Chapter 8: The Arsenal Matrix
Ace pushed through the heavy steel doors of his Armory and unceremoniously dumped his cardboard box of scavenged goods onto the main staging table.
With the 41st, 42nd, and 43rd floors secured, the adrenaline was finally beginning to ebb, replaced by a deep, aching exhaustion in his calves and shoulders. But his gamer instincts refused to let him rest just yet. You didn't finish a dungeon run and just go to sleep; you sorted your inventory.
He methodically unpacked the box.
Medical: Two boxes of heavy-duty gauze, three rolls of medical tape, a handful of antiseptic wipes, and a bottle of ibuprofen.
Utility: The travel sewing kit, a half-empty pack of AA batteries, and a heavy-duty flashlight he had pulled from a janitor's cart.
Provisions: Six vacuum-sealed bags of pepper-seasoned steak jerky, four flats of instant mac and cheese cups, three bags of stale almonds, and eight bottles of water.
It was a king's ransom for day two of the apocalypse. He neatly arranged the food and medical supplies on the table, feeling a wave of deep satisfaction.
He swiped his hand through the air, summoning his deep-violet UI.
[ACCOUNT STATUS]
Current UP: 17
A triumphant smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. He had the points to significantly upgrade his gear; he just needed to decide on a build.
As he looked around the sprawling Costume Department, his eyes traced the dozens of high-end weapon replicas hanging on the walls.
His class was the Arsenal Mage. According to the mechanics, he had three primary Core Slots, but his true power lay in the Arsenal Matrix—a limitless inventory of weapons he could swap between using the Genesis Gate ability. But to summon a weapon later, it had to be logged into his Matrix first.
Tracing a weapon cost zero UP. It only required mental intent. Reinforcing it into an Arcane item, or enduring the Rite of Inheritance to gain its muscle memory via Soulbinding, was what cost points and physical endurance.
He decided to start adding the armory to his Arsenal before he spent his points. Even if he couldn't use them all now, one day he could. He walked over to the display walls and began pulling down the highest-quality props he could find, laying them out in a row on the concrete floor. He selected ten distinct weapons to serve as his baseline Matrix.
The Buster Sword(Final Fantasy VII) - A massive, heavy slab of iron for raw, overwhelming kinetic damage.Revolver Gunblade(Final Fantasy VIII) - A versatile hybrid of slashing and explosive point-blank shockwaves.Elucidator(Sword Art Online) - A perfectly balanced, heavy one-handed longsword.Dark Repulser(Sword Art Online) - A crystalline blade, forged for dual-wielding speed.Tessaiga(Inuyasha) - The massive dog-demon fang, perfect for wide-area energy attacks like the Wind Scar.Kurikara(Blue Exorcist) - A sealed katana designed specifically to channel and ignite demonic blue flames.Murasame(Akame ga Kill!) - A cursed katana notorious for its one-hit-kill poison curse.Crescent Rose(RWBY) - A complex, shifting high-impact sniper-scythe.Excalibur(Fate/stay night) - The holy sword of promised victory, built for massive energy projection.Executioner's Blade(Naruto) - A massive, single-edged broadsword that repairs its damaged steel by absorbing iron from the blood of its enemies.
Ace stood at the end of the line, taking a deep breath.
He knelt beside the Buster Sword prop, placing his hand on the painted foam.
"Trace."
Blue light enveloped the blade. Ace took in its full physical form and pushed its lore to the Matrix. He fed the game's history into the UI: the crushing weight, the Mako energy, the devastating execution of the Cross-Slash.
The UI chimed.
[Weapon Memory Accepted. Buster Sword added to Arsenal Matrix]
"Next," Ace grunted, moving to the Gunblade.
He uploaded all he remembered of the SeeD mercenary. The precise, rhythmic timing required to pull the trigger at the exact moment the blade struck a target, triggering a localized explosion of force.
[Gunblade added to Arsenal Matrix]
He moved down the line. It was like manually typing out a hundred pages of dense code entirely from memory. He pushed the lore of the Elucidator and Dark Repulser, logging the impossibly fast 16-hit Starburst Stream into his soul.
By the time he reached the fifth weapon, the Tessaiga, Ace's vision was swimming. He felt a sharp, persistent throb behind his eyes. Forming and uploading the rich, established histories of entire fictional universes was taking a massive toll on his brain; he was physically struggling to deal with the sheer volume of lore.
"Push through," he hissed, moving to the Kurikara. He logged the lore of the exorcist's blade and its blue flames.
With Murasame and Crescent Rose, his hands started to shake. Sweat poured down his face.
He crawled to Excalibur and the Executioner's Blade, forcing the final files of holy energy and blood-iron regeneration into his matrix.
When Ace finally pulled his hand back from the tenth weapon, the room was spinning violently. A thin trickle of warm blood ran down from his left nostril. He wiped it away with a trembling hand.
He was done for now. He couldn't keep going.
Ace dragged himself off the floor and collapsed heavily onto the prop leather couch. The physical exhaustion of his stair climb was nothing compared to this. His mental bandwidth was completely fried. His head pounded with a vicious, rhythmic migraine.
He looked over at the table where Ebony & Ivory and his red trench coat waited. He had 17 UP. He wanted to spend the points right now to Reinforce them, but he knew with absolute certainty that if he tried to initiate a deep-dive Soulbind—the kind that included the Rite of Inheritance necessary to actually wield the demonic guns—his brain would short-circuit, and he would pass out.
"In the morning," Ace whispered to the empty room, reluctantly dismissing the UI. "After I sleep. After I'm clear-headed."
He couldn't rely solely on the system. If the Genesis Override hit a limit—like the mental wall he had just slammed into—he needed his own body to be the secondary fail-safe.
Ace pushed himself off the couch and cleared a space in the center of the Armory. He drew Tensa Zangetsu, the black blade gleaming in the fading light. He began with his Kendo katas—slow, deliberate strikes. He remembered the forms perfectly, but his muscles violently protested. He was out of shape, his breath hitching much sooner than it would have a decade ago.
He sheathed the blade and transitioned into his Taekwondo forms, his sneakers snapping through the air in high kicks. He felt the "rust" in his joints. But even as his lungs burned, he could feel the system humming beneath his skin. It was like a supernatural personal trainer; he knew that with every fight and every level up, the RPG logic would eventually whip his body back into a lethal, peak condition. For now, he just had to push through the soreness.
Hygiene was a luxury he was quickly losing. He grabbed one of the half-full water bottles he'd scavenged from the 43rd floor. The water was room temperature, but as he splashed it over his face and neck to wash away the sweat and the dried blood from his nosebleed, it felt like liquid gold.
He ripped open a bag of the pepper-seasoned steak jerky, the salt making his throat dry, and washed it down with careful sips of water. He checked his gear one last time, ensuring Zangetsu was seated properly in its scabbard.
He lay back on the couch, the black hilt of the sword resting right against his palm, within immediate reach.
He didn't need a flashlight. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the night was far from dark. Massive, mutated vines—thick as tree trunks—clung to the exterior of the tower, pulsing with a faint, sickly green and violet bioluminescence. The light filtered through the glass in jagged streaks, illuminating the 40th floor in a haunting, emerald glow. It was just bright enough to see the layout of the office, but it cast deep, obsidian shadows that seemed to crawl whenever he blinked.
Exhausted, he fell into a light, restless sleep.
CLANG.
The sound was heavy, metallic, and came from the very front of the floor—the Atrium.
Ace was awake in a heartbeat. His fingers closed around his sword before his eyes were even open. He didn't move yet; he stayed low on the couch, straining his ears in the emerald gloom.
CLANG. SCREEECH.
The noise vibrated through the floorboards. It was coming from the elevator bank. The center car—the one with the doors he had noticed were forced open an inch earlier that day—was being hammered from the inside.
BANG.
The steel doors groaned, the metal buckling outward into the Atrium. In the flickering bioluminescent light, Ace crept out of the Armory and moved toward the front barricades, keeping low. He could see the elevator doors bulging as something with immense, terrifying strength slammed against them from the pitch-black shaft.
Ace grabbed a heavy, industrial-strength metal bar from a dismantled clothing rack. He moved into the Atrium just as a pale, multi-jointed hand with jagged black nails forced its way through the gap in the elevator doors.
He didn't wait for it to emerge. He jammed the metal bar directly into the door tracks, using all his weight to foul the mechanism, and then shoved a heavy oak reception desk across the slick tiles to anchor the bar in place.
