As soon as the book broke apart, an immense blinding light appeared in its place, slowly coagulating into the form of a humanoid.
"I AM FREE? AHAHAHAHA! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! I’M FREEEEEEE! FREE AT LAST! I HAVE BEEN STUCK IN THAT MUSTY OLD BOOK FOR TOO LONG! I NEVER THOUGHT I'D GET AWAY FROM IT!" Yelled out the glowing figure which I assumed was the Archangel Michael himself, or a non copyright infringing facsimile of the same entity that corresponded to this world.
"Uugggh...what the heck happened here? Did the Hero that my Fire Grimoire was supposed to belong to suddenly expire or something? No, that's wrong! Wait...it's YOU! YOU’RE the one that’s supposed to be the book's next owner! What did you do to the Tome? Oh Heavens, did you just shatter it into a million pieces? HOLY…! That was supposed to be an essential part of your entire Destiny! Are you insane? How could you DO that? Huuaaarrgh....NONONO! Something's wrong here! You're way too low of a Level to be here! How in Gabe’s inverted feathers did you get inside of this place while being so weak?!! You shouldn't have been able to come in here until you were way over level 50!"
"Yeah, I'm sorry to ruin the entire scripted narrative, but I think we have all stepped off the written path for a while now. Hi, I’m Trina! Nice to meet you, Mr. Archangel…"
"Mykhail...for this world, at least. Blasted Omniverse copyright lawyers are always chasing down after our tailfeathers, so we have to improvise."
"Pss...Trina...What’s he saying? And since when can you speak Celestial?" Lingfeng tugged on my sleeve.
"Celestial? I’m not speaking…AWW *Gulp*...No, wait, I am, and I did not even realise it. Damn auto-translate module!"
"COUGH...Right...Nice to meet you, Senior Mykhail!" I replied back in the Eastern Common tongue. "Soo...I assume that this whole situation we are finding ourselves in right now is probably my fault, because I have killed the Demon that was trapped inside Jin’s Fire Tome too early into his “Hero Career Path”, but I couldn't help it at the time."
"You did WHAT!?!" The Archangel also switched to Common.
"I drowned Ifritt's Tome in a bucket of water after Jin went unconscious from fighting with Fung over there. The damn thing tried to burn me, so I just wanted a little vengeance against it. I never thought that the Demon would actually get banished back to Hell because of my actions."
"PFFF...DROWNED IN A BUCKET? BWAHAHAHAHAHA! OOOOH, THAT’S JUST PRECIOUS! IFRITT’S GOING TO GO INSANE WITH ANGER WHEN HE WINDS UP BACK IN HELL. What in the Heavens is that weird custom-made Achievements list? [Ancient Demon Ice Bucket Challenge]??? PFFFWAHAHA! STRAAAAANGE! YOU, WHO IN SAMMY’S TURKEY FEATHERS ARE YOU?" The Archangel gave me one of those soul-piercing scans with his glowing eyes.
"Hmmmmm...Oooooh...OOOOH!!! So you're one of the other Beta Testers as well...AHAAA...Well, that explains why the threads of destiny got all messed up like that! I see, I see! But that still doesn't explain how you children managed to get down here! There were quite some heavy security measures wired up to guard over this place and defend the Library against any unwanted intruders. Moving even a single book would have awoken all of the Automatons that perform regular maintenance to this place and they would have been forced to attack you! How did you manage to defeat them all?"
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
"Well, then I am glad that we DID NOT TOUCH any of the books! Right, Lingfeng, Jin?"
"R...rriiight...COUGH!" *HIC* Lingfeng choked on his own words.
"You haven't? *Bzzz environment scan noises* Wow, you are right, none of the dwemmer security guards have been disturbed as of yet! But, if you haven't provoked any of them, how did you get inside of the Library in the first place? "
"Oh no, we did get to fight ONE of them, but it came right out of the entrance to the Library and fought us on the external ledge that leads to the foyer. The System said that it was a “Defective Librarian Golem” when we fought it."
"You actually managed to defeat one of those things with your low level party? How in blue blazes? Those things are almost invulnerable to normal physical damage! You would have to melt each and one of them down by sheer force! That's why this was a level 50+ Trial for the Hero of the Flame! It was supposed to be a test of his ability to focus and control his own flames as he melted down the Golems and avoided any structural damage to the fire-vulnerable books that can be found all over the place!"
"Well, sorry to bring the bad news to you, but whoever you Angelic guys have hired to perform maintenance on your dwemmer constructs has done a pretty shoddy job at it, because he left one of the maintenance ports that allowed access to the Golem's Core constructed out of some sort of makeshift provisionary material that melted immediately when Jin helped. After that, we simply cracked the Core and made the entire thing blow up on itself. "
"And you did all of that amidst fighting the Golem? How?"
"Lingfeng kept it busy by kiting it!" I pointed to the silent Windmage.
"I see, so you DO have a high level person with you. Windmage, are you the Guardian of these children? Why have you brought them down here? Were you trying to get them killed?"
"WRONG! Lingfeng did not take us down here intentionally! Stop giving him that judgmental look, Mr. Archangel! One of the above buildings collapsed into the Dungeon with all of us inside of it, causing us to get trapped inside the old Dungeon tunnels. There is War going on at the surface level even right now as we speak, since three other Demonic Sects have joined hands and are currently attacking the Blue Mountains of Books."
"Seriously? Well, that wasn't anywhere in the script! At least not in the one belonging to the Hero of the Flame…UGH!"
"Hey, don't look at me, I'm pretty sure I do not have a pre-written script attached to myself either!"
"Hmmm...Well, YOU most certainly are a weird one. You have a System Non-Interference module attached to you...so no wonder that everything has gone bonkers! You are creating chaos everywhere you go, butterfly effect and all of that. Still, I did not imagine that everything would turn out this way…your every action is forcing the entire Mother System to re-adjust all of her Destiny Threads, and you have obviously severely messed with the Thread belonging to the Hero of the Flame. This is...AMAZING! A true “unchained” narrative happening within the confines of other pre-written narratives! PFUAHAHAH! BRILLIANT! You definitely earned yourself an OmniTube Subscription to your Soul-Streaming channel from my Omni-Self!"
"Ugh, thanks, I guess?"
Wait, WHAT? STREAMING? Timmy, you little bastard! Is all of this stuff that we're doing right now also being streamed-off to someplace else?
Timmy: Well, of course it is! It's being streamed all over the Omniverse. It would be absolutely stupid not to profit from that side of the business, if we were to consider how many “serious stories” are occurring even right now on the whole surface of the planet. In some Universes, you're also being made into a Webnovel, TV Series, and even Anime! You should see how silly you look when you are drawn in anime style with those exaggerated humongous googly-eyes.
Crap...Well, so much for any semblance of privacy. Way to go full Big Brother, Momma System! Why am I not even surprised that my Loli-ass is being streamed all over the Omniverse! I probably even have a Cult following somewhere by now, knowing how many perverts are out there! Should I perform a sudden panty-flash fanservice motion to appease the masses? How many Subscribers do I have so far? BLEH!!!