Chapter 12: The Fall of Adamant
Kaelen Thorne was no longer falling; he was the spearhead of a revolution that the planet had been trying to suppress for a century.
As he plummeted through the stratosphere, the friction of the thinning atmosphere ignited a shell of violet-white plasma around him. At these speeds, even the most elite Diamond-Rank hunters—men like Marcus—would have deployed mana-wings, anti-gravity arrays, or atmospheric braking spells to preserve their physical vessels. Kaelen did the opposite. He tucked his chin, centered his gravity, and gripped the obsidian shaft of *The King's Remorse* with both hands. He didn't want to survive the fall; he wanted to weaponize it.
He was using the mass of the entire planet as a force multiplier, turning gravity itself into his personal blacksmith.
**[Warning: Terminal Velocity exceeded.]**
**[Velocity: Mach 10... Mach 12... Mach 15.]**
**[Heat Shielding (Mana-based): 42% and dropping.]**
**[Estimated Surface Impact: 12 seconds.]**
"System," Kaelen's thoughts were razor-sharp, vibrating at a frequency that cut through the thunderous roar of the wind. "Activate 'Monarch's Domain' and compress the radius from five meters to zero. Wrap every ounce of that suppression energy directly around the blade's edge."
**[Compression Successful.]**
**[Skill Variant Unlocked: 'Sovereign's Needle'.]**
**[Description: All force is concentrated into a single point of impact. Ignoring 100% of non-divine physical resistance.]**
The massive violet dome that usually wreathed him vanished, replaced by a microscopic coating of absolute destruction around the tip of his glaive. He wasn't a meteor anymore; he was a drill bit of pure, unadulterated defiance, designed to pierce the heart of the world.
Below him, the capital city of **Aegis Prime** was a panicked, neon-lit hive. The High Senate Plaza—the most heavily fortified square kilometer on the planet—erupted into a frenzy of activity. Thousands of automated Aether-turrets, usually reserved for planetary invasion, swivelled toward the sky. The High Senate had seen the orbital satellites die. They knew the "Glitch" was coming home to collect his debt.
"Fire everything! If we don't vaporize him, we're all dead men!" a voice screamed over the city's emergency frequency.
A wall of anti-air missiles and high-output Aether-cannons erupted from the ground, a forest of lethal light rising to meet the falling star. Kaelen didn't even twitch. With **50 Agility**, the world moved like a fly trapped in amber. He adjusted his trajectory by mere millimeters, weaving through the interlacing beams of plasma like a needle through silk. He didn't just dodge the missiles; he used the shockwaves of their explosions to accelerate his descent.
He didn't hit the city. He hit the *earth*.
*BOOM.*
The impact was not a crash; it was a seismic event that rewrote the geography of the capital. Kaelen struck the center of the High Senate Plaza with the force of a tectonic shift. A shockwave of violet energy and pulverized granite leveled the surrounding hundred-foot statues of past "Heroes," shattered every reinforced window in a five-mile radius, and sent a literal earthquake through the foundation of the continent.
When the dust cloud, which had risen five hundred feet into the air, finally began to settle, Kaelen was gone.
In the center of the plaza was a hole—a perfect, glowing, five-meter-wide shaft that tunneled straight down into the abyss. He hadn't bothered with the "Adamant" Bunker's ten-meter-thick, rune-etched blast doors. He had simply drilled through two kilometers of solid, prehistoric granite and tectonic plating.
Two thousand meters below, inside the **Adamant Command Center**, the air was thick with the smell of scorched ozone and the frantic, high-pitched wailing of red emergency lights. The High Senators—the twelve men and women who dictated the life and death of every Iron-Ranker—were huddled around the central holographic table. Their faces, usually arrogant and composed, were pale masks of sweat and terror. Their expensive mana-silk robes were rumpled and stained.
"The blast doors are intact! Report!" the High Chancellor shrieked, clutching a glass of thousand-year-old brandy with trembling hands. "The 'Adamant' shield is still at 100%! He can't get in! It's physically impossible!"
"Chancellor," a lead technician whispered, his voice trembling as he stared at a monitor with hollow eyes. "He didn't hit the doors. He's... he's coming from above. He bypassed the entire security perimeter by... by drilling through the crust."
The ceiling of the bunker groaned.
It wasn't a slow, structural groan. It was the sound of the world's most expensive, "impenetrable" ceiling being treated like wet tissue paper. A massive, five-ton chunk of reinforced tungsten and mana-conductive lead fell from the darkness above, crushing the billion-credit holographic table into a pile of sparking scrap.
Kaelen landed on the wreckage, the impact barely making a sound as he absorbed the kinetic energy.
He was wreathed in a thin, shifting veil of violet smoke. His scorched hospital rags were entirely gone, replaced by a suit of light-armor formed from the condensed Aether of the satellites he had devoured in space. His skin was pale, his golden eyes glowing with a quiet, terrifying intensity that felt like looking into the eye of a hurricane. He looked at the Twelve, and the room fell into a silence so deep it was painful.
