[Proximity Alert: Hostile Creditor Detected.]
Yuto opened the door. Standing in the hallway was Mr. Sato, a sleazy, overweight slumlord wearing a cheap Omni-Corp affiliate suit. Behind him stood two heavily augmented corporate thugs with cybernetic arms.
Sato sneered, looking past Yuto into the apartment. He froze when he saw Kurenai's massive Oni horns and Ayase's glowing wireframe katana, but quickly regained his arrogant composure.
"I don't know what kind of black-market holograms you're running in there, Kurosawa," Sato barked, tapping a digital datapad. "But you owe me three years of back-rent. Plus late fees, plus the cost of the electrical surges you're causing. That's fifty thousand credits. Pay up, or my boys throw you and your little VR girlfriends out the window."
Isabella's twin water-blades instantly materialized in her hands, dripping real water onto the cheap linoleum floor. "I will cut off his legs," the gladiator whispered to Yuto.
"Stand down, Vanguard," Yuto ordered calmly. He looked at the slumlord. "I'm not paying fifty thousand credits."
"Then you're evicted!" Sato yelled, gesturing to his thugs. "Grab him!"
"You don't understand," Yuto said, raising his left hand. The golden VIP Ledger barcode burned brightly in the dim hallway. "You're charging me rent based on a deed owned by Omni-Corp's real estate division. But Omni-Corp backed the Zenith Bank. And I assimilated the Bank."
Sato blinked. "What are you talking about, you lunatic?"
"I'm talking about corporate restructuring," Yuto whispered.
He didn't punch the landlord. He simply pressed his glowing left palm flat against the hallway wall.
[Admin Override: Assimilating Sub-Prime Asset (Sector 4 Slum Complex).] [Transferring Deed to: YUTO_KUROSAWA.]
A golden shockwave of digital code rippled outward from Yuto's hand, washing over the peeling wallpaper, diving into the floorboards, and surging through the building's rusted electrical grid. The entire apartment complex groaned as the physical matter was briefly overwritten by Yuto's astronomical offline net worth.
Sato's datapad violently sparked and completely short-circuited.
"What did you just do?!" Sato gasped, dropping the smoking device.
"I didn't pay the rent," Yuto said, his eyes glowing with the terrifying authority of a CEO. "I bought the building. With my bare hands. You are currently trespassing on Vanguard property, Mr. Sato."
The two cybernetic thugs looked at Yuto's violently red right arm, which was radiating a heat so intense it was warping the air in the hallway. Then they looked at the Oni cracking her knuckles behind him. The thugs wisely turned around and sprinted down the stairs.
"You... you can't do that!" Sato stammered, backing away. "Omni-Corp will liquidate you! They'll send the Board of Directors!"
"Let them," Yuto closed the door in the landlord's face.
He turned back to his party. Rin was staring at him with her jaw open. Shion was cheering from the corner, finally given permission to eat the drywall now that they legally owned it.
Meanwhile, five miles away, in the gleaming, hyper-modern skyscraper of Omni-Corp Headquarters, alarms were blaring on the trading floor.
A massive holographic stock ticker in the center of the boardroom was completely flashing red. The CEO of Omni-Corp, a man composed entirely of synthetic cybernetics, stared at the screen in absolute horror.
"Sir," an analyst trembled, pulling up a satellite map of Sector 4. "We didn't just lose the Babel Server. The anomaly... he's acquiring physical territory. He just hostile-took-over an entire city block without spending a single cent of capital."
"He's not a hacker," the Omni-Corp CEO whispered, his cybernetic eyes whirring in panic. "He's a localized economic collapse. Mobilize the Executive Hit Squad. We have to assassinate him before he forecloses on the entire city."