Len followed Rick through the doorway, gripping the staff tightly in his left hand. Rick's old hammer felt familiar in his right - he'd spent enough time being hit by it during training.

The stairs stretched upward, each step seemingly carved from the same star-flecked obsidian as the door. As they emerged into the room above, Len's breath caught. Books lined circular shelves that stretched toward a domed ceiling painted in stark white, crisscrossed with black lines connecting countless points - like a star chart in negative.

Movement caught his eye. A gargoyle perched on a rolling ladder, its form different from the others they'd encountered. Instead of wood or metal, it seemed to be made of the same material as the night-sky door below. It turned toward them, obsidian wings flexing.

Then it flickered.

One moment it was on the ladder, the next it appeared five meters closer, then another five, each jump bringing it nearer in a stuttering rush that set Len's teeth on edge. The thing moved like broken time, like a skipping record of reality.

"Oh, this is going to be fun," Rick said, bouncing slightly on his toes as he raised his shield.

Len felt his own grin spreading. After all the administrative work in Goran, after playing nice with nobles and merchants, this was what they did best. Just him and Rick against something terrifying and powerful, with whatever treasures it guarded waiting to be claimed.

The gargoyle flickered again, now close enough that Len could see the stars wheeling across its surface. He adjusted his grip on the staff, temporal magic humming through it.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Born ready," Rick replied, shield up and hammer cocked back.

The gargoyle's head snapped toward them with impossible speed, and reality bent.

The gargoyle's eyes flared, light bending around it in a way that made Len's head spin. Beams shot out from its eyes, slicing through the air like scythes. One of the beams grazed Len's shoulder, leaving a line of searing pain and smoking fabric.

"Stay on your toes!" Rick yelled, deflecting another beam with his shield. The force pushed him back a step, but he recovered quickly, eyes locked on their enemy.

Len channeled mana through it. He needed to trap this creature, to hold it still long enough for Rick to land a decisive blow. The gargoyle flickered again, now just inches from him. Its hand came down in a sweeping arc, and the space where its claws passed seemed to tear open, revealing a void of nothingness that sucked at Len's very essence.

He dodged, barely avoiding the slash of broken reality. The air around the gargoyle shimmered with distortion, making it hard to focus on any one part of it. Len thrust the staff forward, activating the temporal stasis.

"Stay still," he growled, mana flaring at the tip of the staff.

The Gargoyle hopped backwards stumbling. It expected to teleport.

Rick's hammer slammer into the creature's side, cracks radiated through its body, the hit throwing it back several meters.

It landed on the ground, Len activated the first spell stored within the staff.

He shot out a mana bolt at the creature, it gripped the floor, its wings flapping as it threw itself forward, flickering ontop of a bookshelf.

Len focused on the gargoyle, its dark form shimmering as it flickered from bookshelf to bookshelf. The creature launched itself at Rick again, claws extended, aiming for his exposed flank.

“Watch out!” Len shouted, raising his staff. He has to materialize to get the hit. Len fired into open space.

The mana bolt hit the gargoyle as it reappeared, throwing it back.

Rick pivoted, using the momentum to swing his hammer down with ferocity. The clang of metal against obsidian echoed through the chamber with a crunch.

It flickered behind Rick, aiming for Len.

Len readied resonating strike in his hammer, the angle awkward.

Lightning struck the creature, the branches leaving after-images in Len's eyes. "Gotcha," Rick said.

Len continued to see the world through his mana sight.

The creature flickered away, repositioned and came at them a different direction.

The two worked in tandem now, moving like a well-rehearsed dance. As the creature charged again, Len channeled more mana into a defensive barrier. The gargoyle slammed into it with enough force to send ripples through the air around them.

Rick brought his hammer down and it flickered away, then jumped forward, raking Rick with its claws.

It flapped its wings throwing itself back out of range, then flickered away.

"Left!" Len yelled activating the temporal stasis.

Rick used his shield, the creature's claws raking it. Len struck it with his hammer, light leaked from the creature's wounds and mouth as it flickered away just a few meters.

