The world pulsed.
Each beat of his newly awakened Blood Pulse left a faint red filament trailing in his energy vision. He followed the Soul Ripple from before—16.4 meters, according to the system. The mist thickened. A hushed valley opened before him.
Then came the whispers:
> "...we returned… the memory..."
They didn't come through his ears, but his spine.
Floating just above the ground, he saw it—a fragmented disc of transparent shimmer, its edges cracked like old glass. It hovered silently… then vanished the moment he approached.
---
A screen stuttered into focus:
Caution ▸ Memory Leech Identified
Class: Echo-Wraith
Mode: Passive Extraction
Risk: Cognitive Erosion (Low-Gradual)
He staggered.
Within seconds, the concepts of kinetic transfer—the very teachings he'd absorbed from the system—faded at the edges of his mind. Not forgotten, but leaking.
He tried to resist, pushing back with energy force… and felt the drain accelerate.
Raw power wasn't the answer. This thing fed on thoughts.
---
He gritted his teeth and shifted internal focus.
Activating Pulse Focus Lv.1, he compacted a node of energy just behind his mist-core. With a sharp release, he fired it up toward his mind—an inner collision.
The surge struck the leaking flow head-on.
A soundless crack filled his skull. Crimson capillaries ignited momentarily, stinging like fire through fog.
The Echo-Wraith shrieked—no voice, only silence made violent—and fled.
---
As the atmosphere calmed, a new system notice appeared:
Suggestion: Stabilize Bio-Neural Flow
Blueprint Unlocked → Anchor Glyph
Cost: 120 QP, 1 Shard Crystal
He found a shard on the valley's edge—cracked, but humming faintly.
He carved into it, using Micro-Motion Threads, etching 14 radial lines resembling his internal bioflow network. With each cut, the glyph absorbed more of his pulse rhythm.
He embedded it between his shoulder blades.
It glowed. A low hum formed beneath his thoughts—steady, persistent—a protective song against foreign touch.
---
He reached back out with Life-Sense. But not in fear. In curiosity.
He sent a clean pulse. The Echo-Wraith returned—not to feed, but to show.
A flickering vision burned in his mind: A civilization that had stored their entire knowledge inside these spectral echoes after their physical bodies perished.
> "We hunger for preservation… not destruction."
It wasn't malice. It was desperation. A thirst for continuity. He noted: with careful guidance, they could become living archives.
Not enemies. But future allies.
---
He turned back toward Beacon Zero.
The purple halo was dim.
An alarm flashed across the system:
ALERT ▸ Parasitic Thread Detected in Beacon-0
Type: Energy Corruptor (Larval)
Countdown to Core Collapse: 23h 47m
He froze.
The Echo-Wraith had been a decoy. A distraction. Something had slipped in during the mental scuffle—another parasitic variant, maybe a mutation of what he'd encountered in Chapter 11.
He stared at the flickering interface, hand pressed against the now-glowing Anchor Glyph on his back.
> "If I lose this beacon, the whole network collapses..." "...But maybe—just maybe—I can turn the parasite into fuel."
---