Chapter 95: Chapter 92 — Every Breath Made the Weapon Heavier

Baron Zhang was dead.

His human heart had stopped. His chest cavity was a scorched, hollowed-out crater. The golden teardrop of the Queen’s soul rested safely in the pocket of my ruined black suit. I had legally claimed Sector Eight, and the neon stock tickers wrapping the colossal, fossilized ribcage of the arena had already painted my name across the glass in stark white letters.

The audit was supposed to be over.

I turned my back on the corpse, planting the steel ferrule of my umbrella into the frozen, blood-soaked sand. My eighteen-year-old human vessel ached. A dull, throbbing pain pulsed behind my eyes, the physical consequence of channeling two thousand years of Sovereign Law through a mortal nervous system.

“Boss,” Lingshan said. Her voice lacked its usual icy calm. It carried a sharp, sudden edge of warning.

I stopped.

The sweltering, toxic wind blowing through the arena pit died instantly. The millions of starving ghosts sitting in the general admission bleachers fell dead silent.

A loud, grating screech echoed across the packed sand.

It sounded like an old, dial-up modem violently establishing a connection.

I turned around.

Baron Zhang’s corpse was standing up.

It moved with a jagged, unnatural twitch, like a marionette dragged upward by invisible steel wires. His eyes were wide open, but the blood-red sclera was gone. His pupils were completely flooded with a blinding, terminal-green light.

His flesh was dead meat. But the dull grey, First Era iron armor bolted directly to his skeleton was not.

ERROR.

The automated, synthetic voice of the Zhang Central Bank tore from his dead, slacked jaw.

LIQUIDATION PROTOCOL INTERRUPTED. SECTOR EIGHT ACQUISITION FLAG: HOSTILE. INITIATING CLOSING FEE ASSESSMENT.

“The bank,” I murmured, wiping a thin streak of blood from my chin. “The board of directors built a dead-man’s switch into his armor. They aren’t going to let twelve billion silver walk out the front door without trying to tax it.”

The corpse raised its right hand.

It didn’t reach for the heavy iron sword on its belt. It reached directly into the scorched, hollow crater of its own chest. The First Era iron plating shifted, the metal peeling back to reveal a dark, spatial storage void nested deep within the armor’s chassis.

The corpse grabbed something inside the void. It pulled.

The weapon it dragged out into the sweltering arena air was monstrous.

It was a colossal iron abacus. The frame was forged from thick, rectangular slabs of black steel, measuring six feet long and three feet wide. Instead of wooden counting beads, thick steel rods held rows of heavy, rusted iron spheres the size of cannonballs.

ASSET DEPLOYED: THE MARGIN CALL.

The systemic voice ground through the dead Warlord’s teeth.

“Sovereign,” Lingshan stepped forward, her dark eyes narrowing. She leveled the frozen steel of Winter’s Edge toward the possessed corpse. “The Market Maker is dead. The armor is just a shell running an automated script. I will dismantle the joints.”

Before I could order her to hold her ground, the Sword Saint moved.

She crossed the frozen crater in a fraction of a second, leaving a pale blue trail of freezing mist in her wake. She targeted the exposed, vulnerable gap between the corpse’s iron shoulder plate and its neck.

She channeled a lethal, concentrated burst of Tier-Three Sword Qi into her blade. The steel hummed, biting directly into the dead flesh.

The corpse didn’t dodge. It simply raised the colossal iron abacus, using the thick steel frame as a shield.

CLANG.

The impact rang out like a struck bell. Lingshan’s freezing blade dug half an inch into the black steel of the abacus before completely halting.

Then, a sickening, metallic sound echoed across the sand.

Clack.

A single, heavy iron bead slid across the top rod of the abacus.

The moment the bead locked into its new position, the physical reality of the arena violently shifted.

The corpse’s heavy iron boots instantly sank three inches into the solid permafrost. The packed sand beneath its feet groaned, spider-webbing with deep, jagged fractures. The air around the abacus visibly warped, bending the light.

“Lingshan, fall back!” I ordered, my voice cracking like a whip.

She tried to disengage, kicking off the Warlord’s chest plate to vault backward.

The corpse swung the abacus.

It wasn’t a fast strike. It didn’t need to be. The sheer, impossible physical density of the weapon created a localized vacuum. The kinetic wind pressure trailing the iron frame tore through the air, acting as a secondary blade.

The abacus missed Lingshan’s ribs by a full two feet.

The wind pressure did not.

Crack.

