The reinforced blast door separating the assessment room from the hall groaned, not from brute force, but from intricate, precision-Mana manipulation. The lock mechanisms clicked simultaneously, reversed, and the heavy metal retracted into the ceiling with barely a whisper.
Standing in the doorway was Director Seraphina, the S-Rank Psychic in charge of the entire Neo-Kyoto Authority Sector. She was an imposing figure in a crisp, white uniform tailored with silver thread that seemed to subtly catch the light. Her eyes, however, were the most striking feature: they were a deep, starless black, and they held the stillness of a deep-sea trench.
As she entered, the air pressure in the room visibly dropped. This wasn't a physical effect; it was the sheer force of her focused will, imposing absolute mental silence on the surroundings. Commander Rix and Elara instantly dropped to one knee, panting, their own lesser Mana Cores straining under the pressure.
Elias Vance remained standing, the violet-black glow around his feet flickering like a sputtering internal fire.
«Boy. Stop.» Seraphina didn't speak with her mouth. Her command was a crystalline spike of mental energy, aimed directly at Elias's consciousness, demanding compliance.
The moment the psychic spike touched Elias's mind, Instant Comprehension surged into full throttle. It didn't just understand the meaning of her command; it processed the mechanism.
Seraphina is using a complex weave of focused psionic energy, exploiting a known vulnerability in the undeveloped human Mana Core—the 'Compliance Cascade.' It requires 7.4 seconds of sustained focus to achieve full mental lock. Countermeasure: A subtle, immediate injection of conflicting, overwhelming data into her receptive field to force a partial cognitive failure.
In the physical world, less than a nanosecond passed.
Seraphina's black eyes widened fractionally. Her psychic spike had just been met not with resistance, but with a torrent of raw, unstructured knowledge. Elias involuntarily projected the complete, 3D anatomical structure of her left kidney, the precise number of hairs on her head, and the exact caloric count of the breakfast bar she ate three hours ago—all synthesized from the ambient data signature she carried.
The sheer volume of irrelevant, perfectly accurate data was like a DDoS attack on her S-Rank mind. Seraphina staggered, momentarily pulling back her attack, a single, sharp intake of breath escaping her lips.
"Analysis complete, Director Seraphina," Elias said, still calm, his voice now carrying a strange, resonant echo that seemed to vibrate inside the bones. "Your psychic field is currently unstable by 1.7 degrees. Your breakfast was a Berry Blast protein bar, 210 calories. The renal structure is fine. Now, the Neo-Kyoto Power Core."
Seraphina straightened immediately, her shock quickly morphing into cold fury—but it was mixed with a terrifying recognition.
He's real. And he is faster.
"You claim the Core is failing," Seraphina stated, her mental voice now wary. «Prove it. If you are wrong, you will be stripped of that ability and confined indefinitely.»
"I don't need the schematics to prove it; I need them to fix it," Elias corrected, stepping forward. "The Core relies on a pre-Cascade stabilization principle: the 'Luminar Loop,' which uses concentrated Mana from the surrounding district population as a passive stabilizer. However, the original Loop calculation didn't account for the accelerated decay rate of B-Rank and lower Cores over 100 years. The entire Loop's frequency is drifting into the lower harmonics. If it hits the decay threshold of 7.02 Hertz, it won't just shut down; it will create a Mana-vacuum feedback loop, pulling all local life-force, including yours, into the center until it implodes. That process begins in precisely eight minutes and eleven seconds."
The confidence in his voice, the dizzying precision of the numbers—it was paralyzing. Seraphina was a telepath, a manipulator of minds and wills. But Elias was a reader of objective truth.
Seraphina looked at Rix and Elara, who were still kneeling, sweat dripping onto the polished floor.
«Contact Central Control. Access the Core diagnostics feed. Now.» Her order was a desperate flurry of psychic commands.
The doors hissed shut again. Seraphina moved with sudden, focused urgency, grabbing Elias by the arm—a mistake, as his comprehension instantly gave him access to her entire life history, her deepest fears, and the complex combination to the Authority's main vault.
She prefers to be called 'Sara' by those closest to her. She trusts no one.
"Director Sara," Elias murmured quietly, "your wrist cuff—the one that controls the Sector's heavy machinery—uses an encrypted 128-bit key. The key for the Core data file is currently accessible via the Central Control terminal's physical bypass port. If we bypass the firewall, we save 4 minutes and 30 seconds of decryption time. We are now at 7 minutes 5 seconds until decay."
Seraphina stopped dead, her black eyes locked onto Elias's. She didn't question the key information. She didn't try to lock him down again. She simply stared at the boy who had instantaneously learned everything about her and the impending catastrophe.
"Fine," she hissed, her actual voice cracking the tense silence for the first time. "You are the debugger. Follow me. If you're wrong, I will personally dissolve every atom of your body, starting with the cerebral cortex."
In the next moment, they weren't walking; they were sprinting. Seraphina propelled them down the sterile white corridors using bursts of kinetic force, bypassing stunned Authority staff who dared to stare at the sight of the unranked boy dragging the S-Rank Director toward the city's heart.
Elias, despite running faster than he ever had in his life, found his mind utterly calm. The impending catastrophe was just a complex, multi-variable equation.
The harmonic decay needs a stabilizing input. A counter-frequency injection... something Mana-rich and highly resonant.
He began to instantly calculate the necessary sequence of physical and arcane inputs, cross-referencing the city's power grid with the known properties of every discovered ability in the 100 AC era. He didn't know how to perform the action, but he knew the answer. He just needed the schematics to find the input terminal.
The journey had just begun, and Elias Vance was already fighting Armageddon on a clock.