Chapter 67: Midnight Stealth, The Restricted Library

The damp basement of the Class F dormitories was quiet. The rhythmic, heavy

breathing of exhausted students filled the dark room.

Saile lay awake on his rusted iron bed. He stared at the cracked stone ceiling, listening to the water drip from the exposed pipes. He waited until the distant bell in the central courtyard chimed twelve times.

Midnight.

Saile threw off his thin wool blanket. He did not bother changing out of his cheap linen tunic. He reached into his High-Tier Storage Ring and pulled out the dark stealth cloak he had looted weeks ago in Valerius. He threw the heavy fabric over his shoulders and pulled the deep hood over his blonde hair.

The magical cloak shifted, absorbing the faint moonlight leaking through the barred windows. It swallowed his physical silhouette, turning him into a living shadow.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the brass token he had taken from the arrogant senior noble. The metal hummed softly, loaded with 4,500 Merit Points.

It was time to buy some answers.

"They patrol the grounds heavily at night," Naicul warned. The ancient God’s voice echoed in the quiet void of Saile’s mind. "The Inquisitors use light-infused hounds. They can smell fear and track unregulated mana."

"Then I will not give them any," Saile replied coldly.

He slipped out of the dormitory. He kept his footfalls feather-light, rolling his weight from heel to toe to eliminate any sound against the stone floor. He bypassed the sleeping guards at the lower wing exit and stepped out into the cool night air.

The Vanguard Academy was a different world in the dark.

The golden sunburst banners hung limp. The laughing nobles were safely tucked away in their luxurious suites. In their place, heavy armored patrols walked the marble pathways.

Saile pressed his back against a stone pillar. He watched a squad of three elite Inquisitors march past.

They held glowing lanterns that cast a harsh, searching white light across the manicured lawns. Two large, muscular hounds walked off the leash ahead of them. The dogs possessed glowing blue eyes and thick silver collars etched with tracking runes.

Saile held his breath. He forcibly slowed his heart rate until it beat once every three seconds. He pulled the illusion choker tight, ensuring the fake Light element signature remained a dull, unnoticeable ember.

One of the hounds stopped. It turned its massive head toward Saile’s pillar, sniffing the air. A low growl rumbled in its throat.

Saile did not panic. He channeled a sliver of kinetic energy into his calves.

[Skill Activated: Phantom Step (C-Grade)]

The hound lunged around the pillar. Its jaws snapped on empty air.

Saile was already forty feet away. He dashed from shadow to shadow, using the dark stealth cloak to blend seamlessly into the hedges and archways. He moved with absolute surgical precision, crossing the sprawling courtyards without displacing a single blade of grass.

He arrived at the eastern wing of the campus.

The Restricted Library stood alone in a quiet plaza. It was a towering, circular structure built of pale white stone and reinforced glass. There were no traditional guards posted at the door. The building relied on a deadly, automated magical defense grid.

A shimmering, transparent barrier covered the double doors.

Saile approached the entrance. A bronze pedestal sat in front of the barrier, featuring a narrow slot.

"The toll," Naicul murmured. "Pay the gatekeeper."

Saile slid the stolen brass token into the slot.

The pedestal hummed. A mechanical clicking sound echoed in the quiet plaza.

[Merit Points Deducted: 4,000]

The shimmering barrier flickered and dissolved. The heavy glass doors slid open

with a soft hiss.

Saile stepped inside and retrieved his token. He only had five hundred points left. The extortionate cost was designed specifically to keep commoners out, ensuring only wealthy nobles could access the Church’s deeper knowledge.

The interior of the library was vast and suffocatingly quiet.

Rows of towering oak bookshelves stretched toward the high ceiling. The air

smelled of dry parchment, old leather bindings, and settling dust. Faint magical orbs floated near the vaulted ceiling, casting a dim, blue illumination over the archives.

"Where are the blueprints?" Saile asked internally, keeping his back to the wall.

"Naissac would not leave structural secrets on the main floor for his spoiled students to read," Naicul replied, his tone dripping with bitter resentment. "Go lower. Find the foundation level."

Saile moved through the silent aisles. He ignored the glowing grimoires and spell books the nobles paid fortunes to study. He searched the perimeter of the circular room until he found a narrow, spiral staircase forged from black iron.

He descended. The air grew colder with every step.

The basement of the library lacked the polished elegance of the floors above. It was a raw, unfinished stone cellar filled with locked iron filing cabinets and rotting wooden crates.

Saile reached the bottom of the stairs. A solid wall of crude red brick blocked his path.

"A dead end," Saile noted, narrowing his blue eyes.

"An illusion," Naicul corrected sharply. "Naissac lacks imagination. He builds his lies over my truths, but he uses the same architecture."

Naicul’s presence swelled. The God pushed a vivid memory into Saile’s vision. The red brick wall overlaid with the image of a grand, sweeping archway.

