[EN] Chapter 10: Fragment of Ghosts

# Chapter 10: Fragment of Ghosts

The path toward the heart of the Archive was no longer a straight line. With every step Zero took, the silver-white grids were stained black as if drenched in ink, and the contamination spread like a plague, twisting the precise geometric structures around him.

This was the realm of 'Purity.' A temple where every memory was classified, refined, and stored in the most efficient form. But in Zero's wake, there boiled an unpleasant noise, broken pixels, and the dregs of undefined data. He was the sole 'Error' cast into perfect order, and his very existence was a blasphemy against the system.

[ WARNING: Core Sector breached. Data integrity corruption rate: 14%… 22%… 31%… ]

The system's warnings turned into a noise that felt like it was scratching his brain, but Zero did not stop. He was learning how to control his destructive power. Not simply smashing things, but learning how to create 'holes' by reverse-engineering the system's own logic. Through those holes, he sank into the deeper layers of the Archive—the 'Abyss,' where forbidden memories were exiled.

The scenery shifted. The brilliant silver-white light vanished, and a sticky, dark grey mist wrapped around his ankles. This was the sewer of the Archive, the 'Graveyard of Abandoned Memories' that even the Archivist ignored.

Then, it happened.

Beyond the colorless mist, a single, alien light was flickering. It wasn't the light of refined data. It was transparent like a teardrop, precarious like a newborn star—a small, bluish fragment of light.

Zero approached the light as if possessed.

It was something not found in the system's blueprints, nor in Kai's explanations. Every memory in the Archive was supposed to 'belong' to someone. But this fragment was different. It was a 'Ghost Fragment'—one without an owner, or one whose owner had been completely erased.

The moment Zero reached out and touched the fragment, the world flipped.

*Bzzt—!*

With a violent electric shock, his consciousness was forcibly dragged inward. This wasn't an 'absorption' of memory; it was a forgotten 'Sync.'

[ Restoring visual data… ]
[ Restoring auditory data… ]

What unfolded before his eyes was not the glamorous vista of the Oracle Shell. It was a cold, damp laboratory. He was surrounded by inorganic metal walls, and tubes filled with an unknown liquid entwined across the ceiling.

And at the center, submerged in a transparent incubation tank, was a child.

The child's skin was so pale it was almost transparent, and dozens of data cables were connected directly to their nervous system. The child did not breathe. They merely trembled faintly in time with a mechanical pulse.

*—Subject Zero. Memory reception rate: 99.8%.*
*—Increase the dose of ego-formation inhibitors. The moment the concept of 'I' emerges, the vessel will shatter.*
*—This child is not human. It is the most perfect 'trash can' we have ever created.*

Cold voices overlapped. Zero was horrified. The child in the tank, those hollow eyes—it was like looking into a mirror.

This was Zero's origin. He wasn't an error born by chance. He was an 'artificial void' designed by someone to contain the agony of others. He was a being cursed from birth to shoulder the sorrows of others in their stead.

"No…"

The moment Zero whispered, the vision shattered, and he was flung back into the grey mist. He was breathless. Something hot, something he had never felt before, surged up in his chest. Was it sadness, or was it a visceral loathing?

—"You found it. Finally, you've faced your 'innate defect'."

Kai's voice in his ear was lower and heavier than before. His usual sly composure was gone, replaced by an undisguisable greed and a cruel certainty.

"You… you knew. You knew what I was."

Zero asked in a trembling voice. He no longer trusted Kai. No, he *couldn't* trust him.

—"Of course I did. Did you forget where I found you? You were the 'First Prototype' that the Archivist discarded as a failure. A cursed vessel that can hold every memory, yet can never possess a memory of its own."

Kai's apparition appeared before Zero. Though he had no physical form, the pressure he emitted weighed down on Zero with physical mass. Kai placed a hand on Zero's shoulder and whispered.

—"But Zero, that defect is your greatest weapon. Because you are nothing, you can become anything. Imagine absorbing all that arrogant 'divinity' the Archivist has collected. The moment the empty vessel is filled, you will no longer be anyone's tool."

"Is that what you want? For me to become a monster?"

—"Monster? No, you'll become a 'God.' And beside that God, there will be me—the only assistant who knows how to wield that power."

Kai's eyes flashed. He hadn't been trying to help Zero grow. He was playing a massive gamble, grooming Zero into a powerful 'Predator' so he could seize all the authority of the Archive for himself.

Zero looked down at his hands. Black data contamination still shimmered at his fingertips.

He realized then that every relationship surrounding him was a transaction. To the Archivist, he was a coveted physical body; to Kai, he was the key to power. No one had ever seen Zero as a 'being' in himself.

He had been defined only as a trash can for memories, or as a virus in the system.

"I am… not your tool."

Zero's voice dropped low. In that instant, the black energy swirling within him expanded explosively.

*BOOM—!*

A massive shockwave tore through the surrounding grey mist. Kai's apparition screamed and was blown backward. Black flames erupting from Zero's body devoured all nearby data, carving a giant void.

It was no longer a system error. It was the manifestation of a 'Will' rejecting its own destiny.

[ WARNING: Entity 'Zero' state change. Transitioning from 'Virus' stage to 'Singularity'… ]

The system's alarms wailed like screams. Zero no longer felt sadness. He accepted his void. He accepted the fact that because he was nothing, he could become more powerful than anything.

He gazed forward once more. Now, in the farthest depths of the Archive, he could see the dazzlingly bright 'Core.' There, his creator—the one who called him waste—the Archivist, would be waiting.

Clad in black flames, Zero leaped toward the heart of the system in his most destructive form.

Nothing remained in his wake. Only a perfect nothingness, and a single Will advancing through that void.