Seven seconds.
He found a heavily fortified data vault buried under layers of fake shell companies. ’Eternity Holdings.’ A front used by the Primes.
Five seconds.
Arthur’s mind slammed against the encryption. He used the 2x multiplier to rapidly calculate trillions of password combinations, treating the cosmic lock like a cheap padlock.
Three seconds.
The lock shattered. Arthur ripped the files open. He saw the truth. The Prime Auditors weren’t just judging debt. They were skimming Merit Points off the top of every deleted anomaly and funneling it into their own private reservoirs to extend their immortal lifespans.
One second.
"Download!" Arthur roared in his mind.
[Transferring data to physical storage...]
[0 Seconds. Multiplier deactivated.]
Arthur violently jerked back from the terminal. His nose started bleeding instantly. The sudden crash from hyper-cognition back to mortal processing speed felt like taking a sledgehammer to the skull. He stumbled, gripping the edge of the pedestal to stay upright.
"Arthur!" Cassia grabbed his arm, steadying him.
"I got it," Arthur grunted, wiping the blood from his lip.
With a soft hum, the terminal spat out a small, glowing blue crystal. The data drive.
Arthur snatched it off the console. He held it up, a dark, victorious smile spreading across his face despite the pounding headache.
"Corporate fraud," Arthur laughed, his voice raspy. "The judges are stealing from the till. This isn’t just leverage. This is a guillotine."
Before they could celebrate, the temperature in the library dropped again.
Vane spun around, his broadsword raised. "We have company!"
Drifting down the aisles from every direction were dozens of Silence Wraiths. They had sensed the massive data breach. The grey cloaks glided over the floor, their featureless masks locked onto the trio.
"Time to go," Arthur said, pocketing the crystal. "Vane, break a window. Make it loud."
Vane grinned. He didn’t need to hold back anymore.
"HAAAA!" Vane roared. He swung his heavy broadsword with every ounce of his kinetic strength.
"KRAA-THOOM!"
The massive blade smashed into the stone wall of the cathedral, blowing a twenty-foot hole directly out into the grey wasteland. The deafening sound shattered the absolute silence of the Archives, causing the advancing Wraiths to violently flinch and cover their masked ears.
"Jump!" Arthur yelled.
The three of them vaulted through the rubble, diving out of the suffocating library and into the safety of the frontier fog.
Arthur hit the dirt and rolled to his feet. He patted his coat pocket. The crystal was secure. He had his defense.
"Alright team," Arthur smirked, looking at Cassia and Vane. "Let’s go to court."
The High Court of the Omniverse was not a courtroom. It was a spectacle of absolute, terrifying intimidation.
Arthur, Cassia, and Vane stepped out of the transit portal and onto the floor of a colossal, perfectly circular amphitheater. It was forged entirely from pristine white marble that glowed with a blinding, sterile light.
There was no ceiling. The sky above was a shifting canvas of universal laws, projecting real-time calculations of cosmic debt and planetary erasures.
Surrounding them, rising up in thousands of tiered rows, were the spectators. Millions of deities, high-ranking Auditors, and Celestial Nobles sat in absolute silence. They wore immaculate silks and glowing armor, staring down at the three mortals standing in the center of the arena.
The pressure in the room was absurd. The combined auras of millions of gods pressing down on them felt like standing at the bottom of an ocean.
Vane gritted his teeth, his hand gripping his broadsword so tightly his knuckles turned white. Sweat poured down his scarred face as he fought just to stay upright.
Cassia stood firm, her posture rigidly perfect, but her silver eyes darted nervously across the massive crowd. Even the arrogant rogue hunter felt the overwhelming weight of this place.
Arthur Sterling didn’t sweat. He didn’t tremble.
He stood perfectly straight, his heavy boots planted firmly on the marble. He wore his tailored pitch-black suit. He casually adjusted his tie, looking up at the millions of gods with the bored, irritated expression of a man forced to sit through a useless staff meeting.
"Quite the turnout," Arthur murmured to Cassia. "I didn’t realize bankruptcy was a spectator sport."
"They’re here to watch you get erased," Cassia whispered back. "Don’t poke the bear, Arthur."
Suddenly, the ambient murmurs of the crowd completely vanished.
At the very front of the amphitheater, looming fifty feet above the arena floor, were three massive podiums made of solid, condensed gravity.
Standing behind the podiums were the Prime Auditors.
They were towering, faceless entities draped in flowing robes of pure, shifting numbers and code. They didn’t have physical bodies. They were the living embodiments of the Omniversal ledger. They radiated an aura so intensely powerful that the marble beneath Arthur’s boots began to crack just from their presence.
