The interior of the smelting factory felt like the belly of a dying beast. Steam hissed from ruptured pipes, and the smell of molten iron hung thick in the air.
Shin stood in the center of the hall, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword so tightly his knuckles turned white. His eyes, now a cold, stormy grey, scanned the debris. In his left hand, he felt the faint, supernatural warmth of the silver feather the girl had left behind.
[Status: Seal Threshold 79.9%—CRITICAL WARNING]
A violent tremor shook his frame. The black lightning wasn't just sparking anymore; it was beginning to leak through his skin like liquid shadows. The pain was no longer a sting; it was an all-consuming fire.
"You are still standing," Victor's voice echoed, devoid of surprise. He stepped through the main entrance, the dust settling around his long grey coat. He didn't look like a warrior; he looked like a judge delivering a final sentence. "A logical anomaly. By all laws of mana-biology, your nervous system should have incinerated itself three minutes ago."
Victor flipped his silver coin. Ting.
The sound wave expanded, and the 'Scale of Nihility' crashed down on the room. The flickering lights of the factory died instantly. The humming machinery went silent. Everything was being flattened into a void where only Victor's logic existed.
"Your math is wrong, Victor," Shin rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones. He remembered the girl's words: Stop fighting the lightning. Make it fight for you.
"Math is never wrong, Shin. It is the only thing in this world that doesn't lie," Victor replied, walking forward. He raised his hand, and several iron girders from the ceiling groaned before snapping off, hovering in the air behind him like giant spears. "You have 0.1% of your threshold left before total collapse. Even if you kill me, you die. The most logical outcome is surrender."
Shin let out a dry, haunting laugh. He closed his grey eyes, shifting his #HIGHIQ focus away from the outside world and toward the chaotic storm within his own veins.
Observation 1: The seal was a cage.
Observation 2: The black lightning was the prisoner.
Observation 3: If the prisoner stops attacking the cage and starts attacking the predator outside... the cage becomes a shield.
"I'm done with logic," Shin whispered.
Instead of pushing the lightning outward to strike, Shin did the unthinkable. He pulled it deeper into his core. He stopped resisting the pain. He opened the doors to the 79.9% threshold voluntarily.
[WARNING: VOLUNTARY SEAL EROSION DETECTED]
BOOM!
The factory floor cracked in a perfect circle around Shin. The obsidian lightning, instead of exploding, began to coat his body like a second skin—a jagged, vibrating armor of pure dark energy. His grey eyes ignited with a cold, spectral light.
Victor's eyes narrowed. For the first time, the Inquisitor's hand trembled slightly. "You're... fusing with the instability? That's not a strategy. That's suicide!"
"It's not suicide, Victor," Shin said, and in a heartbeat, he was gone.
He didn't run. He vibrated through the space.
Shin appeared directly in Victor's personal space. The silver coin in the air shattered into dust before it could fall back into Victor's hand. The 'Scale of Nihility' was being pierced by a frequency so high it bypassed the void entirely.
CLANG!
Shin's sword met Victor's suddenly summoned mana-shield. The impact sent a shockwave that blew out every window in the factory.
"How?" Victor gritted his teeth, his feet sliding back across the concrete. "My scale suppresses all external mana!"
"This isn't external," Shin hissed, leaning in, his face inches from Victor's. The black lightning armor was burning through Victor's shield like acid. "This is the sound of a prisoner who just realized the door was never locked."
Shin spun, his movements fluid and impossible to predict. He used the momentum of the lightning to deliver a series of strikes—each one faster than the last. He wasn't just attacking Victor's body; he was attacking the mathematical points where Victor's mana was weakest.
Victor roared, discarding his calm. He manipulated the iron girders, sending them whistling toward Shin like high-speed projectiles. Shin didn't dodge. He moved his blade in a silent arc, the black lightning cutting through the massive iron beams as if they were made of silk.
"Logic dictates..." Victor started, his voice desperate now.
"Shut up about logic!" Shin roared.
He gripped the silver feather and crushed it against the hilt of his sword. A blinding silver light fused with the black lightning, turning the obsidian blades into a shimmering, twilight grey.
Shin leaped into the air, the silhouette of the mysterious girl flickering behind him for a fraction of a second. He brought his sword down in a vertical strike that seemed to split the very concept of 'Silence' in half.
"The Zero-Point Strike!"
The explosion was silent. A dome of grey and black energy expanded from the center of the factory, vaporizing everything it touched. When the dust finally settled, the smelting vats were melted slag, and half the roof was gone, revealing the cold, indifferent stars above.
Victor lay on his back, his grey coat shredded, blood trickling from his ears. He looked at the sky, his eyes wide with a mix of horror and epiphany.
Shin stood over him, his sword tip resting inches from Victor's throat. His grey eyes were calm now, though his body was covered in blackened veins.
[Status: Seal Threshold 79.85%—Stabilizing]
"I win, Victor," Shin said, his voice steady. "And I didn't even need a coin to decide it."
Just as Shin was about to deliver the final blow, a cold, mechanical voice echoed through the ruins—not from Victor, but from a small device fallen from his pocket.
"Inquisitor Victor, the Council has analyzed the resonance. Target 'Shin' has evolved beyond the Scale. Protocol 9-Beta is now active. Purge the district."
Shin's eyes widened. "Purge? Victor, what is Protocol 9?"
Victor let out a weak, coughing laugh, blood staining his teeth. "Logic... always has a backup plan, Shin. If we can't measure the variable... we destroy the entire equation."
Far off in the distance, a low hum began to vibrate through the earth. The sound of an orbital strike or a massive mana-bomb being primed.