Yuuya didn't go back to camp. He couldn't.
Not after that.
The system screen had vanished, but its presence lingered in the marrow of his bones. Every breath he took felt like it bent reality slightly. The air around him shimmered subtly, as if the world wasn't quite sure where to put him anymore.
[Overflow State Active: Anomaly Path]
[You are currently untraceable. Rank suppression removed.]
[New System Detected: Echo Shade - Memory shadows may now form during combat. Unstable, experimental.]
Yuuya sat atop the hollow ruins of a collapsed apartment building. The concrete beneath him cracked when he leaned forward. Too much power, too fast. But he couldn't stop. Not now.
He pulled out the glowing cube from the Sleeper File.
A diver's data. Still warm. Someone who had fought, lost, and been consumed by the dungeon's systems. Inside, maybe... an answer?
He activated it.
[Memory Extracted - Diver ID: K. Sayle - Rank: Silver - Last Dungeon: Overflow Incident, Code X45A]
[Displaying:]
"Don't trust the system. Don't trust the Bureau. We opened something we couldn't close. They said it was just a corrupted gate, but it wasn't. It was alive. It used our skills, spoke with our voices. We called it the Overflow. But it's not a place. It's a reaction. A loop. An answer. And now it's rewriting us. One diver at a time."
Yuuya sat still for a long time after the memory ended.
So I wasn't the first.
But I might be the last.
---
The next gate wasn't marked.
It wasn't on the boards.
It wasn't even on the map.
It was just there. In the middle of Sector 11, behind an abandoned textile plant, pulsing gently like a dying star.
[Overflow Breach Detected - Gate ID: Anomaly-ROOT]
[Difficulty: Unknown | Tier: Broken | System Access: Denied]
Yuuya stood in front of it.
No one else was near.
Not even the drones.
The world had blind spots now. Places the system couldn't or wouldn't see. And he was starting to see them all.
[Warning: Entering this gate will void Bureau tracking. Proceed?]
He didn't hesitate.
He stepped through.
---
There was no loading screen.
Just sudden, deafening silence.
And then color.
Too much of it.
The dungeon looked like a world half-rendered and half-forgotten. Code fragments floated like leaves. Terrain warped and healed itself in real-time. It was like walking through a dream a computer was still trying to finish.
[Zone: ROOT FIELD - Echo Layer 0]
[Enemies: ??? | Terrain Stability: 13%]
[System Notes: NONE. No records exist. You are the first.]
That made him laugh.
Until something laughed back.
[Entity Detected: Echo-Shard Diver - Level: ?? | Status: Overflow-Infected]
It looked like a person. Wore diver gear. But the face was blank. The movement—wrong. Echoes trailed behind every limb. It moved like someone trying to remember what a human body should do.
Yuuya drew his weapon.
It mimicked him.
[Skill Activated: Echo Shift Lv. 1]
[Trait Triggered: Ghost Framework - Inversion Successful]
Yuuya vanished for 0.2 seconds.
Then reappeared behind the thing and struck.
But it wasn't done.
[Counter Skill Detected: Recursive Paradox - Reflective Timing Engaged]
He was hit before his own strike landed.
Flipped. Skidded. Blood sprayed.
[-41 HP | Current HP: 52/120]
It advanced.
He activated Memory Lock.
Dodged.
[New Skill Formed: Memory Fragmentation - Prevents enemy from predicting repeated patterns]
The fight turned.
Slowly.
Until his poker split its mask.
The thing collapsed, breaking into thousands of glimmering particles.
Each one whispered his name.
He breathed heavily.
[Skill Evolution: Shadow Counter -> Echo Break Lv. 1]
[EXP: +??? | Overflow Node Absorbed: 1/5]
He wasn't sure what that meant.
But he was going to find out.
---
Layer by layer, he descended.
ROOT FIELD wasn't one dungeon. It was a world.
Each layer worse than the last. Each one containing traces of failed experiments, discarded skills, abandoned thoughts.
On Layer 3, the air spoke in system prompts.
On Layer 4, a storm of corrupted traits tried to overwrite his memories.
On Layer 5, he met someone.
A person.
A real one.
A girl, standing in the eye of a system hurricane, laughing.
She turned.
Smiled.
"You too, huh?"
Yuuya froze.
[Name: Linna | Overflow Diver Class: Resonance Path | Level: ???]
"They said no one made it past Layer 2," she continued. "But here you are. Look at you. What did you pick?"
He blinked. "Anomaly."
Her grin widened. "Oh. Dangerous. I like you already."
---
They didn't fight.
Not yet.
She showed him her scars. Echo marks across her arms where the system tried to erase her. Told him about the Bureau's secret experiments. The Overflow Tree wasn't new. It was hidden. Restricted. Suppressed.
"They can't control it," she said. "So they made it illegal."
"And we broke it."
She nodded.
Then the sky shattered.
[WARNING: Overflow Root Guardian Approaching - Final Node Guardian]
[Level: ??? | Condition: Mutated Echo Type]
The ground split.
A monster rose.
Half-system. Half-nightmare. Covered in broken UI panels. Voices of past divers screamed from its body.
Yuuya and Linna stood together.
She summoned chains of light.
He activated Echo Shift.
Together, they charged.