As Kael ran, he was exhausted from the effort, but he successfully escaped the Commanders of the Order. After his escape, he went to the safe house where he and Ari were staying.
Kael successfully reunited with Ari.
"Where were you?" Ari said.
"I successfully invaded their HQ and gained some information. I thought I was going to die when they realized I was there."
"Why did you go alone? What if they had caught you and killed you? Do you know how worried I was? I was just thinking about going to get you. What would you have done if they caught you? They would have killed you right away. Right there."
"Yeah, but I am alive right now, and that's important, isn't it?"
Ari approached Kael with a bitter smile. "And being alive is enough? You think you have done everything?"
"Ah, yes, yes. I'm sorry. I won't do that again."
Ari looked at him, her eyes fierce. "You promise?"
"I promise," Kael said. He meant it, but even as the words left his lips, he felt a cold shiver crawl up his spine. The System was humming—a low-frequency vibration that only he could hear. It was the sound of a predator settling into a long hunt.
Ari's expression softened, the fire in her eyes replaced by a weary sadness. She reached out, her fingers hovering over a jagged tear in his sleeve where the fabric had been seared away by Axiom's golden light. "Good. Because this city... it feels different now, Kael. The air tastes like copper. The shadows are moving when they shouldn't."
"It's the Lockdown," Kael muttered, his voice dropping an octave. "The Order isn't just looking for us; they are rewriting the permissions of the city. We aren't residents anymore. We are 'Viruses' marked for deletion."
"Then we need to leave for the next town," Ari said, her voice regaining its strength. "Before the walls finish closing in."
Yes, i was also think the same though.
But how do we escaped this place there are many people of order here.
Order.
Yes, that's the organisation name that were trying to kill me. I'll share everything I know.
Kael tell Ari evrything what he heard in the HQ of the Order.
Hmm, so there is 8 commanders of this organisation called order right? And someone is They call He who is controlling this organisation.
Yea we need to became strong so we can fight them right now we are so weak so even if we faught we'll lose to them.
So how do we escaped this place.
They both were thinking of some plan to escape the city. But no one is able to think for a plan.
After think for a while, kael had a suddenly got an idea.
Kael stared at the flickering floorboards. "If we can't go out through the gates, we go down."
"Down?" Ari asked, her brow furrowed. "You mean the sewers?"
"Lower than that," Kael said, his eyes glowing with a faint violet light. "In the HQ, I saw a map of the 'Old Logic' tunnels. They are Corrupted Zones—places the System hasn't updated in years. The Order can't track us there because their 'Eye' can't see through the glitches."
Ari looked hesitant, but she nodded. "If it's the only way, we take it."
They moved through the city's back alleys until they reached a rusted maintenance hatch hidden behind a pile of discarded crates. Kael pried it open, and instead of the smell of sewage, a cold, static-filled wind blew out.
As they descended the iron ladder, the air began to pixelate. The walls weren't just stone anymore; they were shimmering blocks of grey and black data.
[Warning: Entering Corrupted Zone - 'The Sub-Grid']
[Map Data: Unavailable]
[System Visibility: 0%]
"Stay close to me," Kael whispered. He reached out and grabbed Ari's hand. "I'm going to try something."
He closed his eyes and pushed his Abyss energy outward. Instead of a weapon, he imagined a veil—a shroud of absolute silence.
[Skill Evolving: 'Silence' is merging with Abyss Core...]
[New Skill Unlocked: 'Void Shroud']
Description: Conceals the user and one ally from all digital and physical detection. Cost: 5 Stamina per minute.
"Can you feel that?" Ari whispered, looking at her own hands. They were turning semi-transparent, blending into the flickering shadows of the tunnel.
"It's the Void Shroud," Kael muttered, his face pale from the effort. "We have to move fast. This drains me every second."
They began to jog through the glitching tunnels. Everything was silent—unnervingly silent. But as they rounded a corner where the walls were literally tearing apart into white noise, Kael stopped dead.
