The collapse of the Hannam Bridge defense line was not recorded by the state drones. The moment Min-jae crossed the threshold of the shattered titanium blast gates, the localized atmospheric pressure within a fifty-meter radius underwent a catastrophic phase shift.
The universal interface in the skyāthe pristine blue grid that had promised a structured, digitized future to the corporate eliteāwas tearing open like wet parchment.
Chairman Lee of the Mirae Corporation sat on the asphalt, his custom silk suit stained with black soot and hydraulic fluid from the overturned command vehicle. His fingers, covered in multi-carat mana-crystal rings, clawed frantically at the ruined tar as he stared up at the unarmored teenager approaching him.
"The system..." Lee wheezed, his mouth leaking a thin ribbon of pale blue mana fluid as his internal parameters short-circuited from the feedback. "The system calculated a ninety-nine percent probability of deletion. We invested forty billion won into the vanguardās armor matrix. The numbers... the numbers were absolute."
Min-jae stopped two paces from the older man. His bare chest, glowing with the pristine, self-contained brilliance of the
[True Circuit]
realm, didn't possess a single blemish. The liquid gold within his twelve ignited channels was moving with such velocity that his pulse sounded like the steady, low-frequency thrum of an industrial power transformer.
"Forty billion won," Min-jae said softly, his voice carrying that heavy, metallic resonance that caused the remaining windows of the Mirae Tower across the street to web with fractures. "You spent your whole life trading paper tokens, Chairman, and when the sky tore open, you thought you could just buy a higher seat at the ledger. But a number is just a shadow cast by a real object. If the object changes... your shadow disappears."
He didn't close his fist. He didn't drop into a stance.
Min-jae simply extended his right foot, his bare heel making light contact with the gold-headed cane that lay between them.
Pshhh.
The rare-grade alloy caneāan item mathematically rated to increase a Mageās casting velocity by thirty percentādid not snap. It smoothly, effortlessly dissolved into a mound of metallic flour that was instantly scattered by the river wind.
"AhāGah!" Chairman Lee let out a strangled cry, his system interface flashing a final, terminal warning behind his eyes before his screen went entirely dark.
[Warning: Total Parameter Liquidation.]
[Your vessel has been disconnected from the World Tree Network's financial index.]
Ten yards away, buried beneath the platinum shards of his own armor, Park Jin-woo was attempting to crawl toward an abandoned sidearm. His
Blessed Knight
class skills were completely suppressed, his available mana pool locked behind an eighty-percent data restriction that made his limbs feel like liquid lead.
"Don't... don't touch me," Jin-woo whimpered, his eyes wide with an existential terror that no elixir could cure. "My father... the Helios Guild master... he's clearing a level-forty-five A-Rank gate in Incheon right now. If you kill me, the entire alliance will hunt your vessel until your core is melted down into scrap!"
Min-jae turned his golden-ringed pupils toward the young Master.
"Let him come," Min-jae murmured, his voice cutting through the distant wail of Gangnam's automated sirens with the clinical precision of a scalpel. "Tell your father that the price of an unranked fist has just gone up. If he wants to protect the rest of his investment... he can bring his entire vanguard to the Mirae plaza by sunrise."
He didn't deliver a finishing blow. To a master who had stabilized his
[Solid-State Axis]
, executing a broken parameter was a waste of internal momentum. He turned his back on the ruins of the bridge, his bare feet moving with a silent, weightless precision as he stepped into the broad, neon-lit avenues of Gangnam.
[The 'True Circuit' loop has successfully integrated the vanguard essence.]
[Current True Ki: 185 / 200]
[Your internal pathways are approaching the 'Maximum Resonance' milestone.]
As Min-jae walked deeper into the corporate heart of the city, the skyscrapers around him began to experience a profound physical reaction. The high-frequency mana emitters mounted on the roofsādevices designed to stabilize the universal interface's local data gridāwere exploding one by one. They weren't being struck by magic; the sheer, unbuffered physical gravity of his
[Jade Bone]
matrix was pulling the atmospheric pressure downward, warping the spatial layers until the synthetic mana could no longer maintain its molecular cohesion.
The clean, swept streets of the wealthy district were empty. The luxury sports cars and armored corporate transport vehicles sat abandoned in the middle of the roads, their digital displays flashing red error alerts.
Behind the reinforced glass walls of the penthouses above, hundreds of high-tier hunters and corporate executives were staring down at the lone, bare-chested teenager walking barefoot across their territory. Their status screens were a synchronized mess of flashing warning boxes.
[CRITICAL THREAT ENTRY: SECTOR 1]
[IDENTIFICATION: UNRANKED IRREGULAR]
[CURRENT DEFENSIVE EFFICIENCY: 0.00%]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: ISOLATE ALL ASSETS]
"He's not a Hunter," an analyst inside the Helios headquarters whispered, her fingers shaking so violently she couldn't input an emergency evacuation command. "He's erasing the system's logic just by taking a step. The grid... the entire Gangnam monopoly is dropping by twelve percent every minute he stays in the zone."
Min-jae stopped in the center of the primary intersection, directly beneath the three massive, crimson domes of the B-Rank gates that were pulsing violently over the district.
The black smoke billowing from the cosmic fractures was gathering into a single, colossal vortex that smelled of sulfur, molten iron, and old blood. The
True Masters
of the core matricesāthe lords of the abyssal vanguardāwere preparing to bridge the dimensional layers simultaneously, expecting to find a soft, modern city waiting to be harvested.
Min-jae loose-jointed his shoulders, his long, lean arms hanging loose at his sides as his skin gleamed with that flawless ivory luster in the orange glare of the rifts. He reached deep into his solar plexus, drawing upon the 185 units of liquid
True Ki
that were spinning through his channels with the roar of a closed-loop turbine.
"Three gates," Min-jae whispered, a cold, razor-sharp smile breaking across his face as his golden pupils reflected the burning light of the abyss. "That means three hundred more units of essence to fuel the next boundary. Let's see if these corporate gatekeepers can run their numbers fast enough to keep their furnaces from turning into dust."
[Active Skill Initiated: 'Formless Step'.]
BOOOOOOM!
The asphalt beneath his bare feet didn't just crack; a thirty-meter crater erupted in the center of the avenue as Min-jae launched himself straight into the core of the first crimson vortex, his body breaking the sonic threshold with a concussive roar that signaled the definitive end of the system's monopoly.