The breach into the White Hegemony was not the glorious infiltration of a hero; it was the desperate, wet squeeze of three fugitives through a hole in the world's plumbing. Bas led the way, his massive frame groaning as he forced himself through a drainage vent that had been designed for water, not for a giant of a man with skin the color of hammered iron. With a final, violent shove that bent the titanium grate into a jagged U-shape, the Rook spilled out onto a floor of polished white marble.
Lyra followed, her Knight's agility allowing her to tumble through the gap and land in a crouch, her hand already on the hilt of her silver blade. Finally, Itachi stepped out. He was drenched from head to toe in a cocktail of sewer sludge and the iridescent black ichor of the Shadow-Hunter he had just dismantled.
"Status report," Itachi said, his voice as flat as if he were asking for the time. He didn't look like a legendary warrior; he looked like a drowned rat that had just crawled out of a nightmare.
"Status?" Bas grunted, pulling himself to his feet and checking his tower-shield. The massive hunk of metal had been scraped raw by the pipes. "The status is that we're standing in the middle of a literal sun, kid. My eyes feel like they're being fried in a pan."
He wasn't exaggerating. After the perpetual, smog-choked twilight of the Black Kingdom, the Grandmaster Academy's lower levels were blinding. Everything—the walls, the floors, the ceiling—was made of a brushed, high-grade chrome or sterile white marble. Hexagonal light panels pulsed with a steady, clinical glow, and the air smelled sharply of ozone and expensive bleach.
"Welcome to the 2nd Rank," Itachi said, ignoring his own discomfort. He flicked his wrist, and his internal System Interface projected a translucent blue hologram in front of him.
[Current Rank: 2 (Enemy Territory)]
[Target: 8th Rank (Promotion Zone)]
[Squares to Destination: 6]
He looked at the greyed-out icons of the higher pieces—the leaping silhouette of the Knight, the stoic Rook, the razor-sharp Bishop, and the terrifying, all-encompassing Queen. To the rest of the world, promotion was a myth, a bedtime story told to fodder to keep them marching into the meat-grinder. To Itachi, it was a mathematical certainty. He just needed the data. He just needed the "XP."
"We need to find a way to clean you up, Itachi," Lyra whispered, her eyes darting nervously down the long, sterile hallway. "You're leaving a trail of black blood on the most expensive floor I've ever seen. We might as well be screaming our location into a megaphone."
"I am aware," Itachi replied. He looked down at his ruined clothes. A glob of Krow's ichor dripped from his sleeve and hissed as it touched the white floor, leaving a corrosive black stain. "Analytically speaking, I am a biohazard. But it's a secondary concern. Bas, shield up. Lyra, center-file. We have company."
"How do you know?" Bas asked, but he was already moving, his massive shield clinking as it locked into his forearm.
"The floor," Itachi said, pointing down the hallway.
The polished marble acted like a mirror. Far in the distance, a series of rhythmic, metallic clicks echoed—the sound of synchronized marching. A moment later, a squad of eight White Pawns rounded the corner. These weren't like the starving, desperate fodder of the Black Kingdom. These were Hegemony "Augmented" Pawns—cloned infantry encased in sleek, power-assisted white armor. They carried light-pulse rifles and suppression batons that hummed with enough electricity to stop a heart.
"Pawn Storm," Itachi muttered.
"They've spotted us!" Lyra hissed, her silver blade singing as it left its scabbard.
"HALT," the lead White Pawn commanded, his voice a synthesized, robotic bark. "UNAUTHORIZED PIECES DETECTED ON SQUARE B-2. PREPARE FOR DELETION."
The eight soldiers didn't scramble for cover. They didn't panic. They simply formed a wall—two rows of four, shields overlapping, rifles leveled. It was a textbook defensive formation. To them, Itachi, Bas, and Lyra were just a "glitch" to be erased.
"They're going to pin us against the vent," Bas growled, bracing his weight against his shield. "If they start a pulse-fire volley, I can hold for a minute, maybe two. But after that, we're cooked."
"No," Itachi said. He stepped forward, moving in front of Bas's massive shield. He looked incredibly small against the backdrop of the sterile hallway—a blood-soaked boy facing a wall of high-tech soldiers. "They are playing by the Academy's book. That's their first mistake. They think a Pawn only moves one square at a time."
