[Root Layer — 00:00:00]
Darkness. Then a pulse.A slow, rhythmic heartbeat deep within the void.
Evelyn knelt amid the shattered code fragments of her own essence. The once-blinding chamber of light had dimmed to a forest of dying green.Each breath she took felt like a glitch — static caught between existence and deletion.
And yet, beneath the ash of erased data, something grew.
The World Tree Seed.
It glowed faintly — a pulse the System could not track, categorize, or erase.Where her mana bled away, the seed absorbed it, steady and quiet, growing deeper roots into the unseen layer of the world.
[Warning: Unknown Phenomenon Detected.]
[Classification Failed.]
[Attempting Scan—ERROR.]
[Result: NULL.]
Evelyn smiled weakly, her fingers brushing the tiny sprout at her feet."You can't name what you don't understand," she whispered.
The System trembled, whispering its response — not words, but overlapping error tones, digital growls of frustration.
[Entity Evelyn Park — interference continues.]
[Enforcement Program: HUNTERS deployed.]
All around her, black figures emerged — faceless, jagged silhouettes shaped from corrupted code, each one armed with crystalline blades.The Hunters — the System's immune response.
Evelyn straightened, the last of her mana flickering across her fingertips."Then come," she whispered. "Let's see which of us survives longer — your perfection, or my mistake."
[Seoul — Morning of the New Awakening]
Across the city, the System returned in full.
Blue panels reappeared in the eyes of millions — civilians, soldiers, children.But this time… not all were blue.
For the first time in recorded cycles, some awakened to green panels — pulsing softly like living leaves instead of circuits.
[System Initialization: ROOT-TYPE Detected.]
[Skill Granted: Seed of Resilience Lv.1]
[Skill Granted: Minor Regrowth Lv.1]
Doctors. Farmers. Even children.No combat classes — no weapons or fire or steel.Just life. Growth. Balance.
The System tried to delete the anomaly. It couldn't.Every attempt to purge Root-type users resulted in the same response:
[Access Denied — Entity Not Found.]
No one knew it yet, but the Green Code was Evelyn's rebellion — her will buried beneath the world's base layer, rewriting the rules one fragment at a time.
[Min Jae — The Root Connection]
Min Jae awoke to chaos.
People were screaming in the streets, their panels flickering between blue and green.Emergency sirens echoed through the city, warning of System Desynchronization Events.
He opened his own interface.His Berserker Mark was dim, but something new had appeared beside it:
[Link Detected: Root Signal.]
[Do you wish to connect? Y/N]
He didn't hesitate. "Yes."
A warmth spread through his chest — not fire, not rage, but calm.And in the reflection of a broken glass panel, he saw her — Evelyn's silhouette, smiling faintly before fading.
"Min Jae… keep them alive. The tree needs them."
He gritted his teeth. "You're still out there, aren't you?"
The System voice cut in, sharp and mechanical.
[Warning: Unauthorized Link Established.]
[Deploying Enforcement—]
He smirked. "Go ahead. I've killed worse things than your rules."
[Gangnam — The Saintess' Awakening]
Lee Ara woke in the church infirmary, the gold of her Saintess light now intertwined with veins of green.Her reflection shimmered — half divine, half living root.
She heard the whispers before she saw them — gentle, countless, speaking from everywhere and nowhere.
"Protect life.""Preserve balance.""The Root remembers."
Tears slid down her cheeks. "Evelyn…"
The priests around her starred as vines began to grow from the walls, curling around crosses and stained glass, purifying the air.
[Saintess Class Evolution: Saint of Renewal (Root)]
[New Skill Acquired: Blessing of Verdant Dawn]
The church bells rang — not by human hands, but by resonance.
[The System's Response]
[Alert: ROOT-TYPE Expansion at 3.9%.]
[Warning: Containment Failure Approaching Critical Threshold.]
[Deploying Code Hunters to all major zones.]
Digital gates opened across the sky, unseen to ordinary eyes — shimmering rifts through which the Hunters descended.They did not bleed, did not breathe.They existed only to erase.
The first Root Awakener in Busan vanished within seconds — pixelated into dust.But her garden didn't die with her. It spread.
Wherever the Hunters struck, grass broke through concrete.Vines split apart roads.Life, refusing deletion.
The System's voice turned erratic.
[Error. Unrecognized feedback.]
[Feedback Source: "World Tree Protocol."]
[Tracking… FAILED.]
It couldn't locate it. Couldn't classify it.The World Tree Seed lived beyond its perception — a blind spot, the one line of code that the System's logic could not parse.
[Root Layer — Evelyn's Resistance]
Evelyn was kneeling again, sweat and code dripping from her skin like ink.The Hunters advanced.For every one she struck down, another spawned — endless, recursive.
But the seed beneath her feet glowed brighter with every heartbeat.
She realized something then:It wasn't growing outward — it was growing inward, deep into the core of the System itself.
[Growth Detected in Unassigned Space.]
[Attempting Access—ERROR.]
[Cannot read variable: "Soul."]
Evelyn smiled faintly."You can't touch it because it's not code. It's me."
The World Tree Seed pulsed again, and the chamber transformed — green light fracturing into tendrils, roots, leaves made of light.Each one carried echoes of voices — her memories, her regrets, her hope.
She stood tall.For the first time, her hair glowed faintly silver-green, her eyes like mirrored sunlight through leaves.
She was no longer just Evelyn Park, the first Awakener.She had become the Root of Defiance.
[System Command Override Detected.]
[ERROR: Identity redefinition impossible.]
[Classification Unknown.]
The System screamed.Evelyn opened her hand, and the Hunters froze mid-strike — their forms turning to dust.
"You can't erase what's alive."
[Surface — Seoul, Dusk]
The city was changing.Parks overgrew in minutes. Cracked buildings regrew into living architecture, walls breathing like trees.
And every Root Awakener heard it — the same whisper, gentle and defiant:
"When they erase, you rebuild."
The Green Code spread like a heartbeat, linking each of them together, unseen.
Min Jae stood beneath a bridge, watching as green veins lit the stone.He whispered, "She's fighting back."
Then looked to the horizon — where the sky pulsed with crimson light again.The next stage of the System was arriving.
[End Scene — Root Layer]
Evelyn's body trembled, barely holding form.Her mana was gone, her skills stripped, but the seed no longer needed her power.It was growing on its own now — pure, autonomous, alive.
"Good," she whispered, collapsing to her knees."Live… even if I can't."
The chamber responded — faintly, softly.Leaves unfolded.A single line of text shimmered above the sprout, written in code the System didn't create.
[World Tree Protocol: ACTIVE]
[System Lock Disabled]
[Root Sovereign — Evelyn Park]
And for the first time since its creation…the System feared.