Now, we were inside the library building.
Lyra moved with a silent, predatory grace, still walking a few paces ahead of me while I followed right behind her.
From the loud and bloody atmosphere of the courtyard, the transition was jarring. Inside, the air was cool and thick with the scent of old parchment and dust, but it wasn't the peaceful quiet of a study hall. It was the predatory silence of a tomb.
Long, jagged shadows stretched across the floor from the towering bookshelves, creating a flickering maze in the dim, grey light. It wasn't pitch black, but the darkness seemed to cling to the corners, waiting to move.
It wasn't that the library was untouched. Far from it. Lifeless bodies were scattered across the patterned rugs, their faces frozen in various states of shock. While it was technically "safer" than the open sky where the Imps ruled, the silence here felt like a trap waiting to spring.
As we went deeper into the heart of the archives, we encountered a pile of dead students slumped against a circulation desk.
Looking at them, I noticed something strange. Some of the victims had jagged, messy claw marks ripped across their chests and backs.
It must be the work of the imps that have crashed through the high windows.
But others were different.
Some had their limbs completely detached from their torsos. It looked like a beast-type monster had gone through this way, but the patterns didn't match.
'How could it be?' I thought. The library was supposed to be a refuge for the first ten minutes. This level of violence shouldn't have happened yet.
"Hmm." Lyra stopped. She didn't look bothered; she looked curious.
She reached down and grabbed one of the severed arms lying in our path, lifting it to the light of a nearby mana-lamp. She was looking at it intently, her blue eyes scanning the flesh as if she were reading a textbook.
As I expected there 'was' something odd.
I walked near a severed leg further down the hall and examined the wound. There I saw it.
The leg hadn't been pulled out or torn apart by brute force. It had been perfectly sliced—a clean, surgical cut that had sheared through bone and muscle as if they were nothing more than soft butter.
The students with the claw marks were still "whole," despite their fatal wounds. But the ones with the sliced limbs... their injuries were too precise. It wasn't the work of a beast's mindless rage. It looked more like the work of a...
"Could it be..." I whispered.
Lyra had heard my words. She didn't look at me, but I saw her nose crinkle in visible disgust, her face twisting as if she had stepped in something foul.
"Yeah, it is exactly as you think," she said, her voice dripping with disdain.
She threw the arm against the wall with a wet thud. It hit the stone, leaving a dark smear of crimson before sliding to the floor like a piece of discarded meat.
"It looks like we have a traitor among us."
She wiped her hand on her uniform, the fabric of her glove squeaking against her palm. She slightly turned her head upward, staring at the high, shadowed rafters of the library, and let out a long, weary sigh.
"I hope we don't run into him," she murmured, her eyes tracking a trail of blood that led toward the restricted archives. "Otherwise, the library will need a new floor. I don't like cleaning up twice."
"Huh?!"
The exclamation escaped my throat before I could stop it.
Does she mean that she would kill him? Just like that?
This doesn't make sense.
Lyra Y Astrea was a frost-hearted loner, sure, but she wasn't a vigilante. She didn't go out of her way to hunt down "traitors" or avenge students she never even talked to.
She only showed this ruthless, protective side much later—after Cian grew strong enough to actually stand beside her.
Is there something I don't know?
Did the author hide a subplot? Or... did my very presence, the act of dragging her away from her quiet oak tree and into this specific building, trigger a "Hidden Scenario"?
"What are you gaping at, trash?" Lyra's eyes snapped back to me, the blue snowflake patterns in her pupils spinning with a sharp, rhythmic intensity.
"Did you think humans were the only ones who followed the rules of the academy? When the sky breaks, the dogs lose their leashes. And some dogs have very sharp blades."
She didn't wait for my answer. She stepped over a headless torso and kept moving.
The way she said "him"... she wasn't talking about a random person. She knew exactly who did this. She recognized the mana signature of those clean, surgical cuts.
Well, whatever. I just count my lucky stars and move.
I just hope we don't run into this "dog." It will just waste my time—and right now, time is a currency I'm rapidly running out of.
I didn't care about the plot changing or some hidden setting appearing. In this world, the butterfly effect wasn't just a theory; it was a death sentence.
If my presence had triggered a side-story that wasn't in the web novel, then so be it.
I don't care about the plot.
Not the traitor. Not the monsters.
Not even the world itself.
None of it mattered.
As long as I reached her first.