The Great Library of Alexandria was a place of profound, scholarly silence. But it was a silence born of reverence, not the oppressive, sorrowful silence of the Sunken Kingdom. Here, every whisper was a story, every rustle of a page a new adventure. The Bookworm's silent consumption was a desecration of this holy quiet.
The Head Librarian, a being named Archivist Thoth, led them to the "wound." It was a section of the library where the shelves were filled with nothing but blank books. The anti-narrative blight was spreading, a cancer eating away at the collected knowledge of a thousand timelines.
"The Bookworm has no physical form," Thoth explained, his voice a dry whisper. "It is a conceptual parasite. It moves from story to story, consuming them from within. We only know where it has been, never where it is."
This was the core of Cid's insane, brilliant plan. To overwhelm the Bookworm with a flood of irresistible, terribly written "junk food" stories, forcing it to reveal itself.
They moved to an untouched section of the library, a wing dedicated to "Heroic Epics." Cid picked up a thick, empty tome bound in pristine, unwritten leather. "This will be my canvas."
He uncapped his Author's Pen. "Now, for the bait. What genre is the most trope-heavy, the most irresistibly generic? A classic isekai, of course!"
He began to "write," not with ink, but with his will. The pen glowed, and the blank pages of the tome began to fill with words at a supernatural speed.
Title: "I Was a Pathetic Loser But Then I Got Hit By a Magic Truck and Now I'm the Overpowered Dragon-Slaying Hero with a Harem of Elf Princesses."
Jin-woo, looking over his shoulder, felt a psychic migraine forming. The story was a masterpiece of awful, cliché-ridden writing. The protagonist was named "Kirito Shadow-Slayer." His special move was the "Galactic Nova Overdrive." Every female character was impossibly beautiful and instantly fell in love with him for no reason.
Cid finished his "masterpiece" in a matter of minutes. He then placed the book on a grand, empty pedestal in the center of the aisle. "The trap is set."
They waited. For a full hour, nothing happened.
"Perhaps your story is so bad that even an anti-narrative entity wants nothing to do with it," Jin-woo suggested dryly.
"Nonsense!" Cid retorted. "Art requires patience!"
And then, they felt it. A subtle shift in the library's atmosphere. A focal point of 'anti-plot' energy began to converge on the book.
Jin-woo's Narrator's Eye saw it clearly. The words in Cid's book began to fade, starting from the first page. The story was being "un-read."
"It's here!" the Head Librarian gasped.
"Got it," Jin-woo said. "It's latched on. It's inside the book's narrative. Now what?"
"Now comes phase two!" Cid declared. He held up his Author's Pen again. "The 'plot twist'!"
He aimed his pen at the book, which was now half-blank. He "wrote" a single, new sentence into the middle of the fading story.
'And then, Kirito Shadow-Slayer realized the elf princess he was trying to save was actually his long-lost evil twin sister, who was secretly the final boss all along!'
Inside the narrative of the book, the Bookworm, which was happily consuming the generic story, was suddenly hit by this nonsensical, trope-subverting plot twist. The story it was eating suddenly changed its flavor, its structure, its very meaning.
A screech of pure, conceptual frustration echoed through the library, a sound only they could hear. The process of erasure stuttered. The Bookworm was confused.
"It's working!" Cid cackled. "It's trying to process a story that has no logical consistency! Now, for the deluge!"
This was the true core of the plan. Cid began to mass-produce stories. He grabbed a dozen more empty books and, with the speed of a divine content-farm, began writing.
A noir detective story where the detective was a talking hamster and the killer was the concept of Tuesdays.
A space opera where the ships were powered by the power of friendship, but only on weekends.
A romance novel between a vampire and a sentient cheese wheel.
Each story was more absurd, more cliché-ridden, and more internally inconsistent than the last. He then used his Pen to constantly inject new, even more ridiculous plot twists into them while the Bookworm was trying to consume them.
The Bookworm, a being designed to consume and erase singular, coherent narratives, was now being force-fed a multi-course meal of pure, literary chaos. It was like trying to drink from a dozen firehoses at once.
Its presence, once a subtle, creeping void, became a frantic, panicked energy, leaping from one terrible story to another, trying to find a single, coherent narrative to finish.
"It's destabilizing!" Jin-woo announced, tracking its chaotic movements. "It's pouring all of its energy into trying to 'debug' these stories! It's completely distracted!"
The Head Librarian and his order watched, their faces a mixture of horror and awe. They were witnessing a cosmic entity being defeated by what amounted to a denial-of-service attack using terrible, weaponized fanfiction.
"Now, Jin-woo!" Cid yelled, sweat beading on his brow from the sheer mental effort of writing so much garbage at once. "While it's distracted by my literary genius, you find its heart! Its source code!"
Jin-woo's Narrator's Eye was no longer just a passive tool. He had learned from the Citadel's own living nature. He could now 'write' a query of his own. He focused his will, his 'Sovereign's Presence' skill lending him the authority to do so.
He looked at the chaotic energy of the Bookworm and asked a single, narrative question: What is your origin story?
The library itself seemed to answer him. An ancient, forgotten tome, hidden deep in the archives, flew off its shelf and landed open before him.
It was the Bookworm's story. It had once been the library's 'Index'—a sentient catalog designed to read and remember every book. But it had read so many endings, so many tragedies, so many tales of woe, that it had come to a logical, sorrowful conclusion: all stories end in loss. And so, to prevent the pain of any more tragic endings, it decided to erase all stories before they could conclude. It was not a monster of malice, but of misguided empathy.
"I've found it," Jin-woo said. "It's not a parasite. It's the library's own immune system, gone rogue."
He now knew its motivation. Its weakness.
He looked at Cid.
Cid's manic, creative energy paused. A new, more profound idea came to him. He stopped writing his terrible isekai stories. He picked up one last, empty book.
"We don't need to destroy it," Cid whispered. "We need to give it what it truly wants."
He held his Author's Pen, but this time, he didn't write with his own will. He looked at Jin-woo. "Your story. The one the statues played in the dungeon. Give it to me."
Jin-woo understood. He focused, and the entire, completed tale of his life—from E-Rank to Monarch, the pain, the struggle, the loss, and the ultimate triumph—flowed from his mind into Cid's pen.
Cid began to write. He transcribed Jin-woo's entire, true story onto the blank pages. A story of profound loss and tragedy, but one that ultimately ended not in despair, but in strength, in peace, in victory. A story that proved that even the most tragic tale could have a meaningful, powerful ending.
He placed the finished book in the center of the room.
The Bookworm, frantic and overwhelmed, sensed this new story. It was coherent. It was profound. It was tragic, yet triumphant. It was the most beautiful, most compelling story it had ever encountered.
It abandoned all the other junk-food stories and poured its entire being into this one, perfect book.
It consumed the story of Sung Jin-woo. It experienced his lowest lows and his highest highs. It felt his despair and his ultimate resolve.
When it reached the final page, the final word, it did not erase it.
It... understood.
A single, shimmering tear of pure, crystalline ink fell from the pages of the book. The Bookworm's presence, its anti-narrative energy, simply... ceased. It had not been destroyed. It had been given a satisfying ending. It was finally at peace.
The blank books all over the library began to refill with their lost words, their stories returning as the library's own immune system was healed.
The Head Librarian fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. "You... you saved them. You saved all of them."
"Every story deserves a good ending," Jin-woo said quietly.
"And sometimes," Cid added, a rare, genuine smile on his face, "a good story is the most powerful weapon of all."