Kanos blinked three times. He rubbed his eyelids hard with the back of his dirty hand. The transparent blue interface that had been practically glued to his retinas since his first day in this hell was completely gone. No health bar. No mana pool. Not even the faint glowing grid of his structural analysis skill. The world suddenly felt incredibly naked.
A sudden wave of vertigo hit him. The absence of the system was not just a visual change. It felt like a phantom limb had just been chopped off. He had unconsciously relied on that stamina bar to tell him when he was tired. Now, the pure and unfiltered exhaustion of his human body crashed into him all at once. His knees buckled slightly. He had to grab the edge of a tall wooden bookshelf just to keep himself standing upright.
"Turn it back on," Kanos said coldly. He stepped closer to the old man sitting in the rocking chair.
Chitala did not stop reeling his burnt fishing string. The old man casually placed the wooden rod on the floor and looked at Kanos. "I did not turn anything off, Illustrator. The Yomalvara system is a very strict set of rules. It only sees what it wants to see. This room is a leftover code. A mistake. So the system simply pretends we do not exist at all."
A heavy thud interrupted them. Papuyu dropped to her knees on the cold stone floor. The female assassin did not scream. She just bit her lower lip so hard it started bleeding. The scorch mark on her right shoulder looked a lot worse under the bright light of the library. The gray fabric of her cloak had melted directly into her skin. The flesh was peeling badly, exposing charred muscle tissue from the Executioner’s anti magic pulse earlier.
Belida immediately walked over. The giant knight quickly unhooked a small red glass bottle from his heavy leather belt. It was a high tier healing potion he had looted from Garrick weeks ago. Belida pulled the cork out with his teeth and poured the thick red liquid directly onto Papuyu’s open wound.
Nothing happened.
The expensive potion just dripped down her shoulder and splattered onto the stone floor like cheap fruit juice. There was no glowing green light. No instant tissue regeneration. The wound remained exactly as gruesome as before. Papuyu let out a rough, ragged breath. She stared at the spilled red liquid with a completely flat expression.
"Magic requires the system to process the command," Chitala spoke casually from his chair. The old man tossed a small bundle of dried silver leaves toward Belida. "You are in a dead zone, knight. System items are just colored water in here. Chew those leaves until they turn into a paste and press them onto her burn. It is an old world weed. It heals flesh the slow and painful way."
Belida did not ask twice. The giant knight shoved the dry leaves into his mouth and started chewing aggressively. He spat the thick silver paste onto his palm. Papuyu did not say a single word. She just ripped the remaining melted fabric off her shoulder in one swift motion, tearing some blistered skin along with it. She offered her bare shoulder to Belida.
Belida pressed the paste hard against the burn. Papuyu’s entire body tensed up violently. Her knuckles turned pure white from gripping the stone floor, but she still refused to make a single sound.
"It burns worse than the magic," Papuyu whispered through her gritted teeth. Her breathing was heavy, but her dark eyes remained as sharp as ever.
"Boss. Boss, you have to look at this." Sili ran toward Kanos from the back of the room. The skinny broker was carrying a book as thick as a brick, struggling to hold it up with his skinny arms. "This is not parchment paper. This is pressed wood pulp. Vellum. The system does not make books like this anymore."
Sili slapped the massive book onto a wooden reading table nearby. A thick cloud of ancient dust flew everywhere. Kanos coughed and waved the dust away. The pages were yellow, brittle, and filled with handwritten text. Sili pointed his shaking finger at a crude anatomical drawing of a human body. But there were strange mechanical gears and glowing tubes drawn inside the chest cavity instead of a heart.
"The Number Castes," Sili spoke incredibly fast. He pushed his cracked glasses up his sweaty nose. "I always thought they were just elite players who got promoted by the Bureau. You know, high level freaks. But this book is an observation log from two hundred years ago. They are not humans who leveled up. They are white blood cells."
Kanos frowned. He leaned over the table, staring at the strange anatomy drawing. "Make it simple, Sili."
"The Yomalvara system is a living organism, boss," Sili tapped the old page excitedly. "It gets sick. It gets infected by glitches. Anomalies. Things that do not follow the preset rules. Like you. The system creates the Number Castes purely to hunt down the infection and cut it out. That is exactly why that Executioner could just delete your magic earlier. He does not cast spells. He has admin access to the world."
Belida walked closer after finishing treating Papuyu. The giant knight crossed his massive arms across his chest. He looked at Kanos with a serious expression. "We just killed an admin."
