The silence in the Repository's secure conference room was denser than the granite of the Alps. It was the silence of a paradigm shattering, its pieces settling into a new, terrifying configuration.
Asuta stood before the holographic globe, its surface now marred with the pulsing red markers of "acceptable scars." Saito Tanaka sat perfectly still, his earlier triumph evaporated, replaced by the pale, focused stillness of a man recalculating the yield of an apocalypse. Ken, who had been summoned urgently, looked like he'd been slapped by a ghost, his usual nervous energy frozen solid.
"We have been thinking too small," Asuta began, his voice not loud, but carrying the absolute weight of the mountain tomb within it. "We have been preparing for the wrong apocalypse."
He turned from the globe to face them. In his eyes, the horror of the scale-grave had been refined into a cold, cutting clarity.
"Let me connect the logs," he said, and it was the language of the audit trail he used now. "Exhibit A: The Dragon Scale. Not a trophy. A witness. It records a Purge Protocol. A target designated 'Miasma' was exterminated. The dragons were collateral damage, their biomass fossilized, the 'reality scarring' deemed acceptable."
He tapped the air, and a shimmering, ghostly image of the bronze spear, KAL-77-V, appeared beside the globe. "Exhibit B: The weapon. A Judgement-Class spear. It is not a relic. It is an active crime scene marker. Its audit trail was open until last week. The system was waiting for a final report. The enforcers we saw were the clerks closing the file."
He brought up the spectral image of the Primordial Fragment from the Foundation's vault. "Exhibit C: Pure source code. Uncorrupted, fundamental law. It is what this reality is supposed to be. It is the original programming before the corruption."
His gaze swept over Saito and Ken. "The Convergence. The return of spiritual energy. We thought it was an invasion. It is not. It is a system reboot."
The word hung in the air, heavy and technical and utterly devastating.
Ken found his voice, a thin, strained thread of sound. "And the Immortals? The ones coming in 2024?"
"Scavengers," Asuta said, the word dripping with cold contempt. "They are not the vanguard of an army. They are data-miners. They sense the reboot initializing. They smell the power coming back online. They want to rush in, loot the pure source code, strip-mine the spiritual energy, and claim this 'new' territory for their own clans and sects. They are vultures circling a corpse that's about to twitch."
Saito leaned forward, his fingers steepled. "And the reboot itself? What does it entail?"
"That is the true threat," Asuta said, his voice dropping. "When a corrupted system reboots, what is the first thing it does?" He looked at Ken.
Ken swallowed. "It… runs a diagnostic. It checks the integrity of the core files. It looks for malware."
"Exactly. The return of Qi is the power coming back on. The diagnostic is the next step. And based on the logs from that spear, the diagnostic parameters are brutally simple." Asuta's eyes were like chips of obsidian. "It will scan for corruption. It will scan for unauthorized lifeforms—entities that evolved in the corrupted environment, whose very spiritual signature is marked by the glitches and scars. It will scan for anomalies. And what is the protocol for anomalies?"
"Purge," Saito whispered.
"Purge," Asuta confirmed. "Theta, or Zeta, or Omega. They have a menu. The Immortals who come scrambling through the reboot will be a nuisance. A gang of thieves in a bank during an earthquake. But the earthquake itself… that is the system check. And if it finds the planet teeming with 'malware'—with humanity, with beasts mutated by residual scar-energy, with us—it will not send an army. It will send a single, updated spear. Or it will simply… reformat the sector."
The scope of it was paralyzing. They had been training for a bar fight while the building was scheduled for demolition.
"So… what do we do?" Ken asked, despair etching his face. "How do you fight that?"
"You don't," Asuta said, and for the first time, a flicker of his true, fierce will showed through the grim analysis. "You cannot fight a system check. You cannot cut a rule with a sword. You have to pass it. You have to hack it."
He turned back to the holograms. "Our mission is no longer to prepare for a war against soldiers. It is to prepare for an audit by gods. Our goal is not victory, but certification."
"Certification?" Saito echoed, the businessman in him latching onto the term.
"We must change our classification. We must make ourselves, our allies, and as much of this world as we can, not 'malware' or 'corrupted data,' but 'essential background processes.' We must become so utterly, flawlessly aligned with the fundamental principles of this reality—with the pure source code of the Primordial Fragment—that when the system boots up and runs its scan, it sees us as part of the operating system. As mandatory."
He held up his hand, and a faint, shimmering aura enveloped it. It was the Mirage Cloak, but subtly different. It didn't just hide; it seemed to settle, to harmonize with the very light and air around it, becoming unremarkable, approved.
"I have been practicing. The Mirage Cloak was a stealth tool. This… is an emulation. A Scar-Weaver Technique. It doesn't just hide my life force. It makes my spiritual signature resonate with the 'acceptable' scarring of this world. It makes me look like a logged, reviewed, and sanctioned part of the environment. It is a crude forgery of a security clearance."
