High Councilman Aamon.
There was no scream of rage. No grand speech. Aamon simply pointed a single finger at the exploding girl.
- Attack Type: Divine Art.
- Velocity: 299,792,458 m/s(c).
- Warning: Dodge impossible. Arrival precedes perception.
"Unique Ability: Beyond Light."
The air around Aamon’s finger didn't burn; it distorted. He wasn't just firing a laser; he was accelerating photons beyond the friction of reality 1.
He’s going to fire! The Light Devil shrieked in Lack's mind. And it’s faster than time! You can't dodge it! It arrives before it leaves!
"I don't need to dodge," Lack snarled, his shattered legs screaming as he launched himself off the molten stone. "I just need to be in the way" 2.
"Divine Art: Photon Erasure."
Aamon fired.
A beam of pure, concentrated white light—no wider than a pencil—shot from his finger. It didn't travel. It simply existed in a straight line from Aamon to Sarah. It pierced the dust, the mana, and the air instantly, a needle of absolute erasure stitching two points in space together 3.
But in that fraction of a nanosecond before reality caught up to the light... Lack was there.
He threw his broken body into the path of the beam. He didn't have a shield. He didn't have armour. He only had a Flashlight and a desperate idea.
"Mixture Art: Refraction."
HUMMMMM.
Lack vibrated his own skin. He tried to turn his body into a prism. If he couldn't stop the light, maybe he could bend it 4.
- Calculation: Divine Tier (Aamon) > Abyss Tier (Lack).
- Result: Failure. You don't bend a laser with a dirty window.
ZZZT.
There was no sound of impact. Just the smell of ozone and vaporised flesh.
The beam punched a hole straight through Lack’s chest. It missed his heart by millimetres only because the vibration threw Aamon’s aim off by a fraction of a degree.
[Health: 2% -> 0%]
[System Alert: Vital Organ Failure. Status: Deceased.]
Lack fell. The beam passed through him, dissipated by his body's resistance, and harmlessly grazed Sarah’s cheek. He hit the ground. Hard 5.
Time stopped. Lack floated in the white void of death. It was quiet here. No pain. No Aamon. Just the silence of a stopped clock.
Well, the Devil sighed in the silence. You blocked it. You crazy idiot, you actually blocked a lightspeed attack with your face.
His consciousness frayed into absolute physical smoke around a singular, anchored calculation: "Did... she... make it?"
She's safe. But you're toast. Literally.
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"Is this it?"
Yeah. Unless you have a miracle in your pocket.
Close up on: Lack’s pocket.
In the pocket of his disintegrated uniform, the Ancient Map—the thin sheet of memory foil he had stolen from the library—began to burn.
Unscathed by the laser’s heat, the map burned in reaction to the Command Code 6.
Aamon hadn't just fired a laser. He had whispered a command word used by the Architects eons ago to purge glitches.
"Sanitation Protocol."
The Map processed the acoustic signature. The mathematical reality locked in: Aamon lacked Admin status.
[System Override Initiated.]
[Key Item Detected: Architect's Blueprint (Sector 98 Fragment).]
[Error: Unauthorised User (Aamon) attempting Admin Command.]
Instead of healing Lack, the map rejected the reality Aamon tried to enforce.
ZZZT.
A sphere of absolute, colourless Void erupted from Lack’s chest. It wasn't the purple of the Devils or the gold of the Gods. It was the grey of The System 7.
It swallowed the lingering photons of Aamon's laser.
"What?!" Aamon stood up in the VIP box, his glowing eyes widening. "My light... it stopped?"
The grey sphere didn't stop there. It expanded, engulfing Lack's corpse and the overloading Sarah. Then, it grew heavy.
[Safety Protocol: Quarantine.]
The floor of the arena—the bedrock of the University—couldn't handle the sudden shift in mass. The System was forcing them down, away from the Unauthorised User.
CRACK-BOOM.
The entire centre of the Grand Arena collapsed.
It wasn't an explosion. It was a deletion. The ground simply gave way, swallowing Lack, Sarah, and tonnes of debris into the pitch-black darkness beneath the school.
"No!" Torin screamed from the stands, watching his friend vanish into the earth8.
Aamon stared at the dust rising from the pit. His beam was gone. His vessel candidate was gone. And the "Glitch" had just fallen into the one place Aamon had been trying to keep hidden for centuries.
"Seal it," Aamon hissed to the Silent Shadow. "Seal the pit. I don't care if they are dead or alive. Bury them" 9.
? ? ?
[Scene Change: Beneath Sector 98] Time: Unknown Status: Rebooting...
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Lack woke up to the sound of water. Or maybe it was blood. He tried to move. He couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel the hole in his chest.
[System Reboot Complete.]
[Health: 1%.]
[Survival Mode: Active.]
"I'm... alive?" Lack croaked. His acoustic output was the literal, physical grind of gravel.
Barely, the Devil whispered, sounding exhausted. That piece of tin in your pocket saved us. It ate the light, Lack. It literally ate the light.
Lack forced his eyes open. It was dark, but his Night Vision kicked in.
Instead of dirt, he woke up on smooth, cold metal. The "Sinkhole" hadn't led to a cave. It had dropped them into a massive, metallic corridor. The walls were lined with dormant server racks and pipes thick enough to drive a truck through 10.
[Location Discovered: Node 98 - The University Undercroft.]
"The leak," Lack wheezed, remembering the log in Sector 88. "The Karmic Leak in Sector 98... the University was built on top of a Node."
He tried to sit up. Pain exploded in his chest, but the hole was cauterised.
"Sarah?"
His target lock swept the immediate perimeter.
A few metres away, lying in a pile of rubble, was Sarah.
She wasn't glowing anymore. The golden cracks on her skin had faded to faint white scars. His target lock swept the immediate perimeter.
But she was breathing.
The "Safety Protocol" of the map executed a hard suppression on her overload, forcing her into stasis to mathematically negate the explosion.
"She's alive," Lack exhaled, his head falling back against the metal floor.
For now, the Devil noted. But we’re trapped. We fell about a mile. And I sense Aamon sealing the roof. Tonnes of rock are piling up above us.
Lack's focus anchored upward. Far above, the circle of light was gone.
"He's burying the evidence," Lack muttered.
He reached into his pocket. The Ancient Map was hot to the touch. It was glowing with a new marker.
[You are Here.]
[Objective: Locate System Core.]
Lack laughed. It was a wet, painful sound.
"We aren't buried, Devil."
He looked down the endless, dark corridor of the ancient machine-world beneath the school.
"We've just been given a backstage pass."
He dragged himself toward Sarah. He had to stabilise her. And then... he had to find a way to weaponise this basement before Aamon dug them up.
? ? ?
[System Record: Character Progression]
- Health: 1% (Critical).
- Location: The University Undercroft.
- Item Update: The Ancient Map is confirmed as an Architect Key. It can override Divine/Devil commands (like Aamon's "Sanitation Protocol").
- Sarah Status: Comatose (Stable). The Moon God is suppressed by the System.
- New Objective: Survive the Undercroft.