The cheers of the five hundred "baits" were still echoing through the mud-slicked ruins of the camp when the sky didn't just darken—it shattered.
From the belly of the leading golden dreadnought, a single silver streak tore through the clouds, descending with a terminal velocity that bypassed all aerodynamic logic. It hit the central courtyard of the camp with the force of a localized meteor strike.
BOOM.
The shockwave wasn't just physical; it was metaphysical. A dome of blinding white light expanded from the impact site, instantly snuffing out the fires the prisoners had lit. The five hundred men, who moments ago felt like conquerors, were thrown backward as if the very air had turned into a solid wall of ice.
As the dust settled, the sapphire glow of Su Zhou's Truth Vision flickered violently, struggling to render the entity standing in the crater.
He wasn't a man. He was a monument.
Clovis, the Silver Knight of the Imperial Inspection Bureau, stood in the center of the devastation. His armor was a masterpiece of "Living Ether-Gold," a shifting, liquid-metal surface that seemed to breathe with a holy, rhythmic light. He didn't just occupy space; he dominated it. The mud beneath his silver sabatons didn't just yield; it was incinerated into white ash, refusing to touch the divine metal of his station.
"Vermin," Clovis whispered.
His voice wasn't loud, yet it carried the weight of a decree. It was a frequency that vibrated in the teeth of every man present, a sound that demanded absolute submission.
Behind him, Overseer Ma scrambled out of the wreckage of the balcony, his burned face twisted into a grotesque, sobbing mask of relief. "Lord Clovis! You're here! Look at them! Look at what this... this cripple has done to the Emperor's property!"
Ma pointed a trembling finger at Su Zhou, his voice rising into a hysterical shriek. "Kill him! Don't just kill him—strip the logic from his very bones! He thinks he's a God because he can shoot a bird!"
Su Zhou stood atop the watchtower, his right eye bleeding a thin, hot trail of sapphire fluid. The "Truth Vision" was screaming.
[Warning: High-Tier Reality Warper Detected.]
[Target: Clovis (Tier-4 Silver Knight).]
[Detection Error: Target possesses 'Etheric Sovereignty'.]
[Logic Analysis: FAILED. FAILED. FAILED.]
In Su Zhou's vision, the world was no longer a neat wireframe of blue lines. Around Clovis, the lines were frayed, sparking with chaotic red noise. It was as if the Knight was a walking "Glitch" in the system of the world. Every law of physics—gravity, friction, momentum—seemed to warp and bow in his presence.
"Old Huang! Fire!" Su Zhou commanded, his voice strained.
Old Huang and a dozen of the most hardened veterans raised their scavenged Imperial crossbows. These were the men who had just dismantled a Griffin Rider squad. They were confident. They were lethal.
"For the Boss! Die, you silver dog!" Old Huang roared, pulling the trigger.
Twelve bolts, heavy and tipped with serrated iron, hissed through the air in a perfect, converging kill-zone.
Clovis didn't move. He didn't even draw his spear. He simply looked at the arrows.
[Ether Armament: 'The King's Sanctuary' – Active.]
The air ten feet in front of Clovis rippled like a disturbed pond. As the bolts entered that ripple, their "Logic" was instantly overwritten. The iron tips didn't strike armor; they turned into soft, white jasmine petals that drifted harmlessly to the mud. The kinetic energy behind them vanished, replaced by a gentle, floral scent.
The silence that followed was absolute. It was the silence of a God watching a child throw a pebble at the ocean.
"Do you see, little rat?" Clovis turned his gaze toward the watchtower, his eyes two burning pits of silver light. "You play with 'logic.' You calculate trajectories. You think the world is a machine you can tinker with. But you forget who built the machine. You forget that some of us are the machine."
Clovis took a step forward. With that single movement, a gravitational shockwave rippled outward. Five hundred men fell to their knees simultaneously, their lungs collapsing under a pressure that felt like the weight of a mountain. Their bows snapped; their spears shattered. The "Class Oppression" was a physical force, a divine mandate that rendered their rebellion a joke.
"Su Zhou," Clovis said, beginning to float toward the tower, his feet never touching the ground. "Your little 'miracle' with the Recon Falcon was amusing. A clever bit of arithmetic. But arithmetic cannot kill a Decree."
Su Zhou's brain felt like it was being stirred by a red-hot needle. He ignored the pain, his left hand gripping the railing so hard the wood began to splinter.
"Everything has a logic, Clovis," Su Zhou hissed, his voice thick with the taste of copper. "Even your 'Sovereignty' is just a set of rules. And every rule has a loophole."
[System: Forced Overclocking Engaged.]
[Warning: Neural Burn-in Imminent. 95% threshold exceeded.]
[Logic Path: Searching for 'The Root Error'...]
Su Zhou snatched a bolt from his belt. It wasn't an ordinary bolt; it was the "Causality Bolt" he had been saving, tipped with the last fragments of the Wind Spirit Core.
