The air beneath Sector 7 never smelled clean.
Burnt synthetic noodles.
Leaking coolant.
Rusted metal.
Raw ozone.
And the stench of people abandoned by the world.
No matter how many ventilation towers Neo-Edo built above...
None of that clean air ever reached the underground.
Ever since the Dimensional Merge...
The people living beneath the city had forgotten what real sunlight looked like.
They only knew neon.
Artificial light.
And darkness.
Above them...
Neo-Edo glittered like paradise.
Floating highways crossed between silver skyscrapers.
Mana-powered trains streaked across the skyline.
Heroes smiled from giant holographic billboards.
Down here...
Those same glowing posters had long since become blankets for freezing children and homeless old men.
Hope didn't survive in Sector 7.
Only people too stubborn to die.
◇ ◇ ◇
Inside a cramped apartment barely larger than a storage container...
The room was completely dark.
Empty energy drink cans covered the floor.
Bundles of cables crawled across the walls like mechanical vines.
Modified processors buzzed nonstop.
Cooling fans roared against unbearable heat.
The entire room smelled of overheated copper wiring and stale caffeine.
In the center...
A young woman sat perfectly still.
Nineteen years old.
Pale skin.
Long black hair tied carelessly behind her neck.
Dark circles rested beneath sharp gray eyes that had forgotten what proper sleep felt like.
Her name...
Was Nyx.
To the local street gangs...
She was just another creepy shut-in.
The ghost of Building 19.
A caffeine addict who almost never stepped outside.
Someone people preferred not to disturb.
To the Vanguard Guild...
She had another name.
The Tech Phantom.
Class-S Cyber Threat.
Priority Elimination Target.
Financial damage inflicted over the past twelve months...
Three billion credits.
Confirmed.
Estimated actual losses...
Much higher.
Every cybersecurity division inside Vanguard had received the same order.
If The Tech Phantom was found...
Capture her.
Dead or alive.
Preferably alive.
The Guild wanted to know how one person without mana kept humiliating them.
Twelve massive holographic monitors illuminated the darkness.
Each displayed a different battlefield.
Encrypted financial networks.
Military satellites.
Mana communication relays.
Corporate databases.
Rune-encrypted security protocols.
Information flowed faster than most awakened mages could even read.
Nyx's fingers glided across the haptic keyboard.
Click.
Tap.
Swipe.
Her hands became nothing more than afterimages.
Commands were written.
Compiled.
Executed.
Deleted.
Rewritten.
Thousands of lines of spell-code flashed across the monitors.
Emerald.
Violet.
Azure.
The glowing symbols reflected inside her tired eyes.
This wasn't magic.
Not for her.
She didn't possess a mana core.
Never awakened one.
Never would.
In this world...
Talent was measured by the amount of mana flowing through your body.
People who couldn't awaken were trash.
People who couldn't cast magic were forgotten.
Nyx simply smiled at that idea.
Who decided magic was the only path to power?
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If the world ran on systems...
Then someone only needed to rewrite the system.
BEEP.
BEEP.
BEEP.
A crimson warning spread across her primary monitor.
WARNING.
VANGUARD ICE ACTIVATED.
INTRUSION COUNTERMEASURE ELECTRONICS DEPLOYED.
AUTO-PURGE SEQUENCE INITIALIZING.
Nyx stuffed another piece of synthetic bubblegum into her mouth.
Her lips curved upward.
"Come on..."
"You corporate pigs."
"Show me your backdoor."
The security construct unfolded before her eyes.
A rotating digital fortress made from countless layers of adaptive spell-code.
Each defensive wall continuously rewrote itself.
Every second.
A masterpiece of magical cybersecurity.
The pride of Vanguard's Cyber Intelligence Division.
It had stopped thousands of hackers.
None had ever broken through.
Officially.
Nyx lazily stretched her neck.
Crack.
Then both wrists.
Crack.
"I was half asleep when I wrote this."
"I hope it still works."
She pressed Enter.
A tiny program launched.
LOGIC BOMB.exe
Silence.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Tiny fractures spread throughout the crystalline fortress.
Like cracks forming across frozen glass.
The adaptive defenses desperately attempted to repair themselves.
Too late.
Boom.
The entire fortress exploded into fragments of corrupted data.
ACCESS GRANTED.
Nyx chuckled.
"Too easy."
Her fingers moved again.
Two million credits vanished from a Vanguard shell corporation.
Not stolen.
Relocated.
The transaction split into hundreds of microscopic transfers.
Each bounced across encrypted proxy chains.
Ghost servers.
Dead satellites.
Abandoned orbital relays.
Quantum wallets.
By the time Vanguard noticed...
