Chapter 10: The Forge of the Fallen
The rooftop of the *Old Sentinel* was no longer a vantage point; it had been transformed into an unholy altar of twisted scrap metal, cooling mana-exhaust, and the lingering scent of ozone. As the sirens of Aegis Prime wailed in a mournful, distant chorus, a heavy, oppressive silence fell over the immediate area—the kind of unnatural stillness that precedes a Category 5 hurricane.
Kaelen stood in the center of the devastation, his breathing shallow, rhythmic, and perfectly controlled. The adrenaline was no longer a frantic spike; it was a steady, low-frequency hum in his marrow. With his **Intelligence** at 22, his mind was operating like a supercomputer, filtering out the noise of the city and focusing entirely on the digital interface shimmering in his retinas. He knew the Azure Vanguard was merely the appetizer. The Aegis Organization was a multi-trillion credit machine built on the concept of absolute control; they did not stop until the "Glitch" was purged from the ledger.
"System," Kaelen commanded, his voice cutting through the whistling wind like a blade. "Initialize Weapon Synthesis. Use the **Core of the Forsaken** and the **Hollow-Point Daggers** as the base lattice."
**[Weapon Synthesis Initializing...]**
**[Warning: High-Tier Synthesis requires a massive influx of environmental Aether. Drawing from local sources...]**
A dark, swirling vortex of violet energy erupted from Kaelen's chest, the point where the System had anchored itself to his soul. The air around the tower began to distort visibly. The light from the city's neon signs bent toward him, pulled by a localized gravitational anomaly. The two black daggers he had purchased floated into the air, spinning with such velocity that they became a blur of shadow, their blades glowing with a frantic, unstable heat that turned the surrounding air into shimmering plasma.
From his inventory, the **Core of the Forsaken** emerged. It was a pulsing, obsidian heart of pure malice, the concentrated essence of the Abyssal Lord.
**[Synthesis Progress: 15%... 40%... 85%...]**
**[Integration of 'Blood-Lust Aura' detected. Weapon is evolving beyond standard parameters...]**
**[Error: Soul-Bound attribute detected. Weapon is merging with User's Leveling Curve.]**
The three objects collided in a silent explosion of shadow. For a heartbeat, the entire rooftop was plunged into absolute darkness—a void so deep that not even the high-intensity searchlights of the approaching drones could penetrate it. When the light returned, Kaelen wasn't holding daggers anymore.
Resting in his hand was a single, long-handled glaive. The shaft was made of the same indestructible obsidian as the Abyssal Lord's scales, and the blade was a jagged, two-foot-long shard of translucent violet crystal. It didn't reflect the light; it seemed to consume it, bleeding a thin, ghostly smoke that smelled of ancient battlefields.
**[Item Created: 'The King's Remorse' (Rank-S – Growing Type)]**
**[Attack: 500 - 750 (Scales with Strength)]**
**[Passive: 'Sovereign's Tithe' – 20% of all damage dealt is converted into HP/MP.]**
**[Special Skill: 'Shatter the Crown' – Ignore 50% of the target's physical and magical armor. 5% chance to trigger 'Instant Execution' on targets 10 Levels lower.]**
Kaelen swung the weapon in a wide arc. The weight was perfect—not light, but possessing a momentum that felt as though it were pulling his strikes toward their targets. It felt less like a tool and more like an extension of his own nervous system.
"Perfect timing," he whispered, his eyes tracking a single, blinding dot in the sky.
**[Alert: Second Wave Incoming.]**
**[Threat Level: Diamond-Rank Signature Detected. Aether-Index: 14,000+.]**
A single beam of white light descended from the heavens, traveling at a speed that made the Azure Vanguard look like they were standing still. It didn't land on the roof; it *obliterated* it. The top three floors of the Sentinel Tower disintegrated into powder. Kaelen jumped back, his **Impact Boots** flaring with blue sparks as he landed on the arm of a construction crane swinging over the thousand-foot drop to the street.
Standing in the smoking crater of the tower was a man who looked less like a soldier and more like a mythological god. He wore ivory plate-armor that glowed with a blinding, holy radiance, etched with the seals of the High Senate. In his hand was a massive, two-handed claymore that hummed with the trapped energy of a miniature sun.
This was **General Marcus Thorne**—the "Shield of Aegis." He was one of the legendary "Twelve Apostles," the Diamond-Rankers who sat at the top of the global food chain.
"Kaelen Thorne," Marcus said, his voice amplified by Aether until it echoed through the clouds like rolling thunder. "You have caused quite a stir for a child with an F-Rank bracelet. But your little rebellion ends here. You have stolen power that does not belong to your station. You are a biological error that needs correction."
"Stolen?" Kaelen laughed, a dry, harsh sound that carried no warmth. He leveled the violet blade of *The King's Remorse* at the General's throat. "I paid for this power in the currency of my own blood while you sat in your high tower. Vance threw me into the pit to die, and I crawled out with the bill. Are you here to pay it, General? Or are you just another coward in shiny armor?"
