The BOOM of the heavy glass doors slamming created a concussive wave of finality that vibrated through the soles of Chris's sneakers and up into his teeth. The world outside, with its normal physics and its non-sentient welcome signs, vanished. He was sealed inside.
The lobby of the Upshur County Public Library was immediately, nauseatingly wrong. The air was unnaturally still and thick, carrying the faint, musty smell of old paper and something else, a sterile, ozone-like tang that reminded him of the inside of the mysterious junction box. The familiar, checkered floor tiles seemed to breathe, the black and white squares gently rippling like the surface of a disturbed pond. Across the vast room, the massive main circulation desk, a landmark of imposing oak, seemed to stretch and shrink with each passing second, its dimensions refusing to remain stable. It was sort of like looking at a 3D image without the glasses.
A wave of vertigo washed over him. This was the dungeon entrance, and the very ground beneath his feet was a hazard. He planted his feet wide, trying to find his balance on the shifting floor, and activated his [INSPECT] ability on the room itself.
The HUD returned a single, ominous line of text, stark and unsettling.
[WARNING: Geometry is currently unstable in this zone. Proceed with caution.]
"No kidding," he muttered, his voice sounding small and thin. His objective was to find the main terminal of the debugging interface, and he suspected it wasn't going to be at the front desk. He had to move deeper into the library. He saw the wide, arched entryway that led to the nonfiction stacks, a dark maw promising knowledge and, most likely, more reality-bending weirdness.
As he cautiously proceeded across the undulating floor, a sharp, fluttering sound echoed from the high ceiling above. It wasn't the sound of a bird. It was drier, a papery, rustling noise. He looked up into the shadowy recesses of the ceiling. And he saw them.
A squadron of hardcover books—thick encyclopedias, heavy biographies, old, forgotten textbooks—were swooping down from the darkness. They weren't falling. They were flying. Their stiff covers flapped like leathery wings, awkward but aggressive, carrying them through the air in a surprisingly agile formation. They were dive-bombing him.
"You have got to be kidding me," he yelped, his voice cracking.
A massive, unabridged dictionary, its brown cover flapping menacingly, swooped down at his head. He ducked, throwing his backpack over his head as a makeshift shield. The dictionary slammed into the canvas with a solid THWUMP, the force of the blow staggering him. These weren't just books; they were monsters. They were book-bats.
He scrambled backward, his eyes wide with panic. Another book, a thick biography of Winston Churchill, dive-bombed him, its pages ruffling with an angry hiss. He dodged, but more were coming. They were circling now, preparing for another attack run. This was insane. He couldn't fight them. He had no weapons.
His brain, kicking into gear through the sheer terror, frantically searched for a solution. He couldn't fight them head-on. He had to use the environment. His eyes darted around the lobby and landed on a wheeled library cart, the kind used for returning books to the shelves. It was standing near the wall.
He had an idea. It was a long shot, but it was better than being bludgeoned to death by historical nonfiction.
As the squadron of angry tomes banked for another attack, he focused on the library cart. He activated his [Minor Probability Manipulation] skill, his Nudge. The cart shimmered with a faint, golden aura. He didn't want it to do anything complicated. He just wanted to nudge the probability of its wheels overcoming their inertia. He poured his will into the command, and a quarter of his remaining EP bar vanished.
The cart, which had been perfectly still, wobbled for a second and then began to roll slowly across the floor. The book-bats, their primitive, corrupted logic zeroed in on his movement and the sudden motion of the cart, miscalculated. They dove, not at him, but at the rolling metal cart.
The result was a glorious, paper-filled symphony of destruction. The dictionary, Churchill's biography, and a half-dozen other books slammed into the metal cart in a shower of torn pages, shattered spines, and flakes of dried binding glue. They fell to the rippling floor in a pathetic, twitching heap, their covers flapping weakly before going still.
He had won. He had defeated the book-bats. A triumphant grin spread across his face.
The moment the last book hit the floor, a new figure shimmered into existence between two towering bookshelves near the nonfiction archway.
It coalesced out of thin air, a translucent, shimmering blue image of a woman. She wore a severe bun, sharp, pointed cat-eye glasses, and a neatly buttoned cardigan sweater over a high-collared blouse. She was the absolute, stereotypical image of a 1950s librarian. Chris's triumphant grin vanished, replaced by a mask of pure dread. A quick[INSPECT]of the librarian made his stomach turn a little bit from fear.
[SYSTEM STABILITY UNIT 734]
The ModBot had manifested. It had a physical form. And it looked deeply, profoundly disappointed in him.
The ModBot Librarian raised a single, translucent finger to its spectral lips. It fixed its cold, judgmental gaze on him and let out a single, sharp sound.
"SHHHHH!"
The sound was a focused, invisible wave of pure kinetic force. It slammed into Chris's chest like a physical blow, lifting him off his feet. He flew backward several feet, landing hard on his backpack, the air knocked out of his lungs. The fallen books and the library cart were blasted across the floor, scattering in every direction.
He lay there, gasping for breath, staring at the shimmering blue form of his nemesis. He realized with a surge of horror that the ModBot wasn't just a bureaucratic annoyance anymore. It was an endlessly patrolling, and deeply annoying, environmental hazard. It was the wandering, high-level monster you prayed you wouldn't run into.
He scrambled to his feet, his chest aching, and bolted. He ran away from the ModBot, diving through the archway and into the nonfiction stacks. He found himself in a towering, claustrophobic maze of steel shelves that reached up into the darkness. The air in the narrow aisles was alive with a new threat.
