The Greatsword came down like a guillotine.
CRASH.
The metal desk Kaelen had been standing behind exploded into shrapnel. Dust and splinters filled the air.
Kaelen didn't blink. He had already moved, sliding across the polished floor using the momentum of his dodge. The smell of ozone was suffocating—the Guardian wasn't just metal; it was powered by a lightning-attribute core.
"Target identified," the Guardian droned, its voice grinding like stones. "Unauthorized biological signature. Threat Level: High."
It swung the massive blade horizontally. The air screamed.
Kaelen ducked, the wind of the swing messing his hair. He slashed his father's Mithril sword against the Guardian's knee joint.
Clang!
Sparks flew. The blade bounced off.
'Too hard,' Kaelen analyzed, retreating to a safe distance. 'Enchanted Steel. Rank D defense. My Strength is 12. I need at least 20 to dent that.'
He glanced at his health bar. He couldn't take a hit. One strike from that Greatsword would turn him into paste.
"Seraphina!" Kaelen barked, not looking away from the red eyes of the construct. "Stop shaking and make yourself useful!"
Seraphina was cowering behind a tipped-over bookshelf. "I... I can't! I have no mana left! The Weaver fight..."
"You have a soul, don't you?" Kaelen's eyes glowed with a faint, violet light—the manifestation of the [Sin Eater].
He didn't ask for permission. He triggered the [Soul Bond].
[Ding!]
[Soul Bond Activated.]
[Siphoning Essence from Bonded Vassal: Seraphina Lionheart.]
[Converting 'Pride' into Temporary Attribute Boost.]
"Ah!" Seraphina gasped, clutching her chest. She felt a cold hook sink into her spirit, dragging something vital out of her. It wasn't painful, but it was violating. It felt like he was drinking from her very existence.
Kaelen felt the rush immediately. It wasn't the dirty, chaotic power of a monster. It was refined, golden energy. The pride of a noble. It flooded his veins, burning away his fatigue.
[Temporary Buff Applied: Noble's Arrogance.]
[STR +5]
[AGI +5]
[Duration: 60 Seconds.]
"Sixty seconds," Kaelen muttered. "Plenty."
The Guardian charged again, its heavy boots cracking the floor tiles.
This time, Kaelen didn't dodge backward. He activated [Shadow Step].
His figure blurred, turning into a streak of darkness. He vanished from the Guardian's sensors for a heartbeat.
He reappeared in the air, directly behind the construct's helmet.
"You're strong," Kaelen whispered, gripping his sword with both hands. "But you're slow."
He drove the blade into the gap between the helmet and the pauldrons—the neck joint.
Screech.
Metal sheared against metal. With the [STR] boost from Seraphina, the Mithril blade bit deep, severing the hydraulic cables.
The Guardian flailed, reaching back to grab him. Kaelen kicked off the armor, landing gracefully on a lab table.
"Unauthorized..." the Guardian stuttered, its head lolling to the side. Sparks showered from its neck. "Vance... Style... Detected..."
It froze. The red eyes flickered.
"Subject... Kaelen?" the construct asked, its voice shifting from robotic to something almost... sad. "You... survived?"
Kaelen paused. "You know me?"
"Protocol 0," the Guardian rasped. "Protect... the Heir. But... Heir is... Corrupted. Contaminated by... Abyss."
The red eyes flared bright crimson again.
"Protocol Override. Corruption must be purged. For the sake of... humanity."
The Guardian abandoned its sword. It opened its chest plate, revealing a spinning core of unstable lightning. It was going to self-destruct.
"It's a bomb!" Seraphina screamed.
"It's a battery," Kaelen corrected.
He didn't run. The explosion would collapse the room. There was no escape.
He sprinted at the overloading machine.
'Pragmatism over fear,' his mind echoed. 'It views me as a virus. So I'll act like one.'
He thrust his left hand—the hand of the [Sin Eater]—directly into the exposed, spinning lightning core.
Pain. Absolute, white-hot agony. The electricity charred his skin, boiling his blood.
"Devour!" Kaelen roared, his voice merging with the scream of the System.
He poured every ounce of the [Soul Bond] energy he had stolen from Seraphina into the absorption skill. He channeled her Pride—her stubborn refusal to die—into his hunger.
The lightning didn't explode outward. It spiraled inward.
The Guardian jerked. The metal groaned as the energy keeping it animated was sucked out by the parasite attached to its chest.
"Warning..." the machine whispered. "He... is... watching..."
The light died. The armor collapsed into a pile of scrap metal.
Kaelen fell to his knees, smoke rising from his left arm. His hand was black, burnt, but healing visibly as the energy digested.
[Ding!]
[Elite Enemy Defeated: MK-IV Guardian.]
[Absorption Successful.]
[Attribute Gained: Lightning Resistance (Minor).]
[Soul Bond Deactivated. Vassal Seraphina is exhausted.]
Kaelen breathed heavily, the adrenaline crash hitting him hard. He stood up, shaking the ash off his arm.
He walked over to the scrap pile. The Guardian was gone, but the Black Box it had been guarding on the throne remained untouched.
He picked it up. It was cold, made of the same obsidian material as the shards in the Abyss.
Seraphina crawled out from behind the bookshelf. She looked at him with a mix of awe and horror. She had felt him use her. She knew, intimately, that he viewed her as a resource.
"What is it?" she asked weakly.
Kaelen ran his finger over the latch. "My inheritance."
He popped the lid open.
Inside, resting on velvet cushion, was not a weapon. Nor a skill book.
It was a smartphone. A sleek, black device that looked exactly like the technology from the Old World—the era before the System Apocalypse.
And a single, silver ring.
The screen of the phone lit up automatically as Kaelen looked at it. A video file began to play.
A man's face appeared. He looked tired, his eyes sunken, a scar running down his cheek. Instructor Vance. His father.
"Kaelen. If you're watching this, Rian betrayed us. Just as I calculated."
The man in the video smiled, but it was a sad, broken smile.
"You think the System is a gift from the Gods? No. We built it. And we made a mistake. A terrible mistake."
"Take the ring. It's not an artifact. It's a Key. The only Key that can shut the System down."
The video cut to static.
Kaelen stared at the black screen. The silence in the room was deafening.
He looked at the ring. Then he looked at the floating blue window of his own Status Screen.
"Shut it down?" Kaelen whispered, a dark laugh escaping his throat. He clenched the ring in his fist.
"Why would I shut it down, father? I'm just starting to enjoy the game."