One hundred meters underground.
A graveyard of silence.
Viscous air pressed against their lungs like liquid concrete. The cocktail of rancid machine oil and sweet metallic rust could suffocate any delicate carbon-based life form foolish enough to breathe deeply.
At the cavern's center, a black obelisk jutted from the muck at an unnatural angle.
One hundred meters tall.
Its surface crawled with dark red mechanical moss, the base surrounded by battery waste and bleached bones from forgotten eras. It stood in mute testimony—like a discarded lightning rod stabbed into a garbage heap by some cosmic joke.
Marcus clutched his swollen cheek, circling the obelisk twice with the enthusiasm of a man inspecting his own coffin.
He picked off a fingernail-sized rust flake and flicked it away with disgust.
"Ethan." Marcus's features scrunched together in constipated agony. "We're carrying ten billion in loan shark debt for this... oversized fire poker?"
Lyra remained silent, her knuckles white around her broken sword's hilt.
This place held no spiritual energy. The obelisk's aura wasn't powerful—it was *dying*. The kind of decay that came from prolonged starvation. Near-death decay that made her cultivation instincts scream warnings.
"Fire poker?"
Heavy hydraulic footsteps approached like mechanical thunder.
Steel Bone's massive feet crushed ancient skulls underfoot with crisp pops that echoed like gunshots. His red eye swept the obelisk, electronic voice dripping with mockery thick as motor oil.
"Fatty, you've got *exquisite* taste."
Steel Bone approached the obelisk with predatory confidence. Raised his leg like a battering ram.
*THUD!*
The dull impact echoed through the hollow, dust cascading down like gray snow. The scavengers' former god-like leader kicked with less force than he'd use on a stray dog.
The obelisk showed no reaction.
Dead as yesterday's hope.
"This junk was here before the slaughterhouse was built. Eight hundred years, every manager tried activating it." Steel Bone opened his massive mechanical palm with theatrical flair. "Watch this."
His chest storage compartment slid open with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a crystal pulsing with ghostly blue light.
Star core fragment.
In Chaos Sector, this small piece could buy a minor escort fleet. Hell, it could buy a small moon.
Swallowing sounds rippled through the crowd like a wave. The scavengers stared at the crystal, greed practically overflowing from their eyes like drool.
Steel Bone gripped the priceless fragment, roughly jamming it into a socket at the obelisk's base.
"Watch closely, *new boss*."
Steel Bone emphasized "boss" with undisguised mockery that could strip paint. "This is your ten billion treasure."
*Hum—*
The base flickered with weak yellow light. Like an old man's final wheeze before the grave.
"Urgh—ptui!"
A sound like cosmic indigestion.
The star core fragment was ejected like a rejected organ transplant. What entered as priceless treasure emerged as gray-black slag.
Energy unabsorbed. Directly annihilated.
"See that?" Steel Bone shrugged, red eye flashing with malicious satisfaction. "This thing's a bottomless pit. Fusion batteries, spirit stones, star cores—feed it anything, it wastes everything. Except taking up space, it's worthless."
Laughter echoed through the dim underground space. The mockery of desperados who'd found fresh meat to torment.
That glasses-wearing pretty boy carried ten billion death debt for a pile of scrap metal.
Marcus went pale as bleached bone, looking at Ethan with the expression of a man watching his execution. "Ethan, did that AI butler set us up?"
Ethan ignored the surrounding noise like it was elevator music.
He stood before the obelisk. Raised his hand. Pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up his nose with surgical precision.
Data streams cascaded waterfall-like across his lenses, turning his eyes into twin galaxies of information.
Beneath that mottled red rust, behind the "scrap metal" facade everyone saw, **[Predatory Vision]**'s scalpel had dissected the essence with ruthless efficiency.
**[Asset Scan Complete]**
**[Item Name: 9th Sequence - Entropy Reversal Tax Station (Damaged/Dormant)]**
**[Core Logic: Negative Entropy Drive]**
**[Activation Requirements: Standard positive energy (spiritual/electrical/nuclear) ineffective. Requires high-concentration "causal bad debt" or "order deficit" injection.]**
**[Current Status: Extremely Thirsty]**
Extremely thirsty.
*Perfect.*
Ethan's professional smile gradually widened like a crack in reality.
"Hah..."
The laugh was abrupt. Echoing through the spacious underground hollow with an unsettling neurotic quality that made everyone's skin crawl.
The mockery stopped dead. Even the dust seemed to freeze mid-fall.
Steel Bone frowned, hydraulic joints emitting wary hums. "What's so funny? Gone crazy from the debt?"
"I'm laughing at you."
Ethan turned, back against the massive obelisk, eyes filled with pity—the look reserved for uncivilized apes trying to operate quantum computers.
"Pour 98-octane gasoline into a hearse that burns corpse oil, of course it won't run."
He methodically unbuttoned his cuffs with the precision of a surgeon preparing for operation. Rolled up his sleeves. Exposed the vicious, frantically pulsing blue QR code on his hand.
**[Current Debt: -10,000,000,000]**
That blood-red negative number glowed like a fresh wound in the darkness, pulsing with malevolent life.
"Steel Bone, what do you think this is?"
Ethan raised his hand like a priest offering communion.
"Guild death debt." Steel Bone instinctively stepped back, thrusters whining. The ten billion figure itself carried a curse that could kill planets. "Touch that thing to anything, whoever gets it dies screaming."
"No."
