Chapter 52: Quarantine Protocol
The crushing pressure of Vane’s gravity field made every breath Kanos took feel like he was inhaling liquid lead. His knees trembled violently. The physical pain was absolute agony, but Kanos forced his brain into a state of hyper focus. He completely shut out the pain, the noise of the crumbling ceiling, and the terrifying sight of the giant Inquisitor walking slowly toward him.
He only had one single chance. He could not use the void ink. Vane’s kinetic attacks easily shattered smoke constructs. Kanos needed something incredibly dense, impossibly sharp, and completely unaffected by system gravity. He needed pure, raw carbon manipulation.
Kanos gripped the small chunk of wood charcoal tightly in his right hand. He did not raise his arm to draw. He kept his hand low, hiding it right next to his thigh.
Vane stopped three meters away. The Grand Inquisitor raised his right hand slowly. The air around Vane’s palm began to distort and warp wildly, gathering an insane amount of localized kinetic force. He was preparing to deliver a single punch that would instantly turn Kanos’s entire body into a bloody red mist.
"Say goodbye to your flawed existence," Vane stated coldly.
Vane threw the punch.
The invisible kinetic shockwave erupted forward like a speeding bullet train. At that exact millisecond, Kanos threw his entire body aggressively to the left, diving completely off balance toward the floor. The kinetic blast grazed Kanos’s right shoulder, instantly tearing away his gray cloak and brutally dislocating his shoulder joint with a loud, sickening pop.
Kanos screamed in pain, but he used the violent spinning momentum of his fall perfectly. As his body crashed toward the broken floorboards, Kanos aggressively dragged the chunk of charcoal across the hard stone in one perfectly straight, desperate line.
He poured absolutely every single drop of his remaining health points into that single stroke. He did not hold back. He bypassed the system’s safety limits entirely.
"PIERCE!" Kanos roared with a blood filled mouth.
A blindingly bright, pure white light exploded from the charcoal line on the floor. It was not smoke. It was solid matter manipulation. The air pressure in the room violently inverted for a split second. From the thick white line Kanos just drew, a pitch black, highly compressed carbon steel spike erupted directly upward from the floor.
The spike was the thickness of a tree trunk and possessed the density of a diamond. It shot up with explosive, terrifying speed, angling perfectly toward the spot Vane had just stepped into to throw his punch.
Vane’s eyes widened in sheer shock. The Grand Inquisitor instinctively activated his maximum gravity shield, trying to crush the incoming object. But Kanos’s creation was purely physical matter born from an anomaly code. It did not have any magic or mana for the system to easily read or manipulate quickly enough.
The black carbon spike tore straight through the distorted gravity field. It slammed brutally into Vane’s chest, effortlessly piercing through his matte black armor.
Vane let out a horrific, gurgling gasp. The massive steel spike lifted the two meter tall Inquisitor clean off his feet, impaling him entirely and pinning him suspended in the air. The tip of the giant spike burst out through Vane’s back, dripping with dark crimson blood.
The glowing yellow light in Vane’s eyes flickered wildly, filled with absolute disbelief. The man tried to reach out and grab the spike lodged in his chest, but his arms quickly went completely limp. The gravity field pressing down on the room vanished instantly. Vane’s head dropped forward. The apex dog of the Sensor Bureau was dead.
Kanos lay flat on his back on the ruined floor. He was panting frantically. His right arm was twisted at a highly unnatural angle due to the dislocated shoulder. His vision went almost completely black for a few seconds. The system panel suddenly flashed in front of his eyes, glowing a bright, erratic gold.
[ CRITICAL ERROR. GRAND INQUISITOR VANE STATUS: TERMINATED ]
[ ANOMALY THREAT LEVEL UPGRADED TO MAXIMUM ]
[ HP: 1/800 ]
Kanos coughed weakly, spitting blood onto his own cheek. One health point left. He literally just burned through his entire life force to draw that single giant spike. If he had drawn the line even one inch longer, his heart would have stopped beating instantly.
"Boss!" Sili’s voice sounded incredibly panicked from across the room. The skinny broker scrambled over the rubble, completely ignoring the terrifying sight of Vane impaled on the spike. Sili grabbed Kanos’s good arm and tried to drag him up. "Boss, stay awake! We need to get out of here right now!"
Belida groaned loudly. The giant knight forced himself to his feet, heavily using his black sword as a crutch. He limped over to Papuyu, scooped the unconscious hitman up, and threw her over his uninjured shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Belida walked over to Kanos and Sili. The knight looked at the dead Inquisitor on the spike with a gaze of pure respect for Kanos’s insane tactical gamble.
"He is completely drained," Belida noted, looking at Kanos’s pale, nearly dead face. "Help me put him on my back, Sili. We have to move before they send another one."
Sili hurriedly helped lift Kanos onto Belida’s broad back. Kanos barely had the energy to keep his eyes open, let alone walk. His right arm dangled uselessly.
Belida did not waste time. The knight carried both Kanos and Papuyu, moving with heavy but determined steps out of the ruined data hub, heading straight for the eastern toxic pipelines that led back down to the Dead Zone. Sili followed closely behind, constantly looking back in fear.
Ten minutes later, they finally dragged themselves out of the cramped pipeline and stepped onto an open metal grating overlooking the lower district slums. The heavy rain was still pouring relentlessly.
Sili suddenly stopped walking. The broker dropped his leather bag, his hands trembling violently as he pointed toward the sky above the massive underground city. "Boss... Belida... look up."
Belida stopped and looked up. Kanos forced his heavy eyelids open, tilting his head slightly to look at the ceiling of the giant cavern.
The pitch black sky of the underground city was no longer dark. A terrifying, incredibly thick crimson energy barrier was slowly expanding from the upper city pillars, crawling rapidly across the entire ceiling and rolling down the stone walls. The barrier looked like a web of burning red code, completely sealing off the entirety of Sector Four and the lower district from the rest of the world.
A deafening, mechanical voice suddenly echoed clearly from the sky, perfectly heard by every single person living in the lower city.
[ CORRUPTION DETECTED. QUARANTINE PROTOCOL INITIATED. ALL EXITS LOCKED. SECTOR FOUR SCHEDULED FOR COMPLETE PURGE IN SEVEN DAYS. ]
Belida tightened his grip on his sword. Sili fell to his knees in total despair. They were completely locked inside a giant cage, and the system was about to wipe the entire cage clean.
Kanos stared at the glowing red sky. His breathing was incredibly weak, but a faint, cynical smile slowly formed on his bloody lips. The system was scared. For the first time in history, the creators of this world were truly terrified of a single human.
"Seven days," Kanos whispered hoarsely before finally letting the darkness of unconsciousness completely take over his mind. "That is plenty of time to draw an army."
