The B-rank residue wasn't supposed to be there.
Liam found it wedged between two shelves in the east corridor's dead end — skill remnants from a kill that hadn't been cleaned up, still active, the glow almost gone. Someone had taken down a B-rank Ink Beast here within the last few minutes and left without checking for residue. Careless. Or in a hurry.
He pressed his hand to it before thinking about it.
[Death Transcript — Copy Successful]
Skill: Rift Wind Rush (B-rank, beast variant)
Effect: Instant movement burst, 800% speed, 0.3 seconds
Copied Timer: 23:59:58
Permanent Inscription Condition: Use this skill to kill a target ranked higher than F
Warning: Current holder rank F. All targets above F qualify.
Rift Wind.
He stood there longer than he needed to.
His sister's class had been Galerift Archer. A-rank. The skills she'd carried into The Archive's deeper floors had all shared that root name — Rift Wind series, built around velocity and cutting force. The beast variant in his hand was a bastardized copy, something The Archive's system had derived from a real human technique.
The Archive copied people.
This was publicly known. Skills from dead or missing Awakened sometimes showed up in beast variants in the floors matching those people's last registered location. Everyone knew this. No one talked about it.
His sister had last registered on Floor Seven.
He closed the panel and walked to the exit.
A hand caught his shoulder before he cleared the door.
He didn't turn around. He looked at the hand — E-rank inscription on the back, gold-traced, a tendon-form mark that meant Shockfist. E-rank Shockfist could push fifteen times baseline impact force. Against an F-rank, that was a simple calculation.
"Let go," Liam said.
"You were in there forty minutes." The grip didn't loosen. "F-rank Scribe. Standard registration check takes five. What were you doing for the other thirty-five?"
He turned around.
The man's name was Chen Wenhao. Squad leader, E-rank combat team, second-year. Liam had seen his name on the public board two weeks ago and memorized it without intent — the same way he memorized floor layouts and beast distribution maps. Data that lived in the background until it became relevant.
It was relevant now.
"Registration varies by individual," Liam said.
"F-rank Civil Class standard is three to five minutes. It's in the Archive manual." Chen released his shoulder and stepped back, but not out of the way. Two more people behind him had moved to block the exit without being told. "Your Pages have a read record. The Archive logged an active copy event."
The timer ran: 23:31:14.
"What do you want?" Liam asked.
Chen looked at him for a moment — not hostile, more the expression of someone who'd noticed an anomaly and was deciding how to categorize it. "I want to know what a Scribe's hidden talent does. It's not in any public record. Not in the Academy database."
"Then it stays that way."
"I have a different proposal." Chen's tone stayed level. "Come with my team today. One run, one floor. You show me the talent in action. I keep what I see to myself, and I give you twenty percent of our run's take."
"No."
"The alternative is I file an irregularity report with Archive Management tomorrow morning. Unauthorized copy event, F-rank Civil Class, unexplained duration." Chen shrugged, the gesture too practiced to be casual. "Review takes seven to ten days. While it's open, your Pages get flagged. No entry. No copies. No inscriptions."
Seven to ten days.
The Rift Wind Rush timer would hit zero in twenty-three hours. Every skill he managed to copy in the next ten days would expire while his account sat frozen. He'd be back to nothing.
He looked at Chen. Then at the two blocking the exit.
"I'll carry the log," he said. "I don't fight."
"That's all I'm asking." Chen stepped aside. "We go in now."
The first floor corridor was longer than it looked from the entrance. Liam walked three steps behind Chen, Log Book in hand, writing nothing.
Chen's team moved efficiently — the kind of efficiency that came from running the same floor enough times that the work had become muscle memory. They cleared E-rank beasts in pairs, each one a clean exchange: one person pulled attention, the other hit the core. Thirty seconds per target. Fast enough to look routine.
Liam watched the angles.