He let the aura fade. "It is a start. But it is only hiding within the corruption. Our ultimate goal must be more radical. We must not hide in the scar. We must heal it from within. We must use the pure source code we have to rewrite our own spiritual foundations. We must learn to write our souls in a language the system reads as 'whitelisted.' As 'core functionality.'"
The ambition of it was staggering. It was a heist against the cosmos itself.
"The Divine God Body Sutra," Asuta said, laying out the new path. "It is not just a manual for strength. It is a guide to forging a vessel so perfect, so in harmony with natural law, that it appears to be a default feature of reality, not a bug."
"The Unbroken Horizon Sword Art," he continued. "Its ultimate concept is not cutting mountains. It is 'severing' the link between the self and the 'corruption' flag. It is a sword that cuts one's own existential ties to the glitch."
"And the Soul Grinding Scripture," he finished, his voice grim with resolve. "That is the key. The painful, meticulous, terrifying key. We must grind down the souls we have—souls born and shaped in this corrupted epoch—and rebuild them. Not in the image of some distant Immortal ideal, but in the image of the Primordial Mandate. The original, intended laws of this world. We must become natives of a reality that hasn't existed for eons."
Saito stood up, his mind racing ahead, mapping resources, strategies, threats. "The other players. The Seekers. The Foundation."
"The Seekers are blindly looting the corruption," Asuta said. "They are making the 'malware' signature stronger, drawing attention. They are a direct threat to our goal. The Foundation… they are studying the code, but they are afraid to run it. They are passive. We must be active. We must compile."
He looked at both of them, his will a palpable force in the room. "This is our new Mandate. We are not an army. We are a patch. A clandestine update designed to slip through the reboot unnoticed, and to protect this world from the final, fatal scan. We will find the scars, study them, learn the system's tolerances. We will find more pure code. We will cultivate not for power, but for legitimacy. And when the scavengers come in 2024, we will deal with them—not as the defenders of a doomed world, but as its rightful, whitelisted administrators, removing trash before the official inspection."
He walked to the window, looking out at the sprawling, oblivious city. "The war is still coming," he said softly. "But the battlefield is not land or sea. It is the definition of existence itself."
---
Three Days Later - Rooftop of the Abandoned Textile Mill, 03:00
The theory was solid. The mandate was clear. Now came the brutal, physical practice.
Asuta stood shirtless in the center of the rain-slicked roof. Before him, six advanced combat drones whirred silently. This wasn't just about fighting. This was about cultivating under pressure, forcing his already-refined body to its absolute limit to breach the next bottleneck.
He was at Body Tempering, Layer 6: Nerves of Mercury, Forged. His nervous system was a superconductor, his reactions bordering on precognition. Layer 7 had been the purification and alignment of his internal energy meridians—a foundation for Qi Condensation. But the leap from Layer 7 to Layer 8: Unbreakable Vessel, Tempered was a legendary barrier. It required not just purification, but a total, violent reintegration of the body under catastrophic stress. The Sutra described it as "hammering the finished blade in the heart of the avalanche."
"Begin," he murmured.
The drones attacked in a coordinated net. A kinetic round hit his solar plexus with the force of a car crash. Crunch. The air left his lungs. Before the pain could even register, a sonic disruptor pulsed, threatening to shatter his enhanced neural harmony.
Grind. Forge. He didn't retreat from the damage. He welcomed it. He used the Sutra's most esoteric, painful method—Cataclysmic Reintegration. He guided the concussive force through his Layer 7 meridian network, using it as a conduit to channel the violence into his very cells. The shockwave that should have pulped organs became a tectonic plate slamming through his marrow, his muscles, his sinews.
He felt it—not breaking, but binding. The separate, perfected systems of his body—the tempered bones (Layer 5), the mercury nerves (Layer 6), the aligned meridians (Layer 7)—were being smashed together by external trauma and fused by his indomitable will. A terrible, glorious heat erupted from his core. His skin glowed faintly, steam rising from the rainwater as it vaporized on contact. Body Tempering, Layer 8: Progress Initiated. Vessel Reforging: 15%.
He moved, a scream of motion through pain. The Unbroken Horizon Sword Art - Third Form: Horizon-Cleaving Sunder. The Edge was no longer a silver streak; it was a line of erased reality. He didn't fight the drones. He fought the concept of their attack pattern. His sword severed the tactical link between them, creating disarray. A drone lunged; his blade met its pincer, and with a screech of sundered alloys, he cut through the force behind the lunge, leaving the drone mechanically intact but momentum-dead, toppling over.
