On the flip side, Lukas was hunched over the library counter eagerly observing some doodles jumping around on rather a long piece of parchment. If one took a closer look, it was the simplified doodles of the four Sourcerers surrounded by what looked to be the floor plan of the Stacks.

The scene reminded Lukas of his time as a game’s master doing something similar. He was rather fond of the feeling, maybe it was the nostalgic taste that made him brew up this unique encounter for the four in the first place.

It was also serving as a test for the system’s [Create] function on how far it could go. He found out he could go quite far with it in terms of fantasy creation. Just nothing that could exceed his personal prowess in terms of creatures. As for loot and treasure, it was mostly miscellaneous objects that had no real magical value or were derived from his current understanding of Source.

His personal favourite creations were the ball of twilight and the bound journal. Both were rather bland in terms of functionality, but both had their own merits if one was creative enough. Lukas was sure these four could do something with it.

On the map, more and more books kept popping up and disappearing. These guys didn’t seem to be in too much trouble, but he still watched and waited in anticipation.

Whilst being the sole mentor for the world’s first Sourcerers, he still had his own bottom line on their development path. It would be embarrassing if they died due to some fodder. He left them a little surprise. Not to mention he had to leave several plots for them to “discover” on their own in the future.

This whole scenario was also to test a theory of his to possibly find a loophole around the limitations of the [Create] function.

It was going to take a while; he was fine with that.

------

Several Source birds flew around the room before diving straight into a one of the fluttering books. An explosion of paper would sound soon after, adding to the already chaotic space within the room.

The sweat had started to collect on Merla’s forehead as she summoned more and more Source birds to attack the much tougher books in the back. It was a rather rough use of magic, but the sudden change intrusion of hostile books pushed her into a slight panic.

If Lukas was here, he would’ve applauded her creativity in making a derivation on one of the most classic wizard spells, [Magic Missile].

Merla’s arms and some parts of her cheeks already bore the thin, stinging wounds made from the flying paper launched by the enchanted books. She looked around at the state of her current compatriots, they were more or less in the same shape. Though Septimus seemed to have more welts on his head than the rest of them.

Shfff!

“Damn it!” The angry shriek of Thearessa next to her woke Merla up from the sudden passiveness.

Thearessa’s eyes showed a hint of frost before the temperature suddenly dropped, chilling the room. It would’ve felt nice if there wasn’t a horde of insanely hostile, magic books flying everywhere. Merla could tell it was one of the new spells that the hermit had created, [Chilling Gaze].

On a normal occasion the spell itself wouldn’t have done much, but these were books they were dealing with. Old ones. So, within the range of the spell, several flying pages and fluttering books slowly fell to the floor or directly disintegrated in mid-air.

Merla sent her a nod of gratitude. The spell had given the two some breathing space to support the men who were fighting at the forefront.

Septimus had several large heavy bound books flying over his head, occasionally diving down to hammer him on the head. It would’ve been a funny scene if his face wasn’t also bloody from various paper cuts he’d procured.

The man swung an orange blade in the air, occasionally hitting a book or two and causing a sensational burst of smoke, embers, and ash. This must’ve been his new spell, [Heat Metal]. Merla admired the man’s ingenuity, and she sent a few gale winds to knock back some books away from his head.

To the left of the general, a mass of shadows writhed from a rather thin figure shooting out dark tendrils to books that got too close. However, it didn’t seem to help block anything as a small pool of blood had pooled around the feet of Jack Lantier.

Rather surprised as the tenacity of this man, Merla was also quite curious of the spell he used to fight against the mass of books. It was one they hadn’t had time to discuss or rather one he didn’t bother to mention to the group. Luckily, Thearessa was assisting him with some source very roughly made source missiles.

There was hardly any chatter between the four, but after a handful minutes, the once stuffy room had been thinned to a few flying pages and books seemingly trying to flee from their pursuit. Nobody let them go.

The empty floors were littered with torn pages, ash, mangled books, and bloody spots. All of them couldn’t escape unscathed and each retained varying degrees of paper cuts, though some worse than others. Thearessa in general had many tears in her chosen dress, where blood slightly oozed out of her alabaster skin. Septimus looked the worst out of the four, his face was horribly swollen and bloody, nobody would believe him if he said it was all done by books.

Merla and Jack were the least injured. Despite the latter losing so much blood, his clothes weren’t the least bit damaged, and a hood predominantly hid his face in shadow, making it quite hard to tell his situation. As for Merla, she was protected by Thearessa which contributed to most of the hermit’s injuries.

As soon as the last book was vanquished by Septimus’ glowing blade, all of them promptly collapsed onto the floor.

“It hurts… damn. Nobody told me papercuts hurt this much.”

“Gonna teach that kid a lesson when we get out of here.”

“Wait, why didn’t he come? Didn’t he say this was supposed to just be a safe exploration?”

The three adults vented their feelings, openly cursing at Eliott. They hurriedly treated their wounds while keeping a cautious eye to the environment around them. Septimus especially seemed to be very wary of the stone statues, after all it wouldn’t be strange at his point if those suddenly ‘awakened’ to attack them.

Merla helped in this moment of respite and quietly scouted the way back with her source birds. Through the shared vision, she noticed that a majority of the books they had passed before had disappeared from their original location.

“I think we just fought through the whole library?” Merla recounted her findings to the others in awe, not forgetting to cut off the magic to her bird.

“Are you sure? We passed by a lot of shelves on the way in here.” Thearessa didn’t believe it for one second. Her eyes felt strained after such a prolonged skirmish, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t aware that the number of sentient books they fought was in the hundreds rather than the thousands that should be kept in a place like this.

“There’s definitely something wrong,” she held her forehead. “And I don’t think I can fight another skirmish with magic. My eyes… they sting.”

“We definitely need to get out of here as soon as possible and tell Eliott. It doesn’t seem to be so simple anymore.” Septimus had managed to soothe the swelling and bandaged up his face. He quickly took out a short dagger and offered it to Thearessa who took it without hesitation.

He looked over at Jack who hadn’t said a word since their short resting period. “You doing okay Jack? Wouldn’t want to believe the leader of the most mysterious cult in the world would be taken down by a bunch of paper and books.”

“Shhhh! Idiot... Can’t you see that there is something else here?!” Jack responded with a whispered reprimand not looking at the general, but towards the doorway.

Four pairs of eyes gloomily looked at the entrance.

There stood an almost see-through figure. They held an open book in one hand, a feather duster in the other, but the spectral eyes behind the ghostly spectacles was looking straight at them.

“Centuries worth of knowledge was lost before my eyes. Tell me," The ghostly figure closed the book and crossed their arms. “Are you going to compensate for the loss, or will I be getting four new employees today?”

Before their eyes, spectral pages rose out of the dismantled and torn books from the floor and flew towards the ghost.