"Reality" in the training field was nothing more than an elaborate digital lie.
The artificial forest swayed with green leaves, and the sound of electronic birds filled the air, while Tariq panted beside Raiden, his practice sword trembling in his hand.
"Raiden... do you feel that?" Tariq whispered, his eyes darting toward the sky as it began to lose its blue color.
Raiden didn't answer. The Archive on his wrist was pulsing with a strange rhythm—a rhythm that didn't match the forest's programming. Suddenly, the fracture happened.
It wasn't an explosion; it was a silent, terrifying "Glitch." The trees began to disintegrate into burnt green programming cubes, and the sky tore open to reveal an infinite black void behind the simulation's fabric.
"What is this? Is this part of the test?" Tariq screamed, covering his head, flinching at the smell of burnt ozone filling the air.
But Raiden didn't move. He froze in place—not out of courage, but because the weight of The Archive suddenly weighed a ton. He felt as if a cosmic magnet was pulling his black blade toward that hole in the sky.
From the heart of the gap, no roaring monster emerged. Instead, a nearly "human" body slid out... an S-Rank entity.
The entity wore a featureless white mask, like an unfinished face. In place of eyes, there were two slits emitting a cold purple fire that didn't illuminate its surroundings—it consumed them.
Tariq fell to his knees, not just from fear, but because the Livar pressure emitted by the entity was crushing his lungs. To Tariq, the air had turned into liquid lead. Raiden, however, stood watching the scene with a terrifying calm.
"You..." The entity's voice didn't come from a throat; it echoed in Raiden's mind like metal scratching on glass. "The Archive that has no heart... has found a shell that has no soul."
Raiden didn't ask "Who the hell are you?" Instead, he felt his throat go dry. He tried to summon the blade, but his hand was paralyzed. The entity wasn't attacking; it was "recognizing" him.
The entity took a step forward. As it approached, the simulated forest died behind it, turning into digital ash.
"Their Academy tried to 'manufacture' you... but they didn't understand that the weapon isn't made; it is summoned from the abyss."
Raiden felt a massive pressure explode inside his skull. His vision began to blur, but he noticed something strange: the purple fire in the entity's eyes was vibrating at the same frequency as the pulse on his wrist.
Raiden's mental endurance wasn't heroism; it was "compatibility." Being a "Zero" meant he had no energy for the entity to reject; he was just a vacuum absorbing the pressure without breaking.
"Why... me?" Raiden's words came out faint, heavy with the bitterness of District 7's despair.
The entity stopped inches from him. The cold radiating from it froze the edges of Raiden's shirt. The entity reached out a long, pale hand toward The Archive on the boy's wrist.
"Because you are the only one with nothing to lose... and the abyss only accepts the bankrupt."
Suddenly, the black hole in the sky turned into a sweeping vortex. Sirens in the "Real Reality" began to scream, and Commander Caien's voice echoed through shattered speakers: "Exit the simulation immediately! There is an S-Rank breach! Purge the—"
The sound cut off. The entity looked at Raiden one last time, and before vanishing into the purple smoke, it left a new tattoo on Raiden's palm... a tattoo resembling a closed eye.
"We will meet when 'The Archive' is complete... Master of Zero."
The simulation collapsed entirely. Raiden and Tariq fell into the darkness of the actual lab, amidst the wreckage of burnt projectors. Doctors and soldiers rushed toward them, but Raiden was staring at his palm. He wasn't afraid of the monster that appeared; he was afraid of the truth he had just realized: the monster hadn't come to kill him—it had come to see its "spare part."
The meeting wasn't in a luxury hall or a dark room befitting a "Board of Directors." Instead, the leaders summoned Caien to the "Shattered Zone" in the training field, where the smell of burnt ozone and melted simulation wires still filled the air. Cleaners in white hazmat suits moved like ghosts in the background, collecting the remains of the broken reality.
The three leaders stood under the cold emergency spotlights. They didn't hide in shadows; their features were harsh and clear, making their gazes seem even more terrifying.
"Caien, you are asking us for an exception for a boy who attracted an S-Rank entity in his first week," said Leader Mira, wiping gray dust from her leather glove. "This isn't a success... it's a security risk that requires 'Immediate Liquidation.'"
Caien didn't back down. He stood in the wreckage, his gaze fixed on the gap the entity had left in the ceiling.
"Liquidation is the easy solution, and Mira loves easy solutions. But look at this wreckage... the entity didn't attack; it was 'synchronizing.' Raiden is the only key we have to understand why S-Ranks are appearing inside our protected systems."
"And what about your loyalty?" interrupted the old leader, Sol, his voice sounding like breaking bones. "You defend him as if he were your son, not an experimental subject."
Caien gave a cold, joyless smile. "I'm defending my 'investment,' Sol. If you kill him now, we lose 'The Archive' forever, and we'll wait another hundred years for another 'Zero' to appear. I don't care about his life; I care about the power we can extract from him before the weapon consumes him."
Raiden wasn't "cold" like the guards thought. He sat on the metal chair, his body fighting a civil war. Despite his still face, his shirt was soaked with cold sweat pouring from his pores. His right hand—where the closed-eye tattoo lay—trembled with a hysterical shudder he couldn't control no matter how hard he clenched his fist.
He felt nausea rising in his throat, a bitter metallic taste reminding him of monster blood. Every time he tried to close his eyes, he saw the purple fire burning his eyelids from the inside.
"Stop... stop pulsing..." Raiden whispered to himself, his voice shaking with pure human weakness.
His calm wasn't born of strength; it was "Neural Shock." His nervous system had stopped sending pain signals because it could no longer process them. He stared at the concrete wall, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, reflecting the breaking of a soul trying to hold onto the last threads of reality before The Archive dragged it into the depths.
The door creaked open sharply. Caien entered. He didn't ask "Are you okay?" Instead, he slammed a heavy file onto the metal table, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the cramped room.
Raiden flinched violently, his teeth chattering—a primal physical reaction that his internal "poker face" couldn't hide.
"I've bought you some time," Caien said, watching Raiden's trembling hand coldly. "The Council thinks you're just a tool I'll dismantle later. So, stop shaking... and start—"