Samantha pulled out three small, ornate wooden boxes.

"However, the Academy rewards strength. The Top 3 cadets step forward."

I stood up. Kael and Celestia followed.

We stood before the class.

"3rd Place: Princess Celestia Aurelian," Samantha announced.

She handed Celestia a silver card.

"Access Pass to the Elemental Spire's Core Room. It has five times the ambient mana density of the outside world. You have ten hours of usage time."

Celestia's eyes widened. "The Core Room? Thank you, Instructor."

"2nd Place: Cadet Kael," Samantha continued.

She handed Kael a small vial containing a shimmering red liquid.

"Elixir of the Earth Dragon (Diluted). It permanently increases muscle density and bone durability. It will help your body handle the strain of your… unique sword art."

Kael accepted it with a serious nod. "Thank you. I need this."

"And finally," Samantha stood in front of me.

She looked me up and down, a flicker of amusement in her eyes.

"1st Place: Cadet Lucien Ashborne."

She handed me a heavy, black iron key. It didn't look magical, but it felt cold to the touch.

"We considered giving you a weapon, but you seem to prefer your… toys," she said dryly. "So we decided to give you something to help your mind."

She pressed the key into my hand.

"Unrestricted Access to Section Z of the Grand Library."

I gripped the key tight. My heart skipped a beat.

Section Z. The Forbidden Section. It contained books on lost magic, ancient history, and… dark arts that were banned for the general public. For a player like me, this was more valuable than gold. It was an information mine.

"Knowledge is the most dangerous weapon, Cadet," Samantha whispered so only I could hear. "Use it wisely. Do not make me regret this."

"I won't, Instructor," I promised, pocketing the key.

Samantha stepped back.

"That is all. Dismissed for lunch. The real training begins tomorrow."

She turned and marched out, her cape swishing behind her.

I sat back down, feeling the heavy iron key in my pocket.

'Section Z,' I thought, a plan already forming. 'There's a specific grimoire hidden there. If I can find it… the next arc will be a cakewalk.'

Beside me, Ariana poked my arm.

"Section Z? That's dusty and boring," she whispered. "Kael got a Dragon Elixir. Didn't you get ripped off?"

I smiled at her.

"Trust me, Ari. I got the best prize in the room."

****

I left Ariana at the cafeteria entrance, promising to catch up later, and made my way toward the Grand Library.

The structure was a massive dome of white marble, a testament to the Empire's obsession with knowledge. I walked past the main reading areas, ignoring the students whispering about me, and approached the heavy iron gate at the very back of the first floor.

An elderly librarian sat behind a desk, her face wrinkled like dried parchment. She didn't ask for my ID. She simply looked at me, her eyes clouded with cataracts, and pressed a hidden button.

Click. Clank.

The heavy gate groaned open.

"Section Z," she croaked, her voice like grinding stones. "Do not remove anything. Do not read aloud. If you hear whispering, close the book immediately."

"Understood."

I stepped inside, and the gate slammed shut behind me.

****

[Section Z: The Forbidden Archive]

The air inside was stale, tasting of old paper, rot, and forgotten magic.

Dust motes danced in the shafts of light filtering through the high, barred windows. The shelves here weren't organized or clean like the main hall. They were chaotic, piled high with leather-bound tomes that looked like they hadn't been touched in decades.

Cleaners weren't allowed here. In fact, no one was allowed here except authorized personnel.

Most students, like Ariana, thought of this place as a graveyard for useless garbage. Why keep books that no one reads? Why hoard dusty scrolls on necromancy, blood pacts, and demonic biology?

But I knew better.

In Asteria Online, this place was a treasure trove.

The Empire didn't keep these books out of nostalgia. They kept them because knowledge was the only weapon that never dulled. To defeat a demon, you had to know its anatomy. To break a curse, you had to know how it was woven.

And why was it safe to keep such dangerous scriptures right under a school?

Because this Academy was a den of monsters.

Principal Alistair Grendel, the Empire's strongest Mage, lived in the central tower. Samantha Everhart, the Platinum Knight, patrolled the halls. Selene Crest, a Grandmaster of Illusion, taught Class B. Luke, the Sword Grandmaster, managed the training grounds.

If a demon popped out of a book here, it would be dead before it could take a second breath. If this place wasn't safe, then nowhere in the Empire was.

I walked down the silent aisles, my footsteps muffled by the thick layer of dust on the floor.

"Now," I whispered, scanning the shelves. "Where are you?"

My target wasn't a spellbook. It was something older.

A Rune.

In the modern magic system, casting a spell was like painting a picture. You gathered mana, visualized the result, chanted the incantation to shape it, and then fired. It was versatile, but slow.

