The Interrogation Room on the 104th floor of the Heavens-Gate Association headquarters didn't have windows. It was a sterile, white cube, lit by the harsh, humming glare of optimized mana-bulbs.
Choi Sang-min, the Vanguard of Heavens-Gate, sat in the center of the room. He was still wearing his golden armor, but it was cracked and stained with dried blood. His hands, resting on the metal table, were shaking. A slight, involuntary tremor that he couldn't suppress.
Across from him sat Chief Auditor Maeng, a man whose tailored suit cost more than a C-Rank hunter made in a decade.
"Let's go over it one more time, Guild Master Choi," Maeng said, his voice a smooth, irritating purr. He tapped a glass tablet. "Your strike team entered the Heavens-Gate Vault to secure the data-crystals for the Ninth Pillar's upcoming Gala. Standard protocol. Yet, out of a twenty-man elite squad, only three of you walked out."
Sang-min stared at his own reflection in the polished metal table.
In the reflection, right in the corner of his S-Rank status window, a microscopic, violet hourglass was slowly spinning. [ZERO-TETHER: ACTIVE].
"An Abyssal Arbiter," Sang-min said. His voice sounded like it was being dragged over gravel. "It... it spawned out of nowhere. A localized dimensional tear inside the vault."
"An Abyssal Arbiter," Maeng repeated skeptically, leaning back. "A monster that hasn't been recorded since Year Four. And it just happened to bypass our satellite sensors and wipe out your entire Vanguard? Including your A-Rank healer and tank?"
"Yes."
Maeng stopped tapping his tablet. His eyes, cold and unblinking, locked onto the S-Rank. "Then explain the anomaly in the logs, Guild Master. The Vault is a Level 9 Restricted Zone. But our core-logic sensors detected a massive data hemorrhage from Sub-Sector Zero—a hidden partition at the back of the boss room that, officially, does not exist. Did your team attempt to breach the Ninth Pillar's private archives?"
Sang-min's throat went bone-dry. Behind his eyes, a memory flashed: Kang Han-eol, the worthless porter, staring at a solid wall of black marble. He remembered the porter's violet eyes peeling back the code of the room like wet paper, exposing a door that the Association thought they had buried forever.
"No," Sang-min rasped, his heart hammering against his ribs. He felt a phantom pain where Jinsu had touched his forehead. "The Arbiter... its sheer mass caused a spatial distortion. The walls just collapsed inward. We were pinned down."
Maeng sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And then? A miracle occurred?"
"A rogue," Park Do-hyun, the healer, blurted out from the corner of the room. Park looked like he hadn't slept in a week, his eyes darting frantically around the white walls. "A man. An anomaly. He just... appeared. He killed the Arbiter."
"A rogue hunter killed a calamity-class monster?" Maeng's tone shifted from skeptical to openly mocking. "Did you catch a name? A Guild affiliation?"
"His system overlay..." Yoon-ah whispered. He was wrapped in a thermal blanket, staring blankly at the floor. "It read... 'Void Hunter'."
The room went dead silent. The mockery vanished from Maeng's face, replaced by a cold, bureaucratic frown. "Void Hunter. A hidden class. And where is this anomaly now?"
"He vanished," Sang-min said, forcing himself to look the Auditor in the eye. "The resulting mana-clash vaporized the room. Our porter, Kang Han-eol... he was caught in the crossfire. Ash."
Maeng stared at Sang-min for a long, suffocating moment. He looked at the S-Rank's trembling hands, the sweat on his brow, the sheer, unadulterated terror radiating from a man who usually posed for magazine covers.
"I see," Maeng finally said, standing up. "You are dismissed, Guild Master. The Association will compensate the families of the fallen. Rest up. You have your Ascension ceremony to prepare for."
Sang-min flinched violently at the word Ascension. He quickly stood up, grabbing his helmet, and practically fled the room with his surviving team members in tow.
As the door slid shut, a section of the white wall behind Maeng shimmered and deactivated, revealing a one-way observation mirror.
The door to the observation room opened, and Seo Yoon-hee(The Saint / S-Rank) stepped out.
She wore the pristine, white-and-gold uniform of an Association Inquisitor, a silver rapier resting casually at her hip. Her eyes, a striking, crystalline blue, were narrowed in thought.
"What do you think, Saint?" Maeng asked, his deferential tone returning instantly.
"He's lying," Yoon-hee said. Her voice was calm, almost melodic, but completely devoid of warmth.
"About the monster?"
