The silence that followed the destruction of the World Hunter Association was more terrifying than the explosion itself. In the heart of Seoul, a pillar of absolute darkness stood like a scar against the skyline. There was no fire, no smoke—only a void where the most powerful building in the country used to be.
Han Si-woo stood at the epicenter. The white hair shifted in the wind, and the violet runes on his skin hummed with a frequency that made the very atoms of the air vibrate. In his hand, the Blade of the Abyssal Abacus flickered like a glitch in reality.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[Status: Level 50 — The Zero-Sum Sovereign]
[Mana Capacity: Overflowing (1,400,000,000 / 1,400,000,000)]
[Current World Mana Decay: 22.4% — Warning: Global Magic Failure in 48 Hours]
Si-woo didn't look at the notification. He looked at the sky. Through his Architect's Sight, the blue atmosphere was gone. Instead, he saw the "Lattice"—a massive, invisible cage of golden energy wires that surrounded the Earth, filtering mana into the Vaults.
"It's a farm," Si-woo whispered.
He realized then that the "Monsters" weren't invaders. They were livestock managers. The "Hunters" were just a secondary product—a way to keep the mana moving so it wouldn't stagnate. And now, he had just eaten the Farm Manager.
The First Act of Sovereignty
"Si-woo!"
A voice broke through his cosmic trance. Yoo Seol-ah, the Regressor, stood at the edge of the crater. Her white hanbok was stained with soot, and her silver hair was matted with blood. She looked at him with a mixture of awe and pure, unadulterated dread.
"You've done it. You've broken the cycle," she said, her voice trembling. "But look at what you've caused. The 'Pulse' is dying. The hospitals, the defense grids, the barrier systems... they're all failing. You didn't just kill a god; you killed the power grid of the human race."
Si-woo turned to her. His eyes were no longer human. They were twin galaxies of violet static. "I didn't kill it. I reclaimed it."
He closed his eyes and reached out his mind. He wasn't looking for mana anymore; he was looking for a specific "frequency"—the life-sign of Han Su-jin.
He found her. 2.4 kilometers away. Her heart was slowing. The mana-oxygenator in her room had stalled, and the doctors were frantically trying to perform manual resuscitation.
"Watch," Si-woo said.
He thrust his black blade into the ground.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: 'SOVEREIGN'S REDISTRIBUTION']
[Cost: 500,000,000 Mana]
[Effect: Grant 'User-Defined' Properties to Local Reality.]
A shockwave of violet light erupted from the blade. It didn't destroy. It rewrote. As the wave passed through the city, the dying trees suddenly turned into a strange, crystalline silver. The air itself began to shimmer with a new kind of energy—not the golden mana of the Architect, but the cold, stable "Void Energy" of the Sovereign.
In the hospital, Su-jin's eyes snapped open. She didn't need the machine anymore. Her body, once frail and dying, was being reinforced by the very fabric of the room. Her cells were being "updated" to a version of humanity that didn't need the Architect's scraps to survive.
[WORLD DECAY HALTED.]
[NEW ECOSYSTEM INITIALIZED: THE HOLLOW REALM.]
"You... you're changing the species," Seol-ah whispered, falling to her knees. "You aren't saving them. You're making them like you."
"The old world was built on a debt we couldn't pay," Si-woo said, pulling his blade from the earth. "I just filed for bankruptcy."
The Galactic Council: The Observation Deck
Deep in the vacuum of the Boötes Void, trillions of miles from Earth, a group of entities sat in a chamber made of solidified thought. These were the Designers—the beings who seeded planets with mana and harvested the resulting "Soul-Essence" every few millennia.
On the central viewing screen, a tiny blue planet was turning violet.
"The Sector 7-G Farm has experienced a 'Black Swan' event," a voice rang out. It sounded like singing glass. "The Avatar has been consumed. The local mana-cycle has been inverted."
"Impossible," another replied. "A Type-0 civilization cannot produce an Entropic Entity. It violates the Third Law of the Lattice."
"And yet," the first voice continued, "the Lattice is being dismantled from the inside. The 'Dry-Cell' anomaly has reached the Sovereign threshold. If he reaches the Core, he will have the power to 'Delete' our entire Sector."
A heavy silence filled the chamber.
"Dispatch the Exterminators," the lead Designer commanded. "And tell the Star-Eater to begin the 'Solar Collapse' protocol for that system. If we cannot harvest the crop, we will burn the field."