The coffee in Kaelen Vance's mug was lukewarm, a tragedy in its own right, but it paled in comparison to the discrepancy on the spreadsheet in front of him.
"Seventy million," Kaelen muttered, rubbing his temples. The blue light of the monitor reflected in his glasses. "How do you lose seventy million dollars in 'logistical errors'?"
He was sitting on the forty-second floor of the Aris Tower in downtown Seattle. It was 2:14 PM on a Tuesday. Below him, the city was a grey smear of rain and traffic. Inside, the office was the usual hum of white noise, clicking keyboards, and the quiet desperation of corporate finance.
Kaelen liked the quiet. He liked the numbers. Numbers didn't lie; they just waited for someone smart enough to read them. He picked up his pen to circle the error, but the ink didn't flow.
He shook the pen. Nothing. He looked up.
The office had stopped.
Not "stopped" in the sense that people had quit working. Stopped in the sense that Jerry from HR was frozen mid-stride, one foot hovering three inches off the carpet. A droplet of coffee spilling from a secretary's cup hung suspended in the air, a perfect brown sphere refusing to acknowledge gravity.
"Seismic activity?" Kaelen whispered, though he knew that made no sense. He stood up, his heart rate remaining oddly steady. He was a man who thrived on analyzing disasters, not panicking in them.
He walked to the window.
The rain outside had frozen. Millions of crystalline needles hung in the sky. But that wasn't what made his breath hitch.
The sky was peeling.
It looked like old wallpaper stripping away, revealing something Vantablack and terrible underneath. Through the tears in the atmosphere, colossal golden chains were descending. Each link was the size of a city block, glowing with runes that hurt his eyes to look at. They slammed into the earth—silently. There was no sound, no shockwave. Just the visual data of an impossible event.
Then, the text appeared.
It didn't appear on a screen. It burned itself directly onto his retina, overlaid on reality in a crisp, serif font that looked disturbingly like a legal notice.
[NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE]
Asset Class: Civilization Type-0.7 (Designation: "Humanity") Current Owner: Independent Status Status: DEFAULT
Reason: Failure to meet Entropy Generation Quotas for three consecutive galactic cycles.
Resolution: Liquidation. Protocol: The Great Auction commences in T-minus 10 seconds.
Kaelen read the words, his mind racing faster than it ever had during a hostile takeover. Foreclosure. Asset Class. Quotas.
This wasn't an invasion. It was a repossession.
"Who are we in debt to?" Kaelen asked the silence.
[System Integration Initiated] [Appraising Units...]
A wave of blue light swept through the office. It passed through the walls, through the desks, through Jerry. Above Jerry's head, a small holographic tag appeared.
[Unit: Jerry Miller] [Grade: F-] [Estimated Value: 4 Mana Stones] [Disposition: Fodder / Manual Labor]
Kaelen turned. Every person in the office had a tag. Susan (F-): 3 Mana Stones.
The VP of Finance (F): 5 Mana Stones.*
They were being priced. Like cattle.
The blue wave hit Kaelen.
He braced himself, expecting pain. Instead, he felt a cold, invasive sensation, like icy water trickling through the sulci of his brain. It felt like someone was rifling through his filing cabinets, reading his memories, judging his worth not by his muscle mass, but by the architecture of his mind.
[Scanning Unit: Kaelen Vance] [Physicality: F-] [Mana Capacity: Null] [Processing Power: S+] [Trait Detected: Obsessive Analytical Disorder / Cognitive Dissonance]
Error. Unit logic incompatible with standard Soldier/Worker paradigms. Re-evaluating...
Kaelen watched the text flicker. The blue light around him turned a deep, warning crimson.
[Unique Anomaly Detected.] [Unit attempts to quantify the System before the System quantifies the Unit.]
[Class Assignment Override.] Rerolling from [Scholar]... Rerolling from [Tactician]...
[Congratulations! You have awakened a Unique Non-Combat Class.]
[Class: The Auditor]
[Description:] The multiverse is a ledger. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. While others fight for scraps, you balance the books. You are the eye that sees the debt.
[Innate Skill 1: The Ledger's Eye (Passive)] You do not see Health or Mana. You see Assets and Liabilities. You can view the true value of any object, entity, or concept.
[Innate Skill 2: Foreclosure (Active)] If an entity generates a 'Math Error' (uses more energy than available, overexerts, or violates System logic), you may seize their assets to balance the equation.
The world unpaused.
CRACK.
The sound was deafening. The windows of the Aris Tower shattered inward. The wind howled, carrying the scream of millions. Jerry fell forward, stumbling, the coffee cup hit the floor.
"What—what is happening?" Jerry screamed, looking at the floating text above his head. "Four Mana Stones? What does that mean?"
Kaelen didn't answer. He was looking at the window.
A creature was climbing up the side of the skyscraper.