The trail no longer existed.
Final destination confirmed.
Sector 4.
Saint Astra Orphanage.
Transfer complete.
Balance remaining.
Zero.
Nyx leaned back into her heavily modified leather chair.
She blew a pink bubble.
Pop.
It burst against the tip of her nose.
"Heh."
Watching Vanguard lose money felt satisfying.
Watching hungry children eat because of it...
That felt even better.
Her eyes slowly wandered toward another monitor.
The Upper Spire.
Neo-Edo's crown.
Golden towers stretched into the clouds.
Artificial sunlight bathed luxurious gardens.
Private healing sanctuaries floated between skyscrapers.
The wealthy called it paradise.
The poor called it a different world.
Nyx hated the Vanguard Guild.
Every executive.
Every smiling spokesperson.
Every fake hero posing for another propaganda broadcast.
But above all...
She hated one man.
Marcus Thorne.
Guildmaster.
Supreme Hero.
Humanity's Savior.
The greatest fraud ever born.
Ten years ago...
During the climax of the Dimensional Merge...
The heavens split apart.
The sky cracked open as if reality itself had shattered.
Dimensional Gates erupted across the planet.
Monsters flooded into the streets.
Entire cities drowned in blood before the first day had ended.
Millions died.
Humanity survived only because brave hunters stood on the front lines.
Heroes fought.
Heroes bled.
Heroes died.
But when the war finally ended...
Marcus Thorne claimed everything.
The rebuilding effort.
The world's mana crystal reserves.
Political authority.
Military command.
Healing resources.
Hope itself.
He rebuilt Neo-Edo into a shining paradise.
For the rich.
Everyone else...
Could rot.
Nyx had been nine years old.
She remembered every second.
The smell of blood.
The endless screams.
The freezing rain soaking through the medical tents.
Her mother desperately trying to stop her father's bleeding.
Doctors running in every direction.
Then...
A convoy carrying Vanguard executives arrived.
Every high-tier healer immediately abandoned the civilians.
Orders from Guildmaster Marcus Thorne.
Protect the corporate board first.
The people of Sector 7 could wait.
Her parents never received treatment.
She watched them bleed to death before sunrise.
Not because healing magic didn't exist.
Because someone decided they weren't worth saving.
Marcus Thorne didn't save humanity.
He simply built heaven for the wealthy...
And hell for everyone else.
Yet every district displayed towering marble statues of him beside his so-called martyred best friend.
Kaelen Cross.
The Hero of Heroes.
The Sword that Saved Humanity. A legendary Sniper.
Every child was taught to worship them.
Every citizen was told they owed them their lives.
Nyx grabbed another half-empty can of synthetic caffeine.
She drained it in one gulp.
The bitter taste lingered in her mouth.
Just like the memories.
"Saviors..."
She let out a cold laugh.
"What a bunch of fucking hypocrites."
Nyx had just raised another can of synthetic caffeine to her lips.
Then every one of her twelve monitors froze.
The room fell eerily silent.
Even the endless stream of spell-code stopped moving.
"...What?"
She nearly choked on her drink, slamming the can onto her desk as she shot upright.
A heartbeat later, the emerald spell-code across every display violently distorted.
The screens flickered.
Green became white.
White became static.
Then everything was swallowed by a deep, pulsating crimson.
WARNING. WARNING. WARNING.
The letters throbbed like a heartbeat.
"What the fuck..."
Nyx's fingers flew across the haptic keyboard.
Firewall integrity.
100%.
Ghost proxies.
Secure.
Quantum mirrors.
Active.
Emergency escape routes.
Available.
Nothing had been broken.
Nothing had been hacked.
Her defenses hadn't failed.
They had simply been ignored.
Her expression stiffened.
"It wasn't Vanguard..."
She immediately ruled them out.
Even their best cyber division wasn't capable of bypassing her security without leaving so much as a fingerprint.
Nor was this the work of any underground hacker collective.
The code flooding her system didn't resemble anything stored in Earth's databases.
It wasn't binary.
It wasn't rune-code.
It wasn't even a language she could identify.
Streams of impossible symbols flowed across her monitors, constantly rewriting themselves before her hardware could process them.
Several processors began overheating.
One of the holographic projectors sparked violently.
For the first time in years...
Nyx felt genuine fear.
Her mind raced through every possibility.
A hidden Vanguard project?
No.
An experimental AI?
Impossible.
Then one final thought surfaced.
Constellations.
The beings said to exist beyond humanity's reach.
Had one of them... noticed her?
CRACK.
The crimson warning screens shattered into countless pixels.
Before Nyx could react, a live video feed seized control of her primary monitor.
Administrator privileges revoked.
