Chapter 13: The Lunar Threshold
The air in the High Senate Plaza was thick with a heavy, ionized scent—a mixture of scorched ozone and the silent, stunned realization of an entire civilization watching its gods bleed. High above, the shaft Kaelen had drilled through the earth acted like a chimney, venting the acrid smoke of the dying "Adamant" bunker into the night sky. Kaelen stood on the rim of the crater, his violet-black armor shimmering under the gaze of a thousand news drones.
He wasn't looking at the fleeing senators. He wasn't listening to the sirens of the arriving Enforcer legions or the screams of the crowd. He was looking at the Moon.
In the center of that silver orb, exactly where the Tycho Crater should have been, was a flickering, artificial light—a rhythmic pulse of violet that matched the thrumming of his own soul. The **Origin Gate**. The source of every Rank, every monster, and every drop of Aether that had turned Earth into a gilded cage.
**[New Quest: 'The Silent Leap']**
**[Objective: Reach the Origin Gate.]**
**[Requirement: Attain escape velocity or utilize a 'Void Path'.]**
**[Warning: The vacuum of space is a 'Non-Aether Environment'. Vitality will drain at 5 points per minute without proper shielding.]**
"System," Kaelen said, his voice terrifyingly calm even as the heavy-duty tanks began to surround the plaza, their turrets locking onto his position. "I have 92% experience toward the next rank. I need that last 8% before I leave this rock. I'm not going to the source with an incomplete evolution."
**[Alert: High-Rank Reinforcements detected.]**
**[Signature: The 'Seraphim Squad' – Aegis Organization's Final Deterrent.]**
From the cloud layer above, twelve streaks of white fire descended. They didn't use mana-wings; they were encased in sleek, white-and-gold mechanical exoskeletons that hummed with stabilized, high-density Aether. These were the **Seraphim**, the pinnacle of human engineering. They were the ones who kept the Diamond-Rankers in line—the Senate's private "Cleaners."
"Target identified," the Seraphim leader's voice was a cold, synthesized drone that echoed through the plaza's PA system. "Kaelen Thorne, you have committed high treason against the species. Your existence is a structural error. Execution is the only protocol."
Kaelen didn't wait for them to land. He had learned in the Bone Labyrinth that the only way to survive the System was to be the one who redefined the battlefield.
He didn't raise his glaive. Instead, he raised his left hand, the **System Admin Access** flickering to life in his palm like a dying star. A stream of raw, unformatted code began to swirl around his fingers, appearing as digitised smoke.
"You're not hunters," Kaelen said, his eyes narrowing as he watched them deploy their energy blades. "You're just hardware. And hardware can be overwritten by its owner."
He activated **Monarch's Domain**, but instead of projecting the suppression outward, he focused the entire radius into his own nervous system, overclocking his **50 Agility** until the world turned into a frozen, static image.
*THUMP.*
Kaelen became a ghost. He appeared in front of the lead Seraphim while the pilot was still five hundred feet in the air. To the spectators below, Kaelen simply vanished and reappeared as a blur of violet shadow. Before the pilot's HUD could even flash a proximity warning, Kaelen placed his palm on the suit's chest plate—the location of the Aether-Core.
"**Admin Override: Format Drive.**"
The white-and-gold armor sparked violently. The glowing runes on the exoskeleton flickered, turned red, and died. The pilot inside let out a muffled scream of terror as the life-support failed and the anti-gravity stabilizers cut out instantly. The "invincible" Seraphim fell like a dead bird, crashing into a tank below with a thunderous roar of metal on metal.
**[Experience Gained: 2%]**
Kaelen didn't stop. He flickered through the formation of the remaining eleven like a needle sewing a path of destruction through the sky. He was moving so fast that he created a vacuum in his wake, the air itself screaming to fill the void. One by one, the final deterrents of the Aegis Organization were deactivated with a single touch. He wasn't even using his weapon; he was dismantling their divinity with a flick of his wrist.