It looked like a wolf, if a wolf was made of obsidian and hate. It was the size of a van, its claws digging into the steel and glass of the building. It had no eyes, only a mouth full of spinning gears that ground together like a meat grinder.
[Entity: Void Scavenger] [Grade: E] [Asset Value: 150 Mana Stones] [Liability: High Hunger]
It smashed through the window, showering the finance department in glass.
Pandemonium. People scrambled over desks, screaming, trampling one another. The creature roared—a sound like metal tearing—and pounced. It landed on the VP of Finance.
Kaelen watched, frozen, not out of fear, but because his eyes were burning.
When the creature moved, Kaelen didn't see muscles flexing. He saw numbers.
Floating around the beast were streams of equations. Kinetic Energy Output: 4000 Joules. Mana Cost: 12. Current Reserve: 48/50.
The beast tore into the VP. Blood sprayed across the cubicles. The number above the VP's head—[5 Mana Stones]—dissolved, flowing into the beast. The beast's reserve ticked up: 53/50.
Kaelen blinked. 53/50?
A red flag appeared in Kaelen's vision.
[Audit Alert: Insolvency Detected] [Entity: Void Scavenger is operating at 106% efficiency due to 'Blood Frenzy' buff.] [System Logic Violation: Entity has exceeded localized mana cap for E-Grade existence.] [Debt: 3 Mana.]
The beast turned. It had finished its snack. It sniffed the air, the gears in its mouth whirring. It turned its eyeless head toward Jerry.
Jerry was cowering under a desk, sobbing.
The beast crouched, its muscles bunching up. The numbers spiked again. It was preparing a lunge that would require 20 Mana. It only had a cap of 15 for a single burst.
It was borrowing power from its own future to kill faster. It was over-leveraged.
Kaelen stepped forward. "Hey!"
The beast whipped its head toward him. It growled, a low subsonic vibration that rattled Kaelen's teeth.
"You're operating outside your budget," Kaelen said, his voice trembling slightly, but his mind sharp as a razor. He raised his hand. He didn't know how to use magic. He didn't know how to fight. But he knew how to file a claim.
He focused on that red flag. The [Debt: 3 Mana].
"I am calling in the debt," Kaelen commanded.
He activated [Foreclosure].
The world turned grey. A spectral scale appeared above the beast. On one side, the beast's soul. On the other, the number 3.
The scale tipped.
[Foreclosure Approved.] [Seizing Assets to cover Liability.]
The beast mid-pounce stopped in mid-air. It didn't freeze like the time-stop earlier. It glitched. Its body began to convulse. The black obsidian skin cracked, leaking blue light. The creature shrieked—not in anger, but in confusion.
Pop.
It was a small sound. The beast simply imploded. It folded in on itself, crushing into a singularity the size of a marble, before vanishing entirely.
Silence returned to the office, save for the wind howling through the broken window.
A small, glowing orb hovered where the beast had been. And a notification box floated in front of Kaelen.
[Audit Successful.] [Debt Collected.] [You have seized the collateral.]
Rewards: 1. +150 Existence Value (EV) 2. Skill Scroll: [Void Step] (Seized from asset) 3. 53 Mana Stones (Liquidated)
Kaelen stared at the spot where the monster had been. He looked at his hands. They were shaking now.
The VP was dead. The world had ended. Humans were currency.
Kaelen adjusted his glasses. He walked over to the glowing orb and picked it up. It was warm.
"Kaelen?" Jerry whispered from under the desk. "Did... did you just delete that thing?"
Kaelen looked at Jerry. He looked at the tag above Jerry's head. [F- Grade].
Then he looked out the window. In the distance, the Space Needle was collapsing, wrapped in the tentacles of something so large its name tag was obscured by the clouds.
The "Auction" had begun. And Kaelen was the only one who knew the tax code.
"Get up, Jerry," Kaelen said, pocketing the mana stones. "We're leaving."
"Where are we going?"
Kaelen looked at the floating text that marked the "Safe Zone" ten miles away.
"To the bank," Kaelen said. "I need to make a withdrawal."
[Status Window]
Name: Kaelen Vance
Class: The Auditor (Unique)
Level: 1
EV (Existence Value): 150
Assets: [Void Step], 53 Mana Stones.
Liabilities: None.
Kaelen walked toward the stairwell. The elevators were out, obviously. As he pushed open the door, he checked the global leaderboard that had just appeared in the corner of his vision.
[Global Rank: 1] [Kaelen Vance - 150 EV]
It wouldn't last. The fighters, the soldiers, the ones with the swords and fireballs—they would catch up fast. They would kill faster than he could audit.
But they were playing a game. Kaelen was running a business.
And in a liquidation sale, the auditor always gets paid first.
He took the first step down. 41 floors to go. And he could already see the numbers of the monsters on the floors below, rising like red ink on a balance sheet.
"Time to cook the books," he whispered.