Manual override denied.
Every command she entered was rejected before it even executed.
"...You've got to be kidding me."
Her breathing slowed.
Her left hand slipped beneath the desk, wrapping around the cold metal handle of the EMP kill-switch.
One press.
Every device in the room would be reduced to scrap.
Years of work...
Gone.
The distorted image slowly sharpened.
She braced herself to see some incomprehensible cosmic being.
Or a fully armed Vanguard kill squad.
Instead...
She saw a man.
◇ ◇ ◇
Nearly two miles beneath Neo-Edo, inside the lightless depths of the Abyssal Rift, Kaelen Cross stood before the Mid-Level Checkpoint.
A pair of colossal titanium blast doors sealed the only passage forward.
Automated Vanguard turrets swept the cavern with crimson targeting lasers, patiently waiting for anything foolish enough to enter their firing range.
"Well?" Vespera purred inside his mind.
The S-Rank Void Succubus remained merged with his shadow, her cold voice carrying a teasing amusement.
"Are we actually infiltrating this place, or did you come all this way just to admire Vanguard's architecture?"
Kael ignored her.
He lowered the hood of his Shadow-Weave Cloak, revealing a face marked by old scars and fresh dirt.
"System."
"Open Cosmic Shop."
"Category: Network Splicing."
A translucent screen unfolded before his eyes.
Viewer Count: 74,020.
The number climbed every second.
Thousands of alien spectators watched with anticipation, curious how a mana-less human intended to bypass a military-grade security network.
Kael calmly scrolled past disposable hacking scripts, cloaking modules, and low-grade intrusion programs.
He wasn't looking for a shortcut.
He was looking for something unforgettable.
His gaze stopped on a single item radiating chaotic iridescent light.
[Item: Dimensional Network Splicer]
[Grade: B-Tier Consumable]
[Description: A forbidden cyber-parasite engineered by the rogue intelligence of the Xel'Naga Collective. It forcibly establishes a network bridge between the Interstellar Overseer Stream and any lower-dimensional planetary network.]
[Price: 50,000 Cosmic Credits]
Almost everything he had earned.
The exact amount he'd been saving for a Core Mending Elixir to repair his shattered chest.
Vespera clicked her tongue.
"That's your recovery fund."
Kael didn't even blink.
"Purchase."
[50,000 Cosmic Credits deducted.]
[Remaining Balance: 33,000 Credits.]
Space rippled above his palm.
A narrow dimensional tear silently opened.
Something dropped into his hand.
It resembled a metallic centipede forged from black chrome, its segmented body pulsing with neon-pink veins.
The creature twitched.
Its dozens of razor-like legs scraped against his skin as though eager to burrow into something.
Kael walked toward the heavily armored Vanguard access terminal positioned beside the blast doors.
Hidden beneath Vespera's Shadow Muffle, even the automated turrets failed to register his presence.
He crouched before the terminal.
The livestream chat exploded.
[User 'Weapons_Nut_44': Wait. Is that a Xel'Naga Splicer?!]
[User 'Zark': Bro just dropped fifty grand on a hacking tool instead of fixing his mana core! HE IS A PSYCHOPATH!]
[User 'DragonBoredom': You're all looking at the wrong thing.]
[User 'DragonBoredom': He doesn't care about opening the checkpoint.]
[User 'DragonBoredom': He's forcing the Interstellar Stream onto Earth's network.]
[User 'IronSaint': HAHAHAHAHA! He's dragging an entire primitive civilization into the broadcast!]
[User 'Archivist-09': Correction. He's searching for a native administrator with sufficient network authority.]
Without hesitation, Kael drove the metallic parasite straight into the encrypted data port.
The creature released a piercing metallic shriek.
Its countless legs stabbed deep into the terminal, locking itself in place.
BZZZZZT!
Alien data flooded the machine like a tidal wave.
The terminal convulsed violently.
Its operating system collapsed in less than a second, overwritten by technology that Earth had no hope of understanding.
[Network Bridge Established.]
[Interstellar Overseer Stream successfully linked to Earth Intranet.]
[Searching for optimal native proxy host...]
Kael quietly watched the progress bar advance.
He didn't have time to crack Vanguard's systems himself.
He needed someone who already lived inside them.
A native genius.
Someone who could do the impossible.
The terminal chimed.
[Optimal Host Located.]
[Alias: The Tech Phantom.]
[Initiating Forced Video and Audio Handshake...]
The terminal screen flickered once.
The endless lines of alien code vanished.
In their place appeared the feed of a dimly lit room filled with holographic monitors.
A pale young woman stared back through the webcam, her silver eyes wide with disbelief.
Nyx found herself staring back at him.
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