The map burned into Ji-Hoon's vision.
Vanth_01.
It hovered beyond Seoul's corrupted edges—above even the airborne server cities where the elite guilds made their homes. This place wasn't hosted. It wasn't maintained. It ran on legacy fragments, buried command chains, and stolen stability protocols. A city on borrowed runtime.
A ghost riding the wind.
["The last time Vanth_01 went active," Luma whispered, "thousands of players vanished. Whole sectors blinked offline. They covered it up as a rollback. But it wasn't. Ryu locked it down after that. Burned the route keys."]
"Someone kept one," Ji-Hoon said.
He lifted the key fragment left behind by the man in red. Already, it was decaying. Lines of its internal code splintered every few seconds, as if the system itself were trying to erase it.
He memorized the route.
Then crushed the key in his palm.
It shattered, letting out a faint digital scream—half-interface, half-something else.
Ji-Hoon stepped into motion.
He needed altitude. Enough to break into the orbital shell grid where fragments of Vanth_01's pathway still rotated like forgotten satellites. There was only one way to get there without a jump gate.
Sector Zero.
More specifically: a skystack elevator known as Terminus Rise.
It had been sealed since the Blackout.
Even the hunter guilds avoided it. Not because it was cursed—but because every time someone tried to open it, the system responded like it was defending a heart.
Ji-Hoon reached the first gate at dusk.
Rust bled down its sides like old blood. Lines of forgotten user attempts etched the wall—names, levels, failure times. He placed his hand on the console.
✦ [Unauthorized User]
✦ [Admin Trace Signature Detected – Override Access Granted]
✦ [Warning: Activating Terminus Rise will draw system-level attention.]
["You're really doing this."] Luma sounded half in awe, half in dread.
"I'm not going to let them bury another name."
The gate opened.
Not smoothly. Not silently. It groaned like an old god waking from sleep.
Inside, the elevator was not metal. It was glass and light and code lines. The entire shaft shimmered like the inside of a quantum processor.
Ji-Hoon stepped in.
It launched.
The city dropped away, fracturing into shards of light and static as the speed increased. The atmosphere screamed past the capsule as Seoul's layers peeled away one by one—District 12, Core Seoul, then the fractured sky ring.
Above him: clouds made of firewall constructs.
And beyond that… Vanth_01.
["I've connected to an old signal relay," Luma said. "I can hear her. I can hear Kaeri. She's alive. But…"]
The voice came through.
Corrupted. Fragmented.
But real.
"…who's…running my lines…? Did Ryu send you…? No, that's…not right…you're one of mine, aren't you…?"
Ji-Hoon closed his eyes.
"Kaeri."
A pause.
Then a sudden sharp tone—clear.
"…Ji-Hoon?"
The elevator shook violently.
Outside, fragments of defense constructs materialized. They weren't players. They weren't even mobs. These were fail-safe programs—code shaped into spears, into storms, into algorithms that didn't obey any balance system.
They launched.
["I'll hold the defenses," Luma shouted. "Injecting shield protocol. You've got twenty seconds to breach Vanth_01's lower shell. Move!"]
Ji-Hoon did more than move.
He stepped through the capsule as if it were water, activating Phantom Thread mid-leap and twisting his trajectory. The spear constructs followed—only to slam into their own targeting strings.
✦ Skill Activated: System Trace
✦ Override Pattern: Recursive Fold
He hit the edge of Vanth_01 like a meteor.
The outer shell cracked.
He slipped through.
Silence.
Darkness.
Then light.
Vanth_01 wasn't dead.
It was awake.
And watching him.