The invisible wall of displaced air slammed into the Sword Saint. Lingshan gasped, her tactical armor denting inward. She was launched backward, tumbling violently across the glass-fused sand until she slammed against the rusted iron grating of the arena perimeter.

She coughed, spitting a mouthful of bright red blood onto the dirt. She tried to push herself up using her sword, her left arm hanging limply at her side.

The corpse stood in the center of the pit. The colossal abacus rested against the sand. The ground simply liquefied beneath the weapon, unable to support the concentrated weight.

“It’s an algorithmic penalty,” I said, stepping between the corpse and my Vanguard. I stared at the single iron bead that had slid across the rod. “It isn’t tracking physical strikes. It’s tracking expenditure. Every time you channel Qi, every time you spend spiritual energy in its presence, the abacus registers the transaction.”

I adjusted my grip on my umbrella.

“And it adds the cost of your attack directly to its own physical mass. The weight doubles.”

Red Dog did not understand financial mechanics. He understood threat isolation.

The First Era Myrmidon saw Lingshan hit the wall. His optical sensors flared a blinding, violent crimson. The heavy structural gears inside his massive chest roared into maximum overdrive, pumping thick black smoke from his exhaust vents.

He didn’t use Qi. He possessed zero spiritual energy. He relied entirely on the First Era combustion engine buried in his chassis.

Red Dog charged.

He crossed the sand like a runaway freight train, his heavy iron boots shaking the entire coliseum. He threw a massive, matte-black mechanical right hook, aiming directly for the corpse’s terminal-green eyes.

The corpse stepped into the punch. It swung the massive abacus upward in a brutal, two-handed uppercut.

Red Dog’s fist collided with the heavy iron beads.

Clack.

The automated script possessing the Warlord recognized the transaction. It didn’t care that the energy wasn’t spiritual. Raw kinetic force was still currency in the Underworld.

The second iron bead slid across the rod.

The weight doubled again.

The impact sounded like a bomb detonating. A massive shockwave blew the remaining frozen sand completely out of the crater, exposing the bedrock beneath the arena.

Red Dog—a machine that weighed over two tons and had just physically dismantled a Tier-Four Chimera without breaking a sweat—was stopped dead in his tracks.

The sheer, compounded density of the abacus overwhelmed his First Era hydraulics.

The thick iron plating on Red Dog’s right arm buckled. The metal shrieked, tearing open at the elbow joint. Thick, hot machine oil sprayed across the dirt. The kinetic recoil launched the giant Myrmidon backward, crashing heavily into the base of the fossilized ivory ribcage. The ancient bone groaned under the impact.

Two beads. Four times the original mass.

The abacus was rapidly approaching the physical weight of a commercial skyscraper.

The corpse didn’t pursue Red Dog. Its terminal-green eyes locked onto me.

COLLECTION PENDING. PLEASE SUBMIT ASSETS.

It dragged the abacus across the bedrock. The thick steel frame carved a deep, jagged trench straight through the solid stone. The friction superheated the rock, leaving a trail of glowing, molten slag behind the dead Warlord’s boots.

“Boss,” Jian’s terrified voice crackled through the comms link in my ear. “Boss, the telemetry on that weapon is breaking my monitors. If it swings that thing again, the kinetic shockwave is going to shatter the entire arena foundation. The bleachers will collapse!”

“I see it, Jian,” I said, my voice deadpan.

I rolled my bleeding shoulders. I stepped out of the shallow crater, my ruined black leather boots crunching over the cooling slag.

You cannot out-punch a compounding debt.

If I summoned the Golden Ledger and hit the corpse with a massive burst of Sovereign Law, the abacus would simply register the massive spiritual expenditure. Ten beads would slide. The weapon would instantly achieve the physical density of a small moon. The gravitational collapse would vaporize the entire sector, including me, instantly.

The Iron Bank had designed a perfect, unwinnable mechanic. It forced the debtor to continuously fund their own execution.

The corpse raised the colossal iron abacus high above its head.

The heavy iron beads clicked. The bedrock beneath the dead Warlord’s boots instantly shattered, plunging the corpse up to its knees in crushed stone. It didn’t care. It brought the massive weapon down in a brutal, vertical strike aimed directly at the crown of my head.

I didn’t dodge.

I didn’t summon a shield of administrative fire. I didn’t spend a single fraction of Qi or Sovereign Law.

I reached out with my bare, blood-stained left hand.

I caught the descending edge of the colossal iron frame.

The impact was entirely physical.

CRACK.

