Failed Mission

Inside an isolated storage room, a group of teenagers could be seen frantically running in random directions with anxious breathes.

"Quickly!! Inside that room!!" A blonde haired guy who was leading the way said as he pointed at a bronzed door, the rest of the group quickly followed his orders and opened the door to go inside.

They immediately blocked the door with the empty old shelf that was laying on the side. The group of teenagers paused their movements to catch some breathes.

"T-they never told us this promotion mission would be l-like this...!" A brown haired girl whose hair was cut short said as tears filled up her eyes. Fear lingered her head the more she thought of their situation. She grabbed the folded sheet of paper in her pocket which contained the information for their current mission promotion and reread it as she tried to spark some sort of hope in order to escape.

[ Promotion Mission :

Information : A small cult group consisting of 6 members is attempting to call-forth an old soul at the abandoned storage building near Avalon Street, the soul they are attempting to call is most likely just a weak unknown soul due to the level of the cult. The cult calls themselves "Believers of the Lost One."

The small cult consists of 4 normal citizens who funded the cult and 2 apparitions of different kinds. The weaker apparition is a rank 10 of the Horse path, and the other apparition is a rank 9 of the Deer path.

Mission: Stop the attempt of their summoning and apprehend or kill the cult members

Reward : Becoming a certified Librarian I ]

"They said the soul was just from a weak lingering person!! They fucking lied to us!!!" The red headed male beside the short haired girl who held the paper said in anger.

"Calm down, Rafael. Right now we have to figure out how to get out of here and contact the official librarian team... Right now, although this promotion mission is important to us candidate librarians, what's more important are our lives." The blonde haired guy uttered as he attempted to calm down his team. In truth, he was also filled with fear, but as the successor of the Ledrick family, they had high expectations for him. Hence, he had to show no imperfections even in the most dire situations.

"Fuck... Dammit!" The red head cursed when he heard one of his teammates, a girl who wore a plain pair of glasses, suddenly groan in pain and collapse on the floor out of weakness. He immediately went over to help her up and surveyed her wound.

"Are you alright, Laura? That looks pretty messed up..." He said as he looked at the rotting flesh on the girl's abdomen, it looked as though it was squirming and trying to invade what was left of her body. "As you can see... I'm obviously fucking dying!!" She screamed at his idiocy as she attempted to save her last bit of energy on saving herself.

A system prompt then popped up beside her as she did so.

[The News leveled stories in your body are attempting to resist the corrosion of your body]

She bit her lip, she could feel the stories she had collected in her body trying to resist whatever was trying to consume her, however it was barely effective and only managed to get her conscious enough to stay awake.

Originally, there were 6 of them whom were candidate librarians which were in on this mission, all of them being rank 10 apparition users. Basir, the blonde haired teenager, Anna, the short haired brown girl, and Rafael were supposed to form some sort of distraction to separate the civilians from the apparition users. Meanwhile her, and the rest of the other two teammates left would attempt to injure the weaker apparition while waiting for Basir and the others to come back to handle the rank 9 apparition.

However, they miscalculated one thing, which was the duration of how long it would take the cultists to call the lost soul. They had not known that the lost soul was so close to their location to a point that the summoning only took 5 minutes after preparation was completed. And by the time Basir, Rafael, and Anna came back, two of her other teammates had already exploded into guts, and she was left with having a fatal wound on her abdomen.

What was worse was that they held no hope in combating the lost soul despite them outnumbering it... Because the lost soul had killed the rank 9 apparition in front of them in less than 10 seconds, they witnessed the rank 9 cultist shred himself while screaming and begging for help. In an attempt to save their lives, they immediately escaped out of fear.

"Just... What exactly was that thing..?" Rafael muttered in fear, what they saw felt incomprehensible. The figure of the lost soul felt so hazy, as though it was not supposed to be in this world. Their minds could not fathom its shape and features at all. "We'll... Get out of here, right?" He said, looking at Basir, the most trustworthy person in the room. He held hopes in him nodding his head, because he was always the type to keep his promises.

Basir nodded his head and patted his back in a joking way, attempting to lighten the situation. "Of course, we promised each other we're gonna be chief librarians and rule over cities, didn't we?" He laughed heartily.

Rafael couldn't help but get get annoyed and smile at the bad timing of his jokes. "Moron.. think of a way to get us out of here first, how the hell are we gonna becomes chief librarians if we can't even pass this dang candidate librarian mission promotion?"

Silence filled the room for a little while as they tried to rack their brains for a solution.

Anna, who was seated on the floor suddenly called to their attention as an idea sparked her mind for an escape. "B-before this storage building became empty, I often visited this place with my brother, and I remember there being a back exit door near the second floor which had stairs that lead to the ground floor... M-maybe we can get there!"

"The only problem is that we don't know where the lost soul is lingering..." Laura said self-depracatingly.

Basir, who was beside Anna suddenly reached into the inner pocket of his black tracksuit and took out a book.

"That's...!" Anna exclaimed.

"... that's right, it's one of my family's books that is passed down from successors... The Fable of [The Ledrick's Blood]. Perhaps with this we can attempt to distract the old soul, maybe it will find this more attractive than our bodies... Then we can make a run for the floor second floor." Basir said with gritted teeth, this book was precious, but he was also sure that his family would rather want a lost book artifact than a dead son.

He was about to continue talking when they suddenly heard something outside the room speak.

"Anyone....? Please... Help me..."