The Stellar-Iron didn't just sit in the pool; it breathed. As Kenji stood submerged to his waist in the celestial liquid, the "Scrap" around the room, the broken Sentries, the crystalline remains, the discarded gears began to float, caught in a gravitational pull centered on his heart.
"Kenji, the readings are off the charts!" Mateo yelled from the edge of the pool, his Synapse-Hub projecting a holographic warning: [DANGER: RELATIVISTIC FORGE EVENT]. "You're not just smithing metal; you're bending the space-time coordinates of the ship!"
"The Syndicate thinks they own the hardware," Kenji's voice was distorted, sounding like two stones grinding together. "But hardware is just cold matter. It needs a Smith to give it a soul."
[SKILL ACTIVATED: SOUL-BOND FORGE (RANK 1)]
Kenji slammed his palms into the surface of the Stellar-Iron. He channeled the Star of the Void-Smith directly into the liquid. A pillar of indigo and gold fire erupted, shooting through the ceiling of the Labyrinth and piercing the surface of the moon.
Outside, the Ghost-Venture began to scream. The mercury coating Kenji had applied earlier began to boil and fuse with the Stellar-Iron rising from below. The ship's frame stretched, its Recursive Iron ribs snapping and reforming into a "Non-Euclidean" geometry.
[SHIP EVOLUTION IN PROGRESS...]
[CORE INTEGRATION: 45%... 67%...]
Suddenly, the green-lit sky of Xylos turned a clinical, blinding white. A massive, rectangular shadow blotted out the stars. It wasn't a ship in the traditional sense; it was a "Delete" command given physical form.
[TARGET DETECTED: SYNDICATE ERASER-CLASS 'CENSOR' (RANK 150)]
"They're here!" Elara shouted, looking up through the hole in the ceiling. "The Exiles are being vaporized! The Eraser is 'Zeroing' the coordinates!"
From the sky, beams of "Null-Light" struck the moon's surface. Where they hit, the scrap simply ceased to exist. No explosion, no rubble just a clean, gray void. The Rank 132 Exile leader was hit by a stray beam; he didn't die, his data was simply "Un-assigned," leaving behind a flickering, nameless ghost.
"Kenji! We have to go NOW!" Bjorn roared, bracing his axe against the tremors of the moon's impending deletion.
"Almost... done..." Kenji's skin was cracking, revealing a liquid-galaxy interior. He was holding the entire weight of the Ghost-Venture's data in his mind.
[FINAL INTEGRATION: THE SEVENTH STAR IS NOW THE SHIP'S ENGINE]
Kenji leaped out of the pool, his body trailing wisps of stellar fire. He grabbed Elara and Bjorn, and with a single step, he didn't run, he Teleported them directly onto the bridge of the ship.
The interior of the Ghost-Venture was unrecognizable. The walls were made of "Living-Iron" that pulsed with violet light. The viewports didn't show the sky; they showed the "Flow" of the universe's code.
[NEW SHIP: THE STAR-EATER (RANK: NULL)]
[CAPTAIN: KENJI TANAKA]
"Mateo, take the helm!" Kenji commanded, falling into the Captain's chair. His eyes were bleeding white light. "Engage the Logic-Drive!"
"I don't even know what a Logic-Drive is!" Mateo panicked, but as his hands touched the new console, the ship "Talked" to his brain. He didn't need buttons; he just needed to will the ship to move.
The Star-Eater didn't lift off. It "Deleted" its own presence from Xylos and "Re-inserted" itself directly behind the Syndicate Eraser.
"Bjorn, the cannons are no longer kinetic," Kenji whispered, his hand gripping the armrest. "They fire Recursive Paradoxes. Fire at their core."
Bjorn grinned, his hands finding the firing grips. "Recursive Paradoxes... I can work with that."
The ship's main battery flared. Instead of a shell, a bolt of "Corrupted Information" hit the Eraser-Class vessel. The massive ship shuddered. Its Rank 150 shields didn't break they contradicted themselves. The ship's own computer began to argue with the "Null" energy of the bolt.
[SYSTEM ERROR: ERASER.EXE HAS ENCOUNTERED AN ILLEGAL ARGUMENT]
The Syndicate ship began to fold in on itself, its massive chrome hull crumpling like paper as its internal logic collapsed. In a flash of blue light, the Rank 150 threat was reduced to a small, marble-sized bead of compressed data.
Kenji reached out his hand, and the bead flew into his palm. He swallowed it.
[DATA CONSUMED: RANK 150 CORE]
[LEVEL UP: ??? (STAGNANT AT 0)]
[NEW TRAIT: CENSOR-BREAK]
"We did it," Elara breathed, looking at the empty space where the Eraser had been. "We just took down a Rank 150 ship with a crew of 'Legacies'."
"We didn't just take it down," Kenji said, standing up. He looked at the "Map" now burning in his mind. He could see the "Mainframe" the heart of the Syndicate War. "We just sent a message. The Gutter is coming for the Hardware."
"Where to next, Captain?" Mateo asked, his eyes glowing with the ship's interface.
Kenji pointed to a massive, golden cluster on the map, the Foundry of the First Revision.
"If we want to stop the Defrag, we have to take the Forge," Kenji said. "We're going to the source of all 'Revision' code. We're going to meet the High Architects."
[LOCATION: DEPARTING XYLOS]
[CURRENT RANK: NULL (0)]
[DESTINATION: THE GOLDEN FOUNDRY]