*Thud. Thud. Thud.*
The billion-credit suits hit the pavement of the plaza like discarded toys, their pilots trapped inside powerless coffins of steel.
**[Level Up!]**
**[You are now Level 23.]**
**[Rank-D Evolution: COMPLETE.]**
**[Rank-C Evolution: INITIALIZING...]**
**[Rank-C Attribute Unlocked: 'Void Step' – The ability to fold space and blink through the vacuum of space.]**
**[Bonus: 'Internal Life Support' – MP can now be used to simulate oxygenation.]**
Kaelen landed on the very tip of the High Senate spire, the highest point in the capital. Below him, the world was in chaos. Above him, the Moon waited. He felt a shift in his soul—the heavy, anchoring weight of physical Rank-D had been replaced by a terrifying, ethereal lightness.
"Now," Kaelen said, looking up at the Tycho Crater once more. "Let's see who's pulling the strings."
He gripped *The King's Remorse* and pointed it toward the stars. He didn't need a ship. He didn't need a rocket. He had the **Void**.
"**Void Step.**"
Kaelen Thorne vanished.
He didn't reappear in the plaza. He didn't reappear in the city. He reappeared ten thousand miles above the Earth, standing on absolute nothingness. Around him, the stars were cold, bright, and unblinking. The atmosphere of Earth was a thin, blue veil that he had finally pierced, a fragile bubble he had left behind.
His **Vitality** began to tick down—5... 4... 3—but before it could drop further, his MP surged, his new passive skill filtering his energy to keep his heart beating in the silence of space.
**[Vitality: 30/30 (Stabilized)]**
**[MP Consumption: 50 per minute.]**
**[Estimated time to reach Origin Gate: 4 minutes.]**
Kaelen kicked off the vacuum itself. With every "Void Step," he folded a thousand miles of space, appearing closer and closer to the lunar surface. He was a violet spark flying toward the Moon, a single glitch in the cosmic tapestry, leaving the secrets of Earth in his wake.
As he drew closer to the Tycho Crater, the light began to take a terrifying shape. It wasn't just a Gate; it was a fortress. A sprawling, geometric city of obsidian and violet mana that made Aegis Prime look like a primitive, mud-caked village. This was the true home of the System—the server room of reality.
Kaelen slowed his momentum, landing on the jagged, airless rim of the crater. His boots made no sound on the fine lunar dust, but the vibration of his arrival sent a ripple through the ground that could be felt across the entire moon. He leveled his glaive at the center of the crater.
Standing there, waiting for him, was a figure that defied the System's own logic. It didn't have a Rank. It didn't have a name. It was a silhouette made of pure, white light, wearing a cloak that seemed to contain shifting galaxies.
**[Warning: Encountering 'The Architect'.]**
**[Status: Error. Entity exists outside the Database.]**
Kaelen walked forward, his violet armor pulsing. "You're the one who started this. The Ranks. The Gates. The 'Dead-Weight'."
"You're late, Kaelen Thorne," the figure said, the voice resonating directly in his mind, bypasses his ears. "The 'Glitch' was mathematically supposed to happen a thousand years ago. You've let your world suffer much longer than intended."
Kaelen's grip on his weapon tightened. "I was busy surviving the 'mercy' of your system. Who are you?"
"I am the one who built the Ranks to save you," the Architect replied, gesturing toward the blue marble of Earth hanging in the black sky. "The Ranks weren't for oppression; they were a filtration system. A way to find a soul strong enough to hold the weight of what's coming."
The Architect stepped aside, revealing the Origin Gate. It wasn't a door. It was a massive, vibrating crystalline cork, plugged into a hole in reality. And it was covered in millions of tiny, glowing cracks.
"You didn't destroy a government today, Kaelen," the Architect whispered. "You destroyed the only thing keeping the Abyss from realizing the door is open. And now, you have to decide if you're going to fix the cork... or become the monster that lets the Abyss in."