The "Great Reclamation" had changed the sky. Instead of the suffocating golden dome of the System, the firmament above the Three Layers was now a swirling aurora of violet and emerald, the visible remnants of Kenji's "Outlier" code.
But in the Iron Graveyard, the air was silent.
"He's been gone for thirty days," Bjorn said, his voice echoing in the hollow shell of the Scrap-Venture. He was polishing the World-Root Splitter, though the axe already shone with a preternatural light. "The world is healing, the Steam-Wastes are cooling down, and the Jade Empire is blooming... but the guy who did it isn't here to see it."
Elara sat on the edge of the boarding ramp, looking out at the horizon. "He's not 'gone,' Bjorn. The System Sight still registers a signature. But it's... everywhere. He's the background noise of the planet now."
[STATUS: WORLD RECOVERY 92%]
[CURRENT RANK: ???]
[THREAT LEVEL: NEGLIGIBLE... FOR NOW]
Mateo ran a hand through his messy hair, staring at a new, flickering monitor on his Synapse-Hub. "Guys, we have a problem. A big one. The Architect wasn't the top of the food chain. He was just a Middle Manager. When Kenji deleted him and ran the 'Outlier' restore, he broke the contractual agreement with the Outer-Rim Syndicate."
"The who?" Priya asked, looking up from a bowl of spirit-rice.
"The Syndicate," Mateo whispered, his face turning pale. "The beings who own the hardware the Three Layers are running on. We just spent sixty-nine chapters fighting the software. Now, the hardware owners are sending a 'Maintenance Crew' to find out why their server is leaking violet light."
A shadow suddenly fell over the Iron Graveyard. It wasn't a cloud. It was a massive, geometric needle kilometers long piercing through the aurora sky. It looked like a needle made of polished chrome and cold, blue lasers.
[SYSTEM EVENT: EXTERNAL PATCH DETECTED]
[SOURCE: THE OVER-VOID]
[INITIATING: HARDWARE AUDIT]
"That doesn't look like a garden," Bjorn growled, grabbing his axe.
A beam of blue light shot down from the needle, hitting the center of the Graveyard. Where the light touched the ground, the "Scrap" didn't just break it vanished, replaced by perfectly smooth, gray cubes of "Non-Matter."
From the light emerged a figure that made the Architect look primitive. It was a tall, spindly being made of liquid mercury, wearing a suit of "Data-Armor" that pulsed with a Rank that Mateo's hub couldn't even calculate.
[TARGET: SYNDICATE ADJUSTER - UNIT X]
[RANK: ERROR - OUT OF BOUNDS]
"This sector has been flagged for 'Total Decommissioning'," the Adjuster spoke, its voice sounding like ice breaking. "The local administrator has been deleted. The source code has been corrupted by 'Sentiment' and 'Recursive Trash.' This hardware will be wiped and repurposed for a New-Gen Simulation."
"The hell it will!" Bjorn roared, leaping forward. He swung his axe with enough force to level a building.
The Adjuster didn't move. It simply raised a finger. A blue "Boundary Line" appeared in the air. When Bjorn's axe hit the line, the kinetic energy didn't bounce back, it was stored.
"Kinetic energy: 40,000 Joules. Diverting to local power-grid," the Adjuster said.
Bjorn's axe simply stopped dead in the air, its momentum erased.
"You are artifacts of a failed version," the Adjuster said, its mercury face ripples. "You will be archived in the Null-Library. Do not resist the cleanup."
"Hey!"
The voice didn't come from the ground. It came from the pile of junk the Adjuster was standing on.
A shimmering, translucent hand reached out of a rusted pile of gears. Then an arm. Then a shoulder. Kenji Tanaka pulled himself out of the scrap as if he were climbing out of a swimming pool.
He didn't have his Void-Weaver armor. He was wearing the same grease-stained shirt and trousers from Chapter 1. But his skin was etched with glowing violet lines that pulsed like a heartbeat, and his eyes were a piercing, infinite white.
[CHARACTER RETURN: KENJI TANAKA]
[CLASS: THE SMITH OF ALL THINGS]
[RANK: 0 (TRUE)]
"Kenji!" Elara shouted, her eyes filling with tears.
Kenji didn't look back. He looked at the liquid-metal Adjuster. "You're trespassing on my workshop."
The Adjuster's mercury face shifted. "The Anomaly. You are the 'Outlier' that caused the logic-crash. Your Rank is 0. You are a rounding error."
"In your world, maybe," Kenji said, picking up a bent piece of copper pipe from the ground. "But in this world, 0 is where everything starts."
Kenji tapped the copper pipe against his palm. The pipe didn't just glow; it expanded. The "Non-Matter" cubes the Adjuster had created suddenly began to vibrate.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: HARDWARE RECYCLING (RANK 1)]
"You think you own the hardware?" Kenji asked, stepping toward the Adjuster. The ground beneath his feet didn't just support him; it rose up to meet him, the scrap arranging itself into a throne of jagged steel. "I spent a month becoming the ghost in your machine. I don't just use the code anymore. I am the metal."
Kenji swung the copper pipe. It didn't hit the Adjuster's "Boundary Line." It Recycled the line itself. The blue laser-wall turned into a harmless stream of copper-colored mana that Kenji absorbed back into his skin.
"Maintenance is over," Kenji said, his voice echoing with the power of the three Layers combined. "Tell your Syndicate that the Gutter is under new management."
The Adjuster hissed, its liquid body beginning to boil as Kenji's "Density" forced it to take a solid, heavy form. "The Outer-Rim will not permit a Rank 0 to hold a Sovereign Sector!"
"Then let them come," Kenji said, his white eyes flashing. "I've got a lot of scrap left to sort."
[LEVEL UP: ???]
[QUEST INITIATED: THE SYNDICATE WAR]