Lionheart was the most feared warrior from generation one all the way to the latest generation seven, fighters. His created fable, The Emperor Risen by a Librarian, was one of the most famous stories across his kingdom and beyond.
It wasn't a fable born from mere tradition, but from fierce devotion, defiance of fate, and existential horror.
"Lionheart" was a name bestowed by his mother, defying the tradition that names should only be passed from male to male and female to female. He was a child of prophecy, destined to inherit the throne of the Dragon Emperor.
Ahhh... is this just the prologue? I thought. How did I go from reading two hundred plus chapters a night to this barely human speed? I feel like a toddler given a book to revise grammar. But wait... why is this book in English?
Ahhhh! If I used to read that much, what was I reading back then, and where?
Having no answers in my mind, I continued reading for several hours. The core of the story seemed to revolve around pure love laced with tragedy, though if you asked me, I'd define it as love with a real cost.
Then again, it wasn't even pure love—it was the desperation of wanting to be understood. In the entire kingdom, from birth, only the head librarian of the Great Library,rose that understood Lionheart's fragility and weak memory. She recognized that his mind was burning out at the age of eight. Being a Huame over three hundred years old, she knew a fair number of ways to help him manage his condition.
Okay, fine, the story is ethereal, sweet, and caring... but why is the age gap nineteen to three hundred?! That's a freaking two-hundred-and-seventy-one-year difference! Three generations of my family would get wiped out in that time! Why are Huame stated to have a lifespan of 3,000 years, and why is she described in the text as looking like someone in her late twenties? Bro, she's exponentially older than the greatest-great-grandmother I'll ever see!
And how did the MC even fall for her? What was the author thinking? "Oh, she helped him, so it's lovely, okay, I admit he fell for her." Bro! Your mother's age is listed as forty-two, and your grandmother is barely eighty! This woman had the potential to meet you, your mother, AND your grandmother at birth while eating a piece of candy!
Alas, it's the author's choice. If I were the author, I'd at least respect the age gap. Sure, she looks twenty, but why? Authors completely lose their minds when writing age gaps.
As the story went on, she continued helping him. When the MC fell for her, he requested to be her fiancé. She accepted it as a joke since nothing was on paper, but he literally started treating her as his property.
I'm not even going to comment on this part. I'm just reading.
In a later arc, whenever someone tried to touch her out of vulgarity or even displayed the smallest flicker of male attraction, he made sure to strip away their sight or sever their hands using long-range dark magic.
Bro, just let her live a peaceful life.
When she eventually confronted him about it, he agreed not to harm anyone who didn't show vulgar intent, but for the rest, he made no promises. She agreed—I guess when people are stripped of diamonds, even silver starts looking like gold.
When he finally defeated the true child of prophecy—the original heir to the throne—he married her. She helped him heal from his trauma and mental crises, reassuring him that suffering through his adolescence for a throne meant for someone else was all just a misunderstanding.
Yet he was never defeated in war. One day, during that same period of crisis when a soul-devouring tentacle was summoned, he was found soulless. After slaying the entity and covering the kingdom in a great mist, she began her journey to find his soul, realizing the reincarnation potion she had been brewing was missing as well.
It was a tragic story, filled with a desperate need for understanding and an absolutely pampering male lead. Personally, I didn't care for it much—it bordered on strange fixations—but from a purely emotional standpoint, it was morally grey. My opinion wouldn't hold up in public debate, but reading her perspective showed how deeply she longed to be held. As an orphan, no one had ever held her the way he did, regardless of whether she lost her ethereal beauty, status, or knowledge—he always made sure she recovered them.
As I looked down at the book, something suddenly caught my attention.
I had been holding the book for hours. When I had first picked up the floating volume, I hadn't even registered the physical effort. But one thing was certain: this was a sign of recovery. It wasn't much—I still couldn't stand—but I was able to hold something on my own.
A sudden surge of relief and pride welled up in my heart. Excitedly, I called out, "Lina? Uh... am I supposed to be able to hold things already? Because if not, I'm..."
Lina and Roxana were lying on their stomachs on the floor at the other side of the room, murmuring and working on their own things.
When Lina stretched her neck to look toward me, she was so baffled by my sudden recovery that she couldn't form words.
Roxana didn't even look up before speaking coldly. "As expected of this crazy idiot. He unconsciously channeled all his mana into his arms when he reached for it. The second I stepped into the room, his overall gradual body recovery stopped, and only his hands recovered."
Lina thought for a moment before nodding. "Yes... you're right." She paused, then added, "By the way, I just remembered—you entered a tournament before all this, didn't you? What happened there? I didn't get to see it."
I took a breath, trying to calm and control my sudden spike of emotion. Unlike the obsessed Lionheart, I didn't need to know every detail of the past right away. I opened my mouth to give her a straight, honest answer—to explain how the tournament ended when Aeldir killed me, how she gave me that time-reversing fruit, and how I regressed back to the start.
"It went until..."
I felt the words form clearly in my mind, but as they passed my lips, something twisted in the air between us. My throat hitched, and the words tumbled out completely scrambled.
"...and, uh, Mira looked really cute wearing that..."
A dumbfounded, horrified silence fell over the room.
A expression of absolute bewilderment flared across Lina's face. Roxana stretched her neck up from the floor, her red eyes narrowing into a lethal glare.
"You're a creep," Roxana spat.
Lina blinked, completely lost. "What do you mean 'Mira looked cute wearing that'? Sorry to break it to you, Ryn, but I asked how the tournament went—not how you felt seeing your little sister."
Wait... what did I just say?!