"Vanguard!" Yuto barked, the Stigma on his right hand flaring with crimson heat. "Hold the line! Do not engage his weapons—they are highly leveraged!"
"I don't care how leveraged they are!" Isabella roared. She couldn't stand the sight of Kazuma. Everything about him—the waste, the arrogance, the unearned, leased power—violated every instinct she had as a gladiator.
Isabella charged, her twin water-blades slicing through the digital ash.
"Too slow, wage-cuck!" Kazuma sneered. He didn't even bother swinging a sword. He simply selected three Mythic-tier greatswords from the air behind him and detonated them.
[Skill Activated: Default Bomber!]
He intentionally destroyed three priceless, loaned weapons just to create a massive explosion of raw, untethered mana. The shockwave slammed into Isabella, throwing her backward across the glass floor. Ayase caught her, sliding back ten feet from the kinetic force.
"He's destroying premium assets just to cast spells!" Shion cried out, weeping at the financial tragedy. "Master, his gear is too high-level! He has the stats of a god!"
"Borrowed stats," Yuto grunted, his boots cracking the floor as he stepped forward, the 50% Vault pressure radiating a terrifying, suffocating gravity.
"Borrowed or not, it's going to crush you!" Kazuma screamed, his manic facade breaking. He summoned a massive, Tier-S spear made of pure, condensed lightning—a weapon leased from the Floor 40 Thunder Pantheon. He hurled it directly at Yuto's chest. "Die, you cheapskate!"
The lightning spear crossed the room in a nanosecond.
Yuto didn't dodge. He raised his left hand—the hand holding the assimilated VIP Vault Ledger.
"You forgot one thing about borrowing, Kazuma," Yuto said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, absolute monotone.
The lightning spear struck Yuto's palm... and instantly stopped. The blinding electricity fizzled out, the spear turning a dull, rusted gray.
Kazuma froze, hovering in the air. "What... what did you do?!"
"I'm the Bank now," Yuto whispered, the golden barcode on his palm glowing brightly. He looked at the Ledger's UI interface. "And your interest rate is adjustable."
[Admin Override: Host YUTO_KUROSAWA is adjusting the Interest Rate on Escrow Account VANE_K. New Rate: 10,000% APR, Compounding Minutely.]
Kazuma's neon-pink eyes widened in absolute, primal terror.
The Babel System, even in its crashing state, was still bound by the fundamental laws of its own accounting software. The moment Yuto adjusted the interest rate, the debt caught up to the Subprime Prince.
"No! Wait!" Kazuma shrieked, looking down at his glowing starlight boots. They were flickering. The Phoenix cloak turned to ash. The diamond halos shattered into cheap glass.
"Margin call," Yuto declared.
Yuto didn't even throw a punch. He just opened his Vault and pulled.
The sheer, terrifying vacuum of Yuto's unspent mass collided with the sudden, astronomical weight of Kazuma's defaulted debt. Kazuma's leased stats were violently ripped from his body. His Level 999 buffs instantly plummeted to Level 1. His health bar, previously protected by layers of premium corporate shielding, was laid entirely bare.
Kazuma dropped out of the air, hitting the glass floor with a pathetic, deeply human thud.
He looked up at Yuto, stripped of everything, just a regular teenager in a plain linen shirt.
"You... you foreclosed on my build," Kazuma whispered, tears of shock welling in his eyes.
"You hated the Bank, so you became its best customer," Yuto said coldly, walking past the shivering boy toward the massive, glowing Exit Terminal at the back of the room. "I hated the Bank. So I bought it. We are not the same."
Yuto looked at his party. "Leave him. Without his leased stats, the server wipe will delete his account naturally. Vanguard, to the terminal. We're clocking out."
As the void began to consume the Penthouse, Yuto placed his bloody right hand on the Exit Terminal, the weight of the Vault ready to tear open a hole into the real world.