Runes were different.

Runes were like computer code.

They were pre-programmed blocks of logic. A specific geometric symbol that, when injected with mana, executed a single, hard-coded command instantly.

No chanting. No visualization. Just Input = Output.

And hidden somewhere in this mountain of paper was a specific Rune.

[The Rune of Physiological Reconstruction] aka [The Auto-Heal Rune].

It was a passive rune that, once engraved onto the user's mana core or body, would automatically divert mana to heal wounds. As long as my heart was beating and I had mana, I wouldn't die. For a glass-cannon marksman like me, it was the ultimate insurance policy.

But there was a problem.

I stopped in front of a towering bookshelf that stretched twenty feet high.

In the game, the quest was simple: Enter Section Z -> A popup appears -> "You found the Ancient Rune!" -> Click Equip.

"This isn't the game," I muttered, staring at the thousands of books.

There was no glowing quest marker floating above a shelf. There was no shimmering golden aura around the correct book to guide my hand.

I stood in the center of the dusty aisle, surrounded by towering shelves that disappeared into the gloom above.

I had to find a single page in a library of millions.

"Think, Lucien. Think."

I closed my eyes, visualizing the game assets from Asteria Online.

'In the game, the icon for the rune was found inside a black book. No title on the spine. It was located in the section regarding... Biological Anomalies. Sub-section: Regenerative Theory.'

I opened my eyes and looked at the mountain of literature before me.

"Right. Time to start digging."

***

[Hour 3]

"Nope."

Thud.

I closed a thick, leather-bound tome titled 'The ethical implications of grafting Orc arms onto Human torsos'.

"Disgusting. And poorly written."

I shoved it back onto the shelf and pulled the next one.

'The Mating Calls of the Abyssal Siren.'

I opened it. It screamed.

"REEEEEEE!"

I slammed it shut immediately.

"Okay, noted. Don't open the red ones."

[Hour 6]

The sun had set hours ago. The only light in Section Z came from the pale moonlight filtering through the high windows and the faint, magical luminescence of my [Flash] spell, which I was using as a lantern.

My eyes were burning. The dust was clogging my throat.

I was sitting on top of a ladder, twenty feet in the air, surrounded by a pile of rejected books.

'Cellular Division in Slimes.' No. 'How to knit flesh with Mana Thread.' Useful, but not a Rune. 'Vampiric Blood Pacts for Dummies.' Tempting, but I enjoy the sun.

"Where are you?" I muttered, wiping sweat from my forehead. "I know you're here. The devs wouldn't put a fake location in the lore."

[Hour 9]

It was the dead of night. The library was silent as a grave, save for the occasional settling of the building's foundation, which sounded suspiciously like footsteps.

I was on the floor now, cross-legged, surrounded by open books like a mad scholar.

My fingers were stained with ink and dust. My mana was running low just from keeping my [Detection] active for so long.

I picked up a book bound in what felt disturbingly like human skin.

'Anomalies of the Flesh.'

I flipped through it.

Page 45: A picture of a man with eyes on his hands. Page 89: A diagram of a heart that beats backwards.

I sighed. Another dud.

I tossed it aside and reached for the next one on the bottom shelf, hidden behind a stack of scrolls about Golem cores.

It was a small, unassuming black book. The cover was cracked leather, devoid of any title or author name.

I paused.

It didn't have a magical aura. In fact, to my [Detection], it looked like a black hole—a void where mana refused to exist.

"...Hello there."

My heart rate spiked.

I opened the book.

The pages were brittle, yellowed with extreme age. The first half was gibberish—ramblings of a madman obsessed with immortality.

I turned the pages carefully, terrified they might crumble.

Page 100... Page 150...

I reached the very end.

Tucked between the final two pages wasn't just paper. It was a sheet of Vellum—parchment made from the skin of a high-tier magical beast.

On it, drawn in ink that shimmered with a faint, iridescent light, was a complex geometric symbol. A spiraling helix intersected by three sharp triangles.

The Rune.

It didn't do anything just sitting there. But looking at it made my eyes water. It felt heavy, like I was holding a brick of solid lead.

[System Notification]

[Hidden Item Discovered!] [Ancient Rune Parchment: Vitality] [Rank: Unique]

"Gotcha."

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

I carefully extracted the vellum page from the book. I didn't dare try to absorb it here—I was too exhausted, and if I passed out from the pain in the middle of the Forbidden Section, I might wake up as a bookmark.

[Inventory: Store].

The parchment dissolved into pixels and vanished into my dimensional storage.

I slumped back against the bookshelf, closing my eyes.

"Mission... accomplished."

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