The sudden, brutal clarity of the Corruption Debt slamming down on him was instantly followed by the worst psychic agony Acheron had ever felt. It was a targeted deletion, not of an image, but of a deeply held concept.
[DEBT THRESHOLD REACHED. COMMENCE IDENTITY PURGE.]
[MEMORY FRAGMENT 002. CONCEPT: FAIRNESS. DELETING...]
A flash of memory: his younger self, arguing with a landlord over a ruined security deposit. A fierce, righteous conviction that things must be right. The core belief that the Vigil's betrayal was fundamentally wrong.
Then, nothing. The feeling of righteous anger was simply replaced by a cold, calculating void. He no longer cared if the Vigil was "wrong." He only cared that they were an obstacle.
Acheron barely registered the chaos around him. The System, busy finalizing the purge and recalculating his Corruption Debt accrual, missed the crucial two seconds that followed.
He was still kneeling over the broker, whose blood had gifted him the knowledge of Archaic Runes. His eyes, razor-sharp, scanned the immediate vicinity. He spotted it: a large, iron-banded container near the back wall, sealed with crude, glowing etchings.
It's a containment seal. Old magic.
His new skill, Linguistics (Archaic Runes, Lvl 1), was an immediate, visceral understanding. He didn't read the symbols; he felt their purpose. The runes were a simple sequence designed to hold an artifact or a specific type of elemental energy stable.
[TIME WINDOW: HIGH CHAOS / VIGIL INTERVENTION IMMINENT.]
"Acheron! Report your status!" Kellan's voice crackled through the comms. "Your last energy spike was unacceptable! We have teams inbound to clean up the contamination, stand down!"
Acheron ignored him. He stumbled to the container, his hands moving not with the grace of his locked Celerity, but with the precise, frantic logic of the new rune knowledge. The sequence was [SEAL-BIND-LOCK]. To break the seal safely would take hours. To trigger a destructive malfunction took seconds.
He jammed the silver-coated tip of his utility knife into the SEAL rune and twisted, forcing the raw metal of the knife to disrupt the circuit.
The runes screamed silently, collapsing inward. The container didn't explode outwardly, but the seal failed, releasing a massive surge of pent-up kinetic energy and dust. The iron bands burst, whipping outwards and tearing through the warehouse supports.
BOOM!
The explosion was spectacular, localized, and loud enough to mask a hundred sins. Debris rained down, burying the bodies of the human thugs and the infected brokers, including the one Acheron had fed from.
[CURRENT OBJECTIVE: TERMINATED DUE TO ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE.]
[NEW SYSTEM OBJECTIVE: EVACUATE AREA IMMEDIATELY. RISK OF STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE.]
Acheron, protected from the worst of the blast by a metal container, scrambled into the shadows. The System Glitch had bought him not time, but the perfect scapegoat: the black market raid had failed due to a sudden, magical artifact breach—a factor outside of Acheron's operational control.
He burst out of a rear fire escape just as the Vigil's armored response vehicles screamed toward the entrance. He wasn't running from the crime; he was running from the inevitable consequence.
He reported over the comms, his voice steady. "Structural integrity failed. Source: unknown high-energy artifact breach in Section C. Mission status: Cleanse Protocol complete via structural collapse. Extracting to secondary safe-zone."
He heard Kellan choke on the other end. "Artifact breach? Damn it! The cost of that containment seal..."
Acheron smiled, a cold, empty expression that felt alien on his face. I don't care about the cost, Kellan. That concept has been purged.
He was still suffering the 72-hour System Lockdown, but he had a new skill, a powerful cover story, and a terrifying clarity of purpose: to get stronger, no matter what it cost him.