Chapter 174: His Desperate Math

The Elector swiped his bare left hand across the empty air.

The pristine white flesh peeled back and glitched with black digital squares.

Raziel threw his body backward.

He hit the cold stone floor of the Founder’s room and slid across the dusty tiles. A massive, flat gray void ripped open in the exact spot where he just stood.

The unrendered hole deleted the small wooden desk and erased the brittle feather quill resting on top of it.

The void expanded toward his boots and chewed on the floor.

Raziel scrambled backward until his spine hit the brick wall of the cell.

He operated on five percent stamina and a drained mana core while held the heavy bronze map in his right hand.

He stared at the supreme commander of the Inquisition.

Mordecai did not run or jump.

He possessed administrative access to the physical reality of the server. He just lowered his hand and adjusted the gold trim on his white sleeve.

The black code vanished under the illusion of human skin.

He stepped toward Raziel and raised his crystal cane.

The blue interface erupted in Raziel’s vision. The screens flashed with frantic red text and illuminated the dark cell with bloody digital light.

[CRITICAL ALERT: ENVIRONMENTAL DELETION IN PROGRESS.]

[PHYSICAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED.]

[RECOMMENDATION: EVACUATE THE SECTOR IMMEDIATELY.]

Raziel dismissed the warning screens with a mental command.

He looked straight down at his own chest.

He needed the seventh weapon.

He opened his main interface menu and navigated directly to the locked file he discovered days ago in the East Basement.

[GIFT 7/?: SEALED.]

[REQUIREMENTS FOR ACCESS: Master Gifts 4, 5, and 6. Unlock the original memory of the Umbral Paragon.]

He fulfilled the first requirement.

He mastered Chronoperception when he relived his own murder.

He mastered Anchor Blood when he bled to protect Zorya.

He mastered the Devourer when he accepted Gideon’s empty crystal without calculating the tactical cost.

He needed to unlock the original memory of the Umbral Paragon.

He fused the holy Paragon light with the Shadow Parasite back in the St. Sophia dungeon.

He forged the exact container the Nine designed countless cycles ago to hold their ultimate weapon.

He created the lock and the game handed him the key, but he never looked inside the box.

He tapped the red text.

VMMMM!

The interface glitched violently. The blue screens sparked with chaotic red pixels and generated a brand new notification window.

The System struggled to format the text properly because it interacted with code hidden from the Architect.

[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED DATA EXTRACTION.]

[THE FORGE RECOGNIZES THE TENTH CHIME.]

[ACCESS GRANTED: ORIGINAL MEMORY OF THE UMBRAL PARAGON.]

Raziel breathed hard and read the next block of text.

[COST OF EXTRACTION: PERMANENT EMPATHY LOCK.]

[DOWNLOADING THIS DATA WILL FIX THE PLAYER’S EMPATHY AT EXACTLY 50%.]

[WARNING: THIS ACTION IS IRREVERSIBLE. YOU WILL BECOME A PERFECT HYBRID OF HUMANITY AND CORRUPTION.]

[PROCEED?]

Raziel stared at the screen.

His tactical brain processed the mathematical reality of the transaction in a fraction of a second.

He felt the cold numbness growing in his chest every single time he used the corrupted magic.

He slowly lost his capacity to feel genuine warmth or deep emotional connection.

If he accepted the download, he permanently lost another twenty percent of his soul.

He would exist in an eternal state of half-monster and half-human.

The fifty percent mark represented the exact center of the spectrum. He would never heal completely and he would never succumb entirely to the abyss.

He would just freeze in place forever.

He listened to the heavy, methodical footsteps of the Elector approaching his boots. Mordecai raised the crystal cane and pointed the glass tip at his face.

Raziel made his choice.

Proceed.

He bit down on his already bleeding left thumb and tore the flesh open with his teeth. Hot blood welled up and ran down his fingers.

He activated Anchor Blood and burned his own physical blood as a raw catalyst to amplify his mana output.

The veins on his wrist flared with blinding gold and black light. He forced the boiling heat straight into his chest.

He did not channel standard blue Church magic. He did not cast an offensive spell at the Moderator.

He activated Soul Resonance and Chronoperception at the exact same time.

He forced both Forbidden Gifts inward. He aimed the maximum amplified power of the ancient magic directly into his own corrupted core.

He used Chronoperception to read the temporal echoes of his own soul and used Soul Resonance to establish a connection with the locked data file.

VMMMM!

A violent shockwave of pure psychological pressure hit the inside of his skull. The feedback loop established itself immediately.

The noise of a thousand shattered memories screamed in his ears.

[DATA EXTRACTION IN PROGRESS…]

[30%…]

[60%…]

Mordecai stopped walking.

The Elector lowered his crystal cane and frowned at the blinding gold and black light erupting from the novice on the floor.

The supreme commander recognized an anomaly that defied his administrative parameters.

The cleanup protocol analyzed the raw power venting from Raziel’s chest and registered a massive, catastrophic error in the server.

“You violate the foundation,” Mordecai stated.

Raziel coughed up a mouthful of dark blood onto the stone floor and looked up at the Elector.

The physical pain burned his nerves, but he forced a cold, sarcastic smile.

“I am a teenager with six illegal superpowers sitting in a basement,”

Raziel answered and kept his hands pressed against his chest. “Violating the foundation is literally my only hobby.”

Mordecai did not blink. The cleanup protocol lacked a sense of humor.

“Your corruption spreads,” the Elector replied with mechanical precision.

“You infect the code of this world. You must be isolated and purged.”

“Purge this,” Raziel muttered.

The Elector raised his bare left hand and pointed his open palm directly at Raziel’s face.

[90%…]

[99%…]

[EXTRACTION COMPLETE.]

Raziel screamed.

He did not scream from physical pain. He screamed from the massive, sudden absence of feeling in his chest.

The interface finalized the transaction. The game wiped away twenty percent of his humanity in a single micro-second.

The cold numbness rushed through his veins and froze his heart. The empathy lock slammed into place with a heavy, irreversible thud.

[EMPATHY LEVEL: 50% (LOCKED).]

The blue screens vanished completely.

The gray void ripped open in the air inches from his face as Mordecai swiped his hand to delete him.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep