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Apocalypse Archive System: I Loot Powers From Dead Worlds
Apocalypse Archive System: I Loot Powers From Dead Worlds
Author: Haisen X
Chapter 1 — My F-Rank Class Sent Me to a Dead World
Author: Haisen X
last update2026-10-04 01:24:14

Damon Cross had spent six years preparing to kill monsters.

Apparently, the universe wanted him to organize their paperwork instead.

The crystal in front of him went dark.

For three seconds, nobody inside Hall Seven said anything.

Then blue letters appeared above the Awakening Platform.

[Awakening Complete.]

[Combat Path: Archivist.]

[Rank: F.]

[Combat Skills: None.]

Someone in the crowd laughed.

Damon stared at the words.

Archivist.

He had heard of the Path.

Everyone had.

Archivists worked in guild warehouses, museums, dungeon recovery teams, and auction houses. They catalogued monster remains, identified old equipment, recorded magical artifacts, and occasionally translated inscriptions if their Path evolved far enough.

Useful.

Safe.

Boring.

More importantly, not something anyone trained six years to receive.

Examiner Halloran cleared his throat.

The old man stood beside the Awakening Crystal with the careful expression of someone about to explain to a dog that its owner had died.

“Archivist is a recognized support Path.”

Damon looked at him.

“I know.”

“There are guilds that specifically recruit identification specialists.”

“I know.”

“Some senior Archivists make very respectable incomes.”

Damon glanced at the floating words again.

[Combat Skills: None.]

“Do they usually need to know how to break a man’s wrist?”

Halloran paused.

“No.”

“Then I may have overprepared.”

A few people laughed.

Not at him this time.

Halloran’s mouth twitched before he managed to control it.

“Step down, Mr. Cross.”

Damon did.

The moment his boots left the Awakening Platform, the next student hurried forward.

There were two hundred and seventeen people waiting to awaken today, and no one cared that one more teenager had just discovered that the future he planned for himself no longer existed.

Damon moved toward the wall.

His friend Marcus intercepted him halfway there.

Marcus was built like someone had taken a normal eighteen-year-old and stretched him sideways.

He lowered his voice.

“You all right?”

“No.”

“Good. I was worried that smile meant you’d finally lost your mind.”

Damon touched his mouth.

He hadn’t realized he was smiling.

“Could be both.”

Marcus glanced toward the platform.

A girl stepped forward and placed her hand on the crystal.

Light exploded across the hall.

Red.

Gold.

The temperature rose instantly.

[Combat Path: Flame Lancer.]

[Rank: A.]

The hall erupted.

People cheered.

Someone farther back shouted her name.

Recruiters sitting in the observation boxes leaned forward at the same time.

Marcus watched the girl in silence.

Then he looked back at Damon.

“Bad timing.”

“Very.”

“Want me to punch her?”

Damon looked at him.

“You haven’t awakened yet.”

“Then I’ll punch her after.”

“That sounds more responsible.”

Marcus grinned.

Damon didn’t.

His eyes had already returned to the status panel hovering faintly in front of him.

[Name: Damon Cross.]

[Level: 1.]

[Combat Path: Archivist.]

[Rank: F.]

[Strength: 12.]

[Agility: 14.]

[Endurance: 13.]

[Mana: 4.]

[Path Skills:]

[Identify Lv.1.]

That was it.

Six years of training had given him physical attributes slightly above average for someone who had just awakened.

His Path had given him Identify.

Damon focused on Marcus.

A tiny panel appeared.

[Marcus Hale.]

[Human.]

[Condition: Healthy.]

Damon waited.

Nothing else happened.

Marcus raised an eyebrow.

“Are you using your exciting new power on me?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“You’re human.”

Marcus stared at him.

“Damn.”

“I know.”

“I was hoping for something rarer.”

“Sorry.”

The next awakening began.

Damon stopped watching.

His older brother had been twenty-three when he died.

That was the inconvenient thing about monsters.

They did not care how promising someone was.

Elias Cross had awakened as a B-Rank Vanguard. By twenty-one, he had joined the Argent Fang Guild. By twenty-two, he had cleared his first B-Rank Rift.