"Exactly," Sili nodded frantically, flipping to the next page. "Which means the system now knows the infection is highly aggressive. They lost a cell. They will not send another regular execution squad to Marrath."
Chitala hummed softly from the center of the room. The old man picked up his straw hat and fanned his wrinkled face. "The loud boy is right. The Bureau will deploy a Cleaner next. Someone whose only job is to format the entire hard drive just to erase one corrupted file."
Kanos turned to face Chitala. The headache was throbbing behind his eyes again. "A Cleaner? How strong are we talking about?"
"A Cleaner does not fight," Chitala answered calmly. "A Cleaner simply overwrites reality. They will find the exact location of the last place you used your shadow ink. Then they will erase that entire city block from existence. Every building, every sewer rat, every human living in that radius will be formatted back into empty space. They will burn the lower district of Marrath to the ground if they have to."
The room went completely dead silent. Even Sili stopped flipping the pages. Belida tightened his jaw. If the Bureau simply wiped out the entire lower district, thousands of poor citizens and refugees would die in an instant just because Kanos walked through their alleyways.
Kanos looked down at his left hand. The same hand he used to draw the giant shadow wolf. The hand he used to manipulate the deadly invisible threads earlier today. His mana was completely gone in this room. Without the system assisting his drawings, he was just a regular, tired guy with a bunch of crazy ideas in his head. Drawing in the air was powerful, but it was temporary. It drained his life force. The system would always try to correct the anomaly he created.
"You brought us here for a reason, old man," Kanos said. His voice was flat. "You did not just invite us to your secret fishing spot to watch us panic."
Chitala smiled. It was a very warm, knowing smile. "You draw beautifully, Kanos. Your lines are incredibly sharp. Your understanding of structural anatomy is practically flawless. But you are drawing on cheap canvas."
"The air," Kanos answered quickly.
"Yes. You force the air particles to become solid. You force system energy to bend to your will. It takes a massive toll on your brain. It drains your blood. And worst of all, the system can easily read the code of your creations and delete them." Chitala stood up slowly. His joints popped lightly. He walked past Kanos, heading toward a massive iron vault door located at the very back of the circular library.
The old man placed his wrinkled hand on the cold, rusted iron. "If you want to fight a world, you cannot use the world’s tools. You need a medium that the system cannot overwrite. You need the First Canvas."
Kanos’s eyes locked onto the heavy vault door. He could feel it. Even without his system interface and his structural analysis skill, his pure artist instincts screamed at him. Whatever was behind that thick iron door possessed an incredibly dense weight. It felt heavy. It felt absolute.
"What is inside?" Belida asked quietly. The giant knight instinctively rested his hand on the hilt of his black greatsword.
"The remnants of the old gods," Chitala answered. He did not turn around. "A material so dense and absolute, the Yomalvara system completely failed to delete it. So they buried it here in the blind spot." Chitala finally looked back at Kanos. "It is a solid block of pure void stone. It is completely immune to magic. It absorbs system data and destroys it on contact."
Kanos walked closer. He stood right next to Chitala. He reached out and touched the iron door. The metal was freezing cold. "You want me to draw on it?"
"I want you to carve it," Chitala corrected him gently. "You have the Gargoyle Bat smoke core. You have the highly reactive spider blood. You have the absolute freedom of an illustrator. If you can carve a golem out of that void stone and infuse it with your shadow ink... you will not just have a weapon."
Chitala tilted his straw hat up slightly. His cloudy gray eyes stared deeply into Kanos’s soul. "You will have a walking glitch. A creature that the Number Castes cannot see, cannot touch, and absolutely cannot delete."
Kanos let out a slow, long breath. He turned his head and looked at his battered crew. Papuyu was leaning against a tall bookshelf, her face was pale and covered in sweat, but her eyes remained sharply focused on him. Belida stood tall next to the reading table, looking exactly like an unbreakable iron wall ready to follow him to hell. Sili was already stuffing ancient blueprints and forbidden journals into his leather bag with a crazy, excited grin on his face.
This was no longer just about surviving the dungeon hole. This was no longer just about getting enough gold to sleep in a warm bed. This was a direct declaration of war against the creator of this world. The system wanted him dead. The system wanted to format him.
Kanos pulled the glass bottle of thick black ink from his cargo pocket. He twirled the bottle slowly in his fingers, watching the heavy liquid slosh inside. The headache was still there. The exhaustion was still eating away at his bones. But the corners of his lips slowly pulled up, forming a very cold and dangerous smile.
"Open the door, Chitala," Kanos ordered flatly. He cracked his knuckles. "I have a masterpiece to finish."