He didn't use a bow. He slammed the bolt into the mechanical launcher of his "Logic-Engine" and pulled the primary gear.
"Target: The heart," Su Zhou whispered. "Logic: Non-Existence."
THWIP.
The bolt vanished instantly, entering the "Result-Oriented" state. It bypassed the jasmine-petal barrier. It bypassed the gravity field. It appeared directly in front of Clovis's chest plate, aiming for the gap in the gorget.
For the first time, Clovis's eyes widened. A flicker of genuine surprise crossed his arrogant features.
CLANG.
Clovis didn't swat the arrow. He didn't move. Instead, the silver armor on his chest simply... refused to be hit. The "Logic" of the armor was 'Impenetrable.' When the "Causality" of the arrow met the "Sovereignty" of the armor, the world itself groaned.
A localized space-time fracture erupted between them. The bolt didn't shatter; it was erased from reality, deleted by a higher-tier administrative command.
"Impressive," Clovis sneered, but his voice now held a sharp edge of irritation. "You actually touched the hem of the Divine. For that, I shall allow you to see your own blood before you die."
Clovis raised his hand. A spear of pure, white-hot etheric energy materialized in his palm. He didn't throw it. He simply placed it into the future.
Su Zhou's Truth Vision flashed a blinding, apocalyptic red.
[ERROR: PREDICTION IMPOSSIBLE.]
[TARGET ATTACK HAS NO TRAJECTORY.]
[STATUS: YOU ARE ALREADY HIT.]
"Wait—" Su Zhou barely had time to move his head.
SHRED.
The white spear didn't fly through the air; it simply existed where Su Zhou's shoulder had been a millisecond before. Su Zhou felt a sudden, freezing cold, followed by a heat so intense it felt like his blood was boiling.
He was thrown backward, crashing into the stone wall of the tower. His right shoulder was a mess of charred meat and white-hot etheric residue. Blood—thick, dark, and human—sprayed across the sapphire display of his Truth Vision, obscuring the data.
"Su Boss!" Old Huang screamed, but he couldn't move. He was pinned to the floor by Clovis's aura, his face pressed into the dirt.
Su Zhou gasped for air, his vision swimming. For the first time since he had awakened the "Logic-Engine," he felt the cold, jagged edge of true mortality. His pre-calculations had failed. His "Infallible" logic had been swatted aside like a fly.
Clovis landed on the tower's railing, his silver armor unstained, his expression one of bored superiority. He looked down at Su Zhou, who was clutching his mangled shoulder, blood seeping through his fingers.
"Do you understand now, rat?" Clovis asked, tilting his head. "You are a 'Bait.' A statistical error in the Empire's census. You are not a protagonist. You are not a hero. You are the fuel that makes the light of my armor shine a little brighter. That is your only logic."
Clovis raised the etheric spear again, aiming it directly at Su Zhou's indigo eye. "Now, let us delete this error once and for all."
Su Zhou looked up. Through the haze of pain and the "Noise" in his vision, he saw Clovis's reflection in the blood pooling on the floor.
And in that reflection, the "Truth Vision" didn't show red code. It showed... nothing.
A sudden, terrifying realization struck Su Zhou's mind. Clovis wasn't warping physics. He was faking it. The "Sovereignty" wasn't a law of nature; it was a high-level illusion maintained by a parasitic link to the Golden Dreadnoughts above.
"The King's Sanctuary..." Su Zhou whispered, a bloody smile spreading across his face. "It's not a shield. It's a... broadcast."
[New Logic Identified: The 'Proxy' Fallacy.]
[Targeting Source: The Mother Vessel (9,000m above).]
[Proposed Solution: Overload the Receiver.]
"Lord Clovis," Su Zhou said, his voice trembling but his eye burning with a new, dangerous light. "You said I play with 'arithmetic.' You're right. But do you know what happens when you divide a King... by zero?"
Su Zhou's hand reached for the "Logic-Engine" again, but this time, he didn't aim at Clovis. He aimed his blood-stained hand directly at his own temple.
"If I can't find the logic in your world," Su Zhou growled, his eye turning from sapphire to a violent, screaming violet. "I'll rewrite the source code of my own soul."
[WARNING: SYSTEM TRANSGRESSION DETECTED.]
[FORBIDDEN PROTOCOL: 'THE SINGULARITY' – ACTIVATING...]
[Cliffhanger / Hook]
As Su Zhou's finger touched the trigger of his own mind, the sky above didn't just darken—it began to bleed.
The golden hull of the Dreadnought high above let out a low-frequency groan of metal-fatigue, its lights flickering in perfect synchronization with Su Zhou's heartbeat. Clovis froze, the etheric spear in his hand beginning to dissolve into black smoke.
For the first time in his life, the Silver Knight felt something he didn't have the logic to name.
He felt fear.
Because Su Zhou wasn't just shooting an arrow anymore. He was pulling the plug on the world.