The Oracle's words were a death sentence. Reset to Level 1.
I stood in the sterile white emptiness of the Safe Zone, the silence pressing in on me. The two paths before me were both forms of annihilation. On one path, I could let the Ghost in my head fester, a psychic cancer that would slowly, inevitably, consume my will until I was just a passenger in my own body, a prisoner in my own mind. On the other path, I could submit to the System's brutal cure: a full defragmentation, a hard reset. I would kill the Ghost, but I would also kill the person I had become.
Everything I had earned, every skill I had learned through blood and terror, would be wiped clean. My Acoustic Sensor, the skill that had saved my life more times than I could count. My Ghost skill, which let me move like a shadow. My Adrenaline Rush, the burst of speed that had given me the edge in a dozen desperate fights. All of it, gone. All my hard-earned stats, my levels, my combat experience—deleted.
I would be returned to the state I was in when I first woke up in Dustgate. A terrified, clumsy Level 1 player with a basic pistol and no idea how to survive.
But this time, I would not be an unknown. I was the Marked Man. I was a System Anathema. The moment I entered my first match as a weak, skill-less rookie, the System would be waiting for me. Ouroboros would be waiting for me. I would not survive a single encounter. It was suicide. A clean, efficient, system-approved suicide.
The Ghost in my mind, which had been cowering since our last battle, was silent. But I could feel its presence. I could feel its smug satisfaction. It knew this choice was tearing me apart. It knew that either way, it won.
The blue light of teleportation washed over me, pulling me from the Safe Zone. I returned to the Undercroft, materializing in the Oracle's cavern. The weight of my choice was a physical thing, pressing down on my shoulders.
Anya was waiting for me. Her newly repaired cybernetic leg was humming softly, a constant reminder of the battles we had already endured. She saw the look on my face immediately. "What is it?" she asked, her voice sharp with concern. "What did the Oracle say?"
I told her everything. I told her about the Ghost, the parasite from my old world. And I told her about the System's cure. The hard reset.
Her reaction was immediate and fierce. "No," she said, her voice a low, angry growl. "Absolutely not. That's not a choice, Leo. That's an execution."
She took a step closer, her eyes blazing. "Resetting is suicide. You know that. With your System Anathema status, being Level 1 would make you the easiest, most valuable target in the entire game. You wouldn't survive a single match. There has to be another way. There is always another way."
Her fierce loyalty was a shield. For the first time, I realized how much she had come to rely on my strength, on my strange luck and tactical mind. She was not just my partner anymore. I was her anchor in this storm, just as she was mine. To sacrifice myself was to sacrifice her, too.
Desperate, I opened a secure comms channel to Seraph. I needed another perspective. I explained the situation to the Ouroboros leader, my voice hollow. I told her about the ghost, the reset, the impossible choice.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. When Seraph finally spoke, her melodic voice was grim, stripped of its usual calm. "This is a complication I did not foresee," she said. "From a tactical standpoint, having our primary asset reset to Level 1 would be... a disaster for our cause. The Idealists are counting on your strength to help us win this civil war."
"Is there another way?" I asked, my voice pleading. "Your faction... you have records, right? Old logs?"
"Caden was obsessed with data parasites and system intrusions," Seraph replied, a new energy in her voice. "He believed that consciousness could be weaponized. It's possible he encountered something like this before. I will have my researchers scour our archives. Every log, every fragment he ever wrote. If there is an alternative solution, we will find it."
It was a small sliver of hope, but it was enough to keep me from drowning.
While Seraph's people began their search, a familiar, grating sound echoed from the shadows of the cavern. Glitch hobbled into the firelight, his red optic eyes seeming to absorb the light around them. He had been listening, as always.
"The old witch is right about the Defrag," he rasped, his mechanical voice cutting through the quiet. "It's the System's way of solving the problem. It is clean. Brutal. Absolute." He tapped his sparking staff on the ground. "But the System isn't the only power down here in the dark."
Anya and I both turned to look at him.
"There are... things... in the Undercroft," he continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss. "Things that were here long before the first player ever fell. Old things. Things made of pure information." He looked directly at me. "There is an entity that resides in the deepest, most corrupted sectors. A place we Exiles call the 'Static Core.' We call this entity 'The Archivist'."
"What is it?" Anya asked, her hand resting on her pistol.
"Not a player," Glitch said. "Not a system program. Something else. The stories say it's a pre-System AI. A ghost from the old world's network, the one that existed before this game was ever built. A digital dragon, sleeping on a hoard of forgotten knowledge."
My heart began to beat faster. Forbidden knowledge. That was exactly what I needed.
"The Archivist might know a different way to deal with your parasite," Glitch said. "A back-end solution. A dirty fix that doesn't involve the System's clean, simple 'delete' command."
It was another sliver of hope. A dangerous one.
"But be warned," Glitch rasped, his red eyes seeming to glow brighter. "Dealing with The Archivist is a fool's errand. It doesn't trade for parts or ammo, kid. It doesn't want things you can hold." He leaned closer, his mechanical voice dropping to a whisper. "It trades in secrets. And the price for its knowledge is always steeper than you think."
Just as the weight of his warning settled over me, a chime came from my HUD. It was a new message from Seraph. Her voice was strained.
"Leo, my researchers found something," she said, her words coming quickly. "It's an old, heavily encrypted log from Caden. We've only managed to decrypt a fragment. He talks about encountering a 'cognitive parasite' during one of his early explorations of the system's backend."
My breath caught in my throat.
"He found a way to fight it," Seraph continued. "The fragment is corrupted, but we were able to pull one clear phrase. He says the method was... 'unorthodox.' And that to do it, he was forced to seek help from an entity he only refers to as 'The Archivist'."
The two separate paths, Seraph's research and Glitch's rumor, had led to the exact same place. The same dangerous, unknown entity.
My choice was no longer between resetting or being possessed. A third path had opened up. A dark, uncertain path into the heart of the Undercroft to bargain with a digital devil.
I had a new, desperate goal. Find The Archivist.
But what secrets would I have to give up to buy my own soul back?