Floor 108 did not look like a place where work occurred. It looked like a temple built to honor the concept of compounding interest.
The terminal platform was constructed entirely from seamless slabs of white marble, polished to such a mirror-like finish that the reflection of the golden ceiling lights gave the illusion of walking on liquid light. At the center of the grand concourse, a thirty-foot waterfall of chilled, mineral-infused water cascaded over tiers of frosted glass, filling the wide hall with a soft, expensive mist.
There were no crowds here. No scavengers hauling scrap bags, no street vendors screaming over the whine of uncalibrated generators, no guards in dented iron plating. There were only high-tier corporate liaisons in tailored silk suits, walking with the quiet, effortless speed of people who had never once worried about their monthly calorie allocation.
Then the first-class transit car pulled into Dock 4.
The pneumatic doors hissed open, releasing a small, residual puff of freezing atmospheric air from eighty-four thousand feet.
Vanta stepped out onto the pristine white marble.
He didn't walk fast. His movement was a slow, deliberate cadence—a dark, six-foot-four silhouette carved from pure, non-reflective Vanta-black matter. The golden ceiling lights hit his broad shoulders and simply ceased to exist, creating a moving, humanoid shadow that threw off the ambient lighting of the entire platform. Every footstep was entirely silent, swallowed whole by the acoustic void of his Void Stride.
Beside his shoulder, Spike floated in its sleek aluminum shell, its single optical lens whirring rapidly as it took in the surroundings.
"Boss," Spike murmured through a private short-range frequency. "The platform security grid is running an automatic Class-S threat assessment. We've got forty-eight optical sensors, twelve thermal sweeps, and four high-frequency energy dampeners locked onto your chest plate right now."
"Let them sweep," Vanta deadpanned, his featureless black face turned slightly toward the grand waterfall. "A Class-S sweep measures energy output and weapon signatures. I am currently holding no weapons, and my energy output is zero."
"Yeah, but you look like an active void in their ledger, boss!"
"That is an aesthetic choice, not a crime," Vanta replied smoothly.
[Location: Aethelgard Hegemony — Executive Concourse 108]
[Security Level: Maximum (Class-S Matrix)]
[Active Protocol: Vanta Black Tier 2]
[Dignity Stat: 100/100 (Unblemished)]
A dozen paces down the marble concourse, three men stepped out from behind a line of decorative marble pillars. They were not line operatives. They wore tailored black frock coats adorned with gold-leaf embroidery along the cuffs—Grandmaster's Personal Escorts (Level 38). Each man carried a polished silver cane topped with a glowing, high-density plasma orb.
The lead escort—a man with immaculate, slicked-back platinum hair and a silver monocle—held up a gloved hand, stopping ten yards short of Vanta.
"Unregistered unit," the lead escort said, his tone carrying the practiced, bored condescension of a man who managed multi-billion-credit asset portfolios. "You have crossed into the Executive Concourse of Grandmaster Vane-Zero without a formal appointment or a corporate escort. Identify your manufacturer and present your asset title."
Vanta stopped. His single, brilliant golden eye-ring burned in the center of his dark face, casting a cold amber glow over the lead escort's polished shoes.
"My manufacturer was an uncalibrated forge captain who used low-grade iron and a third-hand plasma torch," Vanta said, his deep baritone vibrating quietly through the air. "My asset title is currently unassigned."
The lead escort's monocle flared with a series of rapidly updating amber diagnostic lines. "A rogue scrap chassis from the lower sectors. Remarkable that a piece of foundry refuse managed to survive the transit rail. However, you are currently standing on private corporate marble. The penalty for unauthorized mass placement on Floor 108 is immediate molecular reclamation."
"I am aware," Vanta replied, taking a single, silent step forward. "I am here to audit the Grandmaster's operational efficiency."
"The Grandmaster does not take audits from scrap," the escort said coldly.
He raised his silver cane. The plasma orb at the tip ignited with a blinding, high-frequency white light, humming at twelve thousand hertz—a charge capable of vaporizing a light armored vehicle in half a second. The two escorts behind him raised their canes in unison, locking three overlapping targeting beams directly onto Vanta's chest plate.
[Threat Matrix Updated: 3x Executive Escorts (Lv. 38)]
[Targeting System: High-Frequency Plasma Discharge]
[Win Probability: 100%]
[System Advice: The marble floor cost 4,000 credits per square foot. Please dispose of the targets cleanly to maintain environmental dignity.]
"Vanta," Spike whispered, flying up to perch safely behind Vanta's left ear. "Their plasma canes are running on localized fusion cells. If you take a direct hit, the heat output is roughly four thousand degrees Celsius."
