The air thrummed with overwhelming electromagnetic power as The Viceroy focused the Relic Realm's energy into a crippling field. His armor glowed, his golden silhouette a declaration of Absolute Data Authority.
"Your entropy ends now, Auditor," The Viceroy declared. "My calculations have defined your every possible move. You are a predictable chaos."
Elara ignored the magnetic field crushing down on them, her focus entirely on Lira. "Lira, his flaw is in his authority. He controls the power grid, but he must be drawing that power from a stable, external source. Find the Dependency Proof."
Lira, kneeling under the intense pressure, extended her light-shadow filaments, weaving them into the periphery of the Viceroy's magnetic field—not to disrupt it, but to read the data passing through.
"He's not just using the city's grid, Reckoner," Lira grunted, her eyes squinting at the influx of complex circuit algebra. "His entire suit and the tower's magnetic lock are receiving power from a hidden, massive reservoir. It's an archaic signature—almost too raw, too powerful for standard Relic-Realm cultivation to handle."
"The Leviathan AI," Elara stated, recognizing Orrin's earlier warning. "The ancient computational core sealed beneath the city. The Viceroy is tapping its residual power."
"It's more than residual," Lira hissed, her filaments retracting violently as the magnetic field intensified. "His system is running on a massive, consistent drain. He is dependent on the Leviathan's energy being present and stable. Look at his power signature—it has a recurrent dip every 2.7 seconds to stabilize the archaic power flow."
The First Easter Egg: Lira's next observation was crucial. "Wait. The stabilization proof he uses to manage the Leviathan's energy… the error code is familiar. It's an ancient, non-Aetherforge marker. It looks like a pre-Convergence Network Protocol Error—a code for 'External Connection Dropped' from Earth's old internet! Why is the Viceroy's life support running on a relic protocol?"
Elara's eyes flashed with fierce deduction. "The Leviathan isn't just an AI; it's a piece of the original, failed system the Helix is trying to forget. The Viceroy's system has a computational debt to the Leviathan's archaic stability. He thinks his power is his own, but it's borrowed."
"How does that help us?" Thorne yelled, barely holding his ground against the magnetic crush.
"If the Viceroy detects a chaotic fluctuation near the Leviathan, his entire system will divert power to protect the source, not his current attack," Elara calculated, leveraging the Law of Self-Preservation. "He is predictable because his self-preservation is tied to a single, external data source. Lira, find the nearest Energy Transfer Node connecting the Viceroy's tower to the Ouroboros Nexus."
Lira's filaments snapped out, finding a hidden magnetic conduit running deep into the foundations. "Found it! A high-voltage transfer node, 15 meters below us!"
"Good," Elara said, channeling the CEB. "I'm not attacking him. I'm giving him a system error he can't ignore. I will introduce an Entropy Proof directly into that Node, creating a localized, chaotic event that mimics a sudden, catastrophic Leviathan failure."
Elara aimed her Living Anchor arm at the ground. She didn't have the cultivation of Realm 2, but she had the power to make the numbers stop adding up. Her logical goal was pure: Mimic the Unimaginable.