Nexus Awakened (An Isekai LitRPG Gender Bender Story)

723. The Footsteps of the Palace

The scale of Frontier was only half of Paradise.

An estimated three hundred thousand people lived in the Capital, and few knew of a hard day’s worth of labor. Thirty years ago, the Bellum Empire was projected to expand to one or two dozen cities in the next hundred years.

However, the involvement of the Impuritas and injection of counterfeit coins slowed their growth to a crawl. Workers had no incentive to continue constructing homes when their pouches were already full of coins.

The bare minimum was required to preserve their level of luxury.

It was not even known where the excess meat came from, and yet people did not question it. No longer did people need to trudge through mud and earth to earn a single coin, for now it was plentiful, and there did not seem to be a shortage of supplies.

This came at the expense of other cities, towns, villages – Everything was funneled straight to the cities of the south and the Capital itself to maintain the Bellum Empire’s bubble of prosperity.

Generations of sloth had caused the population to become so reliant on the Empire that the moment their coins were taken away, they’d have no other means nor skills to remain afloat. The Bellum Empire was a like a frog in pot of slowly boiling water. It did not know that they were being cooked alive. 30 years of Impuritas manipulation crippled the citizens of the Empire without them even realizing it.

Lightning struck down the world as a blanket of dark clouds loomed overhead. A torrential downpour swept through the Capital. The deluge caused many to remain indoors as the giant, paraded eggs were kept sheltered to prevent them from being soaked.

The storm was the perfect cover.

Two figures strode through the streets of the false paradise; both adorned in regal, frilly dresses which were worn atop existing attire. The hems reached down to their ankles, and Frost – who moved through the downpour like a specter – would occasionally step on it since she was not used to wearing a dress.

The streets were cleaner than the putrid roads of the border city just across the Adamantium Mines. Librarians that had taken the form of soldiers roamed these streets with silver halberds held high.

Attached to their halberds were paper talismans, similar to what the paper-eggs were made of. To Frost’s surprise, they appeared entirely human. Even their stats were not out of the ordinary. Aside from the captured Expositionist, this was the first time she had encountered a Librarian.

It’s like mimicry, huh. Except they preserve their stats. The Librarians can make people, but since it’s just a chapter… wouldn’t that mean it’s considered incomplete?

“Correct. They are fragments of someone else. Surprisingly, we have yet to see a ‘Book’. Could it be that they are incapable of creating true Books of people?”

Possibly, but I doubt they can’t when Authors can create Masterpieces.

The Authors of Existentia and the Librarians were one in the same, but they were rarely mentioned together. Librarians could transform people into pages and chapters, as well as give them life, like what they did with the Handless Bers.

In a sense, the Librarians sought to give birth to already existing, established, and living things, such as people and memories.

The Authors of Existentia on the other hand, sought to create fictional Masterpieces. If their names were to be taken literally, then they were beings that tried to bring fiction to life.

Narrow streets were flooded with paper and ribbons. The gutters that led into the Underflow and the oceans could not handle the downpour. Frost trudged through ankle-deep waters in the backstreets of the City, weaving her way undetected as they waited for Gerina’s approach.

The main streets were the only areas unaffected by the floods, and it was where a surprising number of people roamed with umbrellas made from fabric stretched across a lattice of wood.

Half of the crowd were regular humans, and the others were Librarians.

More and more Chapters of people passed by, living their lives normally as though they didn’t know they were mere recreations. They ate, drank, and sought after worldly pleasures.

A family of a mother, father and child passed by, and Frost could not help but notice that the father was a Chapter.

The smile on his face was far from sinister as he held onto the child’s hand in earnest. He was not the only Librarian that seemed rather… ‘normal’, so to speak. Like they weren’t monsters waiting for a trigger to kill indiscriminately.

Like all Impuritas, they did not possess any Light.

The Red Avenger was an abnormality in this sense, since she did.

It did not matter how perfect the copy was.

In the end, they were merely beings made from pages, and yet, they had blue flames in their hearts. Some were pale, which indicated innocence…

The black and purple color scheme of the Capital hypnotized Frost as she pondered on this. Voices of genuine happiness left the paper lips of Librarians. Their expressions of joy were a truth that caused her feathers to rustle against her body.

Are they conscious? Do they know what they are?

The sound of shattering broke her train of thought. Many eyes flicked towards a café not too far away from the walls of the Palace’s perimeter. Screeching of a chair and a panicked man caused Frost to stop for a moment and observe.

“I’m not bleeding…?” The man clasped at his cut finger in shock. “I’m sure I’ve cut myself down to the bone. How come…?”

Suddenly, multiple Librarian knights surrounded him, taking him by the arms.

“Unhand me! I didn’t do anything wrong! What’s… happening to my body!?”

“Silence. You’re being restrained for public unrest.”

“I just –!”

Due to how clumped up they were, Frost did not see how they silenced him. But she caught a glimpse of letters being stolen from his body. They were absorbed by the Librarian’s talismans. Clothes, hair, nails, teeth, a peg leg – it did not matter what it was.

Everything that belonged to him aside from a hat radiated letters. She ventured to guess that this was because his apparel was what was originally on him when he was transformed into a Chapter.

The reverse of what the Scraper and the Expositionist did to their victims. Anna saw them flick weaponized letters onto people, but here, it looks like Librarians can take those letters from other Librarians.

“To repurpose them? Use their letters as new material?”

Could be. And maybe as a method to quickly kill off a Librarian that isn’t cooperating, since it seems like they don’t even know they’re Librarians themselves. The soldiers and knights do, but regular people are living normal lives. I don’t recall an Expositionist having a ‘chapter’ or ‘page’ under their name. It was a generic title, but they are absolutely made of paper too.

There were three types of Librarians: the creators, the collectors, and the created. This didn’t include the Expositionists however, who were an anomaly. The fact that the people could be Librarians without even knowing was yet another brick in the wall of existential terrors.

“But with the existence of the Rivers and Cycles, aren’t we a more complicated version of them?”

Not at all, considering we’re not entirely bounded by tales and Cycles. We can be freed from them. I’m not sure if a Librarian… a Book, a Chapter, or Page can. It’s more tangible in their case. I’d rather a world with the Rivers than a world dictated by books.

“Would you call these people real?”

No, because if they’re anything like the copies of Ber, then they’re still just a fragment of the real thing. Which is sad, especially since they don’t realize what they are…

Frost trailed off as her eyes lingered on the black-stone walls that surrounded the palace.

They stood ten meters high and dwarfed everything across the Capital. Behind the palace wall awaited a complex that served as the foundation of the palace itself; a courtyard of gardens, several barracks, and functions reserved for those in high society.

She approached a long strip of road where hedges trimmed in the shape of bells lined the sides. Between each hedge stood a guard, who held a halberd carrying a banner with the Bellum Empire’s insignia high above – the image of a bell and a star.

… it’s easier for me to call them monsters to rationalize my actions. We don’t know if they’re innocent in the first place, and I can’t easily assume that’s the case either. Not when they’re clearly associated with an Impuritas Group. But then you have cases like Mae…

“What’s on your mind?”

Nothing special… Nav. You think there’s a possibility to make some more unlikely allies down the line? We have an Expositionist under our control, a Disciple of Nilhim, and now an ex-Maestro of Flesh member.

“Is this how you’re going to suggest teaming up with the Red Barron?”

Frost mentally grimaced at the thought.

It was good timing on Nav’s part too, since it only reinvigorated her hunger to hunt down the Red Barron. She had never forgotten the reason why she was in the Capital in the first place. The Red Barron was lurking here, but no one had reported any signs of him yet, which led Frost to believe that he was in a place where they had no eyes.

She gazed upwards at the 200-meter tower that dominated the skies of the Capital. It seemingly wept as water spilled down its gothic contours like waterfalls, collapsing onto the surrounding buildings within its secluded perimeter.

The contrast of its brustalistic, yet gothic architecture to the fantasy-esque complex far beneath made it clear that it was built to withstand the end of time.

This was the Palace.

As Frost steadily approached the final stretch, her brows knitted, and her head twitched in the direction of the orb of light at the peak of the tower.

She heard the haunting sound of a funeral bell.

It occurred precisely as another person was detained by the Librarians.