Chapter 320: Zero Presence
On the city outskirts, beneath an abandoned overpass.
Falcon collapsed, her strength finally failing, and Sora tumbled from her arms
onto the muddy ground.
Falcon was nearing total system failure. The high-intensity evasion cycle
combined with her previous trauma had pushed her consciousness to the brink. But
her primary directive remained anchored.
"Run..."
Crimson bubbled from Falcon's mouth, her voice a flickering vibration. Sora
scrambled out of her embrace, staring at the blood-soaked Watchman. Tears
tracked through the grime on Sora's face.
"Falcon! Please... stay active!"
Sora desperately tried to hoist Falcon to her feet, but her own physical output
was insufficient for the task.
Just then.
Within the deep shadows ahead, two distorted silhouettes slowly manifested. They
lacked fixed biological parameters, appearing as elongated, shifting pools of
darkness that rippled under the dim amber of the streetlights. If one didn't
utilize ocular input, their signatures were so low they wouldn't even trigger a
mental sensory ping.
These were two Tier 3 Anomalies.
Entity Alpha and Entity Beta.
"My, my... a most touching display of social resonance," Entity Alpha hissed.
The sound was like a blade scraping against a dry skull.
"The logic remains sound, Leader," Entity Beta added, his tone brimming with a
predatory triumph. "Umbra and those other simpletons are toiling away against
the Chief, believing their strength is the only path to the win-condition."
"They have zero data on our existence. They do not realize that the highest-tier
prize is about to fall into our custody."
Alpha's frame stretched, circling Falcon and Sora like a constricting snake.
"Naturally. Our primary Authority is Zero Presence."
"As long as we suppress our output, even Umbra cannot localize us. And these
'Night Watchman' pests? They are blind to our proximity."
Alpha halted before Sora. A horizontal seam tore open across its "face,"
revealing rows of serrated, needle-thin teeth.
"Once I consume this child... I shall breach the limiter of Tier 3 and ascend to
the Tier 4 rank."
"At that stage, this entire coordinate will become our private sector!"
Beta leaned in, tentacles twitching with excitement. "Exactly! Even that
legendary 'Blue Monster' won't archive our actions. They'll assume she was
processed by a street-level mob. Kekeke~"
The two horrors let out a cacophony of raspy laughter. To them, this was a
statistical miracle. No one was guarding the girl. No one was watching. They
were the hidden victors of the Grand Liquidation.
Falcon looked up, her gaze hollow with despair. She never imagined that after
evading Umbra's host, they would stumble into the path of two Anomalies with
such high-tier stealth parameters. Their ability was so specific that unless
they actively revealed themselves, she was blind to the danger.
"Release her..." Falcon rasped, her hand twitching toward her dagger, but her
arm refused to complete the kinetic movement.
"A pitiable attempt at resistance," Alpha mocked. "Do not worry. Once we process
the God-Fragment, we will recycle your biomass as well. We do not believe in
wasted resources."
Alpha unhinged its jaw, lunging for Sora's head.
Sora closed her eyes.
Data flashed through her mind. Her parents. Lyra Frost. And the blue slime who
was obsessed with cheesecake.
"Bochi..." she whispered to the dark. "I am sorry. I failed to wait for your
return."
However.
The expected agony never manifested.
Instead, a crushing, absolute Pressure descended from the heavens.
"Logic... error...?"
Alpha's jaw locked mid-air. It realized, with a wave of terminal terror, that
its frame was pinned by a gravitational weight it could not compute. Beside it,
Beta was similarly paralyzed, standing as rigid as a statue.
"L-Leader..." Beta's voice was a shivering frequency of terror. "Look... up..."
Alpha forced its ocular sensors to rotate toward the sky.
In that heartbeat, it witnessed a sight that would haunt its essence for
eternity.
The pitch-black night was being incinerated by thousands of localized flares.
They weren't stars.
They were gargantuan teleportation arrays.
Hundreds of them covered the city's sky, glowing with an intense sapphire light.
Every individual array radiated a death-signature so dense it felt like a
physical hammer striking the soul.
And then.
With a thunderous, atmospheric roar...
The Legions of the Evernight Empire manifested.
