Yoon-hee read the message in the Association's main corridor at 14:00 on a Wednesday.
Not through a crystal. Not through a drop point. Through the building itself — the specific, ambient data-transfer of the maintenance layer sending information through the infrastructure that the Association building was built on, reaching into the specific frequency of her Divine Eye in the way that the Eyes of the Architect broadcast had reached into the System's nodes.
Two sentences.
She read them walking.
She did not stop walking.
She maintained the specific, composed pace of an S-Rank Inquisitor on routine patrol — the pace that the monitoring thread was calibrated to read as standard behavior, the pace that had been her armor for weeks.
She read the two sentences.
She kept walking.
She reached the end of the corridor.
She turned.
She walked back.
She was halfway back when she stopped.
Not from the sentences. From what they required of her.
She stood in the Association's main corridor at 14:00 on a Wednesday and thought about what the two sentences meant and what the response to them had to be and whether the response was something she could do from inside the Association's framework or whether it required her to be outside it.
She already knew the answer.
She had known since the rooftop in Chapter 26.
Since the debris field in Chapter 24.
Since the dungeon in Chapter 6 where she had turned off her communication device because the System hadn't saved anyone's life that day.
She kept walking.
She walked to her office.
She opened the standard Association paperwork database.
She found the resignation form.
She filled it out.
Personal reasons. Effective immediately. Signed.
She submitted it.
She looked at her Inquisitor's badge.
She put it on her desk.
She picked up the silver rapier.
She walked out of the building.