Ethan shook his head with the patience of a teacher correcting a slow student.
Golden light exploded in his eyes like twin suns being born.
"This is *fuel*."
Before the words finished echoing—
Under Steel Bone's horrified gaze, Ethan turned and slammed his ten-billion-debt hand against the obelisk's energy port like a man high-fiving death itself!
"MADMAN! That's void debt! It'll trigger antimatter annihilation!!"
Steel Bone screamed, voice cracking with electronic terror. Thrusters ignited as he tried escaping this lunatic who'd just pulled the pin on a universe-ending grenade.
Too late.
**[System Command: Asset Restructuring]**
**[Definition Change: Redefining "Void Commerce Guild Debt" as "High-Energy Negative Entropy Flow"!]**
**[Execute: Capital Injection!]**
*ROAR—!*
No explosion. Just a terrifying rumble like a cosmic whale's intake of breath.
The QR code on Ethan's hand erupted in blinding red light. The debt numbers representing despair and annihilation transformed into a roaring crimson dragon made of pure financial fury.
Up his arm. Violent injection!
**[-9,999,000,000...]**
**[-9,500,000,000...]**
Numbers spun wildly like a slot machine paying out in reverse.
Eight hundred years of accumulated rust on the obelisk's surface cracked and peeled like startled snakes fleeing paradise!
Light. Black-gold light that hurt to perceive.
A pure data-constructed black beam instantly pierced a hundred meters of rock, punched through the ceiling like tissue paper, and stabbed into the slaughterhouse's gray-brown sky!
The underground cavern shook violently. What was once rotting scrap now flowed with liquid black-gold ripples that moved like living mercury.
The station's apex unfolded like a mechanical flower blooming in fast-forward. Metal twisted, reorganized, rebuilt itself according to laws that made physics weep.
A massive, floating black-gold throne took shape at the summit.
The aura was no longer deathly. This was *majesty*. From order's pinnacle—the absolute oppression of something that would audit all existence into spreadsheets and find it wanting!
*Thud!*
Dozens of nearby scavengers couldn't even scream before this pressure crushed them into the mud, bones exploding like popcorn in a microwave.
**[Station Activation Successful!]**
**[Current Territory Level: Lv.1 (Basic Tax Office)]**
**[Domain Trait: Mandatory Audit - All energy flows within territory subject to taxation!]**
At the light pillar's center, Ethan's coat tails whipped in winds that tasted of bureaucratic inevitability.
He glanced at the remaining "5 billion" on his hand with satisfaction, and shook it clean like brushing off lint.
Burned fifty billion. Bought a home.
The beauty of financial leverage.
He ascended the black-gold steps to the obelisk-formed throne with the confidence of a man who'd just turned bankruptcy into real estate investment.
Turned. Sat. Crossed his legs.
His gaze fell, locking onto Steel Bone like a targeting laser.
The mechanical tyrant struggled to support himself on hands and knees, hydraulic tubes sparking as he fought the rule-force demanding submission with every fiber of his being.
"I won't kneel... I am Steel Bone... I am king here..."
Steel Bone ground his steel teeth to powder, red eye nearing critical overload.
Ethan propped his chin on one hand, the other tapping rhythmically on the armrest.
*Tap.* *Tap.* *Tap.*
Each sound echoed like a judge's gavel.
"In the tax bureau, there are no kings."
Ethan's voice, amplified by the station, boomed like temple bells directly into Steel Bone's core processor.
"Only taxpayers."
*CRACK!*
Steel Bone's special alloy knees—capable of withstanding depleted uranium rounds—instantly shattered like glass under a sledgehammer.
The three-meter steel giant released a despairing wail that could wake the dead, crashing down in defeat.
Knees buried in the ground. Head striking the steps heavily.
Dust settled. Total silence.
Marcus's jaw could fit a lightbulb. Lyra's sword-grip no longer trembled, replaced by profound shock that rewrote her understanding of reality.
Treating ten billion debt like pocket change. Transforming lethal poison into divine power.
Ethan sat above, surveying the kneeling ruins, elegantly adjusting his tie with the satisfaction of a job well done.
"See." He addressed Marcus and Lyra with the tone of training new employees on their first day.
"Owe enough, and universal law helps you with installment plans."
Lyra: "..."
Just then, the newly restarted station radar emitted a piercing shriek that could shatter glass.
A massive holographic screen unfolded in space like a window to hell.
In the deep starfield, three ships with vicious paint jobs and skull flags blazed blue exhaust trails, rapidly approaching G-749 slaughterhouse orbit with predatory intent.
**[WARNING: Illegal intruders detected!]**
**[Identification: Interstellar pirates "Bloody Hand" gang.]**
**[Purpose: Raid.]**
Steel Bone, prostrate on the ground, shuddered violently at the alarm like a broken machine.
"It's the Bloody Hand pirates! They saw the station beam... we're finished, they have orbital cannons that can crack moons!"
Ethan looked up. Watched the menacing warships on screen with the interest of a man checking his appointment calendar.
Behind his lenses, no panic flickered. Instead, a gentle gleam appeared—the warmth of a shopkeeper seeing returning customers with full wallets.
"Don't panic." Ethan rose, straightening his jacket with meticulous care.
"Opening day visitors bringing flower baskets—that's an auspicious sign."
He extended his hand toward the fleet on screen, making a grasping motion like plucking fruit from a tree.
"Prepare to receive guests."
His smile could have powered a small city.
"We're collecting... business tax."