Kaito had only requisitioned one hundred idle units from each army. But these
seven hundred units were the elite of the Evernight. Every individual had passed
the Academy's Advanced Combat curriculum. The "Weakest" among them was a newly
spawned recruit at Tier 6.
In the sky, the banners of the Seven Armies snapped in the night wind. It was a
host of Gods descending to clear a nest of pests.
Entity Alpha and Beta were struck with total system-failure. Their "Zero
Presence" Rule was a pathetic joke before an output that could level a Plane.
Under the weight of the absolute hierarchy, their logic-cores were pulverized
into dust.
"What... are... these...?" Alpha's shadow-form began to disintegrate.
"Flee... extract... now..." Beta couldn't even manage the breath for a full
shriek.
But movement was a discarded variable. The collective pressure of seven hundred
high-tier undead had sealed the local space-time fabric into a cage of iron.
Just then.
A monolithic shadow plummeted from the heavens. Its velocity was extreme,
accompanied by the shriek of atmospheric friction. The target: the exact
coordinate occupied by Alpha and Beta.
"NO!!"
The two Tier 3s emitted a final, desperate wail.
BOOM!
The earth buckled under a massive impact. Mud and stone were ejected into the
air in a localized explosion.
A gargantuan figure, encased in thick obsidian plate armor, stood in the center
of the crater. It was a Tier 6 Skeleton King from the Punishment Legion.
Within the Legion, he was merely a "New Recruit." In this world, he was a
literal god of destruction. The Skeleton King stood straight, hoisting a massive
greatsword over his shoulder, the soulfire in his sockets performing a perimeter
sweep.
"Logic failure. The landing coordinate experienced a deviation of two meters,"
the recruit muttered to himself.
"General Pride emphasized 'Absolute Precision' in formation-deployment. If the
error is logged, I shall likely be sentenced to the dragon-stall sanitation
detail again."
Obsessing over his performance review, the skeleton lifted a massive metal boot,
preparing to shift back to his intended coordinate. As he moved, he perceived a
"Sticky Texture" on his sole.
"Eh?"
The Skeleton King scratched his bare skull. "Did I step in a localized
biological hazard?"
He tilted his foot, auditing the tread of his boot.
On the ground beneath him were two black smears, completely stripped of their Od
and life-force. They were the final archived remains of Entity Alpha and Entity
Beta. They hadn't even had the bandwidth to shriek before they were pulverized
into Anomaly-Jam by the casual, uncalculated step of a Tier 6 soldier.
"Whatever. Likely common street-pests," the recruit decided. He stepped two
meters to the left, aligning himself perfectly with the Punishment Legion's
arrival-array, and stood with his head high, a mask of unyielding discipline.
Nearby, Sora and Falcon stared in total, mute shock.
Their brains were struggling to restart. Those were two Tier 3 horrors. Beings
that had pushed the Federation to the edge of extinction.
Liquidated. By a foot.
And the monster that had done it didn't even realize he had struck a target. He
was worried about his commander's "Aesthetic of the Formation."
Falcon swallowed hard, her throat raw. She looked up at the hundreds of
high-tier signatures hovering in the sky and felt a wave of profound impotence.
Humanity is done, she thought. Against this, we aren't even mobs. we are
background noise.
But Sora's reaction was different. She stared at the gargantuan Skeleton King,
then at the glowing arrays in the sky.
A familiar resonance touched her core. She remembered Bochi. The little slime
who always spoke of its Master—the First Slime of the Evernight.
"Could it be...?" Sora's eyes began to glow with hope. "Has Bochi's Master...
actually manifested?"
The Abandoned Factory.
Kaito remained suspended in the air.
He had localized the "Minor Incident" in the distance. A Punishment recruit had
missed his mark and crushed two Tier 3 natives.
Pride's drill-sergeants are losing their edge, Kaito mused internally. I shall
have to address the discipline of the New Units later.
He maintained his mask of divine indifference. He looked down at the five
remaining Tier 3s groveling on the asphalt and the shell-shocked Lyra Frost.
The atmosphere was primed. The narrative was set.
It was time for the Sovereign to provide a closing statement.
☆☆☆
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