Chapter 21: The Sovereigns of the Slabs
The walk from the clinical, silent inner sanctum of the Root-vault to the main commons of the Under-City felt like a slow march through a dying dream that was fighting to wake up. Every step Kaelen took sent a visible ripple of golden, crystalline light through the metal floor, the **Root Heart** fused into his palm reacting violently to the proximity of other human souls. It was no longer a dormant tool; it was a hungry, vibrating engine of change.
On his neck, the black, spider-web veins of Abyssal corruption throbbed with a rhythmic, sickening heat. It was a cold, oily sensation—the Abyss's way of marking its territory, a reminder that even "Provisional Administrators" were ultimately just meat in the eyes of the Hunger.
**[Status: Provisional Administrator]**
**[Corruption: 18.6% (Rising at 0.01% per minute)]**
**[Active Protocol: The Great Awakening (Awaiting Execution...)]**
**[User Condition: Severe Aether-Fever. Soul-Core at maximum capacity.]**
When Kaelen stepped out onto the rusted, swaying catwalk that overlooked the central cavern of the Iron Slabs, the deafening roar of the crowd died instantly. It was a silence so profound it felt heavy, as if the air itself were holding its breath.
There were thousands of them now. They had poured in from the surrounding tenement blocks, the drainage pipes, and the illegal sub-levels. These were the "Statistical Errors" of the Aegis civilization. The children born with hollow Aether-veins. The elderly laborers whose cores had been siphoned off by the city's greedy power-grids. The "Dead-Weight."
They looked up at him, a sea of tired, grime-streaked faces illuminated by the flickering emergency lights. For the first time in Kaelen's life, he didn't see the hollow stare of despair. He saw the terrifying, silent expectation of a people who had finally realized that their chains were the only things keeping them from the abyss, and they were ready to let go.
"Kaelen," Lyra whispered, appearing at his shoulder like a ghost. Her violet eyes were wide, scanning the massive density of souls below. "If you do this... if you shatter the Heart and distribute its fragments... the world as we know it ends. There will be no more Levels to hide behind. No more safe zones. Every man, woman, and child will be responsible for their own internal gravity. You are taking away the floor they've stood on for a century."
"The floor was a trapdoor, Lyra," Kaelen said, his voice amplified by the Root Heart, echoing through the cavern like a crack of thunder. "And the Architect already pulled the lever. I'm just giving them wings before they hit the bottom."
He stepped to the very edge of the catwalk, his silhouette framed by the harsh, strobing orange of the emergency beacons.
"Listen to me!" Kaelen's voice boomed, carrying a weight that made the rusted metal beneath him groan. "For a hundred years, the Senate told you that your worth was a letter on a screen! They told you that if you weren't born with a 'Rank,' you were nothing but fuel for the fires of the Upper Districts! They built a paradise for the few on a foundation of your silence!"
A low, guttural murmur rose from the depths of the cavern—a century of suppressed rage, hunger, and grief beginning to boil over like a pressurized steam pipe.
"The Architect is dead!" Kaelen held up his glowing right hand, the golden seal of the Root Heart burning with a light so intense it cast long, sharp shadows against the rock walls. "The High Senate is ash! And the 'Gods' in the gold-plated towers are currently weeping in their bunkers while the Abyss tears the sky into ribbons!"
He looked down, his eyes locking onto a young girl in the front row. She was no older than ten, her face smudged with soot, clutching a rusted pipe-wrench as if it were a legendary holy blade.
"They called us 'Dead-Weight' because they were terrified of what would happen if we ever stopped carrying their world on our backs!" Kaelen's voice dropped to a low, dangerous snarl. "Today, we stop carrying. Today, we stand up and let their world fall."
**[Warning: Initiating 'The Great Awakening' will consume 50% of your current Vitality.]**
**[System Note: This process is irreversible. The 'Rank-System' will be permanently deleted.]**
**[Do you wish to proceed, Administrator Thorne?]**
*Proceed,* Kaelen thought, his jaw setting with enough force to crack a tooth.
He slammed his glowing palm into the rusted iron railing of the catwalk.
"**ADMIN COMMAND: FRAGMENT THE ROOT. UNLOCK ALL SOUL-LIMITERS. DISTRIBUTION: GLOBAL BROADCAST.**"
The world didn't just shake; it screamed in a frequency only the soul could hear.
A wave of pure, crystalline gold erupted from Kaelen's hand. It didn't move like light; it moved like a tidal wave of liquid data, a shimmering ocean of Aether that swept through the cavern in a heartbeat. It passed through the stone, through the steel, and through the bodies of the thousands below.
**[Protocol: Awakening 10%... 45%... 80%... 100%.]**
**[Global Rank-Database: DELETED.]**
Kaelen gasped, his knees hitting the metal grating with a violent *clang*. He felt as if his very bone marrow were being turned into white-hot lead. His **Vitality** bar plummeted, flashing a violent, rhythmic red as it crashed down to **7/45**. His vision blurred, the world turning into a kaleidoscope of gold and shadow.
In the cavern below, the transformation was a beautiful, terrifying chaos.
A grizzled old miner, a man whose Aether-core had been "depleted" and discarded by the mining corps twenty years ago, suddenly let out a roar that shook the stalactites. His eyes didn't glow with the soft blue of a standard Rank-D; they flared with a raw, jagged, incandescent white. His shriveled muscles swelled with a sudden, violent surge of vitality, the skin on his forearms etching with glowing golden circuitry.
