Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 157: Chance Encounter

Flip... flip... flip...

The initial curious glances from other students had long since morphed into stares of awe, curiosity, and confusion.

The source of their bewilderment hovered in the air around Cecilia.

Not one, not two, but six massive, leather-bound tomes floated in a gentle, rotating orbit at her eye level. Their pages flipped in a synchronized whisper, each book turning at its own pace as her eyes darted from one to the next.

A faint, cerulean glow, the only visible sign of her telekinetic magic, limned each spine and fluttering page. The good old multi-tasking and magical control, a performance that would have earned top marks in a Practical Arts exam and was currently earning her a wide berth in the library.

When a book had yielded all its useful data, a passing mention of the Alicei name in a centuries-old land grant, a note on the Headmaster’s discretionary powers in the academy charter, it would gently float down to a growing ’discarded’ pile on her left.

A fresh volume from the ’to-read’ mountain on her right would immediately levitate to take its place in her orbiting constellation of knowledge.

And when she found a thread, a cryptic reference to a ’scholarship of silence,’ a footnote about a ’family in voluntary seclusion’, her magic became a huntress.

Without even looking away from the text she was currently cross-referencing, her power would reach out. From distant shelves, books would shudder, then slide free, sailing through the hushed air in a silent, spectral procession to land softly on her table, ready to provide context, confirmation, or contradiction.

The head librarian, a wizened man with glasses thicker than the library’s foundation stones, passed her aisle, did a double-take, and simply shook his head with resignation and deep professional respect.

He’d seen this before. It seemed even this world’s version of Cecilia Araceli was notorious for these terrifying, hyper-focused library binges. The ’Top-Tier Nerd’ reputation was clearly earned, not bestowed.

Well, Cecilia thought, a distant part of her mind acknowledging the familiarity, not that the real her in the real world was different.

The method was the same. In the depths of her real office, surrounded by reports and maps and fragments of predictions, or in the hallowed vaults of the Imperial library, she would descend into these same trances.

The stakes were just higher there. The pages weren’t about trade agreements, but grain shipment anomalies that presaged famine, about geological surveys that hinted at fault line stress, about coded diplomatic letters that smelled of impending betrayal.

How was she able to stop tragedies before they happened? To predict the assassinations, the mine collapse, the attacks, the volcanoes?

This was how.

Not through divine sight, but through reading. Through connecting dots no one else even knew were on the same page. Through the willingness to drown in the boring, the mundane, the administrative detritus of the world until it screamed its secrets.

But there was always a downside to this kind of deep dive.

A temporal disconnect. A severing from the flow of normal time.

The world above faded. The rustle of pages turned by hand, the soft tread of other students, the gradual shift of the dusty sunbeams cutting through the high windows.

One moment, the light streaming through the leaded glass was the pale, buttery gold of late afternoon, painting motes of dust in brilliant relief.

She blinked, her eyes dry and aching from the relentless scan of tiny, ornate script.

And in that blink... everything was dark.

The sunbeams were gone. The only light now came from the gentle, floating orbs of magelight that had awakened with the dusk.

The world outside the tall windows was black, speckled with the first stars and the glowing windows of other academy buildings.

The library was emptier, quieter. The diurnal students had fled for dinner, for dormitory gossip, for clandestine meetings in shadowy corners.

Cecilia slowly lowered the last book she’d been holding aloft. It settled onto the table. The cerulean glow around her fingers winked out. She sat back in her chair, her body protesting with the stiffness of hours spent in perfect, unmoving focus.

Mm.

Shucks.

She had missed dinner.

That was when she saw something.

A flicker at the edge of her dark-adapted vision, in the deepest, most unvisited canyon between the towering shelves labeled ’Post-Cataclysm Cartography’ and ’Theories of Dimensional Echoes.’

White.

Floating...?

Transpare—

Her brain, still sluggish from its marathon of historical analysis, struggled to process the input. Ghost stories whispered in dorm rooms flitted through her mind. The Athenaeum was ancient. And it was a world she wasn’t familiar with.

What if—

"AAAAAAAHHHH! GHOST—"

The scream tore from her throat. But, to her horror, it was met instantly by a second, even higher-pitched shriek of pure terror from the white apparition itself.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! GHOST?!"

The thing didn’t flee. It did something worse. It lunged. At her!

GRASP—

A pair of arms, solid, real, and shockingly strong, wrapped around her from the front in a panicked clutch. The luminous white form buried its face against her shoulder, trying desperately to use her as a human shield.

"WAAAGHHH—LET ME GO—EASTIEL—HELPPPPP!"

"HUH?! WHERE?! WHERE’S THE GHOST?! WHEREEEEEE?!" it—he—wailed into her uniform, his voice muffled but vibrating with unadulterated terror.

In the chaotic tangle of limbs and panic, Cecilia’s own fright evaporated. The ’ghost’ was clinging to her, and the substance she was feeling was not ectoplasm, but fine, expensive wool over tense, trembling muscle.

Cecilia blinked, her heart hammering for an entirely new reason.

She realized what, or rather, who, had bumped into her in the shared panic was—

Oathran.

He was still pressed against her, terrified. His face, when she managed to tilt her head, was pressed into her shoulder, but she could see the side of it. It was pale, bloodless, like someone who had just been convinced the supernatural was upon them.

His eyes, when he peeked one open, were wide, his grey irises dilated almost to black.

He had clearly been in the library as well, for who knew how long, perhaps engaged in his own research in some forgotten alcove.

The ’floating white’ had been him.

"What are you doing?!" Cecilia snapped.

"What am I doing?!" Oathran asked, confused.

The mighty Dragon Lord was currently trying to hide behind her from a library ghost he thought she had seen.

"Why were you white and transparent?!" Cecilia specified.

Oathran went perfectly still.

"Oh—" Oathran flinched. "Yeah. I was testing this spell I just read in this boo—ooooohhh, sorry. That was my fault. That was on me."

But he grasped her again, tight. "BUT ARE YOU SURE, THOUGH?"

"I am. Please... off..."

The death-grip around her loosened by a fraction. He lifted his head slowly, just enough to look at her face. He looked at her, then over her shoulder at the empty, dark aisle, then back at her.

The terror in his eyes melted away, replaced by a flush of embarrassment so deep it seemed to radiate heat. He released her as if she’d suddenly caught fire, taking two quick steps back, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process.

"I—apologize," he stammered, the smooth, cultured baritone now cracked with humiliation. He straightened his rumpled jacket with frantic, clumsy tugs. It was a light, off-white linen overcoat, she now saw.. "I was... researching. The light... it plays tricks. And you... you screamed..."

"I screamed because I saw you," Cecilia tiredly sighed. "And you screamed because I screamed."

"Oh."

"Hm."

"Okay."

"Yep."

"Please don’t make commotions in the librar—"

"WAAAAAAAAAAHHH—"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH—"

"SILENCE!"