"Run your hand along the fourth row of bricks from the floor," Naicul instructed. "Count seven paces from the left."

Saile followed the command. He crouched down, dragging his fingertips across the cold, rough stone. He counted his steps. He stopped.

His fingers brushed against a faint, almost microscopic groove in the mortar.

He pressed firmly against the brick.

A sharp hiss of escaping air cut through the silence. The red brick wall rippled, shedding its outer layer of dust. A glowing, circular runic lock materialized on the stone. The runes were not the harsh, jagged symbols of the Church. They were ancient, elegant, and glowing with a deep purple light.

"A blood lock," Saile realized.

"No. Blood can be stolen. This is a vocal cipher," Naicul said. "It responds only to the tongue of the first era. Naissac kept the lock intact because he could not break the enchantment without collapsing the ceiling."

The glowing circle pulsed, waiting for a command.

"Repeat after me, kid," Naicul whispered. The God’s voice carried a heavy, sorrowful weight.

Saile took a breath. He opened his mouth, letting the ancient, guttural syllables scrape against his throat.

"Vok’tal en sharak. Zul’na elav."

The words translated to a simple, arrogant truth: The earth belongs to the sovereign.

The glowing purple runes flared blindingly bright. The heavy stone wall shuddered. Deep, grinding gears echoed from within the bedrock. The false wall split down the middle and slowly slid apart, revealing a small, forgotten archive hidden in the dark.

Saile stepped inside.

The room was cramped, barely ten feet wide. A single wooden table sat in the center, covered in a thick layer of dust. Stacks of rolled parchment rested in iron tubes along the walls.

"This is it," Saile said softly.

He walked to the table and picked up a large, heavy leather tube. He popped the rusted cap off and pulled out a thick roll of stiff parchment.

He unrolled the document across the table, using two heavy iron paperweights to hold the curling edges flat.

It was a highly detailed architectural schematic.

The top half of the blueprint showed the sprawling layout of the Holy Vanguard Academy. It detailed the coliseum, the dormitories, and the grand cathedral. It was dated over nine hundred years ago.

But the bottom half of the parchment was what caught Saile’s eye.

Drawn in faded red ink, directly beneath the Academy, was a massive, terrifyingly complex structure. It was a sprawling underground network labeled The Abyssal Labyrinth.

"Look closer," Naicul urged.

Saile leaned over the table. The labyrinth was not a natural cave system. It was a series of heavily fortified rings, designed like a descending spiral. At the very bottom of the spiral, trapped in the absolute center of the dungeon, was a single, black-inked room.

The label next to the room read: The Armory of the Fallen.

"He buried it," Naicul whispered. The hatred in the God’s voice was cold enough to freeze blood. "He built this entire school just to sit on top of my home. He turned my sacred armory into the final floor of a student testing ground."

Saile traced the descending levels of the labyrinth with his finger.

The blueprints confirmed the horrific truth. The Church used the upper floors of the labyrinth to train their students. But the lower floors were heavily restricted, packed with terrifyingly high-level monsters to act as a natural defense system.

"The second Divine Fragment is down there," Saile stated.

"My right arm," Naicul confirmed. "Sealed behind a thousand years of rock and monsters."

Saile rolled the parchment back up and slipped it into his storage ring. He had the map. He knew exactly where the prize was buried.

Now, he just needed to find a way to access the Labyrinth without drawing the attention of the Demigod Headmaster.

"The monthly survival exam," Saile recalled. "The students are sent into the upper levels to hunt."

"We will use their exam as a cover," Naicul agreed. "While the sheep play in the shallow end, we will sink to the bottom."

Saile turned around and walked out of the hidden archive. The stone wall ground shut behind him, locking the ancient secrets away in the dark.

He climbed the spiral staircase, leaving the basement of the Restricted Library. He moved like a ghost through the silent aisles of the main floor, his stealth cloak swallowing the dim blue light.

He pushed the heavy glass doors open and stepped back out into the cool night air.

He had won. The infiltration was a flawless success.

Saile pulled the hood of his cloak down, preparing to dash back across the courtyards toward the Class F dorms.

A sharp, metallic scrape echoed from the shadows of the plaza.

Saile stopped dead in his tracks. His Diamond-Tier instincts flared, warning him

of a lethal presence standing mere feet away.

"You walk very quietly for a C-Rank commoner."

The voice was smooth, cold, and dripping with suspicion.

Saile slowly turned his head.

Standing beneath the archway of the library plaza was a girl in pristine silver armor. Flowing white hair cascaded over her shoulders. She held a glowing, unsheathed broadsword in her right hand.

Aira, the Holy Saintess.

Her golden eyes burned in the dark, cutting right through his stealth cloak. She stared directly at him, the lethal tip of her sword pointed straight at his chest.

She had been waiting for him.