It was a classical study.
A red-and-gold wool rug covered the floor. The ocher semicircular desk had been polished to a shine, its surface gleaming under the piped gas lamps.
The small room was lined on all four sides with upright bookshelves, each crammed with Thick-Shell Books of every kind.
At first glance, the study's warm yellow glow made it seem cozy. A closer look, however, revealed that it had neither doors nor windows. It was a lavishly furnished cell.
And now, a figure had appeared out of thin air inside that cramped, elegant "cell."
Angel opened his eyes.
He looked around and confirmed that he was in what appeared to be a sealed study.
There was no one else here. The members of the Rabbit Hole Team seemed to have been forcibly separated.
Angel was not particularly surprised.
This was a standard part of the Echo Library: the entry test.
Dawn's Poem Squad had been separated in much the same way when they entered the Echo Library.
Their team had not been scattered at random. They had been placed in five neighboring sealed rooms. Once each solved the puzzle in their own room, they could meet in the hall outside.
Those puzzles were the entry test.
It sounded difficult, but in practice it was manageable.
The Echo Library's puzzles tested observation. If you paid close attention, the puzzles themselves were not hard.
The members of Dawn's Poem had escaped without much trouble.
Starting together, on the other hand, could make things harder. Take the Divine Dragon Team, for example.
They had started in the same tiered reading room, where their entry-test puzzle was also to find a way out.
Despite working together, they had taken a full half hour to solve it.
The contrast made it clear: when teammates