Chapter 405: Visual Quality: High-Tier
Secretary Greed cast a sideways glance at Wrath.
"State the reasoning for your anxiety."
"Reasoning?! She is initializing a total excise-protocol on our existence! Are
your logic circuits malfunctioning?!"
Greed calmly smoothed his tattered collar, tucking a stray lock of hair behind
his ear.
"Anxiety is a non-productive variable. Her Authority is a 'Complete Version';
our manual interception hit a failure-state. The only viable protocol remaining
is to stall for duration."
"Stall for what?!"
Greed offered zero verbal feedback. His crimson vertical pupils swept over the
assembled units, eventually locking onto Pride.
Pride met his gaze for a single heartbeat. Then, the silver-boned King hoisted
his fractured greatsword.
"Resume the offensive."
"Until structural failure?" Wrath queried.
"Until liquidation," Pride confirmed.
Wrath bared his teeth, the dark red flames erupting from his ribs once more.
"Logged and loaded."
The five Sin-Generals initiated a synchronized charge.
Sophia's temporal Od had already breached the soul-strata of Pride and Avarice.
Their Sovereign Imprints—the "Root Access" Kaito had established—were 70%
eroded. In sixty seconds, perhaps one hundred and twenty at most, the connection
would be severed permanently.
Pride's greatsword executed a horizontal sweep; Sophia manifested a temporal
barrier to parry the kinetic force. Utilizing the recoil, she retreated into the
void, her fingers tracing a line through the air to inject more temporal data
into Pride's soul.
Pride's soul-fire dimmed visibly. His movement-speed hit a "Sub-Optimal"
threshold—not due to the environment, but because his very soul was undergoing a
"Bleaching Event."
Wrath lunged forward to fill the gap, his fist impacting Sophia's barrier with
enough force to shatter the light. But Sophia had already blinked three meters
away. Her fingers extended again, this time targeting Wrath. The Authority of
Time touched his imprint and began the erosion protocol.
Lust's composite elemental magic bombarded the sector from long-range. Sophia
blurred through the distortions, her movements never ceasing, her hands
maintaining the excise-protocol on three targets simultaneously.
Greed had vanished again.
Sophia ignored the Blood-kin. His "Word Spirit" was no longer a high-tier
threat; the initial "Kneel" command had only worked due to a lack of defensive
data. Now, she had architected a "Temporal Filter" around her soul-signature;
any mental-tier suggestion would be automatically decelerated and neutralized.
Sixty seconds remaining.
Pride's Sovereign Imprint reached the final layer of integrity. It resisted with
a stubborn, high-density resilience, as if it were awaiting a specific
"Trigger-Event."
Sophia increased the output. The imprint manifested structural fractures.
Just as the fractures were about to propagate through the entire seal—
The sky changed.
Not the sky within the Time-Space Domain. But the sky of the external world—the
total atmosphere of the Lostarn Realm.
Sophia's domain had been compromised during the skirmish; the barriers were
saturated with fissures, making the outside world visible.
She saw it.
In the grey-purple firmament of the Evernight Empire, a massive rift tore open.
Within that rift was an Eye.
A colossal, absolute entity. It occupied half the horizon. It was composed of
pure, concentrated necrotic energy. The iris was obsidian; the pupil was a pale,
deathly white, swirling with the "Data-Shards" of ten million screaming souls.
[AUTHORITY: DEATH'S END]
The gaze of the Abyssal Eye descended. It pierced through the domain's barriers,
bypassed the temporal distortions, and locked onto Sophia with terminal
precision.
Sophia's hands froze.
She looked up at the eye. Death's End. The Finality of All Paths.
She recognized this logic. Eons ago, the Five Pillars possessed a similar
Authority. But the Old Pillar of Death was fragmented, sub-optimal. This…
Sophia decoded the intent behind that gaze. It was an Audit. It was a Fact.
—You cannot liquidate them. —Because I am auditing the world.
Sophia withdrew the temporal energy from Pride's soul. Under the gaze of Death's
End, the Sovereign Imprints underwent an instantaneous "Self-Repair" protocol.
The fractures healed; the luminosity returned to its peak. The Sins were fully
restored.
Sophia lowered her hand. Her expression was flat, clinical.
"Statistical defeat. I failed to calculate the 'Observer' variable."
She turned to face the five Generals.
