The world outside the Gate felt jarringly loud. Sirens wailed, and the air was too fresh, lacking the necessary spiritual tension of a dimensional rift. Leo sat on the curb, his back against a portable barricade, feeling the most profound sense of exhaustion he had ever experienced. It wasn't the bone-deep weariness of a long hike; it was the hollow, metallic ache of an energy drain so severe it felt like his very soul had been vacuumed out.
He had used the Arcane Step—the perfected movement technique—only once, but the cost of the Aetherial Comprehension that birthed it was catastrophic. His spiritual well, the reservoir all Archivists drew from, was not just empty; it felt damaged, like a dry, cracked cistern.
Anya was still hysterical, relaying a fractured account of the failure and Ryker's demise to the two bewildered emergency extraction officers. She carefully omitted the part where Leo, the team's research deadweight, had commanded a shadow creature and then flickered across the ground like bad signal reception.
"It was a Swordsman," Anya was sputtering, tears streaming down her grime-smeared face. "It was too fast. It... it just dissolved! Then Leo pulled me out. He was just there."
Leo remained silent, running a silent diagnostic in the Archive.
[Spiritual Energy Reserve: 0.003% (Critical)]
[Spectre Unit: Blade (Active/Idle)]
[Aetherial Comprehension Core: System Idle (Power Requirements Exceeded)]
The Archive Command is nearly free, Leo observed. Deploying Blade requires negligible resources. The comprehension and conceptual rewriting, however... that is the tax. Rewriting the Law of Momentum demanded the fundamental energy equivalent of clearing a Grade A Gate solo. A fascinating, if terrifying, resource management problem.
A black, armored transport pulled up, and a large, impeccably dressed man stepped out. This was Director Vance, the local chapter head of the Archivist Guild—a veteran known for his ruthlessly efficient administrative methods and terrifyingly accurate instincts.
Vance ignored Anya and the officers, walking straight to Leo. He knelt, his eyes—cold, hard chips of gray—analyzing Leo's face.
"Three dead, one hysterical. One sitting here, looking like he just finished a four-hour PhD defense," Vance stated, his voice a low rumble. "Maxwell, what exactly cleared that Gate?"
"The Failed Swordsman was neutralized," Leo replied, his voice raspy. "The subsequent husks were dispatched. The core geode cluster is secure, and the Gate is stable and ready for salvage operations."
Vance raised an eyebrow. "Neutralized. Not killed? And you dispatched the remaining targets after the tank and DPS were down, without a functional Caster?"
"Correct," Leo said simply. "The primary failure was tactical. Ryker relied on brute force to patch a conceptual hole in his defense. The Swordsman's technique was mathematically perfect; Ryker's shield had a predictable weak point based on the angle of impact. Anya's Caster routine was eighty percent wasted energy. Once the Swordsman had eliminated the key threats, its function was complete. My intervention was merely necessary to prevent further material loss."
Vance stared at Leo for a long, silent moment. Most survivors rattled off panic and heroics. Leo was giving him a battlefield autopsy report.
"You analyzed the Swordsman's technique mid-strike and identified a conceptual hole in Ryker's defense?" Vance asked, a flicker of something new—respect, perhaps—entering his eyes.
"It was obvious," Leo shrugged, trying to sound bored, but the effort cost him a visible twitch.
Vance let out a short, humorless laugh. "The kid who sits in the back of the briefing room drawing structural diagrams just single-handedly solved a crisis level tactical problem while running on fumes." He stood up, towering over Leo. "From now on, Maxwell, you don't answer to the field teams. You answer to me. And we'll call you Prof. Because clearly, you're teaching the rest of us how to fail."
Later that evening, in the solitude of his small, book-crammed apartment, Leo lay in the dark. He wasn't resting; he was studying the Archive.
He mentally commanded Blade to materialize. The shadow Specter stood silently by the foot of his bed, a disciplined sentinel.
"Blade," Leo mentally queried, projecting a clear conceptual image of the Swordsman's movement. "Demonstrate the Arcane Step flaw."
Blade instantly executed the original movement: fast, elegant, but followed by that minute, conceptual drag of residual inertia.
"Now, the perfected method," Leo commanded, projecting the newly created Arcane Step algorithm.
Blade moved. It was the blur, the flicker, the instantaneous displacement that had saved Anya. The motion was flawless, but as Blade executed it, Leo felt a sympathetic echo of the massive spiritual drain in his chest.
[Analysis of Aetherial Consumption Rate:]
Archive Command (Deployment/Basic Control): 0.0001% S.E. per minute.
Aetherial Comprehension (Concept Rewrite): 99.9% S.E. (Equivalent to a full charge) per rewrite.
The realization hit him with cold clarity: He had the most powerful military asset in the world—an army of entities that could wield the perfect data of dead cultivators. But the key to unlocking their true potential, the Comprehension ability, was a nuclear trigger. He could rewrite reality, but he could only do it once, maybe twice, before being rendered spiritually comatose.
He didn't need to fight often; he needed to fight perfectly.
The Spectres are the army, Leo concluded, sitting up. But I am the Library, and the Library's librarian must be ruthless with his reserves.
He looked at Blade, the perfect soldier standing in his cluttered room, a constant reminder of the immense, deadly knowledge now at his command. His next mission wouldn't be about clearing a Gate; it would be about maximizing data acquisition while minimizing spiritual expenditure. He needed more archives, more skills, and a better understanding of the Law of Order he was beginning to impose on chaos.
He had three dead men to replace, and the world was his inventory.