Without hesitation, they turned around and ran toward their friends—who were under heavy pressure.

  Two huge brown bears, shoulder height close to two meters, were already engaged with Jamal and Anne, with three more racing towards them.

  Bear. Energy-Born. Tier 1. Rare Challenge.

  Every slash of their finger-long claws seemed deadly, and Ben was pretty sure that there was nobody in their group—except him and maybe Jamal—who could survive being bitten by these huge maws and sharp teeth.

  As he sprinted towards his friends, he thought about their options and quickly came to the conclusion that they didn't have enough experienced front-line fighters to engage all five bears in parallel, they needed to eliminate threats quickly to deal with the situation.

  “Help Jamal, let's take them out before the reinforcements arrive,” he shouted to Michael, while racing toward Anne.

  Their three new team members were engaging as well, the fighter, Nino, positioned himself to intercept the three incoming bears before they could reach their ranged fighter, which was suicidal; fortunately, the ranged fighters engaged with the two bears that were already attacking. “Nino, help Jamal, ranged, fighting retreat!”

  He felt the smoothness of his motion as he took the final steps towards the bear, planted his foot and swung with all his might at the joint between the bear’s front leg and torso.

  He felt how the blade cut through fur, skin, fat, and muscle, but it wasn't as deep as he had hoped. He briefly wondered whether his axe would need an upgrade in the future if enemies continued to evolve.

  Ben switched tactics, from aiming to kill to buying time. “Disable!” he shouted, while ducking under the wide swipe of the bear. He had a second, maybe two before the other bears arrived, taking a risk, he closed in again, and hit the same area again, this time, more blood sprayed, and the bear crashed to the ground, no longer able to support his massive weight with the front right leg. “Disengage,” he barked to Anne, urging her to follow him in intercepting the three newcomers.

  Fortunately, two of them were smaller than the giants that had engaged first. Still, smaller meant that they looked eye-to-eye with Ben.

  Hoping not to get pincered between the newcomers and the bear they had just left behind, but not really seeing an alternative, he leaped into the lead bear's path, and shouted all his frustration about the situation in one large roar as he swung at the bear's chest, cutting deep, …

  Ooof.

  He felt himself flying through the air, explosively exhaling after one of the smaller bears had barreled into him.

  He landed hard, but his skin did not tear, despite the rough treatment from the stone path he had landed on.

  Within a second, he jumped back up, but unfortunately, he had lost his axe. It was still stuck in the first bear's chest, that was out for revenge, coming after him. Meanwhile, Anne had engaged the other two, despite being heavily outmatched.

  A milky-white forcefield appeared in the bear's path, leading to it pushing Ben's axe deeper into its own torso. The barrier shattered immediately, but it had bought him the second to close in on his own terms, while being relieved to see Jamal and Nino closing in to help Anne, as Michael moved to finish off the bear with the leg wound.

  Ben did not see any natural weaknesses in the gigantic furry creature, and he did not have the hand-to-hand combat perks Anne possessed, but he did have speed, weight, and very robust bones. He clasped his arms and used his momentum to ram his elbow into the bear's throat. It clearly wasn't even close to a lethal wound, probably nothing more than a nuisance, but it bought him another moment as the bear hesitated, to grab his axe, and swing it at the same place he had just punched.

  He was rewarded with blood spraying from the wound and leaped back from the bear that was raising itself up on its rear paws while roaring in pain.

  The roar was answered by Jamal, who taunted the battlefield, and their archer, who landed a precise—or lucky—shot in the wound that Ben had caused in his initial attack on the creature's chest.

  With a glance, Ben saw that Michael was still hacking at and evading from his first target – the thick bear hide was difficult for the sword and dagger fighter – but Anne had apparently disabled one of the two smaller bears and Jamal and Nino seemed safe in their engagement.

  As Ben's opponent reoriented himself to Jamal, Ben was able to close in again and land a good hit on the back leg, slowing the beast down, while it was still bleeding profusely from its throat and chest wounds.

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  A force spike from their mage helped finish off Michael's target and the three other melee fighters made short work of their remaining enemy.

  Being careful not to get hit in the final stretch of the fight, Ben struck the bear two more times before finally finishing it off.

  “Everybody ok?”

  His teammates nodded, but seemed as exhausted as Ben felt after a long day of hiking followed by this brutal fight.

  Carefully, he prodded his skin where he had landed earlier, but except for a few scratches, none of which had drawn blood, he was perfectly ok. He shrugged happily and walked over to make sure the others were truly fine.

  They looted the bears, which took some time as Ben did not want to leave the hides behind, which he thought would make fantastic crafting materials. He nearly reconsidered when he realized that they wouldn't all fit into his Bag of Holding, but they distributed them across people's backpacks, and it was fine.

