Yuuya didn't report his clear.
The system did. Quietly. Automatically. His name appeared at the bottom of a server log, under a line of system diagnostics the Bureau barely read. Echo Loop: Cleared. Diver: Yuu. Level: 21. Clearance: F.
No one believed it.
No one cared.
Except one person.
---
The Diver Registry buzzed with late morning tension. A new gate had opened in Sector 9, and Bureau staff were scrambling to organize deployment rosters. Runners typed. Operators yelled. Divers argued.
Yuuya walked through it like a ghost.
His gear was patched. His boots were scorched. His poker was wrapped in cloth, and the look in his eyes made people step aside without knowing why.
At the counter, an older man looked up from the board.
"You're still F-rank," he said flatly. No hello. No eye contact. Just facts.
Yuuya nodded. "That's not going to change, is it?"
The man shrugged. "System can't detect what it can't parse. Your profile's a tangle of ghost data and suppressed flags. Bureau thinks it's a sync error. I think you're dangerous."
Yuuya grunted. "I'm not here to convince you. I want gate access."
"Where to?"
[Temporary Gate: Archive Verge - Sector 4 - Tier D+] [Warning: Mental Contamination Possible]
Yuuya pointed. "That one."
The man raised an eyebrow. "Alone again?"
Yuuya didn't answer.
---
[Entering Dungeon: Archive Verge - Status: Active] [Cognitive Hazard Warning: Visual and Auditory Memory Overlap Possible]
The dungeon was... quiet.
Not silent. Just full of the wrong kinds of sounds.
Whispers. Scratching pens. Distant voices reading lines Yuuya didn't know.
He stepped through marble hallways lined with shattered bookshelves. Parchment crumbled beneath his boots. Nothing attacked.
At first.
Then it started.
[Enemy Detected: Thought-Repeater - Level 16 - Semi-Corporeal]
A shadow detached from a page and swung.
Yuuya dodged, struck low, swept through it.
The shadow turned into a memory—his first fight, the burning church, the way his legs had trembled.
He stabbed through it again.
[EXP +64] [Memory Fragment Gained: Flamebound Instinct - Accuracy +4% in fire-based dungeons]
So that's how this place worked.
Memories were loot.
---
The deeper he went, the harder it became.
The enemies were illusions and truths. Versions of himself. Past echoes. Fights he lost. Words he hadn't forgotten.
A door opened and he saw his mother's face.
Not real.
Still hurt.
He kept going.
[True Learning 97%]
[Skill Gained: Memory Lock - Temporarily negate the effect of mental attacks or illusions]
He used it immediately.
A whisper tried to claw his confidence apart.
He stepped through it.
---
The boss room was a library in mid-collapse.
Pages flew like birds. Statues whispered quotes. And at the center, a massive being shaped like a librarian—but with a quill for a head and ink pooling from its robes.
[Dungeon Boss: Index-Watcher - Level 23 - Mental Hazard Active]
It spoke in paragraphs.
He didn't listen.
He charged.
Its pages wrapped around him. Tried to rewrite him.
[Memory Lock Active]
[Skill Copied: Sentence Break - Shatter illusion-based constructs with direct impact]
He slammed a book into its core.
The echo of its scream sounded like a thousand pens snapping.
[Boss Defeated - EXP +344] [Level Up: 22] [Level Up: 23]
[New Trait Gained: Archivist's Resilience - Resistance to memory-based attacks increased by 12%]
[Loot: Index Core Fragment, Inkbound Shard x2, Rare Skill Scroll - Annotation Mark]
---
When he emerged, the Registry didn't even notice.
He walked past the front desk, dropped a sealed envelope onto the counter.
The old man opened it.
Inside was a single line of handwriting:
"Your system is wrong. I'm not F-rank."
He didn't sign it.
He didn't need to.
He just kept walking.
And the Board updated again.
Cleared: Archive Verge.
By: Yuu.
Status: F.
But the Bureau took notice.
In a locked office, a man in a long coat leaned forward.
"He's ghosting their scans now."
His assistant swallowed. "Should we tag him?"
"No," the man said. "We wait."
"Wait for what?"
The man smiled faintly.
"For when he stops hiding."