The silence of the Great Library was usually a comfort, but tonight it felt like a burial shroud. My SP was still crawling back up from the depths of zero, and my muscles ached with a dull, persistent throb—a physical receipt of my "interaction" with Lilith.
> **[System Message]**
> **[Oh, look who decided to get out of bed. I'm surprised you can even walk straight after that performance. "Ahh... Viktor... more... harder..." Honestly, I had to run a diagnostic on my own audio processors just to scrub the sound of your pathetic whimpering. You really are a bottom-feeder, aren't you?]**
>
"Shut up," I hissed, leaning against a mahogany bookshelf. "It was... a tactical negotiation."
> **[System Message]**
> **[Is that what the kids call it these days? Usually, tactical negotiations don't involve that much saliva. My internal logs are just a wall of 'Oh god, why?' and 'Please stop.' You're a stain on the Null Rank, Volkov.]**
>
I ignored the System's digital sneering. I had come to the restricted section of the library to find data on Rank X entities, but the air suddenly turned cold—not winter cold, but *existential* cold.
The world stopped. Literally.
A dust mote, floating in a beam of moonlight, froze mid-air. My heart gave one heavy, agonizing thump and then seemed to quit. This wasn't a time-stop spell; it was an **[Intervael of Rank X]**. A presence so heavy that reality itself was simply too intimidated to keep moving.
Then, he appeared.
He was a tall, translucent figure wearing a suit that looked like it was woven from compressed shadows and HR violations. He carried a spectral clipboard, and his face was a blur of static. This was the **Ghost Manager**, a mythic entity that shouldn't have existed in this era.
The **Soul-Sucking Aura** hit me like a physical wall. To anyone else, it would have been instant death. To me, with my twisted perception, it registered as something much worse.
> **[System Notification]**
> **[Environmental Hazard Detected: Bad Breath from a Corporate Overlord.]**
> **[Interpretation: This entity has spent 5,000 years micromanaging souls without a single mint. The stench of bureaucracy and unwashed middle-management is literal poison.]**
>
I felt like I was being killed. Every second I stood there, I experienced the sensation of my soul being shredded and filed into a cabinet. But because of my unnaturally high aura, I stayed conscious, trapped in a loop of feeling my own death while remaining very much alive.
"Stop," I gasped, my voice sounding like grinding gravel. I tried to trigger my Interpretation skill to rewrite his aura, but the UI flickered red. **[Skill on Cooldown: 12 Hours Remaining]**.
I was defenseless. The legends were true—Rank X wasn't just a level; it was a different plane of existence.
The Ghost Manager adjusted his glasses, the sound like ice breaking. "You... are late for your shift, User 01," the entity vibrated. "Your productivity is... unacceptable."
"Wait," I wheezed, trying to stand tall even as my knees buckled. "I have... a proposal. You've been working this floor for millennia. No vacations. No benefits. I'm offering you... a **Retirement Plan**."
I reached into my inventory, pulling out a 'Void-Signed Resignation Form' I'd looted from a dungeon boss weeks ago. "Sign this. Leave the library. You can go to the afterlife's Florida. Just... let me pass."
The Ghost Manager stopped. The static on his face cleared for a second, revealing hollow, tired eyes. For a moment, I thought my "bullshit-no-jutsu" had worked. I thought I could talk my way out of a Rank X encounter.
"Retirement?" the Manager whispered.
Then, he moved.
It wasn't a punch. It wasn't a spell. It was a single, dismissive flick of his spectral clipboard.
In that one move, I was deleted. I didn't even see the impact. I just felt the world invert. I was sent flying through three solid oak bookshelves, my health bar plummeting into the flashing red zone before I even hit the floor.
I lay in a heap of ancient scrolls and broken wood, coughing up blood that tasted like copper and ink. I couldn't move. My high aura had saved me from being erased, but it couldn't save me from the absolute gap in power. People said Rank X, Y, and Z were myths because nobody lived long enough to report them.
I saw the Ghost Manager looming over me, his clipboard raised like a guillotine.
> **[System Message]**
> **[Well, look at that. You tried to give a primordial ghost a pension and he gave you a concussion. You really are an idiot. But hey, at least your death will be quiet... unlike your night with Lilith. Want me to play that 'Ahh' sound one last time for the road?]**
>
"I... hate... this... system," I whispered, closing my eyes as the darkness took me.