"The moment you give shape to your power, it begins to limit you. The System understood this. So it caged you with convenience."– Fragmented Whisper, Unknown Rootless Source
[Real World – Kyoto University Archive, Offline Section]
Jun sat in the dim quiet of the university library's decommissioned archive floor. He wasn't supposed to be there. This part of the facility had been mothballed years ago—funding cuts, digitization. But old habits died hard.
Especially for someone looking for something that didn't want to be found.
He scanned the index manually. No holograms. No biometric AI scans. Just old-fashioned drawers and yellowed paper slips.
Subject:Pre-Sync Era Neural Feedback Models
Code Ref:"Sovereign Breath Hypothesis"
Found it.
His fingers trembled as he pulled the dusty file. Inside were handwritten notes, diagrams of strange breathing sequences, archaic Eastern philosophy merged with prototype neural mapping.
A line stood out.
"Root-level memory retrieval may result in ambient environmental reaction. Breathing isn't just for the body—it's for the code beneath the code."
He exhaled.
Something his brother said before diving into Heaven's Gate five days ago returned to him: "What if the System didn't create the world? What if it just grew over it?"
[In-Game – Rootless Hollow, The Stillfire Grove]
I sat before a tree whose bark shimmered like cooled ember and breathed.
Once.
Twice.
And with the third breath, I held.
Not air.
Stillness.
The Dao of Still Flame had no chants. No incantations. It demanded nothing but absence—a paradox of burning and not-moving.
Mei stood behind me, silent.
Then a familiar presence approached.
Kairos.
"You're actually trying to understand it," he said, circling like a bored predator. "Still Flame. The most ironic path in this twisted forest."
"It's real," I said.
"Of course it's real," he snapped. "But real doesn't mean useful."
He sat across from me, elbows on knees, and looked directly into my eyes.
"Tell me, Systemless. What do you think this is all for? Enlightenment? Purity? Do you think awakening the Root will make you some kind of savior?"
"I'm not trying to be anything."
Kairos smirked. "And that's your weakness."
[Earlier That Day – The Rootless Gathering]
The Rootless gathered in the Hollow's amphitheater—just thirteen of them, the last remnants of an old path now remembered by few.
Each had cultivated something beyond the System's reach. And each believed in the Root.
But not all agreed on what it meant.
Kairos stood at the center. His voice was calm but sharp.
"The System adapts. Slowly, yes, but it learns. The moment it detects Root-level interaction, it begins forming containment strategies. You think we're free? We're on borrowed time."
He let the silence settle before continuing.
"I propose we act first. Break the passive oath. Intervene."
Someone near the back—an old woman with jade beads and smoke drifting from her sleeves—spoke up. "Intervene how?"
"By striking before it finds us."
Murmurs followed.
Mei stepped forward. "We were never meant to fight the System head-on. That's not the Root's purpose. It's to remember—to awaken what was lost, not burn everything down in revenge."
Kairos turned to her, eyes glowing faintly.
"You speak of balance. But balance is just stagnation dressed in patience. The Root wasn't meant to preserve. It was meant to liberate."
"Liberation without harmony becomes destruction," Mei said, evenly.
Then, to the entire circle:
"If we divide now, the Root fractures with us."
[In-Game – Later That Night, My Shelter]
I sat alone in my corner of the Hollow—bare earthen walls, moss-woven bedding, and a crystal lantern glowing softly with ambient Qi.
The scroll Mei had given me earlier still sat unopened.
| Threaded Memory: Breath Pattern - Ember Echo (Unranked, Incomplete) |
It wasn't a spell.
It was a memory sequence.
I laid it out. The ink shimmered faintly under moonlight, as though responding to my breath. I followed the sequence—not perfectly, just enough to feel it.
With each breath, I could hear something faint in the air around me.
Not words.
Not system dialogue.
But fragments.
"…burn… witness… remain…"
The lantern flickered.
A presence passed through me—not aggressive, not dark. Curious.
Like something ancient had just noticed I existed.
[Real World – SeraphTech Developer Layer, Undisclosed Location]
Yejin leaned back in her chair, watching the data stream pour in.
An entire section of Root-level interaction data had begun clustering in a zone previously considered "dead code." The environmental memory readings had stabilized into a pattern.
And most alarming of all—
Subject 000-VRM-Δ has successfully accessed Tier-1 Manual Memory Path: Still Flame / Ember Echo
A ping came through.
An encrypted message.
[FROM: SYSTEM BLACKBOX LIAISON]
"Confirmation of Root Tier-1 retrieval. Contingency activation recommended.Deploy WhisperSilence Protocol?"
She hesitated.
Then replied:
"Not yet. Let him go deeper. Let him trigger the next zone. Only then will we see what the Root is trying to become."
[In-Game – Edge of the Hollow, Forbidden Ridge]
Kairos waited by the ridge, where the Hollow met the wild, unrendered forest beyond—territory the System had never fully restructured.
I found him there.
"You're not going to listen to her," I said.
He didn't look back. "Would you, if you had seen what I've seen?"
"What's out there?"
"Not mobs. Not quests. Ghosts. Memories of cultivators who never logged in, because they were never players to begin with."
He turned, and his eyes—still human, but touched by something older—met mine.
"This world didn't start as a game. The System didn't build it. It grew over the bones of something ancient. Something we buried."
"And you want to bring it back?"
"I want to finish what they started."
"And Mei?"
"She wants to preserve the ghost garden. I want to let it burn, so something real can grow."
He tossed me a stone etched with an unfamiliar glyph.
| Hidden Zone Trigger – Ashroot Depths |
"I opened it once," he said. "Couldn't pass the threshold. Maybe you can."
I stared at it.
"You still don't understand, Systemless. This isn't about the System vs players. It's about what was always meant to be."
Then he stepped beyond the ridge and vanished into the wilderness.
[Real World – That Same Night, Jun's Apartment]
Jun sat in front of his brother's pod, watching the flickering vitals on the external screen.
Another spike.
But this one wasn't brain activity. It was something else—an ambient signal bleed. Some kind of quantum residual echo that shouldn't be possible in a VR chamber.
The log read:
"Non-system interface detected. Signal anomaly: Breath-tuned waveform."
Jun stared.
Then reached for his notebook.
He wasn't sure what this was.
But he was beginning to understand one thing—
This wasn't a game anymore.