Rick hit the ground with his hammer, the shockwave threw the beasts into a bookshelf, it staggered up and ran at them again.

After several exchanges of blows, the creature's movements started to slow. Its teleportation distances shrank, flickering closer and closer each time until its reality rending claws extended only a few centimeters.

Len and Rick's clothes were torn on their upper bodies, even with diminished abilities the creature had razor sharp claws.

“Keep your eyes sharp! We can’t let up now!” Rick said.

They covered one another's blind spots, using spells to not over-extend themselves and go for the kill.

The creature flickered forward, aiming for Len's throat as he activated temporal stasis.

Len threw out his staff to activate the lightning spell. The gargoyle grabbed the staff and pushed it higher, the spell went off hitting the ceiling as the creature turned and pulled on the staff.

It sunk its claws into Len's wrist and the staff came free. Reality tore around its claws as it ripped its hand free.

It flickered away, dropping the staff, letting it hit the floor and roll away.

Its eyes flickered to Rick and it jumped. Len just knew what it was going to do. His hand was barely attached as he threw himself at Rick's back.

The creatures appeared, snarling it drove its left hand forward, reality warped along its talons.

It stabbed through his side and up into his body.

Len wrapped up the creature with his one good hand and cast temporal stasis, he turned the creature out of place as an enraged Rick swung his hammer, the air howling as mana gathered with it.

The creature looked into Len's face as he grinned, blood falling from his mouth.

Rick's hammer hit the creature's head, the half of its head on the other side of the impact blowing out

With a soft hiss like falling sand the gargoyle collapsed into dust, with its core falling out of the growing pile, to tinkle on the floor.

Len stumbled backwards, healing spells firing off.

Rick caught him by his vest straps and lowered him to the ground, and scanned the area.

===

You have earned EXP

===

Using experience would take a heavy toll on his body. One that he didn't think he could survive in his current state.

Len's will spread throughout his body, creating solid will constructs in the walls of his heart and the arteries to continue pumping oxygenated blood, if he fell unconscious he would be of no help in putting himself back together.

The constructs solidified as he contracted his own heart.

He enhanced his bone marrow turning on all the systems within his body that would create more blood and assisted the flow to and from his brain.

Rick cast and alarm spell. "We're clear," Rick assessed, dropping his hammer.

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Rick pulled out Len's potions and started pouring them on his wounds. "Stamina?"

"Yeah, got in deep, talons need to come out," Len said.

Rick put his hand at Len's side, pulling out the talons with a quick work of will, at the same time he pulled out the stopper of a stamina potion with his teeth and doused the wound with the potion.

It would get into the bloodstream faster and energize the tissues around the wound. Len held onto these facts, fell back on the training, the healing they'd done in the past.

"Wrist," Len said.

A working of will clamped down on his forearm, cutting off the blood loss.

Len healed the damage to the main arteries and heart where the talons had cut through, removing the will constructs that had been acting in their stead.

Len started coughing.

"You got that?" Rick asked.

Len didn't respond, instead using his will to push the blood out of his lungs and create a constructed diaphragm that kept his lungs working.

Rick pushed that blood back into his veins, the oxygenated blood waking up Len's brain.Len kept a constant water spell going, stopping his blood from clotting within his body.

"Focus on vitals," Rick said.

"On it," Len said. "Legs?"

Rick took his shield, a spell softened the ground before he slammed it in and grabbed Len's legs, putting them up on the shield.

Rick went back to work, fusing the veins together along Len's side to stop blood loss.

Len gritted through the pain of having his side put back together.

"Diaphragm is good," Rick said.

Len reduced the amount that his construct was working to inflate and deflate his lungs.

Rick fused what he could, quick and effective work, each done to extend the amount of time it would take for Len to die.

"Stamina," Len said.

Rick tore out a precious potion and poured it into Len's side without hesitation.

Len felt alert again as Rick finished off fusing the last major parts together. He poured water over the wounds to clean Len's side and fused the skin together.

