The silver-haired woman, Captain Elara Lia, stepped closer. Her boots, reinforced with Rank 1: World Breaker gravity-plates, left shallow indentations in the metal floor. Her scanner, a floating crystalline orb, hummed as it passed over the shivering orphans.
«...Mana Density: 0.02%... Status: Non-Caster...» The orb hovered in front of Yuan. He didn't look up. He let his shoulders slump, his breathing becoming shallow and ragged—a perfect imitation of a child whose lungs were scarred by industrial smog. He bit the inside of his cheek, letting a drop of that metallic, "failed" blood leak from the corner of his mouth.
"This one," Elara said, her voice like cracking ice. "His bio-signature is flickering. Why?"
The orphanage director, a man whose spine was bent from years of subservience, scrambled forward. "He's a defect, Captain. Born with a mana-rejection syndrome. He won't last another year. A waste of rations, truly."
Yuan felt the cold gaze of Lia's descendant. He didn't use mana to resist; he used the Null-Logic to sink his presence. To her sensors, he didn't look like a threat; he looked like a dying spark.
But Elara saw something else. She saw a child who didn't cry. In this era, everyone cried when the Peacekeepers arrived. Fear was the only honest currency left on Earth.
"My father, the Arch-Councilor, requires 'Blank Slates' for the new atmospheric refineries in the Lia Estate," Elara murmured, more to herself than the director. "Common servants are too rebellious these days. But a dying boy with no prospects... he will be grateful for the scraps."
She reached out with a gloved hand and lifted Yuan's chin. "What is your name, little ghost?"
"Yuan..." he rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering on pavement. He forced his eyes to look "vacant," hiding the cold, calculating abyss within his pupils. "I... I can work, mistress. I don't need much... just a warm place to sleep."
Elara smirked. It was the same arrogant expression the original Lia used to wear when she thought she had outsmarted the universe.
"Pack him," she commanded her soldiers. "He will be a 'Scrubber' in the High-Refined Mana Chambers. If he survives the radiation for a month, he might even earn a name."
As they dragged him toward the armored transport, Yuan didn't struggle. Inside his mind, he was already mapping the Lia Estate. The "High-Refined Mana Chambers" were exactly where the Council stored the liquid essence used to fuel Rank 1: World Breaker warriors.
«You call me a 'Blank Slate', Elara Lia,» Yuan thought as the transport's heavy doors hissed shut, plunging him into darkness. «But soon, I will use your family's own blood-right to rewrite the laws of this world. I am not your servant. I am your extinction.»