The cold breath of dawn whispered through the Hollow Forest, stirring the mist into winding ribbons of silver. Jun sat cross-legged before an ancient, hollowed tree marked by spiral etchings—faintly pulsing symbols from a forgotten age. The Fragmented Root Core pulsed in his palm, rhythmically resonating with each inhale.
Breath Initiation DetectedManual Cultivation: Phase I Core Binding (Frostburn Variant)Warning: No System Path Detected. All results may vary. Proceed?
Jun exhaled slowly. No lights, no rings of power, no synthetic voice guiding him. Just silence and his own heartbeat echoing in the forest.
He pressed the core against his chest.
Pain bloomed—white-hot and frigid at once. His breath caught, eyes fluttering open as ghostly veins of frostfire branched along his skin.
[Tokyo – Real World: Private Neural Stabilization Lab]
"His waveform is spiking again."Hana's voice was calm, but her fingers were white-knuckled on the edge of the console. A dozen medical graphs blinked red across her display.
Inside a secure lab buried under layers of corporate subnets, Jun's real-world body lay motionless within a high-tier immersion pod. His vitals were erratic but stable. For now.
"Phase I Core Binding… but without system mediation?" she whispered.
A second operator stepped into the room, holding a classified access tablet.
"New update from NexSoul HQ. They've reclassified him."
Protocol Divergence Status: EscalatedObservation Level: SigmaDesignation: Pathweaver Candidate
"They think he's evolving," the tech muttered. "But the weird part? He's doing it through the Rootless framework. That wasn't even meant to exist."
Hana leaned closer to the screen. "No. It was meant to exist. Just not for us."
[Back in Heaven's Gate Online]
Jun gasped, spine arching as the Root Core fused with his Breath Center. The pain didn't dull—it deepened. But he didn't resist it. He guided it.
This wasn't just power. It was memory, pain, intention—fossilized into energy. The Rootless hadn't just rejected the system. They'd remembered something older.
His breath settled.
Frostburn Root Core – BoundBreath Tier: IIEffect: Breath Grid Access UnlockedNew Meridian Activated: Echo Lattice
Suddenly, the world changed.
Lines of breath—soft glowing filaments of energy—unfurled across the landscape like constellations pulled taut across space. Invisible threads connecting trees, mountains, ruins... and people.
Jun staggered to his feet. "What… is this?"
Riven stepped from the shadows of a nearby stone arch, arms crossed, impressed.
"You've done it," he said. "You've pierced the Grid. The world before the system was built on this network. Breath flowed in cycles. Not XP, not numbers—just intent and resonance."
Jun reached out and touched one of the filaments. It hummed faintly, revealing a faded signature: Araya – Flame Sutra, West Node.
"These are…" Jun whispered.
"Echoes," Riven replied. "Not all players—some are traces of those who came before. Some were cultivators. Some were builders. And some, like you… are something in between."
New Mechanic Unlocked: Breath Grid NavigationDescription: Reveals hidden breath paths, ancestral cultivation sites, and anomaly nodes across the world. Usable only in Manual Mode.
Jun spent the next hours moving from node to node—studying, breathing, sensing. Each filament responded differently. Some flared bright. Others recoiled. A few shattered when touched, collapsing into flickers of lost data.
He learned by feeling. Not from a quest. Not from a UI prompt. From intuition.
And the deeper he went, the more he felt the System watching.
[NexSoul HQ – Internal Server Room, Level Ω]
"Level-Three Breath Grid access," muttered Minase, VP of Neural Integration.
"It's unstable," Sora replied. "He's drawing from pre-System code strata. Every move he makes now is rewriting portions of the engine's foundation."
A silence.
"Do we kill the connection?" someone asked.
"No," Sora said. "We watch. He's showing us what we buried."
That night, Jun and Riven rested atop a spiraling tree-bridge that arched across a ravine like a sleeping serpent. Below, energy veins pulsed faintly under the earth.
Jun unwrapped the breath-forged silk scroll he had traded for earlier.
Fragmented Manual: Echo Meridian – Body of RainlightClassification: Rootless Legacy TechniqueRequirements: Tier II Core, 3 Minor Echo AlignmentsNotes: Technique cultivates nerve-resonance. Enhances intuitive reflexes. Weakens interface dependence.
Jun blinked. "This technique… it doesn't mention damage output. Or cooldowns."
Riven grinned. "Because it's not meant for system logic. It trains you, not your avatar."
Jun looked out at the darkness. "Then I'll learn it. All of it."
Riven's voice dropped low. "Then be ready. Because learning these… marks you. And not just in-game."
[Real World – Nexus Black Channel Briefing]
Subject: Jun TakahiroStatus: Rootless – Kernel-BoundNew Alert: Echo Interference Detected in Neural ArchitectureProjected Outcome: Behavioral Shifts. Biofeedback Unstable. Probability of Pathweaver Awakening: 42%
Quest Branch Unlocked: Legacy of the RootlessType: Hidden Mainline (Untracked)Requirements: Breath Grid Activation, Tier II CoreObjective: Awaken 3 Ancestral NodesReward: UnknownRisk: Catastrophic System Interference Possible
Jun scrolled through the notice and dismissed it.
No system. No interface. No rules.
He wasn't leveling up.
He was ascending.