In the middle of the path, a figure was standing. It wasn't a human, and it wasn't a Commander. It was a System Guardian—a mindless, Level 50 sentinel designed to delete anything that entered the Corrupted Zone.
Its "head" was a floating red eye, and its body was made of jagged blades.
"Kael..." Ari gasped, her voice barely a breath.
The Guardian's eye swiveled toward them. It couldn't see them through the Shroud, but it could sense the heat of their existence.
"Don't move," Kael commanded, his hand tightening on Ari's. "If we fight, the Shroud breaks. If the Shroud breaks, the Eight Commanders will see our location instantly."
The Guardian drifted closer, its blades scraping against the glitching floor. Skreeee.
The Guardian didn't have a face, but Kael could feel its "gaze" tearing through his Void Shroud. The red light from its floating eye washed over them, turning the grey data-walls a blood-like crimson. Every time its blades scraped the floor—Skreeee—a spark of white static flew off, momentarily illuminating the dark tunnel.
Kael felt Ari's hand trembling in his. Her fingers were ice-cold. If he stayed still, they would be detected by the Guardian's heat sensors. If he moved, the sound would trigger its combat protocols.
[Stamina: 4%]
[Warning: Void Shroud flickering...]
Damn it, Kael thought, his vision blurring. Not like this. Not to a mindless drone.
The Guardian stopped. It was barely two meters away. The hum of its internal core sounded like a thousand bees. It tilted its "head," the red lens dilating as it analyzed the "empty" space where Kael and Ari stood. It knew something was there. A "Logic Error" it couldn't ignore.
Kael knew he couldn't fight, so he did the only thing an Administrator-in-waiting could do. He stopped trying to hide from the System and started trying to command it.
"Ari," Kael whispered, his voice so low it was almost a vibration. "When I say run... don't look back."
He didn't pull his sword. Instead, he reached out his left hand—the one marked by the Abyss—and touched the glitching, pixelated wall of the tunnel.
[Internal Directive: Accessing Sub-Grid Permissions...]
[Warning: Unauthorized Access Detected]
[Attempting to 'Overwrite' Local Gravity.roar]
The Abyss energy didn't flow out like a blast; it leaked into the wall like black ink in water. Kael wasn't attacking the Guardian; he was attacking the floor underneath it.
"Now!" Kael roared.
The stone beneath the Guardian didn't just break; it deleted. A three-meter square of reality simply vanished, leaving a void of pure white static. The Level 50 Guardian, caught mid-calculation, plummeted into the digital abyss. It didn't even make a sound as it fell—the "Logic" of the room simply no longer recognized its existence.
Kael and Ari didn't wait to see where it went. They sprinted.
As they ran, the tunnel behind them began to collapse. Because Kael had deleted a piece of the "Sub-Grid," the rest of the sector was trying to "Auto-Correct" itself by crashing.
"Kael, your eyes!" Ari screamed as they ran.
Kael didn't need a mirror to know what she meant. He could feel it. Black liquid was leaking from his tear ducts, and his veins were glowing a violent, toxic purple. He had reached 0% Stamina, but he wasn't stopping. He was running on Abyss Burn now—using his very life force to keep his legs moving.
[Alert: Life Force Consumption Active]
[Status: Near-Death Evolution]
They reached a ladder at the end of the corridor. Kael practically threw Ari up the rungs. As he climbed up behind her, his vision started to go dark.
They burst through another hatch, collapsing onto hard, dry dirt. The air was different here—cleaner, but heavy with the scent of pine trees. They were outside the city. They were in the Borderlands.
But as Kael tried to catch his breath, he realized they weren't alone.
Standing in the shadow of a large oak tree was a man wearing a traveling cloak. He wasn't an assassin. He didn't have the mark of The Order. He held a simple wooden staff, but the System window above his head sent a chill down KaeChronicler
[Name: Unknown]
[Level: ???]
[Class: The Chronicler]
"You've caused quite a mess in the Sub-Grid, little Seed," the man said, his voice as calm as a summer breeze. "But I suppose a Re-Write is never a clean process."