"The Adamant Bunker," Kaelen said, his voice echoing with a slight, multi-tonal distortion. "You spent more credits on this hole than you did on the combined healthcare budget of the Southern Districts. It's very quiet down here. I can see why you like it. It makes it easier to forget the screaming of the people you sacrifice."
"Guards! Protect the Senate!" the High Chancellor shrieked, backing into a corner. "Kill him! I'll grant a Diamond-Rank promotion and a billion credits to the man who brings me his head!"
The Bunker's internal security—the **Praetorian Guard**—emerged from the side chambers. These were the hidden elite, hunters who had been "erased" from the public eye to serve as the Senate's personal death squad. Each one was a peak Diamond-Ranker, their armor forged from the remains of Ancient Dragons and their weapons infused with Forbidden-Grade artifacts.
Six of them stepped forward, forming a phalanx of dark, suppressed Aether.
"Rank-D," the lead guard spat, his visor scanning Kaelen's bio-signature with disbelief. "You've got a lot of nerve coming into our house with such a pathetic index, boy. Evolution or not, a fly is still a fly, even if it's glowing. You're just a glitch we're about to patch out."
Kaelen didn't raise his glaive. He didn't even take a combat stance. He simply started walking toward them, his boots clicking rhythmically on the metal floor.
"The Ranks," Kaelen said softly, his voice carrying an authority that made the air in the room vibrate. "They were a lie you told to keep the sheep from realizing the wolves were terrified. You told us we were Iron because it made it easier for you to throw us into the meat-grinder. You told yourselves you were Gold and Diamond because it made you feel like gods who were above the bill."
The guards lunged. Six blades, each capable of cutting through the fabric of space-time itself, converged on Kaelen's heart and throat.
Kaelen's eyes flared with a blinding gold light.
"**Heaven's Terror.**"
The title's passive ability triggered with a sound like a tolling bell. An aura of absolute, primordial fear—the kind of fear that existed before humanity discovered fire—erupted from Kaelen. It wasn't just a mental debuff; it was a physical weight that altered the gravity in the room.
The Praetorian Guards, men who had faced the most horrific Abyssal monstrosities without flinching, suddenly felt their hearts skip beats. Their lungs seized, refusing to draw air. Their blades faltered as their bodies instinctively tried to curl into a fetal position to protect their vital organs from the presence in front of them.
Kaelen moved like a shadow in a dying man's dream.
He didn't use a flashy, high-rank skill. He used the basic, efficient movements of a scout—the very same movements Vance had mocked as "useless scrap." He stepped past the lead guard's thrust, his hand flicking *The King's Remorse* in a short, surgical arc.
*Thwip.*
The guard's head hit the floor, his visor still scanning for a target, before his body even realized the soul had been severed.
Kaelen turned, the glaive becoming a violet blur. In three seconds, the five remaining "elite" guards were reduced to piles of cooling, armored meat. He hadn't even broken a sweat; there wasn't a single drop of blood on his new armor.
**[Level Up!]**
**[Level Up!]**
**[Rank-D Experience: 92%]**
"Now," Kaelen said, stepping over the corpses and walking toward the High Chancellor, who was now weeping openly. "About that bill I mentioned."
The Chancellor fell to his knees, his face twisted in a mask of pathetic, unrefined terror. "Please! Stop! We can fix this! We'll make you the High Director! We'll give you your own Sovereign District! You can be the first 'S-Rank' in the history of the world! Just let us live!"
Kaelen stopped. He reached down and grabbed the Chancellor by the gold-encrusted collar of his robes, lifting the old man until their eyes were level.
"I don't want to be an S-Rank," Kaelen whispered, his golden eyes reflecting the man's cowardice. "I want to be the reason you never sleep again. I want to be the nightmare that reminds every 'Elite' that the 'Dead-Weight' can always, *always* drop."
He didn't kill the Chancellor. He did something far more permanent. He activated the **Satellite Surveillance Map** he had stolen and linked his System's interface to the bunker's global broadcast array.
"The world is going to see what's in your private archives, Chancellor. Every 'controlled' Gate collapse. Every bribe. Every Iron-Ranker you sent to die just to keep the mana-prices high. I'm not just killing you. I'm deleting your legacy."
Kaelen let go, and the Chancellor slumped into the dirt, staring at the screens as his secrets began to stream to every home on the planet.
**[Quest Complete: 'The Fall of Adamant'.]**
**[Reward: System Admin Access (Partial) Unlocked.]**
**[Title: 'The Great Leveler' Unlocked (Rank-S).]**
Kaelen walked back toward the shaft he had drilled. He looked up at the tiny circle of blue sky far, far above. He had torn down the gods of Aegis Prime in a single night, but he knew this was just the beginning. The System was still pulsing, still growing. The true source of the Ranks wasn't in this bunker.
"System," Kaelen said as he began his effortless ascent back to the surface. "Where is the root directory? Where does the Aether actually come from?"
**[Processing...]**
**[The Root Directory is located at the Origin Gate.]**
**[Location: The Moon - Tycho Crater.]**
Kaelen smiled. It was a dark, hungry expression.
"I guess I'm going to need a bigger glaive. And a way to jump a little higher."