The damp walls of the maintenance closet felt like they were closing in on Harish. The air smelled of stale pine-scented floor wax and the metallic tang of high-voltage mana bleeding through the stadium's insulation. He was hunched over a dented bucket, his "Astra Intern" jumpsuit sticking to his skin with a mixture of cold sweat and grime. In his right hand, he gripped a mop handle; in his mind, he was holding the threads of reality.
"Master, her heart rate is exceeding 180 beats per minute," the Great Sage whispered directly into his synapsis. "Prince Valerion is preparing a Star-Glass resonance. Probability of permanent nerve damage to Kaelen: 84%."
Harish's knuckles turned white. He was 23 years old, a man who had spent his life balancing the books of a broken world while playing the role of the "clumsy" younger brother to a sister who thought she had to carry the sun on her shoulders. He stared at a crack in the closet door, his eyes reflecting the emerald glow of the pit through the digital link of the Chronos-Nexus Watch.
"She has to feel it," Harish muttered, his voice raspy and devoid of its usual lazy charm. "If I jump in now, she remains a protected flower in a garden of glass. When the Tower's higher floors descend, there won't be any 'Gold Knight' to catch her. She needs to find the 'Audit' within herself."
In Pit 9, the atmosphere was a physical weight. Prince Valerion of the High Elven Court didn't just unsheathe a weapon; he performed a ritual of superiority. The Viridian Star-Glass blade hummed a mournful, high-pitched frequency that caused the glass partitions of the VIP boxes to vibrate and crack. Emerald Sword Aura spilled from the hilt like a hungry ghost, thick as swamp fog and smelling of ancient, rotting forests.
Kaelen stood opposite him, her breathing coming in shallow, jagged gasps. Her own Radiant Aura was a flickering candle flame in a hurricane. She felt the Prince's killing intent—it was cold, ancient, and utterly indifferent. To him, she wasn't an opponent; she was a weed in a royal driveway.
"You have the audacity to stand on the same sand as a son of the Sun-Tree?" Valerion's voice was like silk sliding over a razor blade. "Your 'Auditor' isn't here to save you, little girl. You are just a pebble in the path of the High Elves."
Valerion moved. He didn't run; he glided. The Star-Glass blade left trails of emerald light that didn't just cut the air—they severed the space behind them. He executed the Green Moon Descent, a vertical strike that hit the stone floor with the force of a falling skyscraper.
[BOOOM-SHATTER!]
The stone floor of Pit 9 didn't just break; it exploded into fine dust. The shockwave sent Kaelen flying backward, her boots skidding across the sand as she tried to find her center. But Valerion was already there, a blur of green and silver. His blade grazed her shoulder, the aura-heat melting through her light armor and searing the flesh beneath.
"ARGH!" Kaelen screamed, the pain a white-hot spike in her nervous system. She looked up toward the VIP box, toward the shadowed figure of the Gold Knight. He didn't move. He stood there, a silent statue of matte-gold, watching his sister bleed.
Up in the stands, the silence was more terrifying than the roar of the crowd. Silas, the veteran with the brass prosthetic, gripped the railing so hard his mechanical arm vented a plume of steam. Beside him, Jaxon was shaking, his tablet displaying a plummeting stock graph for the Agnihotri holdings.
"Why isn't he stopping it?" Silas roared, his voice cracking. "The Gold Knight... he's just watching her get butchered! That Elf is a butcher! Look at the ground—that's Star-Glass residue! It's poisoning her mana circuits as we speak!"
"Maybe he doesn't care," Jaxon whispered, his eyes wide behind his glasses. "Maybe the Auditor is exactly what the name implies. He doesn't have emotions. He only has data. To him, Kaelen is just an inefficient variable. If she dies, she dies. This is... this is cold."
Back in the maintenance closet, Harish heard them. He heard the Elven laughter. He heard the snap of his own mop handle as it broke in his hands.
"Logic," Harish whispered, a dark, predatory light flickering in his eyes. "You want to talk about Logic?"
In the pit, the match reached its technical conclusion. Kaelen, covered in emerald-tinged blood, had managed to land a desperate, glancing blow on Valerion's cheek—a minor scratch that bled silver. It was enough for the referee to call the match for her based on the "Contact-Audit" rules.
But the "victory" was the trigger for a catastrophe.
Valerion touched the silver blood on his cheek. His face didn't just change; it disintegrated into a mask of sub-human fury. "You... you touched me?" Valerion shrieked. "A maggot... drew blood from a Prince?! I will not be 'Audited' by a dirty human!"
He clapped his hands together. 🔥 Forbidden Elven Art: Eternal Pyre of the Void.
The stadium lights flickered and died. A pillar of black-and-violet flame erupted from the ground beneath the exhausted Kaelen. This wasn't fire; it was a conceptual erasure designed to burn a soul. Kaelen looked up, her eyes wide with the realization that she was too drained to even raise her sword.
[SILENCE]
The world stopped. Literally.
In the span of a nanosecond, a streak of matte-gold light cut across the arena. [SNAP!] Dollar appeared directly in front of Kaelen. He stood between her and the violet inferno, his back to her. He raised his hand and flicked his fingers, a casual, almost bored gesture.
The Chronos-Nexus Watch pulsed. The "Zero-Logic" field expanded. The pillar of fire didn't extinguish; it simply ceased to have ever existed. There was no smoke. No heat. Just a silent, empty space.
