Chapter 200: An Unregistered Biological Vessel

Evren’s entire world went dead silent.

The crackle of blue lightning along his blade vanished. The hiss of freezing frost disappeared. Below him, the roars of the forty hunters and the clatter of shields cut out completely, as if someone had hit a mute button on reality.

The tip of the Frost-Bane Cleaver hovered exactly two inches above the monster’s smoking vent.

It didn’t move.

Evren strained with every ounce of his willpower, but not a single muscle in his body responded. His fingers stayed clamped tight around the leather-wrapped hilt, his boots stayed glued to the black scales, and his eyes remained wide open and unblinking.

He couldn’t move his neck... he couldn’t blink... he couldn’t even draw a breath.

He was completely awake and aware of everything around him, but his brain was completely disconnected from his body, leaving him frozen on the monster’s shoulders like a stone statue.

From the cavern floor, Silas Drake looked up and saw Evren motionless. "Evren!" Drake yelled in pure panic. "What are you doing?! Strike now!"

Evren heard the shout, but his hands wouldn’t budge a single millimeter.

The Calamity Beast didn’t wait.

With a sickening sound of grinding bone and shell, the monster twisted its upper torso around, rotating to face the intruder on its spine. Its four purple eyes flared with cold hatred, and its left bone scythe raised high into the air.

The massive blade whistled downward in a brutal, sweeping chop aimed straight at Evren’s neck.

"Master!" Zephyra’s voice screamed through their mental link.

Shadows exploded across the beast’s back.

Zephyra shadow-stepped directly out of the darkness right beside Evren’s boots. She didn’t try to attack. She threw both arms around Evren’s jacket and pulled with all her strength, trying to drag his frozen, rigid body out of the kill zone.

At the exact same second, a bright red flash tore through the air.

Amber dove straight down from the ceiling like a falling meteor. Her crimson wings folded tight against her back to maximize her speed, and she drove both dragon-bone sabers upward with everything she had.

CLANG!

A deafening metallic shriek echoed through the cavern.

Amber’s twin sabers slammed against the flat of the falling scythe, throwing up a shower of white-hot sparks across the beast’s back.

The weight of the twenty-five-foot monster’s strike was immense. Amber’s boots slammed into the black scales, and her knees buckled under the crushing downward force. Blood leaked from the corners of her lips, but she gritted her teeth and held the blade at bay.

"Zephyra! Get him off!" Amber gasped through clenched teeth, her arms shaking violently. "I can’t hold this thing for long!"

Below them, Drake roared at the top of his lungs: "Archers! Front vanguards! Slam the legs! Don’t let it put its weight into that swing!"

Dozens of heavy steel arrows thudded into the monster’s front joints, and five heavy tanks rammed their shields against its front knees, trying to throw the creature off-balance.

Meanwhile, Evren wasn’t on the monster’s back anymore.

At least, his mind wasn’t.

The moment the psychic wave hit him, Evren’s consciousness was violently yanked into a pitch-black void.

There was no cavern... no hunters, and no sound of clashing steel.

Evren found himself standing in an endless, empty space filled with swirling violet mist. The floor beneath his feet felt like cold liquid glass, rippling with faint purple light with every step he took.

’Where am I?’ Evren thought, looking down at his hands.

In this space, he could move freely. His arms and legs worked, and his mind felt razor-sharp.

’A mental space,’ Evren realized quickly. ’The beast didn’t just attack my body. It dragged my consciousness into its own psychic core.’ ℯℯ𝑙.

Suddenly, a strange humming vibrated through the darkness.

It didn’t sound like a monster at all. It sounded like an enormous machine powering up inside a hollow cavern.

The swirling violet mist parted in front of him.

A massive, shadowy face resembling the Calamity Beast looked down from the darkness above. But instead of the mindless, animalistic fury it showed in the real world, its four purple eyes were filled with an eerie, ancient intelligence.

The creature’s voice echoed directly inside Evren’s skull, sounding cold and confused: "An unregistered biological vessel..."

Evren tensed, his hands balling into fists. "You talk?"

The voice ignored his question, its tone growing sharper, almost alarmed: "How does a mortal carry an Archive Seed? Who authorized a biological unit to run the Custodian Protocol?"

Evren’s eyes widened.

’Archive Seed? Custodian Protocol? What is it talking about?’

Before Evren could speak, a sharp, piercing chime rang out inside his head.

It was a sound he knew better than anyone... it was the chime of his own System. A bright golden interface suddenly flashed open right in the center of the dark void.

But it wasn’t displaying his normal bank balance or his rebate multipliers.