The banging continued for another hour—muffled, frustrated, and hungry—before finally subsiding into a low, guttural growl that faded back down into the dark abyss of the shaft.
Ace didn't sleep again. He sat by the barricade, his hand resting on Zangetsu, watching the bioluminescence fade as the gray, misty dawn of Seattle returned.
As the sun finally broke through the haze, the heavy weight in his mind vanished. He felt refreshed—the data drain from the mass Tracing was completely gone. The synchronization between his physical body and his class was progressing.
He stood up, stretched his limbs, and walked back to the Armory table. He looked at the 17 UP sitting in his system, then down at the twin pistols, the red coat, and the white and black Shinigami garments he was currently wearing. If he was going into heavy combat, regular cotton and linen were going to tear just as easily as his graphic tee had. He needed the full set.
He reached out his hands, resting them gently on the two replica guns he loved so much.
"Trace," Ace said, his voice echoing quietly.
The light spiraled down his arm, soaking into the guns, scanning all the plastic and metals holding them together. Then, it was time. The system wanted their history, so Ace gave it to it. From the moment the legendary Devil Hunter received them, every fight, every combo, everything he could remember that made them what they were and the man who wielded them.
[Arcane Weapons: Ebony & Ivory added to Arsenal Matrix.]
Now, for the next part.
"Soulbind."
[Soulbound Weapon added to Arsenal Matrix.]
[Core Slot 3 Ranged Weapon: Ebony & Ivory]
[ERROR: Genesis Gate Unavailable. Soulbound Weapon cannot be manifested.]
The Rite of Inheritance hit him like a freight train. He lived through a thousand stylish, high-speed gunfights in a fraction of a second, juggling heavy demons in mid-air with pure kinetic force.
When he opened his eyes, he was gasping for air, but the Instant Mastery settling into his hands felt incredible.
"Reinforce," Ace commanded.
The sapphire energy surged. The cheap die-cast metal hissed and popped, the fake barrels hollowing out into true rifling. When the light faded, they were lethal, heavy, and practically vibrating with suppressed power.
[Item Upgraded: Ebony & Ivory (Rank 1 - Common Arcane)]
[Current UP: 10]
He picked up the holster and strapped it to his lower back. Ace spun the guns effortlessly around his trigger fingers—a flashy, complex gun-twirl—and slammed them into his holsters.
Next, he placed his hand flat against the red leather trench coat. "Trace."
He pushed his intent into the blank prompt. He imprinted the sheer durability of demonic heritage onto this material, all the fights and damage it had taken while remaining undamaged. He wove the arrogance of an untouchable half-demon into the very stitching of the coat.
"Reinforce."
The blue light sank into the crimson leather. The material tightened, the dull finish transforming into a rich, supernatural sheen that felt as impenetrable as Kevlar.
[Item Upgraded: Demon Hunter's Coat (Rank 1 - Arcane Armor)]
[Current UP: 4]
Finally, Ace looked down at his white kosode top and black hakama pants. "Trace."
This is the Shihakusho, Ace visualized, feeding the lore into the interface. The spiritual weave of the Soul Reapers. It is designed to vent massive amounts of internal spiritual pressure without burning up. It provides absolute, frictionless mobility for the Flash Step.
"Reinforce. Allocating 2 UP to the Top and 2 UP to the Pants."
The sapphire light enveloped his body. Ace felt the standard cotton and linen physically change against his skin. The fabric grew lighter, yet vastly more durable, taking on a faint, ethereal texture. The white sash around his waist tightened automatically, perfectly aligning his center of gravity.
[Item Upgraded: Arcane Shihakusho Top & Hakama (Rank 1 - Arcane Armor)]
[Current UP: 0]
Ace slid his arms into the sleeves of his newly reinforced crimson coat. The heavy leather settled perfectly over the lightweight spiritual robes. He stood up, fully equipped.
The stark-white kosode and black hakama. The heavy crimson trench coat. Tensa Zangetsu at his left hip, and Ebony & Ivory at his lower back. The Burden of History hummed perfectly across his entire loadout, blending the lethal speed of the Shinigami with the unkillable firepower of the Devil Hunter.
He looked at his reflection in the Armory mirror and smirked. He grabbed a fresh bag of jerky for breakfast and headed for the heavy steel doors.
It was time to push for the roof.