Despite Katherine’s warm and caring personality, sparring with her was never relaxing.
The first time I had met her, she gave the impression of someone who preferred quiet conversation and gentle encouragement. She smiled easily, spoke softly, and carried herself with a calm confidence that made people feel comfortable around her.
But the moment combat started-
That image shattered.
She was terrifying.
Not in the brutal, overwhelming way someone like Vincent had been.
No.
Katherine was precise.
Controlled.
Efficient.
And the puppet she summoned made things even worse.
The construct stood a few meters away from me on the training field, its slender frame almost unnaturally graceful. Its limbs were long and delicate, the proportions reminiscent of a ballerina. Thin joints connected smoothly polished segments of pale material that resembled porcelain more than metal.
At first glance, it looked fragile.
Then it moved.
I stepped forward and threw a straight punch toward its torso.
The puppet spun.
Not a dodge.
A pirouette.
My fist cut through empty air as the construct rotated past my guard with fluid elegance. One leg extended mid-spin and snapped into my ribs.
THUD.
I grunted as the impact pushed me back half a step.
“You’re predictable,” Katherine called from behind the puppet.
She stood several meters away, one hand raised slightly as faint glyphs shimmered around her fingertips. Threads of pale light stretched from her fingers to the puppet’s back like invisible strings.
She wasn’t controlling it like a puppet master forcing movements.
It felt more like… guiding.
Enhancing.
Working in tandem.
I stepped forward again.
This time I aimed low, sweeping my leg toward the puppet’s ankle.
The construct hopped lightly into the air.
Then twisted midair.
A heel dropped toward my shoulder like a dancer finishing a jump.
I raised my arm to block.
The kick landed anyway.
The impact rattled through my bones and forced me down onto one knee.
I barely had time to recover before the puppet glided forward again, its footwork silent against the stone training field.
I launched another punch.
Missed.
Another kick.
Missed again.
The puppet leaned back, ducked, and slipped around my attacks with impossible grace.
It wasn’t just fast.
It was efficient.
Every motion flowed seamlessly into the next.
When I tried to close the distance aggressively, Katherine intervened.
A translucent barrier snapped into existence in front of me.
My shoulder slammed into it.
A ripple of blue light spread across the surface like a stone dropped into water.
“Too direct,” she said calmly.
The puppet struck again.
Its foot slammed into my stomach.
The air left my lungs in a harsh wheeze.
I staggered back.
“Damn…”
I tried circling this time.
Watching its movement patterns.
The puppet mirrored my steps lightly, its balance perfect. It moved like it was dancing to music only it could hear.
I lunged suddenly.
For a moment, I thought I had it.
My hand closed toward its arm.
And another spell activated.
A burst of compressed wind exploded between us.
BOOM.
The blast pushed me back three meters.
I skidded across the stone floor, barely keeping my footing.
“You’re relying too much on brute force,” Katherine said.
I wiped sweat from my forehead.
“I’m adapting,” I muttered.
The puppet tilted its head slightly.
Then rushed me.
Its speed doubled.
Left kick.
Right kick.
Spin.
I blocked the first two but the third slipped through my guard and slammed into my chest.
The impact drove me backward again.
“Why aren’t you using your laser attack?” Katherine asked casually.
I let out a tired breath.
“My aim’s decent,” I admitted. “But only when the enemy isn’t practically breathing down my neck.”
That was the problem.
Blazing Drill Shot required positioning.
Distance.
A moment to line up the trajectory.
Against something like this puppet?
I barely had time to blink.
The construct dashed forward again.
This time I tried grappling.
If I could grab it-
The puppet slipped sideways like water.
Its leg swept my feet.
I barely caught myself before hitting the ground.
Then-
WHAM.
A kick slammed into my gut.
Pain shot through my abdomen and I doubled over slightly.
I looked up at Katherine.
“How are you going to use this in the event?” I asked between breaths.
She lowered her hand slightly, though the puppet continued circling me.
“I won’t.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“My summons will be restricted,” she explained. “And my higher-level magic will be sealed at entry.”
The puppet rushed again.
I blocked its strike this time and shoved it back.
“Then why train like this?” I asked.
“Because combat skill still matters,” Katherine replied calmly.
The puppet flipped backward gracefully.
“And fighting won’t be the only factor in the event.”
That was true.
Succession war.
Politics.
Strategy.
Alliances.
Still-
I charged again.
This time I ignored the puppet’s upper body and aimed for its center of balance.
My shoulder slammed into it.
For a split second, I thought I’d succeeded.
Then Katherine’s magic triggered.