The bones in my left forearm splintered. The radius and ulna fractured under the immense, crushing strain. A sickening pop echoed from my shoulder as the joint partially dislocated.

The kinetic force drove my boots straight through the bedrock, burying me up to my calves in solid stone. A hot, thick mouthful of blood filled my throat. I gritted my teeth, locking my jaw so tightly a molar cracked.

But I held the frame.

The abacus stopped moving.

The corpse’s terminal-green eyes flickered in confusion.

TRANSACTION NOT DETECTED. PLEASE SPEND CAPITAL.

The system was waiting for me to use magic to defend myself. It was waiting to slide the third bead.

“I am not spending a dime,” I whispered, blood dripping from my lips onto the white collar of my ruined shirt.

I tightened my shattered left hand around the thick steel of the frame.

I couldn’t attack the corpse. I couldn’t attack the weapon.

But I was the primary creditor of Sector Eight. I owned the bank that was currently trying to collect from me.

I didn’t push Sovereign Law out into the world. I pulled the systemic connection in.

I opened the ledger of my own soul and audited the connection directly through the physical touch of the metal.

The colossal iron abacus suddenly hummed.

It was a piece of high-tier corporate hardware, designed to process and compound external debt. But because my bare hand was touching it, and because I held the absolute Authority of the Ivory Sky, the weapon’s algorithmic targeting system glitched.

It stopped looking at me as a debtor.

It recognized me as the central bank.

CREDITOR IDENTIFIED. REVERSING LEDGER.

Clack.

The first iron bead slid violently backward across the rod.

The physical weight of the weapon instantly halved. My shattered left arm throbbed, the crushing pressure easing just enough for me to draw a ragged, shallow breath.

Clack.

The second iron bead slammed backward.

The corpse’s terminal-green eyes began to strobe frantically. The dead flesh of its face twitched. The automated script was panicking. The weapon was attempting to tax itself.

“You want to calculate expenditures?” I asked, my voice a wet, ragged rasp. I leaned my weight against the heavy iron frame, forcing the glitch deeper into the weapon’s core. “Calculate the cost of holding me.”

Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.

Four iron beads slid rapidly across the lower rods.

But they didn’t slide to my side of the ledger. They slid to the corpse’s side.

The abacus registered the dead Warlord’s First Era armor, the ambient dark Qi lingering in his dead veins, and the systemic connection to the Zhang Central Bank. It logged them as taxable expenditures.

The weight of the colossal iron abacus didn’t just double. It multiplied exponentially.

But the physical density did not project outward toward me. It inverted, localizing entirely on the dead Warlord holding the handle.

The corpse’s First Era iron shoulder plates violently crumpled inward.

Crunch.

The dead spine holding the massive frame instantly snapped in three places. The Warlord’s arms were ripped completely out of their sockets, unable to hold the sudden, localized mass of a collapsing mountain.

The corpse dropped the abacus.

The weapon hit the Warlord’s chest.

The dead flesh liquefied instantly. The unbreakable, First Era iron armor flattened into a sheet of foil barely a millimeter thick. The colossal iron abacus drove the pulverized remains of Baron Zhang directly through the bedrock, sinking a hundred feet into the earth before the sheer density finally stabilized.

The terminal-green light in the corpse’s eyes died.

The screeching dial-up noise faded, replaced by the quiet, settling dust of the ruined arena.

I stood in the center of the deep trench, my left arm hanging uselessly at my side, thoroughly broken. My black suit was coated in grey stone dust and dark blood.

I looked down into the deep, dark hole where the abacus had buried the Warlord.

“Closing fee denied,” I muttered.

Lingshan dragged herself out of the rubble near the arena wall, clutching her ribs. Red Dog stood up slowly, the heavy gears in his ruined right arm grinding loudly, venting thick black smoke.

We were battered. We were broken. The eighteen-year-old vessel was holding on by a frayed thread.

But the Sector was quiet.

I turned away from the hole and began the long, slow limp toward the heavy iron exit doors.

[AUTHOR NOTE]

The Bank tried to collect. The Bank got crushed. 💀📉

Ren just beat an unwinnable, compounding algorithm by letting it hit him in the face and auditing its own targeting system. It cost him a broken arm, but the Warlord is officially, permanently pasted.

No more dead-man switches. The 72-hour clock is running out.

If you loved that brutal, systemic face-slapping, drop those Power Stones and Golden Tickets! The ultimate performance review with Judge Mortis is up next! ⚖️🔥

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep