Ultimate Gacha System: Reborn As A Mob in My Favorite Game

Chapter 133: The Library

It was a pristine glowing white door.

The door possessed no hinges, no frame, and no surrounding walls.

It just stood there, anchored in the center of the universe. The doorknob was forged from a dark heavy metal that seemed to absorb the light around it.

Klaus stared at the door.

Something was wrong...

He knew he was asleep, but the pull radiating from that door was terrifyingly real.

It wasn’t simple gravity that forced you to gravitate over it but rather it was a different kind of magnetism.

Every single fragment of his integrated mind, every single soul he had ever harvested and stored within his inner domain... they all screamed at him to walk forward.

’Hold on, why does this feel so familiar?’ he whispered to himself.

It felt like the authority of the world, but magnified a thousand times over.

It was promising him everything.

If he just turned that dark metal knob, he would know.

He would know exactly what happened... He would know the origin of the Soul King class, the nature of the gods, and the purpose of existence itself...

The pull was intoxicating. It was a drug perfectly tailored to a guy who had spent his entire second life completely in the dark.

He found his consciousness drifting forward as he was walking down the path of parted flames.

He could feel his own mind starting to heavily fray at the edges.

The closer he got, the more his human perspective began to crack.

The knowledge resting behind that simple white wood was too heavy.

He felt his memories of Earth, his memories of Mirela, his memories of Anya and the rest of the women starting to gently slip away, replaced by a cold vast apathy.

"Just one look," Klaus muttered, his thoughts slurring.

He raised his hand.

He extended his fingers toward the dark metal knob.

He was an inch away. The metal was humming, actively reaching out to latch onto him.

He just needed to turn it...

"NO!"

SMACK!

A sharp stinging pain ripped across his cheek out of nowhere.

His vision went completely white, and the roaring flames of the inferno instantly shattered.

A long time later or maybe just a fraction of a second, he had no clue... Klaus finally came to.

He groggily opened his eyes and let out an annoyed groan.

He was still exhausted. His physical body felt like it had been run over by a freight train, backed up, and run over again.

He didn’t immediately sit up. He just lay there, blinking rapidly against the darkness of the Endless Tower.

The glowing runes on the pillars were dark again, the temporary illumination from his class upgrade having faded when he passed out.

The first thing he registered was the smell and the second thing he registered was the stinging heat radiating from his right cheek.

"Ah, for fuck’s sake," Klaus groaned. "I can barely sleep as it is, and now I’m getting assaulted in the real world too...?"

He kept muttering complaints as he pulled himself slightly upward, trying to shake the lingering fog of the dream.

His head felt like it was moving through mud.

That was when he realized he wasn’t lying flat on the hard obsidian floor. The surface beneath his head was soft and it changed slightly as he moved.

He tilted his chin back and focused his eyes.

Anya was leaning directly over him.

The six-year-old Shinigami was looking down at his face, and she looked terrified.

Her striking purple eyes were blown completely wide, her pupils were dilated and her small, pale hands were hovering near his shoulders, trembling visibly.

Klaus realized his head was resting comfortably right in the center of her small lap.

He blinked, rubbing his stinging cheek.

"Did you... did you just slap me?" Klaus blurted out, his groggy brain struggling to catch up.

Anya didn’t immediately revert to her cold persona.

She let out a sharp breath with her small hands dropping to grip the front of his torn combat shirt.

"No, no, no," Anya muttered rapidly, her melodic voice completely devoid of its usual formality.

She sounded scared. "You were reaching for it. You were not supposed to go there. Not yet. The foundational structure of your mind cannot handle the exposure."

Klaus went stiff. The last remnants of his drowsiness evaporated.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, wincing as his newly healed muscles protested the movement.

He was still shirtless with his chest completely exposed to the freezing air of the tower.

His long silver hair spilled over his shoulders becoming a reminder of the massive physical changes he had just gone through before he blacked out.

Only then did he look at her properly, and her panic made things even more confusing.

"Go where?" Klaus asked, his voice steadying. "Anya, what the hell are you talking about? I just picked a skill and passed out... I was having a weird dream about a burning room and a door."

Anya stared at him, her purple eyes tracking his face to ensure he was actually awake and lucid.

Part of him really wanted to believe she was just overreacting.

He wanted to believe the system was just throwing a flashy cutscene at him to celebrate the class upgrade but the look of dread on the little girl’s face told a different story.

Reality was never that kind.

"Did I... almost die again?" Klaus gulped, scanning the dark room.

He saw Mirela standing a few yards away, watching them with wide anxious eyes, still clutching her moon-crystal staff.

Anya took a slow, deep breath.

She smoothed her small hands down the fabric of her blue dress, visibly forcing herself to calm down.

The trembling stopped, replaced by the rigid posture of a Shinigami.

"It was not a dream," Anya stated quietly with her voice echoing in the silence of the ground floor.

She looked down at her lap, refusing to meet his glowing silver eyes.

"When you activated the [Soul Configuration] skill, the volume of divine mana required to unlock the foundational architecture of your inner domain completely drained your conscious reserves..." Anya explained. "It put your mind into a deeply vulnerable receptive state."

"Okay," Klaus nodded slowly. "So I ran out of mana and crashed, still that doesn’t explain the door."

"The door was the Library of the Gods..." Anya whispered.

The name hung in the cold air and Klaus felt a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature of the tower.

"The Library?" Klaus repeated with his brow furrowing.

"It is the repository of universal truth," Anya continued. "It is the realm where the architects of this reality record the fundamental laws of existence, the nature of souls, and the origin of the gods. When a mortal ascends and claims a divine mantle, their consciousness is naturally pulled toward it as the world attempts to integrate them into the pantheon."

Klaus stared at her.

The absurdity of his life just kept piling up... Leave it to this godforsaken world to put a cosmic death trap right next to his subconscious.

"But there is no way I can just walk into a place like that right now," Klaus said under his breath, piecing it together. "I might have the Soul King’s power, and I might have a god’s battery in my chest, but my mind is still human."

"Precisely," Anya nodded, her eyes flashing with lingering fear. "Even though you have gained the absolute power of the Soul King, you are not nearly up to the level of a true deity yet... Your fundamental psychological architecture is mortal. You possess human memories, human attachments, and human limitations."

She looked back up at him.

"If you had touched that door," Anya said, her voice shaking again. "If you had turned that knob and exposed your mortal mind to the raw truth of the cosmos... your consciousness would have shattered into dust. You would have suffered complete ego death... The body of the Soul King would have remained, but ’Klaus’ would have ceased to exist entirely."

Klaus ran a hand through his silver hair, letting out a long sigh.

"Thank you for helping me out... still..."

He looked back down at Anya.

The little girl was trying to look stoic but she was failing miserably.

Her lower lip was trembling slightly, and her small hands were clenched into tight fists.

She had been sitting there, watching him sleep, and had felt his soul actively drifting toward annihilation and she hadn’t used some complex Shinigami spell to save him.

She had just hauled off and slapped the shit out of his physical face to snap him out of it.

Klaus felt the annoyance of the rude awakening completely melt away.

"You slapped me," Klaus said with a small scheming grin appearing on his face.

Anya went rigid.

"It was the most efficient method of applying trauma to sever your connection to the ether... I calculated that standard intervention would be too slow."

"Uh-huh," Klaus laughed softly, reaching up to rub his cheek again. "You panicked."

"I am a Shinigami," Anya defended fiercely with her pale cheeks turning a vibrant shade of pink. "I do not experience panic."

Klaus leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees.

He knew that trying to get her to admit her feelings directly was a dead end. She was too proud but he also couldn’t just let it go.

"I mean, you didn’t want to lose me... isn’t that why you panicked?" Klaus teased with his voice becoming warm and genuinely fond.

Anya completely froze.

The blush spread from her cheeks all the way to the tips of her small pointed ears.

She forcefully averted her gaze, looking very intensely at a crack in the obsidian floor near her knee.

"It is..." Anya stammered with her melodic voice cracking slightly.

She swallowed hard, her small fingers wringing the fabric of her dress. "It is only natural."

"Oh?" Klaus raised a silver eyebrow.

"You are my Papa," Anya mumbled, her voice so quiet Klaus barely heard it. "And I am your daughter. It is a biological and social imperative for a child to ensure the continued survival of their parental figure. Therefore... I cared."

Klaus’s grin softened into a genuine affectionate smile.

The very second she finished that sentence, warmth settled right in the center of his chest.

It completely pushed away the lingering chill of the void.

He had spent his entire life running from attachments, terrified of losing people, convinced he was just a mob.

But right now, looking at the little girl who had literally slapped him away from the edge of the universe just to keep him around, he realized none of that mattered.

"Thanks, Anya," Klaus said quietly. "I appreciate the save."

Anya peaked up at him through her silver bangs.

The heavy blush was still there, but her posture relaxed significantly. She smoothed her dress down one final time, clearing her throat to regain her formal composure.

"I officially congratulate you once again, Papa," Anya said, testing out the word with a bit more confidence this time. "You successfully eradicated the usurper and secured the domain."

Klaus nodded, rolling his shoulders to work out the stiffness. "Yeah. It got a little messy at the end, but he’s gone..."

Anya hesitated.

Her purple eyes darkened slightly, revealing the traumatized six-year-old girl underneath.

She looked at his face, searching for any sign of deception.

"Did you..." Anya started with her voice dropping into a hesitant whisper. "Did you take revenge for the death of my mother?"

Klaus completely stopped moving.

The scenes from the dream, the Library, the system skills... they all instantly vanished from his mind, replaced by the vivid bloody reality of the arena.

He remembered the exact sensation of the massive crimson broadsword in his right hand.

He remembered the look of pathetic terror on Ryoki’s flawless face as the god was weeping silver tears and begging for his life.

He remembered the utter lack of resistance as the heavy blade cleaved cleanly through the god’s neck and he remembered the severed head rolling in the sand, the silent scream, and the brilliant blinding white flames that had reduced the tyrant to a pile of meaningless gray ash.

Klaus looked his daughter dead in the eyes.

There was no hesitation.

"I did," Klaus said, his voice deep, firm, and ringing with absolute, undeniable certainty. "I cut his head off myself and the world burned the rest. He’s gone, Anya. He is never, ever going to hurt anyone else again."

Anya stared at him for a long second, absorbing the heavy truth of his words.

The monster who had chained her mother in the dark, the tyrant who had ripped her family apart before she was even born, was completely erased from existence.

Slowly, the tension she had carried in her small shoulders since the day she was born completely dissolved.

For the second time that day, a massive incredibly genuine smile broke across Anya’s pale face.

It reached all the way to her bright purple eyes, lighting up her entire expression with pure joy.

It was the smile of a normal, happy kid who just realized her dad had chased the ultimate monster out from under her bed.

"Thank you, Papa."