"About everything," Yoon-hee replied, walking over to the glass table where Sang-min had been sitting. She traced a finger over the metal. "My [Divine Eye] measures the flow of a hunter's mana. When Sang-min speaks, his mana doesn't fluctuate with the stress of combat trauma. It violently retracts. He isn't traumatized by a monster, Auditor Maeng. He is terrified of a secret."
Maeng frowned. "Why would the Vanguard lie about an Abyssal Arbiter? To cover up his own incompetence? And what about the breach in Sub-Sector Zero?"
"Spatial distortion?" Yoon-hee murmured to herself, her eyes tracking the lingering heat signatures of the S-Rank's sweat on the table. "No. Someone found Aris Thorne's private safe. And they didn't use a key—they used a backdoor."
She turned to Maeng, her crystalline eyes glowing faintly. "The 'Void Hunter' didn't just kill a monster. He cracked the Ninth Pillar's vault, and whatever he showed them in there broke an S-Rank's mind. I want access to the Heavens-Gate Vault. Right now."
"Saint Yoon-hee, with all due respect, the Purifier squads are already en route to sanitize the area. There is nothing left but rubble."
"Then I will look at the rubble," she said, adjusting her silver belt. "If a hidden-class anomaly is operating in this city, the Nine Pillars will want it found before the Gala. Tell the Purifiers to hold their perimeter. I'm tagging along."
Maeng bowed deeply. "As you command, Saint."
[02:00 AM — The Heavens-Gate Vault]
The air inside the dungeon didn't smell like blood or monsters. It smelled like ozone and burnt plastic.
A dozen high-rank Purifiers stood in a loose perimeter, their golden armor reflecting the emergency floodlights they had set up. The massive, obsidian library of the Archive was a ruin. But it wasn't destroyed by concussive force.
Seo Yoon-hee stepped past the caution tape, her boots clicking softly against the marble.
"Report," she ordered.
A Purifier Captain jogged over, saluting. "Saint. It's exactly as Vanguard Choi described. Total vaporization. We can't find a single trace of the Iron-Gorgon, the Arbiter, or the missing squad members. No bodies. No mana-crystals."
Yoon-hee ignored him, walking toward the center of the room.
She closed her eyes and activated her [S-Rank Skill: Divine Eye].
When she opened them, her pupils had shifted into glowing, concentric rings. Usually, a cleared dungeon looked like a spiderweb of lingering golden threads—the residual energy of spells and severed cores.
But here... there was nothing.
It wasn't just empty. It was an absolute, terrifying vacuum. It looked like a jagged hole had been ripped in the fabric of the world, leaving a corrupt, un-rendered void behind.
"This isn't a battleground," Yoon-hee thought, a cold shiver running down her spine. "An Abyssal Arbiter leaves toxic mana behind. Void Hunter...left nothing. He uninstalled the room."
She knelt down near a shattered obsidian pedestal. Her glowing eyes caught something the Purifiers' tech had missed.
Caught on the jagged edge of the stone was a single, cheap thread of synthetic fabric. Standard issue. A porter's coat.
Next to it was a microscopic drop of blood. But it wasn't red. It was vibrating with a low, violet static.
Yoon-hee reached out, holding her finger inches from the blood. The moment her S-Rank aura brushed against the violet droplet, her mana didn't repel it—her mana was instantly sucked in, devoured by the tiny speck of static.
She gasped, pulling her hand back as if she had been burned.
"It ate my mana," she realized, her breath misting in the cold air. "The porter... Kang Han-eol didn't die in the crossfire. He's the anomaly."
She stood up, her heart racing with a feeling she hadn't experienced in ten years: genuine, unadulterated curiosity.
"Captain," Yoon-hee said, her voice echoing in the dead vault. "Log this room as a hardware failure. Let Vanguard Choi keep his lie."
"Saint? But the anomaly—"
"I will handle the anomaly," Yoon-hee said, her eyes tracking the microscopic trail of violet static that led out of the dungeon and toward the surface. Toward the slums. "Tell no one. Especially not the Pillars."
[03:30 AM — Sector 9 Border]
Three miles away, the neon rain fell heavily on the rusted metal roofs of Sector 9.
Jinsu pulled the collar of his stolen coat up against the chill. He walked slowly, his boots splashing in the puddles of polluted water.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. Cold. Numb. The taste of the rain, the smell of the ozone, the warmth of his own breath—it was all fading, eaten away by the engine running in his chest.
[SYSTEM WARNING]
[VOID SATURATION: 23%]
[SENSORY DEGRADATION IN PROGRESS]
"I need to feed the system," Jinsu thought, his violet eyes locked onto the flickering neon sign of the Black-Market Evaluation Center in the distance. "And the Ninth Pillar's supply line is going to foot the bill."