The holographic message from the past still lingered in the stuffy air of the cave, leaving a shockwave of echoes inside Davin’s head. Yet, before he could digest the meaning of the words spoken by the young boy who shared his face, a tremendous rumbling sound shattered the subterranean silence.

Boom!

The cave ceiling shook violently. Dust and stone fragments rained down from above, pelting the cave floor. At the entrance of the underground tunnel, flashes of blood-red light shot inward at high speed.

Three gray-hooded figures from the Archivist Guild emerged from the darkness of the corridor. Their expressionless white masks reflected the bluish light of the giant crystal in the center of the room. In their hands, threatening strands of data-energy blades vibrated.

"Caught you, anomaly," the mechanical voice of the lead Archivist echoed sharply against the cave walls. "You have contaminated the archive core far too much. Today, your history is permanently erased from the multiverse."

Davin struggled to his feet, wiping the dried blood at the corner of his mouth. His breathing was still ragged from the assault of foreign memories moments ago, but his mind raced instantly. Fighting three trained guards using raw physical strength was suicide. He carried no sword, possessed no destructive magic, and his body remained weak.

Yet, he held something those guards lacked: Echo.

"You put far too much faith in this rotting system," Davin replied coldly, flashing a faint smirk even as cold sweat beaded on his temples.

Without waiting for a cue, the lead Archivist swung his right hand. A sharp red energy blade sliced through the air, targeting Davin’s chest.

Davin dodged swiftly to the side. Scoff! The energy blade slammed into the stone wall behind him, leaving a deep, smoking melt mark. The other two Archivist members moved fast, flanking Davin from the left and right, intent on cutting off his escape route.

Davin did not run. Instead of evading far, he lunged forward toward the guard on the left. Taken aback, the guard instantly raised his energy blade to slash at Davin's head. However, a fraction of a second before the strike connected, Davin slid low and slammed his right palm—marked with the hourglass symbol—directly onto the cave floor near the guard's feet.

"Activate Echo," Davin whispered inwardly.

Instantly, the past history of the stone floor beneath them was sucked into Davin’s consciousness. He read the stone's history: ancient rock formed from volcanic deposits millions of years ago, rendered brittle along specific geological fault lines due to past geothermal pressure.

Using that information, Davin rewound the molecular structure history of the rock beneath the guard's feet to the point of maximum fragility.

Crack... Craaack!

The ground beneath the guard’s feet suddenly collapsed instantly, turning into fine sandy powder. The guard lost his balance, crying out in a muffled gasp as he plunged down into a suddenly yawning earth fracture.

"Damn! What did he do?!" the lead Archivist shouted upon seeing his comrade trapped.

Before the second guard could launch a retaliatory strike, Davin rose and kicked a pile of ancient stone artifacts scattered near the cave wall. Utilizing a lightning-fast touch of his hand, he triggered Echo on those old artifacts.

The history of those artifact shards revealed they were worn-out items already cracked and unstable. The moment Davin rewound their information, the pile of artifacts exploded in sharp fragments, showering the second guard and forcing them back to cover themselves with their thick cloaks.

Yet, safety remained out of reach. A mechanical roar far greater suddenly resounded from deep within the cave floor.

Rrrbaaa-clank!

The earth behind the core crystal split wide open. From within the fissure, a giant monster crawled out. It was an Archive Golem—a colossal creature formed from a pile of thousands of old books, cursed parchment scrolls, and rusted metal plates. The golem's eyes burned with a bright red light, and its body radiated an aura of crushing pressure that made Davin’s chest feel tight.

"Destroy that anomaly!" the lead Archivist commanded the giant golem.

The golem raised its massive arm, constructed from stacks of thick books, and slammed it toward Davin with incredible speed.

Boom!

The impact generated a fierce wind shockwave, shattering the stones around Davin into pieces. Davin leapt backward in a near-late backflip, feeling the wind of the golem's strike graze his hair.

The golem's physical body is too dense. Destroying it with ordinary strength is impossible, Davin thought internally, his eyes observing the stiffly moving structure of the golem's body. But every object has a point of origin and a weakness.

Davin ran in circles, dodging the sweeping hands of the golem that pursued relentlessly. He waited for the precise moment. When the golem raised its right hand once more to deliver a lethal blow, Davin rushed forward, ignoring the risk, and slapped his right palm directly against the golem’s chest—right where the stack of oldest books served as its core operating anchor.

"Let's see your history from the moment of creation," Davin shouted, channeling all his Echo energy into the golem's core.

A massive stream of memory poured into Davin's head. He saw how the golem was assembled from millions of pages of burned archive books bound together by corrupt magic. Davin located the weakest point of those magical stitches: a specific book page on the chest serving as the primary anchor for the entire information structure.

Utilizing his memory manipulation ability, Davin rewound the history of that anchor page to the moment before it was bound—turning it back into fragile paper sheets easily burned and decomposed.

Golden-blue light exploded from Davin's palm!

"Impossible...!" the lead Archivist cried out in panic from behind his mask.

From within its chest, the giant golem abruptly stopped moving. Glowing blue cracks rapidly spread across its entire body. The old books composing its body peeled open page by page, turning into white ash fluttering in the cave air.

Whoosh!

The archive golem collapsed entirely within seconds, tumbling into a pile of dust and old paper on the cave floor. The two remaining Archivist members stared in shock, robbed of their primary weapon.

Yet, that minor victory came at an exorbitant price.

As the golem disintegrated, the remaining memory energy explosion from the golem's core rebounded wildly and struck the main crystal in the center of the room dead center.

Crack... Kringgg!

The giant octagonal crystal shattered into a thousand pieces. The blue light within it burst forth wildly, creating a shockwave of information sweeping across the entire cave.

At the exact same moment, the hourglass symbol on the back of Davin’s right hand pulsed violently, shifting in color from golden-blue to a brilliant burning red. A deafening mechanical alarm sounded almost continuously inside his skull.

"Warning... Severe Warning!" the system voice of The Ledger thundered loudly, far sharper and colder than usual. "Memory capacity exceeds safe limits. System experiencing critical [System Overload]. Integration with host threatened with total collapse."

Davin screamed a stifled cry, dropping to his knees while clutching his head. Incredible pain wracked his entire body, as though his soul were being ripped from his vessel. Fresh blood once more streamed heavily from his nose and ears.

Before him, the main crystal burst into fragments, triggering a chain reaction that brought down the entire underground cave at a terrifying speed.