The ley-lines of the Aether-Reach began to fray as the Scrap-Venture drifted away from the central logic-pillars. The pristine white void was replaced by a flickering, gray twilight. Here, the "data" was unstable. Mountains of pixelated static loomed like jagged cliffs, and the air hummed with the sound of a thousand corrupted audio files.
[ZONE: THE DATA-WASTES (LAYER 3 - FRINGE)]
[ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD: LOGIC DECAY]
[THREAT: GHOST-CODE ENTITIES]
"This place feels... sad," Priya whispered, her healing mana flickering. "It's like a cemetery for ideas."
"It's the recycle bin of the universe," Mateo said, his Synapse-Hub struggling to filter the noise. "Look at these structures. This isn't just scrap metal; these are pieces of entire realities that the Architect decided weren't efficient enough. Version 1.0, 2.0... they're all piled up here."
Kenji walked to the edge of the ship's deck. His Recursive Outlier status made him sensitive to the decay. To him, the "Static" wasn't noise it was a scream.
"Someone is down there," Kenji said. "A signature that doesn't match the System's current frequency."
They descended into a valley of frozen code. Standing in the center of a circle of flickering monoliths was a figure draped in rags made of pure, unformatted text. He was forging something over a fire made of burning logic-gates.
[TARGET: THE FORGOTTEN SMITH (RANK ???)]
[STATUS: RESIDUAL DATA]
"You shouldn't be here, Outlier," the figure said without turning. His voice was a "Text-to-Speech" monotone, glitching with every other word. "The Reach is for the Pure. You are... full of [ERROR: NOUN NOT FOUND]."
"I've been called worse," Kenji said, stepping off the ramp. "You're a Smith. From a previous revision?"
The figure turned. His face was a shifting mosaic of every person Kenji had ever met, a composite of deleted memories. "I was the Smith of Version 4.0. I tried to forge a world without [PAIN]. The Architect found it... 'unproductive.' He deleted my world. He deleted my people. But a Smith is hard to erase."
[NEW SUB-QUEST: THE SMITH'S LEGACY]
"The Architect is harvesting the Jade Silk and the Steam-Cores to build his Final Version," the Forgotten Smith said, his hands glowing with a pale, blue light. "He's going to 'Format' the entire three-layer system. If he does, even the Data-Wastes will be wiped. There will be no memory of us."
Suddenly, the static mountains shook. From the gray clouds, Logic-Hounds descended beasts made of sharp, geometric shapes and "Null" energy.
[TARGET: LOGIC-HOUNDS (RANK 72)]
"The System is 'Cleaning' the area," the Forgotten Smith warned. "They found you, Kenji Tanaka."
"Let them clean," Kenji said.
He didn't draw his sword. He reached into the "Static" around him. To anyone else, the static was useless noise. To Kenji, it was the ultimate scrap.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: GHOST-RECYCLE (RANK 1)]
Kenji grabbed the corrupted data-streams. He didn't try to fix them; he embraced their corruption. He wove the "Ghost-Code" into his own aura, creating a cloak of shimmering, unstable reality.
The Logic-Hounds lunged. One snapped at Kenji's arm, but its teeth passed through him as if he were a hologram. Because Kenji was using "Deleted" code, the System's "Active" hunters couldn't even register his physical coordinates.
"My turn," Kenji said.
He struck back, his fists infused with the "Weight of the Forgotten." Every punch didn't just break the Hounds; it "Un-installed" them.
[LEVEL UP: 70 -> 72]
The Forgotten Smith watched, his shifting face momentarily settling on a look of awe. "You... you can weaponize the Deletion itself."
"I told you," Kenji said, standing over the dissipating geometric shards. "I'm a Scrapsmith. I don't care if the code is 'Active' or 'Deleted.' If it has a spark, I can forge with it."
The Forgotten Smith reached into his forge and pulled out a small, flickering ember. "This is the Core of 4.0. It's the last piece of a world that was too kind for the Architect. Add it to your Stars, Outlier. If you're going to face him, you'll need the strength of everyone he tried to forget."
Kenji took the ember. It merged with the Seventh Star, which turned from silver to a deep, haunting indigo.
[THE SEVENTH STAR EVOLVED: THE STAR OF REMEMBRANCE]
[NEW PASSIVE: GHOST-PHASE (50% CHANCE TO IGNORE SYSTEM-BASED DAMAGE)]
"The Architect's Spire is just beyond the Great Firewall," the Forgotten Smith said, his form beginning to fade into the static. "Go. Finish the work we couldn't."
As the Smith vanished, Kenji looked back at his team. They were all looking at him with a mix of fear and loyalty. He was becoming something more than a man a living repository of a dozen broken worlds.
"To the Firewall," Kenji said. "We're going to give the Architect a memory he can't delete."