The first thing I registered was the dust. It tasted of pulverized stone and something metallic, like old blood. My consciousness flickered on like a faulty lightbulb—a sudden, jarring burst of awareness in a sea of nothing. I was lying on my back, staring up at a fractured sky peeking through a gaping hole in a ceiling that seemed miles away.
Observation 1: Significant structural damage to the immediate environment. Probability of catastrophic event: 98.7%.
The thought wasn't mine, yet it was. It arrived fully formed, a crisp data point in the otherwise silent abyss of my mind. I tried to access more information—a name, a face, a reason for being here—but the archive was empty. Total system failure.
Observation 2: Complete memory loss. Cause: Unknown. Status: Critical.
A groan escaped my lips as I pushed myself up. My body felt… wrong. Fragile. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and a cloying sweetness that made my stomach churn. The room—or what was left of it—was a graveyard of obsidian-like rock and twisted metal. In the center of the devastation, a colossal creature lay motionless, its insectoid body cleaved cleanly in two. Its carapace, which should have been tougher than diamond, was split down the middle.
"Holy... He actually did it," a voice whispered from the edge of the rubble. "An SS-Ranker... here?"
I turned my head. Three figures in tactical gear were picking their way through the debris, their weapons lowered but their stances wary. Their gazes were fixed not on the dead monster, but on me.
"Sir? Are you alright?" one of them called out, a woman with a nervous tremor in her voice. "We detected a massive energy spike and then… nothing. We thought…"
Analysis: They are addressing me. Their posture indicates a mixture of awe and fear. Conclusion: They believe I am responsible for neutralizing the hostile entity.
I looked from the bisected monster back to my own hands. They were pale, uncalloused, and utterly devoid of any power I could feel. There was no thrum of energy, no residual heat, just the slight tremor of a body running on empty. I couldn't have swatted a fly, let alone killed… that.
"The reports said a 'Memory Reaper' went berserk on this floor," another rescuer murmured, his eyes wide as he surveyed the damage. "To not only survive its psychic attack but to obliterate it… that's unheard of."
Memory Reaper? The name meant nothing. Psychic attack? A blank. Every term they used was a foreign variable in an equation I couldn't begin to solve. I was a ghost in my own skull.
The lead rescuer, a man with a grim, scarred face, finally stood before me. He offered a hand, not in aid, but in deference. "We need to get you out of here, sir. The Tower is unstable."
I let him help me to my feet, my legs unsteady. The world swam for a moment, a dizzying kaleidoscope of sensory input my brain was processing with alarming, detached efficiency. The dust particle count in the air, the subtle shifts in their body language, the precise trajectory of a falling piece of debris—I saw it all, but understood none of it. They looked at me as if I was a savior, a god-tier warrior. But as my mind churned through probabilities and logical deductions, one terrifying conclusion rose to the surface.
Hypothesis: I possess no discernible combat abilities. I am a biological entity of unknown origin. Their assessment is catastrophically incorrect.
The lead rescuer cleared his throat. "We… we didn't get your registration. Who are you?"
The question hung in the air, heavier than the tons of rubble surrounding us. Who was I? The empty archive in my head offered no answer. There was only a primal, biological certainty, a single thread of identity in the void.
"I think I'm… human?"
The word felt strange on my tongue, an ill-fitting garment. As their expressions shifted from awe to confusion, a second, more urgent query surfaced, eclipsing everything else.
"Wait—what the hell is a human?"