The iron chisel was badly bent. Kanos cursed quietly. He threw the blunt metal onto the stone floor, making a loud clattering sound. His palms were scraped, calloused, and dripping fresh blood. Without the help of the system interface, without any physical stat boosters, carving a wardrobe sized black stone block relying purely on normal human strength was absolute bone torture.
The Void Stone in front of him did not reflect the library’s light at all. The giant block absorbed every color around it. Staring at it for too long made Kanos’s head spin, like he was looking into a black hole ready to swallow his sanity whole.
"You better rest for five minutes, boss," Sili said from behind the reading table. The information broker was busy reorganizing stacks of ancient books into his leather bag. His hands were shaking so badly he dropped paper scrolls a few times.
"I do not have five minutes," Kanos answered flatly. He wiped the sweat from his forehead using his dirty sleeve. His breathing was still shallow.
Chitala sat casually in his rocking chair. The old man packed his wooden pipe with dry tobacco. "That stone rejects all of Yomalvara’s system rules, Kanos. The system sees it as a vacuum. Do not use muscles to shape it. Your muscles will never win against the void."
Kanos glared sharply at Chitala. "Then what should I use? Prayers?"
"Use your artist eyes," Chitala answered calmly. The old man lit his pipe. Thin smoke billowed into the air. "The stone is dense, but it still has a structure. There are natural fault lines inside it. Find the pattern. Carve along the current, do not fight it."
Kanos let out a long breath. His head was still throbbing. His structural analysis skill absolutely could not be activated inside this dead zone room. He truly had to rely on his pure instincts as an artist. Kanos closed his eyes for a second. He forcefully replayed years of memories drawing monster anatomy, golem structures, and physical weight proportions from his old job. He searched for the imaginary stress points of a solid rock block.
Kanos opened his eyes. He grabbed a small hammer and a new steel chisel from the table. He did not strike randomly anymore. Kanos looked for the thinnest stone veins. Tap. Tap. Tap. His carving sound now felt more rhythmic. More precise. Black stone shards began crumbling to the floor easily. Little by little, the rough shape of a humanoid began to emerge from inside the giant stone block.
Suddenly, the library’s stone floor shook violently.
Thick dust rained down from the dome ceiling. Sili immediately shrieked in panic. The skinny guy crawled fast and hid under the heavy wooden table. Belida instantly drew his giant black sword. The giant knight got into a low fighting stance, positioning his massive body right in front of Kanos.
Papuyu ran in from the library’s front hallway. Her gray cloak was soaked with sweat. The hitman’s face looked paler than usual. The girl was not even holding her daggers at all. Her hands were left empty, hanging loosely by her thighs.
"Cleaner," Papuyu reported fast. Her breathing was terribly ragged. "They did not send a squad. They dropped a single cleaner entity into the lower district. The people out there... they did not get killed."
"What do you mean they did not get killed?" Sili screamed hysterically from under the table. "Then what are they doing? Having a picnic?!"
Papuyu swallowed hard. She stared at Kanos with a truly dim glint in her eyes. "They got erased. Buildings, cobblestone streets, sewer rats, beggars. Everything turned into white dust and just disappeared. The clearing wave is moving this way. Incredibly fast. The toxic river outside just vanished."
The room instantly went dead silent. Even the sound of Kanos’s hammer stopped completely. Belida tightened his grip on the sword hilt. The veins on the giant knight’s neck bulged out, holding back an anger he could not channel anywhere.
"I cannot cut something that has no physical form," Belida growled. His voice was heavy and full of frustration. "If that wave gets in here, this sword will just slice empty air."
Chitala stood up slowly from his rocking chair. The old man walked toward a pile of parchment scrolls. "This room is indeed a dead zone," Chitala said calmly. "But if the Cleaner decides to reformat this entire city block from its roots, this room will slowly get eroded too. This leftover code room will not last forever."
Kanos stared at the half finished statue in front of him. The golem did not have perfect legs yet. Its face was just a flat chunk of stone without carved eyes or a mouth. Its hands were asymmetrical because Kanos rushed the job. But the pattern on its chest was done. There was a large cavity Kanos intentionally carved right in the middle of the golem’s chest, connected to small trenches spreading across its entire stone body like artificial blood vessels.
The shaking on the floor grew more brutal. The tall wooden shelves started tilting forward. Dozens of ancient books fell to the floor, creating terrifying thudding sounds. The rumbling noise from outside did not sound like fire explosions or crumbling rocks. It sounded like an incredibly loud static hum. A frequency of nothingness greedily eating reality.
"Time is up," Kanos said coldly. He threw his hammer and chisel to the floor.
Kanos reached into his cargo pocket. He pulled out a small pitch black cube. The super dense ink made from mixing red spider blood and gargoyle bat core smoke. The tiny object felt extremely heavy in his hand, almost like holding solid lead. Kanos stepped forward, standing right in front of the void stone golem’s chest.
Kanos pressed the black cube right into the golem’s chest cavity.
For a second, nothing happened. Silence.