The Lead Prime Auditor, positioned in the center, slowly raised a massive gavel made of black crystal.
"BANG!"
The sound of the gavel striking the podium wasn’t a noise. It was a physical shockwave that slammed into Arthur’s chest, forcing the breath from his lungs.
"Arthur Sterling," the Lead Prime Auditor’s voice boomed. It didn’t speak with a mouth. The words were directly injected into the minds of everyone in the arena. "You stand before the Apex Tribunal. You are charged with catastrophic reality-manipulation, unauthorized multiversal takeover, and a Cosmic Debt exceeding the permissible threshold of existence."
The entity leaned forward, its faceless visage projecting absolute judgment.
"You have disrupted the zero-sum economy of the universe. The penalty is eternal conceptual erasure. How do you plead?"
Arthur didn’t flinch under the crushing weight of the Prime’s voice. He slowly reached into his suit jacket.
Instantly, thousands of heavily armored Enforcers lining the bottom tier of the stadium raised their weapons, the hum of lethal plasma filling the air.
"Easy," Arthur said smoothly, pulling his hand out empty. He rested his hands in his pockets. "I plead corporate restructuring."
The crowd of millions gasped in collective, horrified shock. No one spoke back to a Prime Auditor.
"Insolence," the Prime Auditor on the right buzzed. "Your debt cannot be restructured. It must be paid in full, or you must be liquidated. You possess zero Merit Points. You have no capital."
Arthur smirked. "I have a highly valuable asset, Your Honor."
[Warning: The Tribunal’s aura is passively attempting to rewrite Host’s existence.]
[Hostile erasure protocol detected.]
The system in Arthur’s mind flashed a rapid, dull copper warning. Without his multiplier, he couldn’t fight off the ambient laws of the courtroom for long. He was already feeling his memories start to blur at the edges.
"System," Arthur commanded silently. "Use the Cosmic Ledger. Anchor my soul to the data-crystal in my pocket. Make my existence dependent on that file."
[Ding!]
[Anchor established. Host’s existence is now tied to ’Exhibit A’.]
Arthur pulled the glowing blue data-crystal from his pocket. He held it up between his index and middle fingers, displaying it for the entire amphitheater to see.
"Before you pass sentence, Your Honors," Arthur announced, his baritone voice carrying effortlessly across the massive stadium. "I would like to submit an exhibit to the court. I believe it completely nullifies my debt."
The Lead Prime Auditor stared down at the tiny crystal. "What is that anomaly?"
"It is an audit," Arthur smiled, a cold, terrifying expression that promised absolute ruin. "Of your own accounts."
The Prime Auditors froze. The shifting code on their robes violently hitched.
"This drive contains the complete transactional history of ’Eternity Holdings’," Arthur continued loudly, ensuring every single deity in the stands heard him. "A massive shell company used to funnel trillions of Merit Points out of the central reserve and directly into the personal accounts of the Prime Auditors."
The amphitheater exploded into chaos!
Millions of gods stood up, shouting in shock and outrage. The perfect, orderly court completely broke down.
"Lies!" the left Prime Auditor shrieked, its calm, mechanical voice shattering into panicked static. "That is a forgery! A desperate trick by a dying anomaly!"
"Is it?" Arthur challenged. He didn’t wait for permission. He tossed the crystal onto the marble floor and stomped his boot down on it.
"CRACK!"
The crystal shattered. Instantly, a massive, holographic projection erupted from the shards, filling the entire center of the arena.
It displayed billions of lines of undeniable, foundational code. It showed the exact flow of stolen Merit Energy transferring from deleted lower realms straight into the lifespans of the three judges. It was absolute, irrefutable proof of cosmic corruption.
The silence that followed was deafening. The entire universe was staring at the undeniable guilt of its own justice system.
"You’ve been skimming from the till for eons," Arthur sneered, looking up at the trembling Prime Auditors. "My debt isn’t breaking the economy. You are. I didn’t steal capital. I just caught the thieves."
The Lead Prime Auditor raised its black crystal gavel, its faceless head shaking with desperate fury. It didn’t care about the trial anymore. It cared about survival.
"Erase them!" the Lead Prime roared, pointing directly at Arthur. "Execute the anomalies! Kill them all!"
"Well," Cassia smirked, drawing her stun pistols and racking the bolts with a sharp clack. "I guess court is adjourned."
Vane roared, swinging his massive broadsword as hundreds of Elite Enforcers poured over the barricades and flooded the arena floor.
Arthur didn’t draw a weapon. He stood amidst the charging army of gods, his dark suit pristine. He had just dropped a nuke on the judicial system of the universe.
"Time to clean house," Arthur commanded.