The young girl with the wrench looked down at her hands. A shimmering, translucent shield of Null-energy flickered into existence around her, humming with the power of a star. She wasn't an 'F-Rank' anymore. She was something the System had no category for—a Sovereign of her own soul.
**[Global Notification: The Rank-System has been Decommissioned.]**
**[New Parameter: Soul-Potential (Uncapped).]**
**[Status: Every living being has been granted 'Local Admin' authority over their own biological vessel.]**
"What have you done, you maniac?!" a voice screamed from the darkness of the transit tunnels.
A squad of Black-Watch recovery hunters, the elite of the elite, stepped into the light. Their obsidian armor was scorched, their capes tattered from their retreat from the surface. They leveled their heavy Aether-rifles at the crowd, their HUDs flickering with errors as they tried to scan targets that no longer had Ranks.
"Back to your holes, you unranked filth!" the squad leader screamed, his voice cracking with a fear he didn't understand. "The Senate still holds authority! This is an illegal—"
He never finished the sentence.
The old miner didn't wait for a skill to cool down. He didn't check his MP. He simply moved—a blur of white-hot speed that bypassed the hunter's high-tier reflexes. He slammed a fist into the hunter's chest. The "Diamond-Grade" obsidian plating, designed to withstand Abyssal strikes, shattered like cheap glass under the force of a human soul that no longer had a ceiling.
The hunter was launched fifty feet back into the tunnel, his armor a crumpled wreck.
"No more holes," the miner growled, his voice vibrating with a physical force that knocked the dust from the ceiling.
The Slabs erupted. The "Dead-Weight" were no longer cowering. They were a sea of white-hot energy, a billion years of evolutionary pressure released in a single, glorious second. The remaining Black-Watch hunters were swallowed by the crowd in heartbeats, their high-tech weaponry and "Rank-A" skills useless against thousands of people who were now literal glitches in reality.
Kaelen pulled himself up to his feet, his hands shaking as he gripped the railing. The black veins on his neck had reached his jaw, and a faint purple mist was beginning to leak from his eyes.
**[Corruption: 22.1%.]**
**[Warning: Physical vessel is nearing its 'Logic-Limit'.]**
"It worked," Elara whispered, standing beside him. Her own orange eyes were now streaked with golden circuits, and the vials on her belt were bubbling with a light that defied chemistry. She reached out and touched a rusted pipe; the rust simply dissolved, replaced by reinforced chrome. "Kaelen... the world... it's all 'Green' code now. I can rewrite anything."
"Good," Kaelen wheezed, leaning heavily on her shoulder. "Because we've just invited the biggest predator in the universe to a dinner where the food can bite back."
**[Alert: Abyssal Lord 'Malphas' has detected the Great Awakening.]**
**[Manifestation Speed: Increased by 400%.]**
**[Estimated Arrival in Sector 4 (The Slabs): 02:14:55.]**
Lyra looked up at the stone ceiling, her violet eyes seeing through the miles of rock to the sky above. "He's coming, Kaelen. Malphas. The Architect's Executioner. He was the fail-safe—the one sent to harvest the world if the System ever became 'unclean'."
"Let him come," Kaelen said, his golden eyes fixing on the dark tunnel that led to the surface. "We aren't a 'dataset' anymore. We're a forest fire."
He looked at the thousands of newly empowered people below. They were looking up at him, silent again, waiting for the next command from their Sovereign. But Kaelen didn't give one.
"You're free!" he shouted, his voice cracking with the strain. "Don't look to me for orders! Follow your own light! But if you want to keep that light... if you want to see tomorrow's sun... then meet me at the surface in two hours. We're going to show the Abyss that this world is no longer on the menu!"
As the crowd began to roar, arming themselves with scrap metal that now hummed with their own internal power, Kaelen felt a sudden, freezing presence behind him.
He turned his head slowly.
Standing at the far end of the catwalk was a man in a perfectly tailored, albeit tattered, business suit. He looked like a mid-level bureaucrat from the Senate, except his skin was the mottled color of a bruised plum and his eyes were hollow, weeping sockets filled with crawling, white maggots made of pure shadow.
"A billion tiny sovereigns," the man whispered, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering over a grave. "A billion little candles for me to snuff out. You've made this harvest so much more... interesting, Kaelen Thorne."
"Who are you?" Kaelen asked, his hand drifting toward the hilt of his glaive.
"I am the Herald of the Hunger," the man smiled, revealing four rows of needle-like teeth. "And I am here to tell you that my Master doesn't just want your world's energy anymore. He wants *you*. You have the Root Heart. You are the only part of this planet that will remain intact during the digestion. You will be his crown."
The Herald vanished into a cloud of oily black smoke just as Kaelen's blade sheared through the space where he had been standing.
**[New Objective: Defeat the Herald's First Wave.]**
**[Location: The Slabs Main Gate.]**
**[Time to Manifestation: 60 Seconds.]**
Kaelen looked at Elara and Lyra, his face a mask of grim determination. "The Slabs are the first target. They want to snuff the spark before it can spread to the other cities."
"Then we make our stand here," Elara said, pulling two massive, glowing grenades from her coat—bottles filled with swirling, golden-white liquid. "I've always wanted to see what happens when you mix a Sovereign's soul with high-grade explosives."
Kaelen gripped *The King's Spite*. The blade was no longer just lunar-etched; it was dripping with golden liquid data, humming with the power of the Root itself.
"Chapter 21 is over," Kaelen whispered, staring into the encroaching dark of the tunnels. "Now, let's see how many Sovereigns it takes to kill a Lord."