  ***

  A few minutes later they entered the library. The doors were open, but they didn't detect any signs of hostile creatures. Any kind of creatures, actually, human or otherwise.

  Ben grinned from ear to ear as he saw all the books, starting on the ground floor. He handed over scanners to Anne and their three new teammates, aligned on who would go where and after a quick demonstration by Ben, the others went their own way.

  Jamal had informed Ben during their hike into town that either he or Michael would be with him at all times during the trip and as Michael wanted to scout the library, Jamal became Ben's shadow as he scanned, board by board, shelf by shelf, and row by row. It was by no means interesting work, but it felt incredibly satisfying to Ben. It made him almost as happy as saving people from hostile places.

  He did notice that the scanning took significantly longer than his first attempt at the monastery. It must be an effect of the much higher density of books in these shelves than back there, combined with the time spent walking from room to room, it took him more than half an hour to cover his share.

  He had lost count how many books he had scanned – but his gut feeling was that they hadn't quite gotten to the roughly 600,000 books that they had expected based on the professor's input.

  As they came back together, they waited for Michael, who hadn't reappeared yet.

  After a few minutes he rejoined them and looked at Ben with an unusual, hard to interpret facial expression. “Done?” he asked.

  Ben felt something coming, but he nodded.

  “Well, let's go then.”

  Michael had never talked like that… Was that… Was that Michael joking?

  “Tell me, what is it?”

  For a brief second Ben could see a slight smirk on Michael's face as he motioned to follow him.

  He led them deeper into the library and into a space that clearly wasn't for public access. There he guided them to a staircase down, and after walking through a large metal door that opened into a cavernous hall, nearly ten meters tall, spanning the full width and depth of the building. Filled with books. Hundreds of thousands of books.

  Now things made a lot more sense to him. They had just scanned the public space; this was the archive.

  “Well, it is good that we won't have to be at our meeting place until tomorrow, anyway, why don't we make a dinner break and then go into the next round of scanning. It should be spend the night here and tomorrow morning we go to the two libraries in the city center.”

  Ben continued to grin throughout the evening.

  ***

  As they left Keiling on the next morning, Ben refused to dwell on what it meant that they hadn’t seen a single living person in their short time in the suburb.

  They were heading towards the city center, where they would first visit the city library, then the central university campus and finally the school parking lot that they had used in the past to meet up with Rose and others. He didn't really know what to expect but after the last time when he had been surprised by the number of people he had decided to just go with the flow.

  90 minutes later they had not just reached the library but also completed their scan. It was significantly smaller than the university library and didn't have an archive. Apparently, the library sold off the old works whenever they needed to make space for new works.

  Interestingly, the library had been quite busy and the personnel from pre–Arrival Day was still working and trying to keep things in shape, despite probably not getting paid anymore. They were truly dedicated to their jobs and the demand for books had risen significantly, since alternatives such as TV, or even eBooks were no longer a thing.

  The university campus was largely unchanged from how Ben remembered it from the time that they had picked up the professor. The library here was a very different animal than the hyper-modern one in Keiling. This was a grand, old building with columns and a white-plastered fa?ade.

  As they entered, they saw a few people, mostly middle-aged and older, but it was largely empty. Ben assumed that the students had maybe moved on from studying and only a few professors kept doing what they had been doing their whole life. How they were getting food, he didn't know.

  At the counter, a relatively young, slim woman with a ponytail sat and sorted through stacks of books. She looked at their outfits with a slightly raised eyebrow, then smiled. “How may I help you?”

  “Hello there, would it be possible for us to browse the books?” Ben asked.

  “Are you students or faculty?” her lips twitched slightly upward.

  “No, not really, but we do work with Professor Gunther.”

  “Mhh, only students and faculty are allowed. But to be honest, we aren’t terribly busy, and nobody cares anymore,” she said with a forced chuckle. “If you promise me to not destroy anything, you can enter.”

  “Thank you very much!” Ben handed four scanners to the others but chose to remain at the counter for a bit longer. “You might not believe me, but we are here on a mission from the systems. With these … devices,” he held up the scanner, “we are supposed to capture and preserve as much of our civilization as possible. Once we scan books with this, they’re preserved and reproduced in our library.”

  The woman looked at him, blinking her eyes slowly. “Obviously I would have declared you insane a couple of months ago, but now… who knows what is and isn't real anymore.” She shrugged, “Where is this library that you are talking about?”

  “We have a settlement up in the mountains. It is enabled by the systems and about protecting people and civilization.”

  “That sounds fantastical, maybe even a bit too good to be true.”

  “It does, doesn't it. Not sure there is anything I can do to convince you, though.”

  “Boss, show her your purse,” Jamal chimed in from the sidelines with a broad grin.