By twenty-three, half his body had been recovered from a collapsed dungeon outside Westbridge.

Damon had been twelve.

He remembered his mother crying.

He remembered his father sitting at the kitchen table for three straight hours without moving.

Mostly, he remembered the sword.

Elias had left it behind that morning because dungeon regulations prohibited personally modified weapons unless approved by a guild inspector.

A black training blade still hung on Damon’s bedroom wall.

He had started training the next day.

Not because he wanted revenge.

The monster that killed Elias had already been exterminated.

Damon simply hated the idea that his brother had entered a place where one bad moment was enough to end everything.

If Damon was ever going to enter a Rift, he wanted every advantage he could build before that happened.

Six years.

Strength training.

Knife work.

Boxing.

Spear fundamentals.

Monster anatomy.

Field survival.

First aid.

Mana theory, even though mana could not be manipulated before Awakening.

All of it had been built around one assumption.

That when Damon awakened, he would receive something he could actually use.

Instead:

[Identify Lv.1.]

Fantastic.

By the time the ceremony ended, Marcus had awakened an uncommon B-Rank Path called Iron Guard and immediately received three recruitment requests.

Damon received one pamphlet.

NORTH DISTRICT HISTORICAL RECOVERY CENTER

ENTRY-LEVEL ARCHIVIST POSITIONS AVAILABLE.

Marcus read it twice.

“They have dental.”

Damon folded the pamphlet.

“You’re making this worse.”

“I’m trying very hard.”

“I noticed.”

They left the academy together.

Outside, hundreds of families crowded the plaza beneath enormous digital billboards.

Most displayed guild advertisements.

THE WORLD BEYOND THE RIFTS NEEDS HEROES.

JOIN ARGENT FANG.

Another showed a famous Hunter standing on the corpse of something that looked like a dragon.

AWAKEN STRONG.

LIVE STRONGER.

Damon stopped beneath it.

Marcus followed his gaze.

“You know Path evaluations can change.”

“Not usually from F to useful.”

“You could evolve.”

“So could mold.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Damon shoved the pamphlet into Marcus’s chest.

“Take this. Apparently they have dental.”

Marcus laughed.

They separated at the metro entrance.

Marcus had a family dinner waiting for him.

Damon did not.

His father worked nights at the western freight terminal, and his mother had moved to another city three years ago after remarrying.

That suited Damon.

He wasn’t in the mood for sympathetic expressions.

His apartment was small enough that the kitchen table also served as his workbench.

Damon dropped his bag beside the door and opened the refrigerator.

Chicken.

Rice.

Three eggs.

A bottle of something Marcus had left there four months ago and repeatedly insisted was still drinkable.

Damon chose survival and ignored the bottle.

Twenty minutes later, he sat at the table with dinner and his phone.

“Archivist Path evolution.”

Thousands of results.

Most useless.

He refined the search.

“F-Rank Archivist combat evolution.”

The results became depressing.

One message board thread was titled:

CAN ARCHIVISTS BECOME COMBAT CLASSES?

The highest-rated answer consisted of two words.

Not really.

Damon opened it anyway.

Archivists could evolve.

That part was true.

At Level 10, some developed into Appraisers.

Others became Relic Scholars, Dungeon Historians, Rune Analysts, or Archaeologists.

Useful professions.

None were fighters.

One extremely rare evolution called Battlefield Curator could apparently identify enemy equipment during combat.

Damon stared at the screen.

“So I can die while knowing exactly what sword killed me.”

No response.

He ate another piece of chicken.

His status screen remained open beside the phone.

[Combat Path: Archivist.]

[Rank: F.]

[Path Skills:]

[Identify Lv.1.]

Damon focused on his fork.

[Steel Dining Fork.]

[Condition: Used.]

He focused on the plate.

[Ceramic Plate.]

[Condition: Good.]

He looked at the chicken.

[Cooked Chicken Breast.]

[Condition: Slightly dry.]

Damon frowned.

“That was unnecessary.”

The system did not apologize.

He continued testing.

Shoes.

Table.

Training gloves.

His brother’s sword.

The moment his eyes reached the weapon hanging on the wall, the panel changed.

[Training Sword.]

[Material: Tempered Steel.]