"Itachi, get back!" Lyra shouted as the lead White Pawn's rifle began to glow with a deadly blue light.
Itachi didn't move back. Instead, he reached into the small, hidden pocket of his vest and pulled out the shattered remains of Krow's Shadow-Core. It was still pulsing with a faint, dying purple light.
"Bas," Itachi said, his voice dropping to that cold, analytical hum. "When they fire, I need you to tilt your shield exactly thirty degrees to the left. Don't absorb the impact. Deflect it."
"You want me to bounce high-yield lasers in a hallway?" Bas yelled over the rising whine of the enemy rifles. "Are you trying to kill us or them?!"
"Geometry doesn't lie, Bas. Do it."
The lead White Pawn pulled the trigger. PEW-THOOM. A bolt of concentrated blue energy screamed down the hallway. At the exact micro-second of impact, Bas roared and angled his shield. The laser didn't explode; it hissed against the iron-grey surface and ricocheted off at a sharp angle, slamming into the wall and shattering a hexagonal light panel.
The hallway went into a strobe-light frenzy.
"Now, Lyra! [Jump]!"
Lyra didn't hesitate. She used the top of Bas's shield as a springboard, her Knight's ability triggering as she soared through the air. She bypassed the first row of White Pawns entirely, her blade a silver blur as she descended behind their line.
But the White Pawns were fast. The rear row spun around, their suppression batons crackling. "TARGET BYPASSED. INITIATING PINCER—"
They never finished the sentence.
Itachi had moved. He hadn't used a skill; he had simply used the chaos. He slid across the polished floor, the blood on his boots acting as a lubricant. He was beneath their line of sight before they could adjust. He jammed the jagged shard of Krow's Core directly into the power-pack of the nearest soldier.
[Skill Sync: Shadow Overload]
The Shadow-Core didn't just break; it bypassed the suit's insulation. The black mana within the shard reacted violently with the White soldier's light-tech. For a split second, the soldier turned into a silhouette of purple static before his armor detonated.
The explosion wasn't a fire; it was a vacuum. It pulled the other seven soldiers toward the center, their formations breaking as they stumbled.
"Gore time," Itachi whispered.
He didn't use a sword. He used his hands. With his [Shadow Syphon] still humming in his veins, he grabbed the faceplate of the nearest dazed soldier. He didn't just pull; he twisted with the mechanical force of a piece that had forgotten how to feel pain. There was a sickening CRACK-SHREK as the reinforced neck seals gave way. Red blood sprayed across Itachi's already ruined face, painting him in a fresh layer of crimson.
Beside him, Lyra was a whirlwind of silver. She didn't have Itachi's brutality, but she had his direction. She severed limbs with surgical precision, her blade humming as it carved through the white armor.
Bas didn't stay behind the shield. He used it as a weapon, charging forward like a literal battering ram. He slammed into the remaining three soldiers, the sheer mass of his Rook-class strength turning their "Augmented" armor into crumpled tin cans. The sound of ribs snapping under the pressure filled the corridor, a wet, crunching percussion to the alarm bells now beginning to wail in the distance.
Ten seconds. That was all it took.
The hallway was no longer white. It was a slaughterhouse. Eight bodies lay scattered across the marble, some missing heads, others crushed beyond recognition. Itachi stood in the center of the mess, his chest heaving slightly, his eyes tracking the fresh data streaming across his vision.
[Multiple Targets Deleted. Combined Value: High.]
[Rank Upgrade Progress: 72%... 85%... 91%]
"I'm almost there," Itachi breathed, the purple smoke from the consumed Core finally fading from his lips. He looked at his hands, which were shaking with a cocktail of adrenaline and mana-exhaustion.
"You're a terrifying little brat, you know that?" Bas said, wiping a smear of blood off his shield with a disgusted look. "You didn't just beat them. You dismantled them."
"They were obstacles," Itachi said, his voice returning to its deadpan chill. He looked toward the end of the hallway, where a massive set of blast doors was beginning to close. "And we just signaled the entire 2nd Rank that the trash is fighting back."
He turned to Lyra, who was staring at a severed hand on the floor with a pale face. "Lyra. Breathe. We have three squares to cross before the Knights arrive. And if my calculations are correct, the next square is where they keep the heavy artillery."
A small, dark smile touched Itachi's lips. "I've always wanted to see what a Rook can do when he's actually angry."