2026-09-23 12:46:38The burnt smell of melted circuits and the heavy metallic stench of ozone filled the main corridor of the Aegis Sector 4 Data Storage Facility. The emergency sirens on the ceiling, which should have been blaring loudly, only emitted a silent, dim red pulse—most of the power lines had been forcibly disabled from the inside.
In the corner of the corridor, Arka and Elena stood rigid in the shadows of a steel pillar. Just a few hours after being sent home from the examination, Arka had intentionally snuck back into the facility to find out what Aegis was truly hiding about his status. Elena, who had been keeping an eye on Arka from afar through her Truth Seeker intuition, shadowed him all the way to this underground area. Yet, instead of finding sealed archives, they were confronted with a chilling sight: over a dozen elite Aegis soldiers lay unconscious along the marble floor without a single sign of struggle. "Arka... don't move forward," Elena whispered hoarsely, clutching the sleeve of Arka's jacket. Her golden pupils trembled violently. "His mana signal... it isn't there. I can't read the power fluctuations of the person inside that room. He is pure void." Arka didn't retreat. His thin-framed glasses reflected the red glow from the wide-open steel door of Level 0 Sealed Archive Room. With calm yet careful movements, Arka stepped past the row of collapsed guards and walked into the main server chamber, which was filled with rows of liquid-cooled server racks. In front of the central console, a man wrapped in a thick black cloak stood staring at the monitor screen. His gloved hand had just pulled out a specialized crystal drive containing the entire copy of Arka's soul analysis data. Click. The sound of the heel of Arka's shoe tapping against the concrete floor made the man freeze. He slowly turned his body around. The man's face was covered by a dull porcelain mask devoid of eye or nose features, bearing only an engraving of a straight golden line split down the middle. There was no killing intent, no physical intimidation pressing down on the air. Yet his presence in that room felt exceedingly uncanny—as if he were a digital object forcibly pasted into the real world. Elena followed Arka inside, summoning a glowing protective barrier in both of her hands. "Who are you?! Hand over that data drive!" The masked man didn't look at Elena at all. The six pairs of mana sensors surrounding his mask suddenly locked tightly onto a single figure: the tall youth with glasses standing before him. The masked figure let out a long, melancholic breath that sounded immensely relieved from behind the porcelain cavity. "At last..." the man's voice was raspy, trembling with long-suppressed emotion. "...we have found you." Arka furrowed his brow behind his glasses. He halted three meters away from the man, positioning himself carefully to anticipate any potential attacks. "Have we met before?" Arka asked softly, his tone remaining cold and measured. "Who is 'we'?" The masked man shook his head slowly. "No." "Then why did you break into an Aegis facility just to steal his file?" Elena interjected sharply from the side, her pupils working overtime to dissect the intruder's identity, only to yield [Access Denied]. The masked man raised his right hand. With a casual snap of his fingers, a wave of black-and-gold air ripples bloomed between Arka and himself. The wave did not attack; instead, it forcibly swept across Arka's private interface screen until it glowed brightly in the open air—a phenomenon of system hacking that should have been impossible for anyone else to execute. Arka's blue translucent screen glowed, laying out line after line of rigid status text reading [Talent: Storyteller (F-Class)] along with rows of wildly flickering error codes. The masked man took a step closer to the glowing system display. He reached out his trembling fingers, gently touching the gray F-Class text with extreme care, as if touching the most sacred relic in history. "F-Class status... corrupted data codes... and a reality structure fracturing around you," the masked man muttered, his voice now filled with a strange reverence. He turned his masked face directly toward Arka's eyes. "You do not know us, Arka Pratama," the masked man continued in a echoing whisper inside the cold server room. "But we... we have been waiting for you for 117 years." Arka froze where he stood. His heart suddenly pounded violently as an ancient mana ripple at the base of his chest burst with warmth, as if responding to the exact number uttered by the intruder. 117 years. The Talent system and dimensional rifts had only appeared on Earth fifty years ago. How could anyone have been waiting for him long before the world ever knew what Awakening meant?
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WHY F-CLASS?
The dense golden glow from the giant system window reflected in Arka's eyes, leaving a string of slowly pulsing letters in the empty air:(Would you like to know why you were given an F?)Arka’s heart hammered in his chest. That question was not merely an interface puzzle; it was the master key hidden by the world’s system order all this time. Beneath the screen's hovering cursor, two menu choices rested with a faint glow: [YES] and [NO].Without a single moment of hesitation, Arka raised his fingers, still trembling from the lingering mana waves, and aimed them toward the [YES] button.However, right before the tip of his finger touched the screen...BZZZZT!A high-frequency electrical burst shook the air. The golden-framed giant screen suddenly flickered wildly, spraying blood-red static sparks. All the corruption codes and ancient text were sucked into a single point, then shattered into digital ash.Arka’s private interface blinked once more before reverting to its rigid, boring s
CLASSIFICATION ERROR
The damp smell from the underground concrete walls still hung heavy in Arka’s nose as the intruder from The Archive dissolved slowly into the shadows of the corridor. The porcelain-masked man didn’t leave using teleportation magic or jump through a window. He simply took a single step backward, his body unraveling into thousands of golden pixels that shattered and evaporated into thin air—as if his very existence had been forcibly purged from the room’s spatial map."He... vanished?" Elena whispered, stepping toward the spot where the man had been standing seconds ago.The silver-haired girl extended a trembling hand, trying to detect any lingering mana traces with Truth Seeker. However, her golden pupils suddenly dimmed into a rigid stillness. No aura remained. No power fluctuations. It was as though the masked man had never set foot on the marble floor of the Aegis containment facility."There's no trace at all," Elena muttered, her voice catching in her throat. She turned a deathly
THE FIRST STORY TELLER
The liquid-cooled archive room fell completely silent, leaving only the rushing wind from the server cooling fans chilling the concrete walls. Outside, heavy rain slammed against the Aegis underground facility, but none of the three shifted their focus from Arka’s hovering, dimly lit system screen.The porcelain-masked man pulled his hand back from thin air, letting Arka’s interface slowly fade. He reached back into his black cloak, halting the subtle motion of mana spores in the room."Who are you people, really?" Elena pressed, taking half a step forward. The protective magic in her palm radiated a strong golden glow, attempting to pierce the invisible veil surrounding the intruder. "This attack... this forced system hacking... it's no ordinary Hunter operation. Are you dimensional rift terrorists?"The masked man let out a low chuckle, his raspy voice sounding like old sheets of paper scraping together. "Terrorists? A narrow label from the perspective of a shallow system."He flick
THE ARCHIEVE
The burnt smell of melted circuits and the heavy metallic stench of ozone filled the main corridor of the Aegis Sector 4 Data Storage Facility. The emergency sirens on the ceiling, which should have been blaring loudly, only emitted a silent, dim red pulse—most of the power lines had been forcibly disabled from the inside.In the corner of the corridor, Arka and Elena stood rigid in the shadows of a steel pillar.Just a few hours after being sent home from the examination, Arka had intentionally snuck back into the facility to find out what Aegis was truly hiding about his status. Elena, who had been keeping an eye on Arka from afar through her Truth Seeker intuition, shadowed him all the way to this underground area. Yet, instead of finding sealed archives, they were confronted with a chilling sight: over a dozen elite Aegis soldiers lay unconscious along the marble floor without a single sign of struggle."Arka... don't move forward," Elena whispered hoarsely, clutching the sleeve o
THE SECOND TEST
Iron-shod footsteps echoed coldly down the underground corridor of Aegis Sector 4 Headquarters. The air inside this specialized containment and testing facility was sterile, filled with the sharp scent of liquid ozone and bone-chilling air conditioning. The walls were lined with special steel plates designed to suppress mana fluctuations, capable of dampening even an S-Rank Hunter's rampage.Arka walked amidst the tight escort of four soldiers in tactical armor. His thin-framed glasses reflected the rigid glow of the white neon lights. Before him, a thick hydraulic sliding door opened with a drawn-out hiss of air, revealing an isolation testing laboratory worth trillions of rupiah.Floating in the center of the room was a latest-generation scanning machine—the Aegis Soul Core Analyzer v8. Unlike the university's Resonance Pillar, which only read the surface of soul waves, this machine could dissect down to the molecular structure of mana and map out the genetic code of a person's Tale
THE GIRL WHO CAN SEE THE LIE
The pungent smell of antiseptic and burnt dust hung heavy in the back corridor of the evacuation area. Arka’s footsteps came to a halt as Elena stepped into his path, cutting off access to the campus exit gate. The evening breeze whipped her messy silver hair while her eyes locked onto Arka with sharp intrigue—like an investigator who had just discovered a crack in a wall of evidence."I know what I saw in the hall earlier, Arka," Elena whispered, her voice quiet yet heavy with emphasis. "Your Talent... it’s no ordinary F-Class. It doesn’t even fit within the system’s classification."Arka adjusted his thin-framed glasses, letting the reflection of the evening light hide the glint in his eyes. He let out a soft breath through his nose. "Elena, you’re just panicking. That insect monster simply had a visual weakness toward stationary objects. I just happened to read its movement pattern faster because I frequently read monster taxonomy literature.""Don't lie to me!" Elena cut in, takin
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