Chapter 57: Eating the Sky
"If you touch it, your physical and magical data gets completely wiped from the server!" Sili yelled frantically. The skinny broker pressed his entire body flat against the ground behind a large chunk of rubble. He refused to step anywhere near the open bridge. "We cannot just punch it, boss! It is an absolute erasure code!"
Papuyu stood silently on Kanos’s left side. She stared at the red barrier with her usual dead expression. Her grip on her twin daggers was noticeably tighter than usual. She was analyzing the massive threat above them, searching for a physical weak point, but found absolutely nothing. It was pure, unadulterated system code designed to format the entire district.
"Everything in this world requires energy to maintain its shape," Kanos said quietly. He raised his uninjured left hand toward the sky. "Even a deletion code needs raw mana to fuel its expansion."
"Feast," Kanos ordered.
The moment the first Null Hound bit into the blazing red energy, a horrific, screeching sound of static feedback violently tore through the entire cavern. It sounded exactly like a massive radio speaker malfunctioning at maximum volume. Sili immediately covered his ears and screamed in pain.
But the Null Hound was made of void ink. It did not have a standard system status to delete. It had no health bar. It had no mana core. It was purely an anomaly born from Kanos’s twisted imagination. The hound clamped its dual hinged jaws tightly onto the barrier and started violently ripping the raw energy away.
Kanos grunted softly. A sharp, incredibly intense stinging pain spiked directly behind his eyes. The system barrier was insanely dense. The sheer amount of pure energy the hounds were absorbing was putting a massive strain on Kanos’s mental link. A thin trail of dark blood slowly dripped from his left nostril, trailing down his chin. His vision blurred for a split second. The blue system interface flickered rapidly in his eyes as it tried to warn him of fatal mental exhaustion.
"Shut up," Kanos snapped coldly. He did not break his focus. He forced his brain to maintain the hounds’ structural integrity despite the immense pressure. He could physically feel the heat tearing at the edges of the dark violet smoke through his mental connection.
However, the barrier was furiously fighting back. The concentrated heat was finally starting to affect the physical properties of the void ink. Several hounds let out distorted, painful growls as their smoke bodies began to crack and splinter. The sheer volume of energy they were forced to swallow was rapidly exceeding their maximum capacity. Two hounds near the center of the barrier suddenly exploded into thin air, completely overloaded by the raw data they had ingested.
"Belida," Kanos called out, his voice incredibly strained and hoarse. He pointed his trembling left hand toward the graying center of the red sky. "The barrier is thinning out in the middle. The code is weakening. The hounds cannot eat fast enough before they overload. I need a physical breach right there."
"Throw me!" Belida ordered the void stone giant.
Belida soared fifty meters upward. The extreme heat from the red barrier instantly scorched his face and burned the ends of his gray hair. He aimed perfectly for the heavily glitched, graying center of the red barrier where dozens of hounds were currently biting and tearing at the dying code. Belida pulled his black greatsword from his back in mid air. He poured every single ounce of his physical strength into his thick, scarred arms. The muscles in his back bulged violently.
He swung the greatsword down with devastating force. The heavy black blade struck the weakened barrier dead center.
Belida fell back down toward the bridge. He landed heavily but safely, caught by the thick arms of another golem waiting below.
Sili cheered loudly, jumping up and down behind his rock. The broker threw his hands into the air, completely relieved that they were not going to be deleted today. Papuyu lowered her daggers slightly, letting out a very rare, quiet sigh of relief.
From the darkness of the eighth floor, two massive objects dropped down through the shattered barrier. They did not fall like normal heavy debris. They descended with terrifying, highly calculated precision. They landed on the stone bridge with a heavy, metallic crash that made the entire cavern shake violently. Sili’s cheering instantly died in his throat.
"System Cleaners," Papuyu whispered. Her voice carried a genuine, undisguised hint of dread for the very first time since Kanos met her. She took a slow, highly cautious step backward. "They only deploy those when the Grand Inquisitors fail to format an anomaly."