"Sub-optimal thermal management," Vanta noted. "They are wasting energy on illumination."
"Fire," the lead escort commanded.
Three streams of superheated, blinding white plasma erupted from the silver canes, converging into a single, roaring column of raw heat that surged across the white marble floor, melting the polished stone into a trench of glowing, liquid glass.
The plasma hit Vanta dead center.
THOOOOOM!
The blinding light illuminated the entire concourse, the sheer thermal output causing the nearby waterfall to instantly flash into a thick cloud of white steam. The escorts maintained the discharge for three full seconds, their silver canes humming under the extreme electrical load before cutting off with a soft, pneumatic hiss.
The steam slowly cleared.
The trench of melted marble was glowing orange, white-hot slag dripping into the sub-floor conduits below.
Standing in the exact center of the molten trench was Vanta.
His dark-matter chassis didn't have a single scorch mark. The four-thousand-degree plasma hadn't burned his frame; it had been completely absorbed by his Tier 2 dark-matter weave. His seamless chest plate was glowing with a faint, deep-violet hue as his internal Void Gauge converted the extreme heat directly into usable kinetic reserve.
[Skill Active: Thermal Void (Passive Tier 2)]
[Energy Absorbed: 48,000 Joules]
[Primal/Void Gauge: 35% -> 85%]
Vanta looked down at his own right hand, flexing his liquid carbon fingers as small, violet arcs of residual thermal energy danced across his knuckles.
"Your heat distribution is horribly inefficient," Vanta deadpanned, looking up at the three escorts. "Seventy percent of your output was lost to atmospheric steam. You are wasting the Hegemony's electricity."
The lead escort stepped back, his slicked-back hair falling out of place as his silver monocle shattered under the sudden influx of error warnings flashing across his HUD. "Illogical! A carbon-based frame cannot absorb a localized fusion discharge!"
"Your frame cannot," Vanta corrected softly. "Mine is better calibrated."
[Skill Activated: Void Stride (Max Velocity)]
Vanta disappeared.
There was no sonic boom, no flash of displaced light, no sound of boots striking stone. Thanks to Void Stride, Vanta simply ceased to occupy his previous coordinates and materialised directly in front of the lead escort.
Before the man could even drop his silver cane, Vanta's left hand shot out. His dark-matter claws closed around the man's throat seal, lifting the Level 38 escort clean off the ground with one arm.
The other two escorts panicked, bringing their canes around to fire at point-blank range.
Vanta didn't turn around. He simply flared his shoulder plates.
[Release: Stored Thermal Energy (Radial Vent)]
BOOM!
The forty-eight thousand joules of absorbed plasma heat erupted from Vanta's back in a concentrated, narrow fan of deep-violet flame. The two escorts behind him didn't even have time to raise their arms before the thermal shockwave hit them, incinerating their silver canes and melting their tailored frock coats into useless ash, launching them thirty feet back across the platform to slam hard against the marble pillars.
They hit the stone and slid down, completely unconscious, their high-tier HUDs permanently fried.
The lead escort, still dangling five feet in the air by Vanta's grip, was trembling so violently his silver monocle frame fell from his cheek and shattered on the ground.
"You..." the lead escort choked out, his hands clawing uselessly at Vanta's smooth, unyielding dark-matter wrist. "What... what kind of chassis are you?"
Vanta raised his right hand, extending a single, razor-sharp black claw to gently tap the access card pinned to the escort's lapel—a platinum pass key gleaming with the Executive Seal of Floor 108.
"I am a non-refundable expense," Vanta deadpanned.
He plucked the platinum pass key from the man's coat, tossed it over his shoulder to Spike, and casually dropped the lead escort onto the white-hot, melted trench of marble below. The man scrambled out of the slag with a shriek of terror, crawling backward on his hands and knees until his back hit the base of the waterfall.
[Targets Neutralized: 3x Executive Escorts]
[XP Gained: 60,000]
[Acquired Item: Platinum Executive Keycard (Level-S Clearance)]
Spike caught the platinum card in its small mechanical claw, running a quick diagnostic sweep over the microchip. "Boss! This keycard opens the private orbital lift directly to Grandmaster Vane-Zero's penthouse suite! No security stops, no automated checkpoints!"
"Excellent," Vanta said, adjusting his cuffs as the dark-matter micro-fibers slicked back into an unblemished, light-swallowing state. "Is the lift carpeted?"
"Looks like velvet and mahogany, boss!" Spike chirped.
"Good," Vanta replied, stepping past the groaning escort toward the gilded double doors at the end of the concourse. "I would hate for my entry to lack presentation."