Marcus didn't waste breath on a retort. He was a man of action, a Diamond-Ranker because he was a master of the kill. He vanished.
*BOOM.*
The steel crane arm Kaelen had been standing on snapped like a dry twig. Marcus appeared in the air where Kaelen had been a millisecond before, his claymore trailing a wake of golden fire that melted the metal into slag.
Kaelen plummeted toward the streets below, but he didn't panic. He twisted in mid-air, his **35 Agility** allowing him to perceive the falling debris as stationary objects. He kicked off a falling slab of concrete, stabilizing his descent, and slammed into the asphalt of a deserted plaza. The ground shattered in a fifty-meter spiderweb pattern beneath his boots.
Marcus descended like a comet, the sheer pressure of his Aether-aura flattening the parked cars in the vicinity until they were nothing but pancakes of steel.
"**Sun-Strike!**" Marcus roared, his voice a literal shockwave.
He brought his claymore down. A pillar of golden light, twenty meters wide and hotter than a furnace, slammed into the plaza. The heat was so intense the pavement turned to liquid glass instantly, and the oxygen in the area was incinerated.
But when the blinding light faded, Kaelen was still standing. He was encased in a dome of swirling, violet shadow—the physical manifestation of **Monarch's Domain**. The golden flames licked against the purple mist but could not penetrate it.
"Is that all a Diamond is worth?" Kaelen asked, his eyes burning with a terrifying, solid gold light.
He didn't wait for Marcus to recover from the shock. Kaelen moved. He was no longer a ghost; he was a blur of violet destruction. He closed the thirty-meter gap in a single, explosive stride, *The King's Remorse* whistling through the air.
*CLANG.*
The two blades met, and the resulting shockwave shattered every window in a three-block radius. Car alarms shrieked, and the news drones were knocked out of the sky by the sheer displacement of air. Marcus's eyes widened behind his visor. He was a Diamond-Ranker—his Strength stat should have been insurmountable for anyone under Rank-A. But Kaelen was matching him, his violet blade cutting through the General's golden aura as if it were parchment.
"**Shatter the Crown!**" Kaelen hissed, leaning into the blade.
The violet crystal pulsed with a hungry light. The ivory armor of the General, forged from the core of an S-Rank Dragon and supposedly indestructible, began to hairline-fracture. The translucency of the glaive allowed Kaelen to see the look of genuine, wide-eyed terror forming on Marcus's face. For the first time in forty years, the Shield of Aegis felt weak.
"You... you're not a Player," Marcus gasped, his muscles bulging as he struggled to hold the weight of Kaelen's strike. "You're a parasite. A void."
"I told you," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a predatory whisper that bypassed Marcus's ears and spoke directly to his soul. "I'm the Glitch that's going to crash your world."
Kaelen twisted the glaive with a sudden, violent torque. The jagged edge of the crystal caught the crossguard of Marcus's claymore. With a guttural roar and a surge of his **25 Strength**, Kaelen disarmed the Diamond-Ranker, sending the holy blade spinning five hundred feet away into the side of a skyscraper.
Before Marcus could summon his secondary weapon or call for a tactical retreat, Kaelen's hand shot out like a strike of dark lightning, grabbing the General by his glowing, armored throat. He lifted the most powerful man in the sector off the ground with one hand.
**[Time Remaining: 15:00]**
"The world is watching, General," Kaelen said, turning Marcus's head to face the nearest high-altitude news drone. "Tell them. Tell them what happens when the 'Dead-Weight' stops carrying your lies."
Kaelen didn't kill him. Death would be too merciful for a man who represented the System. Instead, he channeled the full weight of his **Blood-Lust Aura** directly into Marcus's neural pathway, forcing the General to experience every nightmare, every lonely second of agony, and every ounce of freezing despair Kaelen had felt while his bones were mending in the dark.
Marcus screamed—a raw, soul-shattering sound that broke the spirit of every Aegis soldier listening on the encrypted comms. Kaelen dropped the "Shield of Aegis" like a piece of worthless refuse into the molten glass of the plaza.
**[Level Up!]**
**[Level Up!]**
**[Level Up!]**
**[You are now Level 22.]**
**[Warning: The High Senate has authorized the 'Oblivion Protocol'.]**
**[Detection: Orbital Satellites 'Sol-1' through 'Sol-4' are aligning. Tactical Laser Strike incoming in T-minus 120 seconds.]**
Kaelen looked up at the stars, his violet glaive dripping with the golden mana of a god. He could see a faint, malevolent red dot beginning to glow in the upper atmosphere, growing brighter by the second. The government was willing to burn an entire residential sector and kill thousands of civilians just to ensure he didn't see tomorrow.
"Good," Kaelen said, a dark, hungry smile widening to show his teeth. He gripped the handle of *The King's Remorse* and felt the power of the System coursing through him. "I was getting tired of the ground. Let's see if your satellites are any tougher than your Generals."