Chapter 169: His Broken Altar

“I fight for the code,” Elector Mordecai said.

He raised his bare left hand again and pointed his open palm straight at Lucian’s chest.

Lucian dropped his steel dagger in the grass seconds ago, but he refused to die on his knees.

He operated on pure adrenaline and desperation.

He activated his Stealth Gift and dropped his mana signature to zero.

He erased his physical presence and dashed forward to flank the Elector.

Mordecai did not flinch. He did not turn his head or track the invisible movement.

Mordecai swiped his left hand in a short, horizontal arc.

He did not cast a kinetic blast or a holy smite. He deleted the physical space right in front of him.

A flat, gray void ripped open in the air.

Lucian slammed straight into the unrendered gap mid-stride.

The sudden deletion of the atmosphere created a violent vacuum.

The pressure hit the noble’s chest and knocked the breath completely out of his lungs. His stealth dropped instantly.

Lucian crashed onto the dirt and grabbed his ribs. He gasped for air and coughed hard, but no blood came out.

Mordecai did not hit him with lethal force. The Elector just swatted him away like a minor nuisance.

Gideon charged forward.

The street thug gripped his heavy iron mace with both hands and swung the weapon directly at the Elector’s head. He lacked magic, so he relied entirely on raw physical trauma.

Mordecai raised his crystal cane.

CLANG.

The heavy iron mace hit the fragile crystal. The glass did not shatter.

The iron bent under the impossible structural integrity of the cane. The kinetic force traveled back down the wooden handle and snapped Gideon’s wrists backward.

Gideon screamed and dropped the mace. Mordecai stepped forward and drove the blunt end of his cane into the boy’s stomach.

Gideon folded in half and collapsed onto the grass next to Lucian.

The two boys lay in the dirt and stared up at the supreme commander.

They fought elite Inquisitors and broke tri-point sealing formations, but they possessed zero capacity to fight a cleanup protocol.

Mordecai did not bother to finish them off.

He stepped over their bodies and walked past the heavy wooden doors of the administrative wing.

He ignored the fighting in the East Basement and the screams in the courtyard.

He headed straight for the Main Chapel of St. Celeste.

Raziel felt the shift in the battle through his permanent bond with Zorya.

He knelt on the cold stone floor of the workshop and kept his bleeding left arm pressed against the shattered bricks.

The five dead Inquisitors lay bleeding in the corridor outside the iron door.

“He is moving,” Lara’s voice echoed through the communication rune painted on Raziel’s collar.

“He is walking toward the chapel!”

Raziel tightened his jaw.

The Main Chapel sat directly above the deepest levels of the academy foundation.

The builders of the Primordial Pantheon placed the sacred altar right over the central runic node.

If Mordecai bypassed the outer defenses and reached the chapel, he bypassed the thickest part of Zorya’s shield.

“Zorya!” Raziel yelled over the humming noise of the dome. “Shift the anchor! Pull the shield back to cover the chapel!”

“I cannot!” Zorya screamed from the wooden chair.

“If I pull the perimeter back, the deletion code outside will eat the dormitories! The novices will fall into the void!”

Raziel gritted his teeth.

Mordecai forced them to choose between saving the building and saving the children.

The cleanup protocol just wanted to erase the anomaly.

Mordecai pushed the heavy oak doors of the Main Chapel open.

The sanctuary smelled of stale incense and old wax. Hundreds of candles burned on the side walls and cast flickering orange light against the vaulted ceiling.

The marble statue of the Goddess Zhalyr stood behind the main altar and looked down at the empty wooden pews.

Mordecai walked down the central aisle.

The heavy red digital static from the Silencer artifact outside crawled along the stone floor right behind his boots.

The glitching polygons chewed on the edges of the red carpets and erased the wood.

The Elector reached the front of the sanctuary.

He raised his left hand and snapped his fingers.

CLICK.

The black Silencer artifact sitting in the dirt outside the main gates vanished. He teleported the object through the physical space.

Mordecai placed the black sphere directly onto the center of the sacred altar.

The Elector raised his crystal cane and tapped the top of the artifact for the third time.

CLINK.

The sub-audible frequency spiked to absolute maximum capacity.

The physical pressure hit the chapel like a solid hammer. The noise ripped the stained glass windows out of their lead frames. Colorful shards of glass exploded into the sanctuary and showered the stone floor.

The heavy oak pews splintered and snapped under the sheer kinetic force.

The red digital static erupted from the black sphere. The corrupted polygons poured over the edges of the marble altar and flooded the room in less than three seconds.

The static ate the stone tiles and chewed through the heavy support pillars.

The deletion code hit the center of the Pantheon node directly.

Down in the East Basement, Zorya arched her back in the wooden chair and screamed in pure, unadulterated agony.

BZZT!

The massive silver dome protecting the academy shattered.

The architectural counter-shield broke into a million useless sparks and died completely. The sudden collapse of the magic threw Zorya backward.

Raziel felt the connection snap.

The Anchor Blood spell broke, and the sudden loss of pressure dropped him onto his chest. He gasped for air and clutched his bleeding left arm.

The humming noise in the basement stopped.

The ancient silver runes on the brick walls flickered and died.

The entire foundation of St. Celeste went completely dark and silent.

Raziel lay on the cold stone floor and breathed hard.

He tasted copper in his mouth. He operated on seventy percent empathy, but the cold numbness in his chest shattered under the weight of the disaster.

The academy lost its shield.

A loud, heavy grinding noise echoed from Level -5 beneath them.

The Silencer artifact did not just turn the ancient magic off.

It turned off the containment seals holding the colossal stone guardian in the dark.

Lithos woke up completely unrestricted, and it started climbing out of the abyss.

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