Current timer: 23:18:45
Active skill: Rift Wind Rush (B-rank) — Ink Fade in 23h 18m
Inscription condition: kill any target ranked above F
Every target in this corridor was E-rank or above.
The third beast in the cluster was positioned wrong — its core facing the wall, body turned to track the movement of Chen's second man. It would need to rotate before it could face the main threat. That rotation would take just over half a second.
Rift Wind Rush ran 0.3 seconds.
He waited until Chen's man committed to his approach on the second beast. The third one started its rotation.
Liam's foot hit the floor.
The corridor compressed into a streak of light. He hit the beast shoulder-first, Log Book corner driving into the core joint, and felt the resistance collapse. The impact threw him two steps past it — he caught himself against the wall and turned back.
The beast dissolved.
[Inscription Successful]
Rift Wind Rush (B-rank) → Permanent Inscription (Slot 1)
Remaining Slots: 2 / 3
He pushed his hand into his jacket pocket before Chen turned around.
[Death Transcript — Secondary Function]
[LOCKED → UNLOCKED]
Condition met: 1 permanently inscribed skill
Effect: Reconstruct complete skill architecture from residue trace
Cost: Surrender of one autobiographical memory (irreversible)
WARNING: This action cannot be undone.
He read the second panel once. Then the pocket.
It didn't help. Chen had already turned.
The silence ran for three seconds.
"What did you just do?" Chen's voice was flat.
"The third one came at me." Liam opened the Log Book. "I moved."
"That was not standard movement speed."
"E-rank beasts move at three to four times human baseline. If you thought that looked fast, you may be calibrating against a different baseline."
Chen watched him. The second man — Chen Fang — had stopped moving and was looking between them without speaking.
After a long moment, Chen turned away. "Keep walking."
Liam spent two more hours in the corridor doing exactly what he'd said he would: logging. He recorded data accurately and spoke only when asked. He moved at normal speed. He let his reactions run about half a second slower than they were.
By the time they reached the exit again, Chen had stopped watching him.
The timer: 21:07:28.
Slot 1 was filled. Permanent. The Rift Wind Rush inscription wasn't going anywhere, no matter what the Archives flagged or what Chen decided to do with his report.
At the exit, Chen stopped him.
"Tomorrow. Same time."
"File your report if you want to," Liam said. "I won't be stopping you."
"I'm not filing a report." Chen's tone was still level. "Floor Two has a two-person minimum. You need a combat partner to get in. Civil Class solo access is blocked at E-rank and above." He paused. "I'm offering it again. You show me the talent. I put you in a position where you can actually use it."
Liam didn't answer.
He walked through the door.
The bench outside was metal, cold enough to feel through his jacket. He sat and opened the full panel.
Liam Null
Rank: Scribe (F)
Talent: Death Transcript
Inscription Slots: 1 / 3
Permanently Inscribed:
Rift Wind Rush (B-rank variant)
— 800% speed burst, 0.3 sec, CD 120s
— Stored at F-rank (degraded)
Active Copies: none
His sister's floor was Seven. The first floor's beast variants were already carrying her skill's name.
He closed the panel.
Then the Archive system pushed a notification he hadn't requested.
[Archive Management — Automated Alert]
Non-standard copy event detected.
Holder: Liam Null (F-rank, Scribe)
Alert Classification: B
Recommended Action: Management review and Pages suspension.
This alert has been transmitted to the duty queue.
He read it once. Closed it.
The alert was already sent. Closing it changed nothing — Management would see it when the office opened tomorrow morning. He had tonight.
He stood up and walked toward the dormitory block.
Memory Burn had unlocked the moment Slot 1 filled. He'd read the full description three times while sitting on the bench: reconstruct complete skill architecture from residue trace. If he found residue from a specific person — from someone who'd been in the Archive and left traces behind — he could see everything they'd ever built.
Every skill his sister had carried into the Seventh Floor.
He'd closed the panel before he started calculating which memory he could afford to lose.
Right now he had sixteen hours.