Two drones closed with electrified nets. Asuta dropped his sword. Soul Grinding Scripture - Second Cycle: The Furnace Accepts the Ore. He let the nets entangle him. The high-voltage current surged, a torrent of agonizing energy meant to fry his nervous system. This was the "ore." His soul, the "furnace." He focused the Scripture, not on smoothing his spirit, but on using the external agony as the grinding stone. The searing pain scoured away the lingering psychic residue of fear, the clinging "noise" of his mortal identity. Under this electrocution, his spiritual signature didn't just dull—it became austere, simplified to its bare, essential components: Will. Survival. Purpose.
Now. Scar-Weaver Technique.
He took that austere, simplified spirit and projected it. But he didn't mimic the city's hum this time. He mimicked the echo of the impact. The residual, vibrational "scar" left in the air by the drone's own kinetic weapon. He made his presence feel like the aftermath of sanctioned violence, not the violence itself. He became a fading shockwave.
The drones' sensors, calibrated for living, aggressive biomass, lost positive lock. For 2.3 seconds, he registered as a dissipating energy artifact, a permitted byproduct of their own authorized use of force.
With a roar that tore from his newly-reforging throat, he exploded. Layer 8, even partially integrated, unleashed a wave of pure, physical authority. The electrified nets tore like cobwebs. His fists became pistons of condensed gravity. He didn't dismantle the remaining drones; he shattered them with direct, overwhelming force—each punch a localized shockwave that crumpled polymer and alloy alike.
He stood panting in the center, steam rising from his glowing skin, the smell of ozone and scorched metal in the air. His nerves shrieked, and his bones felt like they'd been through a star's forge. But beneath the pain was a terrifying, profound solidity. His body was no longer a collection of perfected parts. It was becoming a single, unified weapon. Body Tempering, Layer 8: Vessel Reforging - 35%. Bottleneck Breached.
A slow clap echoed from the shadows. Saito Tanaka stepped into the dim light, his scanner whirring. "Remarkable. The energy signature during the entanglement... it didn't hide. It transmuted. You became a classified echo of the event itself." He looked at Asuta with something akin to awe. "You're not just learning to hide from the audit. You're learning to write yourself into the audit's appendices as a non-actionable footnote."
"We need a field test," Asuta said, his voice a rasp of exhausted triumph. "A controlled environment where the rules are already bent. Somewhere the line between 'permitted anomaly' and 'target' is thin."
"I have a candidate," Saito replied. "A forest at the base of Mount Fuji. Aokigahara. The Sea of Trees. It is a documented confluence of magnetic anomalies and psychological disturbances. A 'thin' place. A minor, stable scar. We can test the Scar-Weaver against the forest's own inherent distortion field."
"Good. In three days. And we need a baseline. A control subject with a normal, unaltered spiritual signature. To see if the technique can be extended—if I can weave a cloak large enough for two."
Ken's voice, tinny over the comms, piped up. "Please don't say me. Please, please don't say me."
"Not you, Ken," Asuta said, a ghost of a smile on his lips. The smile faded. He already knew who it had to be. The thought chilled the fiery triumph in his veins. "We need someone whose signature is purely, beautifully human. Uncontaminated by cosmic dread or secret knowledge."
He would have to bring Ruri.
---
Later That Night - The Apartment
Asuta returned just before dawn, moving with a silent, liquid grace that was new even to him. The partial integration of Layer 8 had altered his physical presence; he occupied space more deliberately, like a stone settled at the bottom of a river. He slipped inside, hoping to avoid—
"You're vibrating again."
Ruri stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding a glass of water. She was in her pajamas, her artist's eyes wide-awake and far too perceptive. "Not like last time. Deeper. Slower. Like… a really big engine idling." She stepped closer, peering at him. "And you're bleeding. Again."
"Training," he said, the lie now a familiar, bitter coat on his tongue. "It was intense."
She didn't call him on it. She just stared at his face, then at his hands. "You look different. Not just tired. It's like… you've folded yourself up smaller. Tighter." She reached out, almost touching his arm, then pulled her hand back. "What are you doing, 'Nii-san'?"
The old childhood honorific, used so rarely now, struck him like a physical blow. This was the cost. Every step towards becoming a ghost in the machine was a step away from being her brother.
He made a decision. The first real one in this new, cold war.
"I… need your help with something," he said, his voice rough. "An art project. For a… unique client. We'd need to go on a field trip. To a forest. To sketch the textures of a place that feels… wrong."
Ruri's eyes narrowed. She didn't believe the art project lie for a second. But she heard the genuine plea beneath it. The 'I-need-you' that he could never voice.
"A forest that feels wrong," she repeated slowly. "Okay. When?"
"This weekend."
She nodded once, a sharp, decisive motion. "Fine. But you're buying the snacks. And you're explaining what 'vibrating at a subsonic frequency' actually means on the train ride there."
She turned and walked back to her room, leaving him standing in the silent hallway.
The mandate was set. The path was clear. He was cultivating a body to withstand heaven, a soul to fool it, and a sword to cut his own name from the ledger of the damned.
And now, he was bringing his heart right onto the battlefield.