Pride was kneeling, his greatsword acting as a brace; his golden soul-fire had
rolled back to a dim blue. Greed emerged from the shadows, his blood-armor in
shards, dark biological fluid weeping from multiple lacerations. Wrath sat on
the floor, his left arm severed once again, new bone-buds struggling to
initialize. Avarice was hunched at an unnatural angle, his spine barely
maintaining structural integrity. Lust's Lich form was flickering, the magical
arrays on her bones dimming like dying embers.
Five units. All auditing her with predatory focus.
Sophia's mouth twitched. "In that case… the Lostarn Realm is in your care.
Maintain the logistics."
No Sin provided verbal feedback.
Sophia's frame began to lose opacity. It wasn't a "Liquidated" state; it was
Active Dissolution. Golden sand drifted from her skin, pixelating her body as
she released her Od back into the environment. The grains didn't fall to the
floor; they sank toward the Planar Core.
Temporal Authority transformed into microscopic light-points, piercing through
the castle foundations and diving into the deepest stratum of the world.
Sophia's form grew fainter. Finally, only her eyes remained visible on the
spectrum. She cast one last look at the Abyssal Eye closing in the sky.
Then, she was gone.
The Time-Space Domain collapsed.
The grey void shattered into millions of light-shards. The gallery of Evernight
Castle manifested again. Walls, floorboards, Mana-lamps—everything returned to
its original coordinates.
However, the walls of the third and fourth floors of the East Wing were missing.
A cold wind roared through the massive structural breach.
Pride remained on one knee in the center of the hallway, leaning on his sword.
He slowly lifted his skull, looking toward Greed and Wrath.
"Gah… localization of the Sovereign?"
Greed's vertical pupils narrowed. "The intruder stated he was sealed."
"Coordinates?"
Greed didn't speak. He turned toward Avarice.
Avarice, gripping his fractured spine, forced a hand upward to tear a spatial
rift. He let out a rattling cough as two ribs snapped. "Failure. Structural
damage to my core is too high; spatial perception is manifesting Logic Errors."
Lust approached, using her bony Lich-hand to stabilize Avarice. "Allow me to
initialize the search."
Her soul-fire pulsed, releasing a Wide-Area Detection spell. The radius
saturated the entire castle.
"Zero matches within the Manor perimeter."
"Expand the audit," Pride commanded, forcing himself to stand.
Lust increased the range. Evernight City… the surrounding plains… the edge of
the Elven Forest…
"Localized."
Lust's soul-fire jumped. "Faint spatial fluctuation. Coordinates… directly
beneath the foundation. Emergency Shelter – Level B3."
Pride snatched his sword and turned to move.
"Standby!" Greed called out. "In your current state, navigating three levels is
a terminal risk. Furthermore, we haven't audited the sector for traps left by
that woman. Avarice, can you stabilize a rift to B3?"
Avarice attempted a second initialization. This time, the rift stabilized.
On the other side of the tear was a modest room. The interior of the Emergency
Shelter—grey masonry walls, rudimentary furniture, and stacks of ration crates
in the corner.
In the center of the room sat a chair.
Sitting in the chair was a Skeleton.
Black robes. Silver-grey bone-structure. Steady blue soul-fire burning within
the sockets.
The five Generals froze in synchronization.
The Skeleton was staring at a rectangular object mounted on the wall, appearing
to be in a state of "Deep Focus."
It was a Television.
An asset salvaged from the Eldritch Realm. The Empire had recovered several of
these "Anomaly Artifacts" during the annexation. Tech-geeks had studied them,
concluding they required a fuel called "Electricity" and a specific signal-input
to manifest imagery. In the Lostarn Realm, neither variable existed.
The TVs had been archived as "Inter-planar Junk."
Yet, this unit was active. The screen was manifesting imagery.
Kaito sat cross-legged, one bony hand supporting his chin, staring at the screen
with absolute concentration. Imagery and audio were manifesting—though the
signal was muffled by the rift, strange music and dialogue drifted through.
The Sins exchanged a look of pure confusion. Greed was the first to reboot.
"My Sovereign… status report? Are you nominal?"
Pride stared at the glowing screen. "That object… should not possess 'Content'."
Avarice, struggling to hold the rift open, muttered, "Why does the Master look
so… satisfied?"
On the other side of the rift, Kaito's soul-fire pulsed. He seemed to finally
detect their presence. He slowly turned his skull toward them.
His blue gaze met the ten hollow sockets peering through the tear. The
atmosphere hit an "Awkward Peak."
Kaito's mandible moved with a dry click.
"Ah. You've manifested. Perfect timing."
He pointed a bony finger at the screen.
"Observe this broadcast. The Visual Quality is remarkably high-tier."