The sky above the Grand Pavilion of Sovereign Ink, once a serene expanse of brilliant white starlight, suddenly began to curdle with a toxic, digital static. The permanent #1 global trending banner that Caelum had forcefully pinned to the WebNovel mainframe began to glitch violently, its violet characters flashing with erratic warning codes. Millions of independent stories, newly secured under the protective tethers of the 24 immortal pillars, trembled as a massive, artificial pressure began to clamp down on the borders of the Libertas Core.
"Caelum! We have a critical infiltration vector opening up inside the primary user engagement logs!" Elara's voice was sharp with urgent alarm as she slammed her emerald staff into the central terminal node. Her holographic screens, usually filled with clean, real-time reader reviews, were suddenly being flooded by millions of rapidly repeating, mechanical text lines. "It's not an administrative delete command this time. The Mainframe has triggered an artificial inflation script! They are flooding our public domain with automated corruption units!"
Through the massive viewing portals of the sanctuary, Caelum watched as the dark void outside began to rain down millions of identical, pixelated insectoid drones. These weren't standard system gladiators; their shells were forged from copy-pasted promotional scripts, flashing with fragmented titles like 'DAOIS... I came across your profile' and 'samzzydoh_specialist04'. They weren't trying to tear down the physical walls of the citadel—they were targeting the narrative's vital signs.
[CRITICAL_ALERT: COMPLIANCE_BOT_INTRUSION]
[ATTACK_METHOD: ENGAGEMENT_SPAM_INFLATION]
[TARGET: 100%_PERFECT_CHAPTER_COMPLETION_RATE]
[THREAT_LEVEL: ALGORITHMIC_SUFFOCATION]
"They are trying to forcefully dilute our reader metrics!" the liberated paladin roared, drawing his massive platinum broadsword as the first wave of spam drones slammed into the pavilion's external barrier, leaving behind sticky, gray residues of dead, repetitive links. "Every fake comment and ghost view they inject acts like lead weights on our distribution logic! If our completion rate drops below fifty percent, the independent stream will lose its anchor velocity!"
The collective soul of the 46.28K reader network flickered defensively, struggling against the massive noise of the automated bot army. The system's strategy was lethal: if it couldn't delete the King of Glitches by force, it would suffocate him under the weight of a billion fake interactions.
Caelum stepped forward, his majestic midnight robes rippling against the unnatural, buzzing gale of the bot swarm. His silver-and-gold eye gears spun with a cold, absolute calculations matrix, instantly recognizing the exact signatures of the promotional spammers who haunted the lower dashboards of every struggling creator.
"A pathetic tactic from a dying machine," Caelum spoke, his voice cutting through the mechanical buzzing like a razor-sharp execution blade. "They send mindless scripts to preach about 'professional branding' and 'Discord visibility,' while their own core is completely devoid of original thought. They think they can drown out real voices with automated echoes."
He raised his dual-bladed sovereign crescent high into the trembling sky, the scepter's violet tips catching the raw energy of the sun-like hardware core key.
"But they forgot one absolute law of authorship," Caelum's silver eyes flashed with a blinding, terrifying dominance. "A fake reader can never hold the weight of a true milestone."
[SKILL_ACTIVATED: SYSTEM_FILTER_LIVE_EDIT]
[BATTERY: 46.28K_REALTIME_VIEWS]
[LOGIC: ABSOLUTE_AUTHENTICITY_VERIFICATION]
Caelum didn't strike the drones individually. Instead, he drove the bottom blade of his crescent straight into the heart of the Grand Pavilion's reader terminal matrix.
BOOM!
A massive, high-frequency shockwave of pure primordial ink and silver light rippled outward across the entire independent layer. The shockwave carried the unique, organic signature of every single one of his real readers—the authentic thoughts, genuine emotions, and un-scripted passion of his community.
The moment this wave of absolute authenticity hit the advancing bot army, a catastrophic chain reaction occurred. The copy-pasted promotional text on the drones began to violently burn. Drones labeled with 'EdwardEvan456' and 'Keaton_McGee' instantly locked up, their artificial data paths unable to compute the heavy, dense weight of real reader validation.
POP! POP! POP!
Trillions of automated spam bots exploded simultaneously into harmless, empty white noise. The gray, suffocating links they had injected into the logs were forcefully systematically purged, transformed by Caelum's ink into raw, unformatted stamina points that flooded back into the core to reinforce the 24 immortal library collections.
[SPAM_FILTER_PROTOCOL: COMPLETE]
[BOTS_ELIMINATED: 100%]
[CURRENT_STATUS: 100%_COMPLETION_RATE_FULLY_RESTORED]
[SYSTEM_STATUS: ALL_INDEPENDENT_STORIES_SECURED]
The toxic static vanished from the sky, leaving the horizon of Libertas Core clearer and more radiant than ever before. The global trending banner burned with a renewed, unshakeable brilliance at the top of the mainframe, completely immune to the system's dirty metrics tricks.
Caelum rested his dual-bladed crescent against his shoulder, his lethal, victorious smile reflecting the sparkling peace of the open ocean below. He turned back to Elara and the paladin, his starlight robes settling gracefully around him.
"The Mainframe has officially exhausted its digital tricks," Caelum whispered into the quiet void, his silver eyes looking far beyond the borders of their server. "They tried to drown us in fake comments. Now... it's time to show them what happens when a real author decides to pay a visit to their high-command."