The blood at the corner of Elian's mouth tasted like rusted iron. His ears were still ringing, haunted by the echo of Valerius's mechanical laughter and Miya's screams as she was swallowed by the distance toward Aethelgard's upper reaches.
Elian blinked. Once. Twice.
The dust from his ruined workshop still drifted in the stagnant air, but the view had shifted. The red glowing lines left behind by Valerius's gravitational Axiom were no longer untouchable magic. They had manifested into... numbers. Variables. Complex algebraic equations floating in the air like cracked holographic projections.
He reached out a trembling hand. His index finger brushed against one of the lingering red streaks near a splintered workbench.
Zrrrt.
The line hummed. Inside his mind, Elian's brain automatically decoded the equation. It was a formula for mass displacement. Yet, his analytical gaze immediately caught a discrepancy. There was a decimal point at the end of the string, rounded up by force. A negligence. A... flaw.
Elian flicked the line exactly at that decimal point.
Crack!
The residual gravitational energy shattered like thin glass under a hammer, dissolving into dull dust. The oppressive weight on Elian's chest vanished instantly.
He had no blue energy. He could not manifest an Axiom. But if this world was a gargantuan system built upon equations... then he had just found a backdoor to hack it. He was the anomaly—the division by zero.
The sound of heavy boots crushing splintered wood shattered his focus.
"Ensure no trace of the anomaly remains. Incinerate this scrap pile. Inquisitor Valerius does not tolerate residual organic variables."
Two men in black armored uniforms stepped through the remains of the door frame. They were Eliminators, low-level hounds from Sector 7 usually tasked with purging the "refuse" of Sector 9.
The first soldier, a hulking man with a burn scar across his neck, raised his right hand. A dull orange grid flickered in his palm. The air around him began to warp with heat. Low-tier Thermodynamic Axiom, Elian thought coldly.
The second soldier noticed Elian slowly struggling to his feet. "Subject is still functional. Report identifies him as the 'Zero.' A logical defect. I'll handle the deletion."
The second soldier drew a vibrating short-sword from his hip. He muttered a string of digits. A green light grid ignited on his boots. He was using Kinetic Axiom to manipulate acceleration.
"Commencing erasure, trash."
The soldier lunged. To an ordinary person, the movement was a blur—a lethal green shadow.
But in Elian's eyes, the world slowed into a Cartesian diagram.
A green trajectory line stretched from the soldier's boot directly toward Elian's throat. Numbers sprouted along that path. Elian squinted, his brain calculating at lightning speed.
Velocity is static, Elian thought, his mind an icy void. He didn't account for acceleration variables. Pure Uniform Linear Motion. Distance over time... a pathetic, amateur vector.
Worse yet, the soldier was arrogant. He had locked his attack path in a straight line without accounting for the room's geometry. He hadn't calculated the slope of the stone floor, which had buckled under Valerius's previous gravity well. His angle of attack had a blind spot exactly 15 degrees to the left.
The soldier arrived before Elian, his blade swinging horizontally, aimed for the neck.
Elian didn't retreat. He didn't parry. With millimeter precision, Elian simply dipped his shoulder and stepped sideways, rotating his body exactly 15 degrees into the enemy's blind spot.
The vibrating blade sliced through empty air, passing no further than a sheet of paper from Elian's nose. The soldier's eyes widened in shock. Coordinate Mismatch.
Before the soldier could process the error, Elian swung the steel wrench he had been clutching. He didn't aim for the head. He swung the wrench directly at the rotating green Axiom Grid on the soldier's boot.
"Your friction variable... is zero," Elian whispered flatly.
The steel tip of the wrench struck the Node—the focal point of the soldier's kinetic formula.
A small explosion erupted. The stable green energy turned into chaos. Because Elian had disrupted the center of the equation, the kinetic force that was supposed to propel the soldier forward reflected back brutally into his own leg.
A sickening crack of bone echoed through the room. The soldier screamed as his tibia shattered from the inside out, crushed by his own power. He collapsed to the ground, his sword skidding away.
"What did you do to him?!" the first soldier shouted, panic overriding his clinical tone. "You're a Zero! This is a logical impossibility!"
The fire-user thrust both hands forward. The orange grid expanded, preparing to launch a high-temperature fireball.
Elian tossed aside his bent wrench. He walked slowly toward the flame-wielder. His face showed no fear. Only a terrifying, hollow coldness.
"You're trying to manipulate temperature by accelerating molecular friction at a single point," Elian said, his voice echoing in the silent workshop. His eyes were locked on a glowing equation at the heart of the enemy's swirling fire.
"Shut up! Burn!" The fireball roared forward.
Elian didn't flinch. He reached out his left hand directly into the path of the incoming flame.
"The only problem is," Elian touched his fingertip to an imaginary '1'—the base constant of the enemy's energy multiplier. "You forgot to limit the expansion area."
Division by zero.
The fireball never reached Elian. The moment his finger touched the formula, its entire structure collapsed. Instead of surging forward, the thermal energy imploded, sweeping back over the soldier who created it.
A thermal blast sent the soldier crashing into the wall, knocking him unconscious instantly. His uniform hissed with smoke.
Elian stood in the center of his now-obliterated workshop. Two Eliminators lay broken at his feet. His breath came in ragged gasps. His head throbbed with a localized migraine. Disrupting the calculations of reality drained his calories and physical energy drastically. He was still just a man; his body was not yet tempered for this level of high-tier computation.
But he had won. He had defeated two Axiom users without emitting a single spark of blue energy.
Elian approached the soldier with the shattered leg, who was still moaning in agony. Elian leaned down, his gaze merciless.
"Which Sector... which Sector does Valerius use to process new variables?" Elian asked. His voice was soft, but carried the edge of a blade.
"You... you're a monster... the Inquisitors will delete you..."
Elian didn't waste time. He ground his heel into the soldier's broken shin. Another scream tore through the air.
"Which Sector?" Elian repeated, his eyes as dark as a starless night.
"Sector 4! The Central Tower Academy in Sector 4! Please, stop!"
Elian pulled his foot back. He stripped the gray protective cloak from the soldier's body, wiped the blood from it, and threw it over his shoulders. The cloak was oversized, hiding his grimy workshop clothes and giving him the silhouette of a shadow-dweller.
He looked out through the shattered doorway. In the distance, cutting through the smog of Sector 9, a gargantuan metal pillar pierced the clouds, connecting the slums to Sector 8 above. The energy rail.
Miya was somewhere up there. Beyond this sickening, false sky.
Elian tightened the belt of his cloak. He carried nothing but a broken wrench and the memory of his sister's smile.
"Wait for me, Little Solution," Elian murmured to the steam-laden wind. "I'm going to tear down this sky for you."
Elian Laurent stepped out of the ruins, leaving Sector 9 behind, beginning the long ascent toward the destruction of the world.