Len ran mana through his body, passively healing the remaining trauma. His breathing hitched.

Rick checked him over. "Internal wounds still, your arm's fucked too."

"Ever thought about working on your bedside manner?"

"Ever thought about learning how to dodge?" Rick asked.

Len grunted, too tired to argue—much.

Rick took his arm and started piecing his bones together and fusing them. He used his will to hold it in place to take less strain on Len's body. He pieced muscle and tendons together.

He checked on Len's side again.

"Bones aren't great, been focused on muscle," Len said.

"Alright, I want to unclamp your wrist and get you all connected back together, less time for the hand to get fucky," Rick said.

Len took an accounting of his body. "Works, been in worse shape."

Rick grunted and released his will clamped on Len's wrist. Len added some of his own will to his body's circulatory system. He grimaced in pain, his hand a ball of pain as it came back to life.

Then it turned to the worst case of pins and needles. He focused on healing the tissues with the blood and making sure there was no clotting.

It was slow work as he split attention there and keeping the healing going in his side.

Rick worked on his shoulder too, a pretty simple job reconnected the parts that had been severed.

Rick pinched his fingertips sometime later. "Good reaction and its not like holding a block of ice."

"Got water?" Len asked.

"Sure thing." Rick got his canteen out as Len pulled his legs down off of the shield. He rolled onto his side and used his elbow to try and sit up. Rick grabbed the back of his armor, pulled him up to sitting and turned him around, leaning against the shield.

He held out the canteen to Len who took it with a nod of thanks and drank three mouthfuls and paused.

"That was a nasty one," Rick said.

"Yeah," Len nodded. Without the temporal spell or their coordination—Len shook his head clearing it.

"How you doing?" Rick asked.

"Gimme ten I'll be okay," Len said.

"Alright," Rick patted him on the shoulder and stood up, a cleanse spell pulled the blood from his stained clothes he moved to the pile of supplies he'd used on Len cleaning them up and getting his hammer before he walked over to the staff, grabbing that and then returning.

Len drank from the canteen slowly in the mean time.

Rick put the staff down next to Len as he stoppered Rick's canteen and traded it back to Rick.

He grabbed the staff and used it to push himself up to standing, Rick put out a hand to steady him. Len patted it as his blood rush stabilized.

"Lets check the area. Then we can head down to the first floor and start getting those books out of the damn water."

Rick nodded, wiping sweat from his brow.

Rick picked up the creatures core and stuffed it into his pocket.

Len frowned as he spotted an irregularity in a wall panel. He'd been staring at it for a while, but now he really focused on it.

"Something over there," he pointed at it. They moved over to it Rick examining the panel before he reached into a shelf next to it, feeling around before something clicked.

The panel opened revealing items within.

"Pair of boots and some charts." Rick grabbed the boots and handed them to Len. "Wanna figure out what these do?"

"Space stuff," Len said, the enchantment was on the interior of the boots that were made from a supple leather.

He grimaced at the enchantment. "Space magic is complicated as hell."

"Mhmm," Rick wasn't paying attention, opening a map. "Star map, though these aren't our constellations, must be of a different world's sky."

"We knew that dungeons, and the rest come from other worlds," Len said, studying the enchantment within the boot. It had a positional input and a mana input.

He glanced over to dust pile on the ground. Teleportation of some kind?

"This place feels more like a realm than a dungeon," Rick said, picking up the other chart.

"Isn't a space fused with our world's reality, so dungeon."

"Massive freaking dungeon though to have all of this inside it." Rick opened the second chart.

Len leaned forward seeing the positional information of star systems and the mana pathways that connected them.

Len traced the lines connecting the star systems with his finger. "This is incredible. Look at these coordinates - they're using a three-point system to map out the mana flows between worlds."

He studied the intricate web of connections, mind racing with possibilities. "These show paths of least resistance. Follow these and you'd need maybe a tenth of the power. You could use this to create portals, using the natural mana streams to power the transport. It'd be far more efficient than brute-forcing a connection."

