The Hollow Vault had changed.
Gone was the silence of survival.
In its place, preparations.
The kin who once watched from the shadows now forged, trained, and chanted.
Yuto stood in the center of it all—his frame still bug-like, still low-tier—but now laced with glowing marks from the Core Whisper.
[Faction Authority Detected: Hollow Kin Sub-Ruler]
[Command Slots: 3 Activated]
At his side, the Sovereign Core floated like a silent eye.
Nyx's voice crackled with urgency.
[ALERT: System Forces Detected—Category: Reclaimers]
[ETA: 2 Spiral Hours]
"Already?" Yuto muttered. "We haven't even finished setting up defenses."
[They move faster for anomalies. Especially ones touching divinity.]
■ Elsewhere in the Spiral: Reclaimer Drop Zone
In a chamber made of collapsing logic and blinking null-runes, three figures stepped from folded space.
They were not soldiers.
They were execution protocols wearing flesh.
One was a being made entirely of shifting codeblades.
Another floated without legs, her face masked in broken time.
The third—a child-sized being with a void for a heart and chains dragging behind him.
"Target Identified: Anomaly Class Evolved. Code Name: Yuto. Source: Sovereign Core Contamination."
"Protocol Activated: Thread Severance."
■ Back in the Vault
Yuto stood with the elder kin, watching maps of flickering Spiral strands.
Everywhere the Reclaimers went, timelines were collapsing, erased clean.
"They're not coming to punish," Yuto said. "They're coming to cleanse."
The beast-kin beside him cracked their stitched knuckles.
"Let them try. We've faced purges before."
Yuto wasn't so sure.
This time he wasn't just a glitch.
He was a vessel.
A threat.
And Seraphiel, within the Core, stirred.
"You must flee," came the echo from the Whisper.
"No," Yuto replied. "If I run, they'll follow. If I fight—maybe I'll finally matter."
Nyx pinged softly.
[Skill Unlock: Sovereign Core Fragment - Tier I]
→ Skill: Domain Pulse (Lv1)
→ Create a temporary zone where enemy System code degrades.
→ Duration: 10 sec. Cooldown: 5 minutes.
"We'll make our stand," Yuto said. "Right here. Right now."
■ The Reclaimers Descend
Reality cracked open above the Hollow Vault.
The first Reclaimer dropped like a star crashing into a corpse.
Its blade-limbs screamed with logic meant to rewrite existence.
Yuto felt it slice through the air—and felt his threads tense in primal fear.
"That's not something I can fight," he muttered.
"Which is why you won't fight alone," the beast-kin said, stepping forward.
Dozens of Hollow Kin moved with him. Webweavers. Shadowbinders. Memory-leeches.
They were survivors, yes—but now?
They were soldiers.
The battle began not with a scream, but a pulse.
Yuto activated Domain Pulse, and the ground beneath the Reclaimer warped.
[System Error: Anchor Code Fragmenting]
It twitched.
It adjusted.
And it targeted Yuto directly.
A beam of erasure seared toward him—
And for the first time since his reincarnation, Yuto didn't dodge.
Instead, he activated his Seraphiel trait.
[Skill: Light Rejection] – Intangible to light-based attacks]
The beam passed through him—but melted the stone behind.
"That'll only work once," Nyx warned.
"Then I'll make that once count."
Yuto charged, barely a blur, weaving through kinetic code and cursed geometry.
He wasn't the strongest.
Not yet.
But he had something else:
A reason to fight.
And somewhere beneath the Vault, the old god watching him from the shadows began to stir.
Not in malice.
In interest.
This one is amusing… Let's see how long he dances.