
If he came over without notice, it would be to surveil me in case I was up to something, or to find my weaknesses.
I did not want to give him that chance.
“I was planning to do that anyway. I had a lot piled up to do.”
With that, he waved his hand; a magic circle appeared on the floor and his figure vanished.
To use teleportation for something like that.
Seeing him treat such a high-level spell like a toy reminded me once again of how powerful he was.
I had to move quickly if I wanted to prevent Seo Da-hee’s death.
A few days later, on the weekend.
I finished my preparations to investigate the Gate Fragment.
I could not just stall for time with words, so I decided to search for fragments that would be okay to be publicly seen, as much as possible.
Today I was going to the Academy library — the forbidden books section that regular cadets were barred from entering.
That area was accessible only to instructors and the student council officers, and a regular cadet needed a complicated procedure to gain access.
That was why I had acquired student council privileges to use in situations like this.
Compared to non–student council tech trees, it was certainly more convenient.
When I arrived at the library, I saw countless books.
Seeing the densely packed shelves and the books filling them, it felt like I had entered a vast maze.
Even in-game, the pathfinding difficulty in this forbidden books section had been awful.
The real library I faced exceeded my imagination.
I caught the eye of the librarian who was sitting at the counter reading quietly, and she immediately asked.
“Are you looking for a particular book?”
“I’m trying to enter the forbidden books section. Could you guide me?”
“The forbidden books section?”
At the word “forbidden,” she gave me a puzzled look for a moment, then glanced at the badge on my chest and relaxed.
“You’re a student council officer, then. You know the rules for the forbidden books section, right?”
“I knew them in broad terms.”
“The security in the forbidden books section was extremely strict. Knowing them only in broad strokes would make you likely to get arrested.”
“Then could you explain them to me?”
“For student council officers, access to the forbidden books section was limited to Zone C. The moment you went beyond that, the instructors resident at the Academy would deploy immediately and you’d be detained, so be careful.”
An Academy cadet being criminally detained.
If that happened, my life as a hero would be over.
Why would they store such tightly controlled forbidden books in an Academy where students roamed around?
Because the Academy was essentially the headquarters of Korean heroes.
The Academy gathered the most talented students of the age to train future talent.
And the instructors stationed there were active heroes above the mid-rank, who could be put into combat immediately.
It was truly a natural fortress.
No wonder Pandemonium preferred to keep sending Demons and spies rather than launching direct attacks.
Someone like me, that is.
Saying so, she rose from the counter and led me toward the forbidden books section.
After passing through a maze made of countless books and strict security checkpoints, we arrived at a narrow room with a complex magic circle drawn on the floor.
“If you ride this teleportation circle, you’ll arrive at the forbidden section. I can’t enter that area myself, so my guidance ends here. I wish you a pleasant reading.”
After saying her farewell, she left without any lingering attachment.
I let a small amount of mana flow into the circle, and it soon glowed with a blue light.
At the same time, the floating circle surrounded my body.
Then, with a sensation of my body scattering, my vision turned white.
When I opened my eyes again, I could feel that the space around me had changed.
The first thing I saw upon opening my eyes were, of course, shelves packed tightly with books.
However, the atmosphere was entirely different from the library I had just left.
If the previous library had simply been a dusty space filled with books, this one felt as if each book was a living creature — or a monster — radiating a malevolent aura.
For sealed books that couldn’t even show their full power, the aura they emitted was vicious.
Encountering them in reality rather than through a monitor screen made a shiver run down my spine.
The Academy’s forbidden books section.
It was a dungeon field.
In Become a Hero, which was set in the Academy, there were many hidden dungeons meant to obtain items and strengthen characters.
And the Gate Fragments were hidden throughout those dungeons.
However, not every dungeon was connected to a Gate Fragment.
Only dungeons that had certain special conditions and became corrupted were connected to a fragment.
I knew the locations and the conditions.
So, what was this place — the Academy’s forbidden books section?
It wasn’t completely disconnected from the fragments, but the ones that existed here were useless fragments that Pandemonium couldn’t do anything with.
In short, I was pretending to diligently fulfill my mission for Pandemonium while actually clearing the dungeon to obtain the items I needed.
Sigh, I liked dungeons, but I still wished I could’ve come later.
Setting aside the monsters and the dungeon’s difficulty, the map design and the process of reaching the fragment were painstakingly tedious.
Among this endless sea of books, I had to find the one single book connected to the Gate Fragment.
If I touched any book not linked to a fragment, I’d be afflicted with various status ailments, making it quite the nuisance.
Of course, for someone like me who knew which book was linked to the fragment, such ailments weren’t a problem…
The real issue was that among these countless books, there was another book I needed.
If not for Berid’s sudden visit, I would have gone elsewhere. But to stop his plan—and to strengthen my own power—I had to obtain that item here.
Still, it made no sense that with such strict security and control over the forbidden books, there wasn’t a librarian or a book search system to help find what one needed.
Well, it wasn’t exactly a search system, but there was something similar.
If I could only find her, a random encounter character who appeared sporadically while wandering the forbidden section, finding the Gate Fragment would’ve been as easy as pie—the ghost librarian of the library, Mabel.
One of the Academy’s most popular instructors and an active high-rank hero, she was known as an eccentric rumored to have a house made of books within the forbidden section.
There was no one else in the Academy who knew as much about the forbidden section as she did.
In Become a Hero, if you happened to meet her while exploring the forbidden section, the event would be greatly shortened, and you’d acquire a shortcut illustration.
If you input the exact title of the book connected to the fragment, she would instantly take you to its location.
And right now, I intended to forcibly summon her.
I remembered a post on the Become a Hero community about how to summon her.
Wasn’t it that you had to accumulate ten debuffs in the forbidden section?
The story went that if you touched the wrong forbidden books and stacked more than ten debuffs, Mabel would appear, having sensed the movement of ominous mana.
I hadn’t tested it in-game, but I didn’t have time to hesitate—this was all or nothing.
I spread my mana wide and began sensing.
Among the books that resonated with my detection, I looked for one that seemed to have the weakest curse.
If I stacked more than ten strong or myth-grade curses, I might die screaming on the spot.
The first book that caught my eye was a black leather-bound tome.
As soon as I reached out and touched it, a terrible, ear-splitting scream rang out.
[Kyaaaaaaaah!]
“Ugh, so loud.”
Was it a vengeful spirit clinging to it?
Even after I put the book down, the woman’s screams echoed in my head, buzzing unpleasantly.
After that, I continued stacking debuffs the same way.
Each time I touched a book, I was struck with various curses—chills, nausea, blindness, anemia, and more.
I could barely move, suppressing the curses with the energy of the Asura Divine Art.
And when I finally touched the tenth forbidden book—
A beautiful voice came from somewhere.
“Oh my, I came because I sensed ominous mana swelling up, but what’s a cadet doing here?”
Even though the curse of blindness kept me from seeing,
I knew who it was.
She poked my body here and there and asked,
“Oh my? Yoo Sung-woo? You’re that Yoo Sung-woo who left scars on Instructor Kang Jae-seok’s body, right? I heard you recently became a student council officer—oh my, oh my.”
“Um, could you do something about these curses first…?”
“Ah, right! Silly me. Hold on a second, I’ll fix that right now.”
The first time I met her, she was far louder and more scatterbrained than I expected.