Then, the Void Stone reacted. The giant black stone suddenly absorbed the dense ink liquid like a starving sponge. Thick purple smoke instantly exploded out from the stone’s cracks. Kanos coughed hard. His head felt like it got hit by an iron beam. Without the system interface to regulate the energy flow, Kanos had to guide the material fusion purely using the sheer force of his own brain nerves.
Fresh blood dripped heavily from Kanos’s nose. The veins on his temples twitched wildly. He did not back down. Kanos pressed both of his bloody palms directly onto the golem’s chest surface. Kanos’s blood mixed with the purple smoke and the black stone. He intentionally created an emergency energy circuit that manually tied his life force to his creation. An incredibly sharp coldness pierced straight through his palms, spreading all the way to his spine.
"Wake up," Kanos whispered hoarsely. He ground his teeth together fighting the immense pain. Cold sweat soaked his entire face. "Wake up, you bastard."
A blinding bright white light suddenly hit their eyes from the library’s entrance.
The erasure wave finally arrived. The stone walls around the entrance started cracking badly, then slowly shattered into wildly flickering white pixel boxes. The ancient books lying on the floor vanished without a trace the moment the light touched them. The deafening static wave crept inside, devouring the stone floor bit by bit, moving straight to sweep the entire room like a waterless tsunami.
Belida stepped forward. The giant knight raised his black sword high, ready to slash the white light wave even though he knew it was purely suicide. Papuyu drew her twin daggers, standing tall next to Belida without any intention to run or find cover. Sili had his eyes shut tight while hugging his book bag.
Right before the white wave touched the tip of Belida’s boots, a giant pitch black hand quickly reached out from behind the knight’s back.
The stone hand gripped the floor incredibly roughly. A loud cracking sound echoed throughout the library. The Void Stone golem stepped forward past Belida. The creature truly looked like a nightmare. Its face was flat without any expression. Its body shape was asymmetrical and rough. Thick purple smoke kept billowing from its chest cavity, flowing into the carved trenches all over its body and wrapping the black stone like shadow armor. The creature emitted an aura of absolute weight that made the air pressure around it feel suffocating.
The golem stood directly in front of the Cleaner’s erasure wave. It placed itself as a giant shield for Kanos and his entire crew.
The white formatting light crashed dead center into the golem’s chest.
Instead of getting erased, the golem just stood absolutely still like a mountain of iron. The Void Stone making up its body literally swallowed the system’s cleaning code raw. The white light slammed into the black stone surface and instantly shattered into pieces like glass crashing against a steel wall. The static wave shrieked loudly like a short circuited machine, flickered incredibly wildly, then died completely in a flash.
The Yomalvara system failed to erase the creature.
Right in front of Kanos’s eyes, his system interface suddenly flickered to life for one full second due to an external force. The usually calm blue panel now glowed blood red. Hundreds of lines of warning text scrolled extremely fast, covering his entire vision.
[ FATAL ERROR: UNRECOGNIZED ENTITY DETECTED ]
[ ERADICATION FAILED. TARGET IMMUNE TO ADMIN OVERRIDE ]
[ SYSTEM CORRUPTION IN PROGRESS ]
The red panel flickered again and then died completely. Silence took over the ancient library once more. The brutal shaking on the floor completely stopped. The white formatting light outside the door slowly dimmed, blinked weakly, and finally vanished. The view outside the door was no longer a toxic river or a slummy alleyway, but an empty space of sandy dirt left over from the system wipe. The Cleaner had stopped its attack. This world’s system was currently confused, trying to process the absolute anomaly that had just shattered its main rule.
Sili opened one eye timidly. The skinny guy stared at the giant back of the golem that was still standing quietly, billowing purple smoke. Sili’s glasses slid down to the tip of his nose. The information broker’s mouth hung open so wide his jaw almost unhinged.
Belida lowered his greatsword slowly. The giant knight turned back, staring at Kanos with a look purely filled with disbelief. Papuyu sheathed her daggers back with a motion that was strangely a bit slow. The hitman’s flat face, for the first time since they met, showed a flicker of terrified awe she could not hide.
Chitala chuckled softly from the edge of the room. The old man casually smoked his wooden pipe again as if a mini apocalypse had not just been canceled. "A very rough piece of art, Kanos," Chitala praised warmly. "The shape is far from beautiful. But its message of rejection is incredibly strong."
Kanos dropped down hard onto the stone floor. His energy was completely drained without a single drop left. His linen shirt was totally soaked in cold sweat. His nose was bleeding, his palms were ruined, and his brain felt like it had just been spun inside a meat grinder. He was panting terribly. But the physical pain was absolutely nothing compared to the savage satisfaction currently exploding inside his chest.
Kanos wiped the blood from his chin using the back of his trembling hand. He stared intently at his created creature standing firm like a god destroying wall right in front of him. A flawed masterpiece that had just forced this world’s system to swallow its own spit.
Kanos laughed quietly. A laugh that was very dry, cold, and purely filled with a highly dangerous aura of threat.
"They want to play erasure?" Kanos muttered quietly. He stared sharply past his golem’s back, looking straight toward the ruins of the lower district outside the library door. "Okay. Let me show them how to redraw their world from scratch."