The midnight bells of the Lia Estate tolled with a low, electromagnetic hum. In the servant quarters, the "ghosts" slept in exhaustion, but Yuan's pallet was empty. Using the Shadow-Step—a technique that synchronized his heartbeat with the facility's ventilation cycles—he moved through the obsidian corridors like a literal glitch in the surveillance system.
He reached the Chemical Warehouse Sector 4. The door was a three-ton slab of mana-reinforced tungsten, locked with a DNA-scanner and a localized gravity-seal.
"Biometric lock," Yuan whispered, his eyes narrowing. He didn't have the DNA of a Lia, but he had the Solar Mana he had stolen from Kaelen Vance.
He pressed his small hand against the scanner. Instead of trying to hack it, he injected a microscopic needle of Kaelen's "waste" mana into the sensor's interface. The machine, recognizing the high-grade solar signature of its master, chirped a submissive green. The massive slab slid open with a hiss of pressurized nitrogen.
Inside, rows of crystalline vats glowed with a sickly, metallic silver light. "Liquid Mana-Alloy 72"—the substance used to reinforce the chassis of Rank 1 Combat Drones.
Yuan didn't hesitate. He climbed into a vat, the freezing, viscous liquid swallowing his small frame. The pain was immediate and absolute. The alloy wasn't meant to be absorbed by living tissue; it was meant to be fused to cold steel. It began to tear into his skin, seeking his bones like a thousand microscopic drills.
«Grind it... refine it...» Yuan's mind roared, suppressing the urge to scream. He activated the Bone-Forging Art of the Abyss.
He used the stolen solar mana as a furnace, heating the silver alloy within his own bloodstream. His bones cracked and splintered, only to be reinforced by the liquid metal. Each rib became a conductor; his spine became a high-voltage coil.
[SYSTEM ALERT: FOUNDATION STABILIZING...]
[RANK 0.5 -> RANK 1.0: WORLD BREAKER (INITIAL STAGE)]
As the transformation neared completion, a red light began to pulse in the warehouse. A hovering Security Sentinel—a spider-like drone with a plasma-lance—had detected the drop in the vat's volume.
The drone's red eye locked onto Yuan's head as he rose from the silver liquid, his skin shimmering with a faint, metallic sheen.
"Unauthorized bio-mass detected. Lethal force authorized," the drone's mechanical voice droned.
Yuan didn't run. He looked at his small, newly-forged fist. For the first time in fifty years, he felt the familiar, intoxicating weight of Physical Law under his control.
As the drone fired its plasma-lance, Yuan didn't dodge. He punched the air in front of him.
BOOM.
The atmospheric pressure in the room shifted. A shockwave of raw, physical force shattered the plasma-bolt and crumpled the drone into a ball of scrap metal before it could even register the impact.
Yuan stood in the ruins of the drone, his breath steady. He was no longer a "ghost." He was a World Breaker.
"The bones are set," Yuan said, his voice now carrying a faint, metallic resonance. "Now, I need a heart that can pump the blood of a God."