The room fell silent.
All three stared at the VR terminal, eyes wide. One whole century—gone.
After a heavy pause, Evan broke the silence.
"...What do you mean?" he asked firmly, his voice like a rusted blade—rough, and unwavering.
Mana's fingers were already dancing across the console, running strings of code like a pianist desperate to find the right note. Refresh. Reload. Bypass. Debug. But nothing worked. The interface responded like an apathetic god—cold and unmovable.
"The entire block," shewhispered, "from 2000 to 2100... is sealed. Just—gone."
"I swear... Every second used to be recorded—at least it was before I got kicked out," she muttered, more to herself than the others, her voice trembling with a guilt she didn't fully understand.
Sumei tilted her head, squinting at the blank stretch of data like it might blink back to life.
"How's that even possible? Some kind of plot twist from a second-rate dystopia novel?"
No one laughed.
Evan's eyes were hard. His stance was too still. Too controlled. He turned to Mana.
"You said you're a 'hacker-slash-programmer', right?"
"Y-Yeah..." she said, startled by the sharpness in his tone.
"Then try hacking it."
Mana stiffened like a student asked to answer a test question with a gun pointed at her. But she nodded.
"Okay. I'll try."
She ran a custom bypass, something she'd never used in front of others. Her 'get out of jail free' exploit. The one that cracked sealed archives during dead hours in old corrupted net worlds. It worked on encrypted data from the Galactic Ruin Simulators, and even broke past the Olympus Protocol once.
But not here.
Just as her script began making headway, the defense slammed down like a wall of steel.
"Wait… what?" she blinked. "It—rejected me. It knew I was coming. That wasn't just a block… that was active surveillance-level defense."
Evan's brows furrowed. That kind of countermeasure wasn't just for data security—it was personal. Intentional.
Mana swallowed.
"I've broken through tighter VR locks than this. It's like the system recognized me. Like it expected me. And retaliated."
"Strange," Evan muttered, barely audible.
"Super strange," Sumei added. "Mana losing to grandma-tier VR is breaking genre continuity."
Mana glared, puffing her cheeks.
"I feel insulted."
"You should," Sumei teased, folding her arms behind her head with a grin.
There was a pause. Evan leaned in, studying the interface from a new angle.
"This is a less VR-intensive world, right?" heasked. "There has to be a global player archive. Something persistent."
Mana blinked, processing his train of thought. Then she nodded.
"F.C.H. runs non-volatile records. Always has. Hall of Fame, Global Incidents, Fail Logs… there's always a backup."
"Then there must be a Hall of Fame in this fight club of history too, right?"
Her eyes widened, sparks igniting behind them.
"Oh! That's genius. Top players, longest survivals, extreme scenario clearances. They'd store that data separately from the mainstream archive!"
"You're smarter than you look, Mr. Evan!" shegrinned.
"Just Evan," he replied. Not trying to be dismissive
"Siiiimp~," Sumei hissed from the side, grinning at Mana.
"W-What?! Shut up, Su! I'm complimenting his logic, not his jawline!"
"Sure~ just logic~"
"Ugh! You're insufferable!"
"Maybe. But I'm right."
"Anyway—let me check the archive."
Mana redirected her focus, diving into a lower-layer file system. Her fingers flew as she bypassed UI limitations and decrypted subdirectories. Then—bingo.
"Got it. 'Top 500 Survivors.' This one's untouched."
She opened it.
"All top players, all simulations. Hell-level scenarios like World War II, the Fall of Rome, nuclear winter, asteroid strikes,construction of six faces of layer one,... all logged."
"Look for anything close to the blocked century. Closest possible," Evan saidcalmly.
Mana's blush remained, but her hands moved steadily. Evan, noticing her anxiety, took a half-step back to give her space.
As Mana scrolled through player tags and timestamps, Sumei leaned close to Evan, voice quiet.
"Hey, Grandpa…"
He sighed.
"Not now."
"No, really. Back when you fought that mech gorilla… the way you moved. It wasn't normal. Not even VR-skill normal. It was like your muscles remembered. Like you'd fought monsters like that before. Hundreds of times."
Evan didn't answer. His expression darkened. A memory surfaced, sharp as glass.
The scent of sulfur. Wind screaming through broken towers. His fingers gripping rebar like a weapon. Waking up alone beneath six feet of radioactive soil, lungs burning. Emerging into a world where even silence had fangs.
Toxic air. Ruined cities. Skies permanently stained red. Rivers of ash. Children with empty eyes. And beasts… things that didn't exist in any living memory.
And only him. One man, against it all.
"You okay, Grandpa?" Sumei's voice pulled him back.