"So we could create a network of portals throughout the stars?" Rick said.

"Well yeah, if we knew how to make portals."

"Got enough reading material here," Rick gestured to the room at large.

Len looked around. "Yeah there's a lot here. A bookshelf caught his attention, a glimmer of mana running through it in an enchantment.

"Something there too."

"You going to put those boots on?" Rick asked.

"I think that they have a teleportation ability, not sure how far though," Len said.

"Better than the ones you have on now they look like," Rick said.

"Give me a minute." Len changed out his boots as Rick rolled up the charts, putting them on a nearby shelf.

Len got back up with his new boots on, then aimed for halfway through the room and activated the boots.

He jumped five meters instead of the twenty or so he was aiming for. He tried it again, then sideways where he wasn't looking and back to Rick, the boots not working after the fifth try.

Len checked the enchantment out of mana.

"You figure it out?" Rick asked.

"Based on the rate it fills up can use these once a day and you get five jumps of five meters," Len said.

"That'll be useful in a pinch," Rick said.

"Yeah, shall we check out the weird bookshelf?"

"You know me, always in to check out new hiding spots," Rick said.

They walked to the shelf and studied it.

"I can see what you mean," Rick muttered.

"I sense the enchantment but its folded in on itself like a storage device," Len said.

Rick tapped the shelf and listened.

"There you are." Rick pulled a shelf forward and then reached behind it and flipped something.

A 'hole' appeared in the bookshelf.

Len pulled out what was inside.

Len lifted out a telescope as big as him on a stand.

"Made from a special Pyronite alloy," Rick observed. "Brass where it wasn't needed and those crystal lenses must have been a bastard to craft, tolerances are on the really damn high side. You got any idea about the enchantments?"

Rings of precisely etched runes spiraled along its length.

"Magnification on the lenses, mana detection," Len said.

Rick looked through the eye piece and used the dials to move it. "Increase the mana and it zooms right in." He pulled his eye away and studied the knobs. "Oh! See these numbers here?"

"Yeah?"

"This is how they made that mana pathway chart! Smart bastards, you'd have to keep it in one place though because it is orientating off of your position," Rick held his chin in thought.

"What you talking about?"

"That pathway chart, at the center is the world where whoever owned this storage device lived. Using that as zero, zero, zero and using this telescope they were able to figure out the other system's coordinates. This is even more useful than the chart because we can use it to chart our own pathways."

"We could figure out the planet that the arrivals set out from," Len said.

"Could go and pay them a visit before they get here," Rick grinned.

"Their foot soldiers were level fifty with their leaders in the three hundreds," Len's doubt crept into his words.

"What's to say that we can't catch up to them and become stronger faster?" Rick's grin deepened.

To Len they had always been people and forces that were beyond them, their power on another level their resources endless. With Goran, with Velkaris, with the dungeons and the support of everyone?

How many tricks did they know to increase one's cultivation, how many items in how many dungeons did they know of that could improve their overall power. The forgotten library was just the second they'd visited.

"Come on, lets finish looting this place and then we'll get those books on the bottom floor out of water," Len said.

They returned back to the entrance of the Astral section after having searched the rest of the place. "Was hoping we could find at least one storage device here," Len said.

"Not normal for dungeons to have a storage device inside them, the storage dilemma," Rick said.

"Yeah for every storage device you put into another, they lose fifty percent capacity," Len said.

"Plus side you should be able to figure it out with all these books. Or we hire on an enchanter that's got a mind for this sort of stuff," Rick said as they descended the stairs back into the library.

"What do you want to do about the water?" Len asked. "Thinking you patch up the holes and then use magic to drain out the water and dry up the books."

They entered the library, Rick peering up at the ceiling. "Yeah I could do that."

"I'll head down to the bottom floor and clear out the water, then we can give this place a thorough going over and see if there's anything we missed," Len said. "Though first, lets use up those experience points.

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Body:

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