The silver pages of the First Chairman's Diary didn't glow. They didn't project a sleek, holographic interface or emit the comforting, synthesized chime of a System notification.
They were just paper, covered in frantic, bleeding black ink. To the S-Rank Hunters in the room, it was a dead object. But to Han Jinsu, operating at Processing [75], the analog text screamed with the deafening volume of an unchained truth.
"Listen closely, 'Heroes'," Jinsu's voice echoed through the massive, obsidian library, shedding the last remnants of his stuttering porter disguise. It was a sound like grinding glaciers—cold, absolute, and utterly devoid of pity. "I'm going to read you your death warrants."
Choi Sang-min clutched his severed, bleeding shoulder, his golden armor trembling as he forced himself to stand. "Shut your mouth, Kang! I don't know what kind of illusion skill you're using, but I am a Vanguard of Heavens-Gate! I am three days away from my National-Level Ascension!"
"Ascension," Jinsu repeated, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. He looked down at the diary, his eyes burning with twin, violet suns. "Let's see what the First Chairman had to say about Ascension."
Jinsu ran a finger over the jagged handwriting.
"Log Entry: December 4th, Year Zero," Jinsu read aloud, his voice slicing through the heavy, pressurized air of the Archive. "'The public has accepted the Optimization. We told them the Gates were invasions. We told them the System was Earth's defense mechanism. They bought it. They are willingly walking into the feeding troughs.'"
Mage Park Do-hyun stopped trying to cast his healing spell. He froze, his pale face turning toward Jinsu. "Feeding troughs? What does that mean? The Gates are where we gather mana cores to survive!"
Jinsu turned the page. The heavy parchment scraped against the silence.
"'We are not cultivating heroes," Jinsu continued. "'We are cultivating crops. The human soul is a sponge. The System pumps them full of optimized, high-density mana, swelling their capacities until they are ripe. Once an S-Rank reaches four million mana capacity, their soul becomes dense enough for the Founders to consume. They call it Ascension. In truth... it is the Harvest.'"
Jinsu snapped the heavy silver book shut. The sound echoed like a gunshot.
"Lies!" Sang-min roared, his eyes wide, the veins in his neck bulging as a desperate, terrified madness began to fracture his composure. "That is corrupted data! A localized glitch! The Association protects humanity! I have bled for this city! My capacity is four point two million! I am a god among men!"
"You're not a god, Sang-min," Jinsu said, stepping down from the pedestal. "You're a Wagyu steak bragging about its marbling."
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
Sang-min ignited. The remaining million mana in his core violently erupted, creating a localized storm of heroic, golden energy that illuminated the dark library. He gripped his massive broadsword with his good arm, the blade humming with lethal, S-Rank power.
"Boss, no! Your stability is crashing!" Park screamed, watching the Guild Master's [100% Compliance] bar begin to frantically violently flicker and drop.
But Sang-min was too far gone. His entire identity—his wealth, his fame, the people who had died so he could "level up"—was built on the System. If the System was a slaughterhouse, his life meant nothing. He lunged, moving with the terrifying speed of an apex predator.
Jinsu didn't draw his sword. He didn't even drop into a combat stance.
He just looked at Sang-min.
"Processing: Force Projection," Jinsu commanded.
For the first time, Jinsu pushed his visual data outward, hijacking the local optical feed of the Hunters in the room. He forced them to see the world without the System's pretty graphical filters. He forced them to see the raw, developer-level truth.
The air around Sang-min shimmered. The beautiful, golden status window that hovered above the S-Rank's head—the one that proudly displayed his titles and achievements—violently tore itself apart. The gold pixels bled into a sickening, rusted red. The text forcibly rewrote itself.
Park Do-hyun and Yoon-ah screamed, falling backward as they looked at their Guild Master.
[SYSTEM WINDOW: THE MEAT]
TARGET: Choi Sang-min
RANK: S-Class (Livestock)
MANA CAPACITY: 4,200,000 / 4,200,000
HIDDEN STATUS: [HARVEST READINESS: 104% - OVERDUE]
QUALITY: Excellent.
NOTE: Subject is primed for Deletion and Consumption by Founder-Class Entity [Baal]. Please proceed to the nearest Ascension Altar.
Sang-min stopped mid-swing. The broadsword hovered inches from Jinsu's neck.
The S-Rank hero looked up at his own status window, reflected in the polished obsidian shelves. He saw the words Livestock. He saw Harvest.
His golden aura didn't just fade; it shattered like cheap glass. His broadsword clattered to the marble floor, the heavy thud ringing in the silence.
"Harvest..." Sang-min whispered, his eyes wide and vacant. He dropped to his knees, clutching his chest where his mana core pulsed. It no longer felt like a heart full of power. It felt like a ticking bomb. "My promotion... the Chairman told me to come to headquarters tomorrow for my Ascension... they're... they're going to eat me?"
"You did exactly what they programmed you to do," Jinsu said, looking down at the broken man. "You grinded the dungeons. You absorbed the feed. You got fat."
"Why..." Sang-min sobbed, tearing at his own golden armor, scratching frantically at his chest as if trying to rip the mana out of his own body. "I did everything right! I followed the quests! I was compliant! WHY ME?!"
Jinsu knelt, his face inches from the weeping S-Rank. The violet static in Jinsu's eyes reflected in Sang-min's terrified tears.
"Because that's how a farm works, Sang-min," Jinsu whispered softly. "The farmer doesn't hate the pig. He just gets hungry."
Yoon-ah was violently throwing up in the corner of the room. Porter Bae was staring at his own hands, weeping silently as he realized the entire human race was locked in a cage they couldn't even see.
Park crawled forward on his hands and knees, grabbing the hem of Jinsu's cheap porter jumpsuit.
"Kang... Han-eol..." Park begged, looking up at Jinsu's raw, unreadable status.
[PROTAGONIST STATUS: HAN JINSU]
LEVEL: 30
PROCESSING: 75
MANA CAPACITY: 0 / 0 (THE ZERO-EATER)
"Your mana is zero," Park choked out, tears streaming down his face. "The window... it can't measure you. You aren't in their system. You're... you're starving. You're the only one who isn't on the menu."
Jinsu stood up, looking past the weeping Hunters, past the thick marble walls of the Archive, and up toward the red, polygonal sky that was currently trying to delete the city around them.
The Founders thought they had built the perfect, closed-loop feeding system. They had turned Earth into a restaurant, and humanity into a renewable menu. But they made one mistake. They left a piece of garbage code—a literal zero—in the dark, and let it start consuming their errors.
"You hunters wanted to clear the Gates to save the world," Jinsu said, resting his hand on the matte-black hilt of The Eraser's Edge. "I'm going to eat the sky. I'm going to find these Founders... and I'm going to format them."