The screen was violently glitching, flickering between bright gold and warning red, like an old monitor receiving corrupted data:

[WARNING: EXTERNAL HARMONIC INTERFERENCE DETECTED...]

[DIMENSIONAL FREQUENCY OVERLAP: 4.12%...]

[PROGENITOR ARCHIVE ACCESSED: READ-ONLY LOCK ENGAGED...]

[ERROR: CURRENT USER CLEARANCE LEVEL INSUFFICIENT FOR ORIGIN DIRECTIVE.]

Evren stared at the floating letters, his heart hammering against his ribs.

’Progenitor Archive? Clearance level insufficient? What does these mean?’

The massive shadowy face leaned closer. Its four glowing purple eyes locked directly onto the floating golden screen, reading the letters.

"Progenitor Archive... Read-only lock..." the entity murmured in disbelief. "Even fragmented across dimensions, the golden script still obeys its mandate..."

Evren took a sharp step back, a jolt of pure shock running down his spine.

"You... you can see that?" Evren stammered.

Ever since the day he awakened, no one had ever seen the golden interface. Not Amber, not Zephyra, not Calista, not a single guild master or high-rank official. To everyone else in the world, the screen didn’t exist... it was completely invisible, floating only in his own mind and vision.

Yet this monster was staring right at it, reading the words like a book.

"See it?" the creature echoed, narrowing its four eyes. "That script was written to bind our realm before your little species even learned to make fire. It is the core framework of the Progenitors. But you... you are nothing but fragile flesh and blood. How does a mortal carry the Custodian Seed without clearance?"

"What is the Progenitor Archive?" Evren demanded. "What does this interface have to do with... the rift?"

"You possess the vessel, yet you are completely blind to its purpose," the entity let out a sound that sounded like a chuckle before replying coldly. "A biological custodian holding a weapon it cannot comprehend. An unauthorized error that threatens the Great Convergence."

The creature’s tone hardened, completely wiping away the confusion.

"The Archive Seed must be purged. Your soul ends here."

The violet mist surged violently, rushing toward Evren like a giant tidal wave. Dozens of thick, shadowy tendrils shot out from the mist, whipping straight toward Evren’s chest and neck to tear his mind apart.

Even in this mental realm, Evren’s combat instincts were still razor-sharp. He focused his willpower and imagined the heavy steel of the Frost-Bane Cleaver in his hands.

A mental projection of the blade formed instantly in his grip, crackling with bright blue lightning.

Evren stepped into the charge and swung the sword with both hands.

SLASH!

The lightning blade cut clean through three incoming tendrils, severing them in a shower of purple sparks.

The giant shadowy face in the darkness let out a low, irritated growl. The psychic pressure inside the void doubled in an instant, pressing down on Evren’s head like an iron weight. A splitting headache hammered between his temples, trying to force his knees to the floor.

"Insignificant insect," the entity’s voice boomed from all directions. "This is my consciousness. You have no authority here."

More dark tendrils erupted from the floor, wrapping tightly around Evren’s legs and waist, pulling him down into the cold violet liquid.

Evren gritted his teeth, his vision swimming with blinding white static.

’He’s right about one thing,’ Evren thought, straining against the dark grip. ’Fighting him in his own mind is a trap. I don’t need to defeat him here. I just need to get back to my body.’

Through the suffocating psychic pressure, a faint, familiar warmth pulsed in his chest... the soul-bond.

Even deep inside this alien mind, the telepathic connection to Amber and Zephyra burned like a steady fire. He could feel Amber’s arms trembling under the crushing weight of that scythe. He could feel Zephyra desperately throwing herself over his back to shield him from the blade.

They were dying out there to protect his empty shell.

"Get off me!" Evren roared.

Instead of fighting the shadow tendrils, Evren grabbed onto the warmth of the soul-bond like a lifeline. He gathered every ounce of his willpower and mental mana into a single, dense point, detonating it outward in a concussive shockwave.

BOOM!

The explosion ripped the tendrils to shreds and cracked the dark walls of the psychic space like brittle glass.

Evren lunged forward, throwing his consciousness straight through the crack to return to the real world.

In the real world, Amber’s left saber finally cracked.

SNAP!

The top half of the dragon-bone blade broke off, spinning away into the dark cavern.

Amber gasped as her arms gave way, the massive black scythe forcing her remaining saber down toward her chest.

Zephyra threw herself over Evren’s back, using her own body as a shield.

The jagged, razor-sharp edge of the monster’s scythe plummeted downward, inches away from slicing through them all.

Right at that split-second, Evren’s frozen fingers twitched.