A barrier appeared between us at the exact moment of impact.
Instead of hitting the puppet-
I hit the barrier.
Hard.
The recoil staggered me.
The puppet used the opening immediately.
Its foot drove straight into my chest.
THUD.
The world flipped.
I tumbled backward across the training field, rolling twice before finally stopping on my back.
The sky spun overhead.
“Ouch…” I groaned.
My ribs protested as I sat up slowly.
Katherine approached, the puppet dissolving into fragments of pale light behind her.
She offered a hand.
I accepted it and pulled myself up.
“You’re improving,” she said.
“Doesn’t feel like it,” I muttered.
She laughed softly.
“That’s because you’re sparring against someone who specializes in controlling the battlefield.”
Fair point.
She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Oh, by the way.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You have three dome duels scheduled.”
“…What?”
“In two weeks.”
That got my attention.
“Three?”
“One each for the Blue, Green, and Yellow domes.”
I blinked.
The dome duels were organized combat trials within the Library.
Different domes meant different combat conditions.
Different rules.
Different environments.
“You signed me up for three fights?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” she said with a smile. “The system did.”
That made it even worse.
The Library had noticed me.
Blue Dome usually meant controlled duels focused on skill.
Green emphasized environmental challenges.
Yellow…
Yellow was chaos.
Multiple combatants.
Dynamic objectives.
“Looks like the Library wants to test you,” Katherine said lightly.
I sighed.
“A medieval war event… and three dome fights right after.”
My schedule was getting crowded.
But Katherine’s smile didn’t fade.
“You’ll be fine.”
I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Next sparring session,” I said, “I’m bringing armor.”
She chuckled.
“Good idea.”
Somewhere deep inside my chest, the Tyrannical Beast stirred faintly again.
More battles were coming.
And apparently-
The Library wanted to see how far I could go.
Only twenty-seven people had registered for the Silver to Platinum ranked event.
For an event hosted by the Library, that number was surprisingly small.
The viewing lounge’s massive display panel reflected it clearly, a neat list of twenty-seven names suspended in pale light. Some names carried rank markers beside them: Silver, Gold, and a handful of Platinum.
Twenty-seven.
Considering the population of bookkeepers eligible for the event, that was barely a fraction.
The reason wasn’t complicated.
Restrictions.
Unlike normal story-dives where a bookkeeper entered with their full record set, events often imposed limitations. This one was particularly heavy-handed: partial record sealing, conditional activation requirements, and environmental narrative constraints.
On top of that, the Library had done something unusual.
It hadn’t revealed the rewards.
Normally, events displayed at least a general reward category, credits, rare records, artifact blueprints, rank points.
This one revealed nothing.
Just a scenario description and entry requirements.
That alone had discouraged most participants.
Many of the Silver-ranked bookkeepers had simply opted out.
The previous event had been brutal, and a lot of them were still mentally exhausted. Story-dives weren’t just physical experiences, they affected memory pathways, instincts, emotional stress responses. Even with recovery protocols, diving back into another high-risk narrative immediately afterward was risky.
Others had declined for a simpler reason.
Uncertainty.
A high-difficulty story-dive without knowing the reward was essentially gambling.
And many bookkeepers weren’t gamblers.
The same reasoning applied to Gold and Platinum ranks as well, though for slightly different motivations.
Events didn’t provide rank-up points.
That alone made them less attractive to higher-ranked bookkeepers.
Normally, if someone at Gold rank wanted to progress toward Platinum, they would choose specific story-dives designed to grant measurable advancement. Those dives came with predictable outcomes: known record tiers, blueprint fragments, resource drops.
Events disrupted that system.
No rank-up points.
No guaranteed progression.
Just a potentially dangerous story-world with unknown rewards.
From a purely strategic perspective, it wasn’t worth the risk.
A Gold-ranked bookkeeper could simply story-dive into a controlled narrative, secure a valuable record, gain rank points, and return with measurable progress.
Why gamble on an event?
Why step into a war scenario with sealed abilities when the outcome was uncertain?
That logic had convinced most people.
Which was why the list had stopped at twenty-seven names.
But there were always exceptions.
Some people weren’t satisfied with predictable gains.
Some people looked deeper.
Dexter was one of those people.
He sat at a quiet table near the edge of the viewing lounge, a stack of projection pages hovering above the surface in layered rows of data. His thin glasses reflected shifting lines of archived records as he scrolled through decades of Library event history.
He adjusted the frames on his nose slightly.
“Twenty-seven participants…” he murmured quietly.
Not surprising.
Most people in the Library focused on efficiency.
Dexter focused on patterns.
And one particular pattern had caught his attention.
Events where the reward information had been deliberately omitted.
He had spent the last several hours digging through archived reports, old interview transcripts, and scattered record logs tied to those specific events.
There weren’t many.
But the ones that existed shared a very interesting outcome.
Dexter tapped one of the projections.
A summary page expanded in front of him.
Event Title: The Shattered Crown
Participants: 19
Reward Disclosure: None
Result:
Three participants emerged with Grandine-ranked records.
Dexter’s eyes flicked across the screen.
Grandine.
Not Diamond.
Not some experimental artifact.
Grandine.
The classification used for the most dangerous type of record known within the Library.
Avatar-type records.
Records that allowed a bookkeeper to temporarily become something else.
Something powerful.
Something legendary.
Most bookkeepers didn’t even encounter the possibility of obtaining one in their entire career.
Yet here it was.
Dexter opened another archived file.
Event Title: The Blood Tide Campaign
Participants: 24
Reward Disclosure: None
Result:
Two Grandine-ranked records.
Dexter leaned back slightly.
“That makes five…”
He opened another entry.
Same pattern.
Events with hidden rewards.
Small participant numbers.
Extremely dangerous narrative settings.
And occasionally…
Grandine-ranked records appearing afterward.
But that wasn’t the only interesting detail.
Dexter scrolled further down the file.
Participants who didn’t obtain a Grandine record still received something unusual.
Partially completed blueprints.
Not empty ones.
Not fragments.
Partially completed constructs.
Some had three slots filled.
Others had four.
One even had five completed slots when they returned.
That kind of progress normally required months of record gathering.
Yet those bookkeepers had returned with them already integrated.
Dexter frowned slightly.
“What’s strange…”
He opened a series of interview transcripts.
Every participant who returned with those blueprints had been interviewed by Library researchers.
Their answers were… strange.
Most of them didn’t remember acquiring the blueprint pieces.
At all.
They remembered the story-world.
They remembered the battles.
The alliances.
The conflicts.
But the moment they supposedly gained the blueprint progress…
Their memories blurred.
One participant had described it like this:
“It’s like a chapter got ripped out of my memory.”
Another had simply shrugged and said:
“I guess it happened somewhere during the story.”
Dexter tapped his fingers lightly against the table.
Memory gaps.
But the truly interesting part involved the others.
The ones who had obtained the Grandine-ranked records.
Dexter opened those transcripts.
Almost every one of them had responded the same way when questioned about how they acquired the record.
Either they refused to answer.
Or they physically couldn’t.
One interview transcript ended abruptly after the participant attempted to describe the event.
The medical report attached to the file stated that the bookkeeper had experienced sudden cognitive feedback, their memory pathways effectively rejecting the recollection.
As if something prevented them from describing it.
Dexter leaned back in his chair.
“…So that’s the game.”
Hidden rewards.
Dangerous narratives.
Memory restrictions.
And occasionally-
A Grandine record.
Not a blueprint.
Not a fragment.
An actual completed Grandine-ranked record.
Which meant something inside those events allowed the Library to produce them.
Something rare.
Something controlled.
Dexter looked back toward the floating list of participants.
Twenty-seven names.
Some he recognized.
Some he didn’t.
Silver.
Gold.
Platinum.
And somewhere among them…
Someone might walk out with one of the most powerful records the Library could produce.
His lips curved slightly.
“Now I understand why they hid the rewards.”
If people knew the possibility beforehand…
The event wouldn’t have twenty-seven participants.
It would have hundreds.
Maybe thousands.
Dexter closed the projection pages.
“…This will be interesting.”
Because in the Library of countless stories-
Some rewards were worth risking everything for.
The day of the event arrived faster than I expected.
The week leading up to it had passed in a blur of training sessions, preparation, and research. Every spare hour I had was spent either studying the information available about the event’s world or sparring with Katherine.
Mostly sparring.
Despite the difference in our fighting styles, our training had become surprisingly productive. Katherine forced me to deal with controlled battlefield pressure, barriers appearing at inconvenient moments, magic bursts disrupting my rhythm, and her puppet constantly exploiting openings in my defense.
Against someone like her, brute force alone didn’t work.
You had to think.
You had to adapt.
Which, according to Morgan, was exactly the point of the Tyrannical Beast Soul now sitting inside my record book.
Still, something had been bothering me.
Not the training.
Katherine.
Over the week, I noticed small things.
During our sparring sessions, she occasionally paused a fraction longer than usual before giving a command to her puppet. Sometimes her gaze would drift toward the viewing panels in the distance. Once or twice she completely missed an opening that she normally would have exploited instantly.
Subtle distractions.
Small enough that someone else might not notice.
But after fighting her repeatedly for a week, it stood out.
One evening, after a particularly exhausting sparring session, I finally asked.
“What’s on your mind?”
We were sitting near the edge of the training field, both catching our breath. The puppet had already dissolved back into light, leaving only faint glowing threads in the air that slowly faded away.
Katherine wiped sweat from her forehead and looked at me.
“Hmm?”
“You’ve been distracted.”
She tilted her head slightly.
“I have?”
“Sometimes during sparring.”
I shrugged.
“You pause for half a second like you’re thinking about something else.”
For a moment, she didn’t answer.
Then she smiled faintly.
“Your instincts are sharper than I thought.”
I leaned back on my hands.
“So?”
She looked out across the training field, watching another pair of bookkeepers sparring in the distance.
“I’m thinking about what happens after the event.”
That caught my attention.
“After?”
She nodded.
“You know how new bookkeepers arrive in waves?”
“Yeah.”
The Library didn’t recruit people constantly. New arrivals tended to come in groups, batches of individuals who had been selected or discovered across countless story-worlds.
“Well,” Katherine continued, “a new batch is arriving earlier than expected.”
I frowned slightly.
“And?”
“And many of them won’t have anyone guiding them.”
That wasn’t unusual.
The Library had a mentoring system, but it wasn’t guaranteed. Sometimes a new bookkeeper would be assigned a guide immediately. Other times they were left to navigate the early stages alone until they found someone willing to help them.
“Which usually ends badly,” she said quietly.
I understood what she meant.
The early stages of being a bookkeeper were the most dangerous.
Without proper guidance, it was easy to waste credits on bad records, enter story-dives that were far beyond your ability, or misunderstand the mechanics of the Library entirely.
I had been lucky.
But not everyone was.
“So what are you planning?” I asked.
Katherine clasped her hands together thoughtfully.
“I want to start a club.”
That surprised me.
“A club?”
“A place where new bookkeepers can get help,” she explained. “Advice. Training. Basic survival strategies.”
She paused.
“And maybe some emotional support too.”
That last part made sense.
Story-dives weren’t easy to process.
Living entire lifetimes in other worlds, fighting, dying, experiencing things most people never would, could break someone if they weren’t prepared.
“So what does this event have to do with it?” I asked.
She smiled slightly.
“Influence.”
Ah.
Now I understood.
“In the Library,” she continued, “reputation matters. If I want people to trust the club… if I want experienced bookkeepers to take it seriously…”
“You need credibility,” I finished.
“Exactly.”
Participating in a difficult event, especially one with unknown rewards, was one way to gain it.
If she performed well, people would notice.
If she returned with something valuable, even more so.
But there was still something else.
“You’re worried about whether it’ll work,” I said.
She didn’t deny it.
“It’s a big commitment,” she admitted softly. “And I don’t know if anyone will actually join.”
I pushed myself up from the ground and stretched.
“Don’t worry about that.”
She looked up at me.
“Why?”
I shrugged casually.
“The first person joining your club is me.”
Her eyes widened slightly.
Then she laughed.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
I rolled my shoulders.
“You’ve helped me a lot already. And besides…”
I glanced toward the distant towers of the Library.
“…new bookkeepers could use someone who knows how to survive a story-dive.”
Katherine looked like she was about to say something.
But before she could-
The event notification triggered.
A deep resonance rolled through the Library.
The air itself vibrated faintly as glowing sigils ignited along the walls of the platform chamber.
Bookkeepers began gathering quickly.
The twenty-seven participants were called forward one by one, stepping onto circular platforms etched with story-dive inscriptions.
Katherine and I walked side by side toward ours.
The room buzzed with quiet tension.
Some participants looked calm.
Others nervous.
A few excited.
I spotted several unfamiliar faces, Gold-ranked bookkeepers I had never met before. One Platinum stood near the center platform, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
Twenty-seven people.
One medieval war.
Unknown rewards.
I stepped onto the platform.
Katherine stood on the one beside mine.
She glanced over.
“Try not to die,” she said lightly.
“No promises.”
The sigils beneath our feet began glowing brighter.
Energy built rapidly.
The air warped.
Reality itself seemed to bend inward toward the center of the chamber.
Katherine turned toward me again.
“About what you said earlier-”
She didn’t get to finish.
The platforms activated.
Light erupted around us.
And the event began.