Dozens of small, buzzing, glowing numbers, each about the size of his fist, zipped through the air like angry, territorial wasps. They were made of hard light, glowing with an internal energy, and they moved with a jerky, unpredictable speed.
He ducked as a glowing green "501.9" buzzed past his ear. He used [INSPECT] on the nearest one, a blue number "398.2" that was hovering aggressively near a shelf of mythology books.
[Anomaly: Corrupted Dewey Decimal Sprite (398.2 - Folklore & Fairy Tales)]
[Behavior: Hostile toward incongruous data signatures.]
The sprites immediately seemed to notice him. Their buzzing grew louder, more agitated. They began to swarm around him, their movements becoming more aggressive. He was the incongruous data signature. He didn't belong.
He had to get through. He dodged and weaved, trying to navigate the narrow aisle as the numbers zipped past him. A glowing red "973" clipped his shoulder, and he felt a sharp, static shock, like a zap of electricity. They weren't just annoying; they could hurt him.
He realized he couldn't just run past them. He had to deal with them. He remembered the book-bats and the library cart. He needed to make them hit something. He needed to make them hit each other.
As two sprites, a "641.5" and a "796.3", buzzed toward him from opposite directions, he activated his Nudge. He focused on the space between them, nudging the probability of their flight paths intersecting. The air shimmered with a golden light. The sprites, locked on their trajectories, failed to adjust. They collided with a sharp CRACK of hard light, shattering both into a shower of fading sparks.
It worked. He let out a relieved laugh. This was the solution. The rest of his journey through the stacks became a frantic, dangerous game of herding. He would lure two or more sprites into an aisle, dodge out of the way at the last second, and use a carefully timed Nudge to make them crash into each other. It was a desperate, energy-intensive strategy, but it was working.
He finally burst out of the last aisle, his heart pounding, his EP bar now hovering at a dangerously low level. Before him, at the end of the stacks, was a heavy oak door marked "Main Atrium." It was sealed with a strange, numerical keypad, currently dark.
Floating in the air before the door were three large, old-looking, leather-bound books. They hovered gently, bathed in a soft, ethereal light. The titles looked like they were from the local history section. "A History of Buckhannon," "The Upshur County Story," and "West Virginia's Heartland."
He used [INSPECT]. The System informed him that each book contained a glitched, contradictory account of the town's founding. Just as he finished reading the inspection, his quest log updated.
[PUZZLE: Stabilize the historical narrative to proceed.]
He had to figure out the right story. He activated his [INSPECT (Tier 2)] with the [Causal Analysis Module] on the first book. The data was a mess, a corrupted file of names and dates that shifted and changed before his eyes. But as he scanned, his new ability highlighted a single, stable string of data within the corrupted text, a piece of information that remained constant. John and Samuel Pringle. He scanned the other two books. The same names appeared, the only uncorrupted data point common to all three. That had to be the key. The Pringle brothers, a pair of British deserters who had famously lived in a hollowed-out sycamore tree, were the first settlers in the area. That was the foundational truth.
He looked around. Next to the door were three empty stone pedestals. This was a classic dungeon puzzle. He had to place the items in the correct order. He used his [INSPECT] ability again, this time on the books' bindings, looking for a publication date. The System provided them. "A History of Buckhannon" (1907), "The Upshur County Story" (1954), and "West Virginia's Heartland" (1988). That was the sequence. Chronological order.
Just as he reached for the first floating book, he heard it. The faint, terrifying sound of the ModBot Librarian gliding down a nearby aisle.
"SHHHHH!"
The wave of force, even from a distance, was enough to send the three floating books scattering, tumbling through the air before slowly returning to their original positions. The puzzle had been reset.
His blood ran cold. The puzzle was made nearly impossible by the dungeon's wandering boss. He had to solve it, but he had to do it without being seen. This had just become a battle of timing, memory, and stealth.
He ducked behind a tall shelf of legal encyclopedias, peering through a small gap. He watched as the ModBot's shimmering blue form glided silently past the end of the aisle and continued on its fixed patrol route. He had a window.
He darted out from behind the shelf and grabbed the first book, "A History of Buckhannon." He rushed to the pedestals and slammed it down on the first one. He looked up. The ModBot was at the far end of the stacks, just beginning to turn.
He ran back, snatched the second book, "The Upshur County Story," and placed it on the second pedestal. He could hear the faint, ethereal whoosh of the ModBot starting its return journey. He was running out of time.
He sprinted back for the third book, "West Virginia's Heartland." His fingers closed around the leather cover just as the ModBot's blue glow appeared at the end of the aisle. It had seen him.
"SHHHHH!"
He didn't wait for the blast. He dove, clutching the book to his chest, as the kinetic wave shattered a display case behind him. He scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding. The ModBot was gliding toward him, its finger raised.
He had one chance.
He sprinted the last few feet to the pedestals and, with a final, desperate effort, slammed the third book down onto the final empty spot just as the ModBot turned the corner into his aisle.
For a heart-stopping second, nothing happened. The ModBot continued to glide toward him, its expression one of severe, bureaucratic disapproval.
Then, a bright green light flashed on the keypad next to the door. A deep, resonant CLICK-CLUNK echoed through the stacks as some unseen lock disengaged. The heavy oak door to the main atrium groaned in protest and then swung inward, revealing a path forward into a large, open, and eerily silent room.
He didn't hesitate. He gave the ModBot one last, defiant look and then dove through the open doorway, ready to face whatever lay in the dungeon's final chamber. He had survived the Stacks of Doom.