The system rebooted in a way reminiscent of a wounded animal.
Not right away.
First of all, the system checked the surroundings—small pings, background recalibrations, silent scans gently touching my silhouette like timid fingers. I could sense all of them.
Wrath was not concealed.
It stood strong.
"Kuro…" Rei whispered as we trudged on through the broken tunnels. "The system is… keeping a different eye on you."
"I am aware," was my answer.
My shadow was no longer like a submissive reflection of me lying flat on the ground. It was a taunting demon, sliding in front of me, mapping the corners before I could see them, and staying where danger might spread.
It wasn't more powerful.
It was confident.
This frightened me more than direct brute force ever did.
Just as we were about to cross the Pre-Trial zone, a mild shaking struck the ruins, and the first tremor caught us by surprise. A faint shaking passed through the city, breaking towers and making dust clouds soar into the air like signaling flares in case of emergencies.
The system rang, and this time it was so loud that it could be heard as an echo.
[GLOBAL NOTICE]
ANOMALOUS ENTITY DETECTED
THREAT LEVEL: UNDEFINED
ALL GANGS ADVISED TO RESTRICT EXPANSION AND MAINTAIN INTERNAL ORDER
Undefined.
That term was the quickest one to spread in the whole area.
Because creatures were classified by ranks. So were the gangs. Even calamities were given types.
Something undefined meant that the rules were yet to be set.
And when rules were slow to catch up with reality, the price was very high—it was blood.
Rei abruptly halted. "This notice… it shows a lack of discretion."
"No," I replied. "It's a trap."
For gangs aspiring to rise.
For Collectors seeking power through the acquisition of knowledge.
For madmen who thought they would be revered for slaying the unknown.
Wrath was stirred.
Not with eagerness.
With expectation.
The next thing they did was they located us, and that was about an hour after the first stirrings.
Not creatures.
Human beings.
They were six in number and moved in such a way that their communication was almost unspoken—each one a gang member whose mark was literally burned onto his or her armor, with guns whose noise meant the powering up from the system was already done. Among the others, the veterans were always the ones who survived by choosing to prey on the weak.
The leader of the group advanced, his visor coming up. When he noticed me, he already had a smile on his face.
"Lucky day," he remarked. "Do you feel it, guys? The system indicates undefined. That is to say, bonus rewards."
Rei, who was standing next to me, changed her position, the light coming from her being flaring up without any planning. "Kuro—"
"I know," I replied.
The leader looked at Rei for a moment and then turned away, as if it was nothing. "Even the scout girl. Cool."
He signaled the way he wanted it.
But I was quicker with my signal.
The shadow moved.
Not in a hurry.
In the end.
It did not attack; rather, it turned in on itself, pulling light, sound, and force into one spot in front of me. The atmosphere went through a lot—the screaming as they inversed the pressure.
One man was no longer there.
Not dead.
No longer there.
The others were like stone.
The lag in their system interfaces was noticeable—they had error messages tumbling down the screen, trying to figure out what had just occurred.
Wrath didn't roar.
It just passed sentence.
I went on towards the front.
Every step was like the whole universe was heavyweight, as if it was counteracting my being. My shadow was getting unglued from the ground, making rough types of silhouettes behind me—ghosts of brutality that were not enacted yet.
"You should leave," I said in a soothing voice.
The leader attempted to chuckle. It was a weird sounding one. "You—"
I stretched my hand out.
Not with my hand.
But with the will.
Wrath came, and for a moment, the man was shown every single person he had ever crushed under his power—faces, cries, and the burden of the consequences.
He went down on his knees.
The others scattered.
I allowed that.
Wrath did not pursue the leftovers.
Rei was looking at me, her breath coming hard. "You made him disappear."
"Not so," I said. "I made him not in the place of importance."
She was not opposing.
The silence was more painful than fear would have been.
And far away, BLACK LOTUS felt it.
When the message came that there were new warnings, the probabilities were changing, the system was subtly rewriting the engagement parameters around one name that it refused to show—Akino was standing in the middle of their territory.
Dragon was able to read between the lines.
Chiemi literally felt an unexplainable pain in her heart.
An invisible line had been crossed.
The very equilibrium of the city—frail, reluctantly accepted—was going away.
And somewhere out of their sight, Kuro Ayanagi had already left the scene, no longer a participant to the same game they were.
That night, I was the only one in the room besides Rei, who was sleeping very lightly with one eye open, and I just let the system take over.
It attempted to talk.
Not in the usual way, though.
Not by using words but rather through opportunities.
A secret interface blinked on and off, and I was the only one who could see it.
[OPTIONAL STABILIZATION PATH AVAILABLE]
RECOMMENDED: LIMIT WRATH EXPRESSION
INCENTIVE: CONTROLLED GROWTH / SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE
I looked at it with my wide-open eyes.
Then I turned it down.
Acceptance was not what wrath was after.
It was yearning for guidance.
The system would adapt.
So would everyone else.
For I am not going to be a hero.
Neither would I be a villain.
But still, I would be something worse for a world governed by control—
A trace that the optimization would not always work.
And the moment the system finally called me by name—
It would not know how to teach people to outlast me.