"…Fine," he said, quiet and closed-off. "And stop calling me Grandpa."
"Why? You act like one. You walk like one. You scowl like one."
"You're a child."
"Am not."
"You are."
"Am NOT!"
"Enough," Mana cut in, smirking. "Found something."
Evan leaned closer.
"Not from the 2000–2100 range," sheexplained, "but only 17 months off. Year 2020. Codename: Mithra677. Ranked Survivor #476."
"Can we view the record?" Evan asked.
Mana's face turned grim.
"Not… visually. Not like playback. But we can relive it."
Evan raised an eyebrow.
"Total immersion?"
"Yup. Full neural sync. Pain, fear, memories, emotions. Everything the player felt—you'll feel too."
Evan didn't hesitate.
"Do it."
Mana stared at him. "You sure? People die during full VR dives when their minds can't take it."
"Don't worry, I will survive."
"…Okay," she said softly. "Step into the sync chamber."
Evan stepped in. The chamber's translucent dome closed around him, locking him in place with a gentle hum.
Mana tapped the sync rune. "Launching in 3... 2..."
The world collapsed.
---
Inside the Simulation...
Rust-colored skies. Burned buildings wept smoke. Roads fractured like scars across dead land.
Evan gasped as the sensory surge stabbed into his skull like a spike of lightning. The pain was pure. Real. Raw.
"Ghh—!"
He gripped his temples. Pressure built. The simulation wasn't simulated pain—it was transferred pain. He was becoming Mithra677. And Mithra had suffered.
I can't lose consciousness, he thought.
So he made a decision.
With a crunch, he broke his own pinky finger. The fresh pain snapped his focus, grounding his consciousness. His vision sharpened.
The player—was walking through a collapsed alleyway. Sounds of distant screaming echoed like sirens underwater. Something massive shifted in the shadows ahead.
And then—
Darkness.
---
Outside...
"It's been hours," Sumei muttered, watching the chamber like a cat watches a box that might explode. "He's been statue-mode this whole time."
Mana sighed.
"Still with the 'grandpa' thing?"
"He gives off 'lived through three wars' vibes. Definitely war-grandpa energy, also he smells old, like real old."
Mana tilted her head, then nodded reluctantly. "your nose is insane sometimes i wonder how this works."
Then—
HSSSSHHHHH.
The chamber hissed open.
Evan stepped out. No expression. No words. But his entire body was trembling slightly, like he was caught between this world and another.
Sumei frowned. "...You okay, Grandpa?"
"What did you see?" Mana asked, cautiously.
Evan didn't answer right away. Then—
"Nothing worth a damn."
His voice was flat. Hollow.
Sumei squinted. She could smell it—he was lying. The fear wasn't in his voice, but it was in his scent. Beneath that calm exterior he's hiding dark secrets— and she knows it's not the right time.
But something told her not to ask.
"So what now?" she asked. "No link to your past?"
Evan turned away. "The feed went dark. I waited. It didn't return."
He walked toward the exit.
But then—
He returned.
From the same door.
Sumei's heart stopped. Mana's mouth fell open.
"…Hey," Evan said slowly. "Is this still part of the VR?"
Mana's fingers hovered over the console.
"No… but…"
Sumei interrupted, her voice a whisper.
"It's a soul. Not code. Not a simulation. A soul is inside the VR."
Then—
The world shattered.
---
Darkness.
Pure, unnatural, suffocating.
"What the—?!"
"Where are we?!"
"I wanna go home!"
Mana clutched Sumei's sleeve like a scared child. Static buzzed in the air like electricity hunting for a target.
And then—
WELCOME, MY NEW GEMS~!!
A voice echoed across the black void like a mad conductor's overture.
Above them, a moon blinked into existence. Stars flickered on. A spotlight of code ignited beneath them.
And then he appeared.
A figure in a cracked Joker mask. Body flickering like corrupted pixels. Limbs jittering like marionettes pulled by invisible threads.
"It seems I have fresh players today, huh?" hegrinned. "How lucky for me. Finally—a chance to claim a perfect body. A source of endless energy. Yes… absolutely perfect for me."
His voice was syrupy and smooth—but laced with static. Something wrong. Something dead pretending to be alive.
He just chuckles
"oh! My apologies this might surprised you~"
Even his movements glitched, in a millisecond he covered the distance standing face to face to evan.
"Perhaps I should introduced myself first," he said, bowing at an impossible angle. His torso bent, but his legs stayed still. A glitch? Or a nightmare?
"My name is…"
He looked directly into Evan's eyes.
"…DAEMON."
Then he smiled.
"…And gentlemen—
you're in my domain."