"Impossible!" Valerion gasped. "That was a Royal Forbidden Art!"
Before the Prince could finish, the gold-clad figure was there. [THUD-GRASP!] Dollar's hand closed around Prince Valerion's throat. With effortless strength, dollar lifted the seven-foot Elf into the air as if he were a wet rag.
"You spoke of pests," dollar's voice vibrated, sounding like the grinding of a planet's core. "But in this pit, you are the only thing that is inefficient. You are a waste of carbon. A waste of space. A waste of my time."
Dollar tightened his grip. The sound of Valerion's royal neck-plates groaning and buckling under the pressure echoed through the silent stadium.
"The Audit is not just for the poor and the weak," dollar whispered, his voice projected to every corner of the stadium. "The higher you stand, the more your errors cost. And your error... was existing in my presence after the bell."
Kaelen stared at the back of the Gold Knight. She didn't see her younger brother. She saw a God of Logic holding a "Prince" like a piece of trash.
"Take your garbage," dollar said. He tossed Valerion across the pit. The Prince tumbled through the air, crashing into the stone wall, unconscious before he even hit the ground. Dollar turned back to Kaelen. He didn't speak. He checked the holographic timer on his wrist: 00:03.
"Efficiency achieved," he rumbled. [SHHH-LINK!] A Radiant Movement: Photon Glide shattered the air, and the Gold Knight was gone.
In a quiet residential street in xxxxxxxxxxx, a silver delivery truck pulled up. Harish, 23, dressed in his sweat-stained intern jumpsuit and smelling of floor wax, came running out of the house. He nearly tripped over a loose brick.
"Wait! Wait! I'm here!" Harish shouted, waving his arms. He fished a crumpled note out of his pocket and signed the pad with a shaky hand for a ₹200 soldering iron.
As the truck drove away, a taxi pulled up. Kaelen stepped out, her shoulder bandaged, her eyes red. She saw Harish standing there on the porch, looking like a total mess, holding a small box.
"Harish..." she whispered. "The Gold Knight... he saved me. He was... terrifying. He deleted fire."
Harish looked at her, his expression instantly shifting back to that of the "hopeless" younger brother. "That's great, Kaelen! But look! The soldering iron made it! Dad isn't going to kill us! Do you want to help me test it? I think the copper coils are just unaligned."
The next morning, Harish sat at the scarred wooden table in their home. Kaelen stood by the door, her silhouette framed by the fading Indian sunset.
"Harish," she said, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. "Don't you dare give me that 'hopeless younger brother' look. Not today. I watched a Prince choke on his own pride because a God in gold armor decided he was 'inefficient.' And that God moved exactly like you do when you're trying not to wake Dad up."
Harish didn't look up. He picked up a screwdriver. "I'm twenty-three, Kaelen. I'm a college dropout working a dead-end internship. My biggest achievement today was beating the delivery truck to the porch."
"Stop it!" Kaelen slammed her hand onto the table. "The Gold Knight... he didn't just save me. He protected me in a way that felt... familiar. You're my younger brother, Harish. I'm supposed to protect you. But out there? You looked at the world like it was a faulty circuit board."
Harish finally looked at her. For a heartbeat, the "lazy" mask slipped. His eyes weren't those of a bored intern; they were deep, cold, and calculated.
"The world is a faulty circuit board, Kaelen," Harish said, his voice reaching that modulated frequency for just a second. "And sometimes, the only way to fix a short circuit is to remove the component that's drawing too much power."
The next hour, a "customer" slid through the front door of the shop. He was a tall man with a silk headband covering a third eye. He placed a jagged, black metal sphere on the counter. "This artifact. It has stopped humming. I need it... recalibrated."
Harish didn't even look up from a rusted toaster. "That's a Shadow-Pulse Mine, Grade 4. Illegal. Also, the internal clock is misaligned. If I touch it, it'll blow a hole in the street. Both options are highly inefficient."
The assassin froze. "How do you—"
"I'm an auditor," Harish sighed. "And you're an assassin. Your heart rate is elevated, and you have a poisoned needle hidden in your left sleeve."
Before the assassin could react, Harish moved. [THWACK!] His hand blurred across the counter. He didn't punch; he tapped the assassin's wrist, then his sternum.
The poisoned needle shot into the ceiling. The man's third eye rolled back as his nervous system was "Banned." The Shadow-Pulse Mine let out a pathetic hiss and turned into a harmless paperweight.
"Kaelen," Harish called out, his voice returning to its lazy, younger-brother whine. "The customer had a seizure! Can you please 'audit' him out to the trash bins? I have to finish this toaster before Mrs. Gupta gets here."
Kaelen stood up, her sword still in its sheath. She looked at her 23-year-old brother, who was already back to poking at the toaster with a butter knife. "You didn't even use a weapon," she whispered.
"Bad wiring," Harish mumbled. "He was drawing too much ego. It caused a system crash."
As Kaelen dragged the body away, she heard Harish talking to his watch. "Master, the Murim Sects are mobilizing," the Great Sage whispered.
Harish clicked a component into place. [DING!] "Let them come," Harish whispered, his voice gaining that goosebump-inducing chill. "The universe is full of errors, Sage. But they forget one thing: I am the one who holds the eraser. If they want to hunt the Auditor, they better make sure their own books are balanced. Because when I arrive... the debt is always paid in full."