[Owner History detected.]

Damon stopped chewing.

That was new.

He stood.

The sword had belonged to Elias for years before Damon inherited it.

He pulled it from the wall.

[Training Sword.]

[Material: Tempered Steel.]

[Condition: 63%.]

[Previous Owner: Elias Cross.]

[Owner History detected.]

[Insufficient Archivist Level.]

Damon stared at the final line.

“Interesting.”

Identify was more sophisticated than he had assumed.

Not useful in combat.

But interesting.

He placed the blade across the table and experimented for almost an hour.

Old coins produced manufacture dates.

A monster fang Elias had kept as a trophy revealed species information.

A cracked dungeon compass identified the Rift from which it had originally been recovered.

That finally made Damon sit back.

Archivist wasn’t entirely useless.

Given enough levels, he could probably make decent money identifying relics.

It just wasn’t the future he had wanted.

Damon glanced at the clock.

11:47 PM.

He had an introductory Path assessment tomorrow morning.

There was no point staying awake.

He cleaned the plate, showered, and collapsed onto his bed.

The sword remained on the table.

Damon closed his eyes.

Nothing happened.

Then something whispered.

Not inside the room.

Inside his head.

[Searching...]

Damon’s eyes opened.

Darkness.

The ceiling remained exactly where it had been.

He waited.

Another message appeared.

[Searching...]

Damon sat up.

“What?”

[Archivist synchronization initiated.]

He frowned.

That phrase had never appeared during the Awakening.

A faint vibration moved through the room.

The lights flickered.

[Compatible record detected.]

[Attempting access.]

Damon got out of bed.

His first instinct was to grab his phone.

No signal.

His second was better.

He crossed the apartment and took Elias’s sword from the table.

The weapon was blunt.

Still preferable to nothing.

Blue light appeared in the center of the living room.

One line.

Then another.

They drew themselves through empty air, intersecting at precise angles.

A rectangle formed.

Two meters tall.

One meter wide.

The inside was completely black.

Damon stared.

“No.”

The rectangle expanded.

Blackness became depth.

Wind blew through it.

Cold air.

Dust.

And the smell of something rotten.

Damon tightened his grip around the sword.

New messages filled his vision.

[Unknown Archivist function detected.]

[Standard Path restrictions unavailable.]

[Searching inaccessible records...]

[Record located.]

A violent pulse ran through the apartment.

The doorway stabilized.

Beyond it stood a street.

Or what remained of one.

Cars lay abandoned beneath layers of rust.

Glass covered the asphalt.

Buildings rose on either side, their windows broken and their walls strangled by black vines.

There were no lights.

No voices.

No movement.

Above the ruined skyline hung a pale moon.

Damon stared through the doorway.

That was not Westbridge.

Another message appeared.

[Dead Timeline detected.]

His grip tightened.

Then:

[Human civilization status:]

[EXTINCT.]

Damon stopped breathing.

More text followed.

[Archive designation: #0001.]

[Cause of extinction: Monster Evolution Event.]

[Human survival duration after initial outbreak: 31 years, 4 months, 12 days.]

[Current human population:]

[0.]

The temperature inside Damon’s apartment seemed to fall.

He looked from the system window to the dead city beyond the doorway.

Every person.

Gone.

Every building.

Abandoned.

Every street.

Empty.

Then one final message appeared.

Larger than the rest.

[Unique Archivist Function awakened.]

[APOCALYPSE ARCHIVE.]

[Enter?]

Damon looked at the sword in his hand.

Then at the ruined world.

Every reasonable instinct told him not to step through an unexplained portal into a world where humanity had already been exterminated.

Damon had never been particularly impressed by reasonable instincts.

He put on his jacket.

Grabbed his field knife.

And stepped through.

The portal vanished behind him.

For half a second, nothing moved.

Then a metallic scraping sound came from beneath an overturned bus.

Damon slowly raised the sword.

Two red eyes opened in the darkness.

A system panel appeared above them.

[Unknown Creature.]

[Level: 3.]

[Identify?]

Damon smiled.

For the first time since his Awakening, the Archivist Path seemed considerably less disappointing.

The creature crawled out.

And charged.

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