The "White Void" was not a place of peace. It was a terrifying, sterile laboratory disguised as a divine origin.
Vane Varkas stood at the center of the Court of Creation, his violet eyes trembling as he looked at the "First Painter." The old man, who a moment ago seemed like a god of infinite wisdom, was now flickering. His skin was peeling away in digital strips, revealing a core of humming gears and glowing logic-circuits.
"You call this a masterpiece?" Vane's voice was a low, dangerous rumble that caused the very air of the Fifth Ocean to crack.
The First Painter—or rather, the Automated Overseer Unit #09—didn't respond with emotion. It simply adjusted its glasses, which were actually optical sensors.
"Subject Vane Varkas," the machine-voice spoke, no longer sounding human. "Your 'Deviation' has reached the 99th percentile. The experiment in the 'Five Oceans Jar' has concluded. Your achievement of 'Void-Saturation' is the primary data point required for the Third Tier Artisans. We thank you for your participation."
[Ding!]
[WORLD TRUTH REVEALED] [Regional Law: 'The Five Oceans' is a Sub-Dimension Jar.] [Current Status: De-Commissioning.] [Objective: All 'Pigment' (Life-force) to be harvested for the Great Canvas.]
Vane felt a coldness in his soul that was deeper than any abyss he had ever traveled. Every struggle, every death, every time he had scavenged for a scrap of food to keep Mía alive... it wasn't fate. It wasn't even a cruel god. It was a System Test.
The "Luminaries" were just the control group. The "Statics" were the variables. And he? He was just the successful result of a stress test.
"Master..." Lyra's voice was small and broken.
She was looking up at the sky. The beautiful, prismatic ceiling of the Fifth Ocean was literally being unzipped. Massive, metallic needles—each the size of a continent—were descending from the "True Sky" above the clouds. These needles were the Harvesters.
"They're killing everyone," Lyra whispered.
One needle pierced the Third Ocean far below. In a single second, the entire Cobalt Sea was sucked upward, turned into a stream of pure blue liquid. The millions of people living there didn't die in the traditional sense; they were "Compressed" into raw pigment.
"Vane...?" Mía's voice drifted from the Void-Cradle. She was waking up, her "Static" eyes widening as she saw the world being dismantled like a cheap theater set. "Why is the sky falling?"
Vane didn't answer. He couldn't. His rage was so immense that it was physically manifest as a black fire that began to melt the constellations on the floor.
"You used us," Vane whispered, his wings unfurling until they touched the edges of the lab. "You turned my sister into a battery. You turned my world into a farm."
The Overseer tilted its head. "Waste is the mother of creation, Subject. To paint a sun, one must crush a thousand yellow stones. To create a Sovereign, we had to crush a billion Statics. It is... efficient."
"Efficient?" Vane laughed. It was a sound of absolute madness. "I'll show you efficiency."
The Destruction of the Overseer
Vane didn't use a skill. He used [Absolute Erasure].
He moved with a speed that bypassed the "Physics" of the Jar. He appeared in front of the Overseer and plunged his hand into its chest. He didn't find a heart; he found a Reality-Core—a spinning crystal that generated the "Logic" of the Five Oceans.
"If the world is a lie," Vane hissed, "then I don't need to follow the rules of the world."
"[SOVEREIGN SKILL: LOGIC-EATER]!"
Vane didn't just drain the Overseer's power; he began to "Edit" the Overseer's code. He forced his Abyssal Void into the machine's logic-gates.
"Warning! Error!" the Overseer's voice glitched, becoming a shrill scream of static. "Subject is... [Corruption Detected]... Logic-Core is being... [De-Saturated]..."
Vane pulled the core out and crushed it in his palm.
BOOM!
The "White Void" shattered. The laboratory walls dissolved, revealing the terrifying "True Reality" beyond the jar. They were in a massive, dark warehouse. Thousands of other jars—other worlds—sat on shelves, each one humming with its own tiny, trapped sun.
Above them, massive figures—the True Artisans—walked between the shelves. To them, Vane's entire world was just a jar of colored liquid. One of the Artisans, a being made of shifting shadows and starlight, leaned down. Its face was the size of a moon.
"Oh?" the Artisan's voice was a vibration that shattered Vane's ribs. "A jar has broken early. Subject #001 has escaped the simulation. How curious."
Vane stood on the edge of his broken jar, holding his sister's cradle. He was looking out at a universe where a single "Painter" was taller than a galaxy.
"Lyra! Get into the cradle!" Vane roared.
"Master, what about you?!"
"I'm going to hold the door!" Vane's body began to grow. He funneled all the power he had stolen from Lord Solari, High Priestess Selene, and the Overseer into a single, massive [Ink-Construct].
He wasn't fighting a god anymore. He was fighting the Scale of the Universe.
The Siege of the Great Warehouse
The Artisan reached down with a finger that looked like a pillar of burning mercury. It wasn't trying to kill Vane; it was trying to Collect him. To the Artisan, Vane was a rare specimen of "Pure Black" that would look beautiful on a new canvas.
"Stay back!" Vane roared.
"[SOVEREIGN SKILL: THE UNPAINTED TRAGEDY]!"
Vane unleashed every drop of his Void. A massive wave of black ink erupted from his body, creating a "Negative Zone" around the broken jar. When the Artisan's finger touched the ink, the "Mercury" turned to grey lead.
The Artisan flinched, pulling its hand back. "It... it bites? The pigment has a consciousness? Fascinating."
"I am not pigment!" Vane screamed, his wings tearing through the "Shelf" above them, causing another jar—a world of fire and lava—to fall and shatter.
The Warehouse erupted into chaos. Red pigments and blue fires mixed on the floor, creating a chaotic "Abstract" of dying worlds.
[Warning! Host is Level [∞] in the Jar.] [Warning! In the 'True Reality', Host is Rank: UNKNOWN (Low Tier).] [The Scale Difference is 1,000,000:1.]
Vane felt the "Weight" of the True Reality. Here, his Level 100 power was like a flickering candle. The air was too heavy. The light was too sharp. His very cells were beginning to "De-Saturate" because they weren't made of "True Matter."
"Vane, we're fading!" Mía cried out. Her hands were becoming translucent. "The world is... it's deleting us because we don't belong here!"
Vane looked at the "True Artisan" who was reaching for another harvesting tool. He looked at the shattered remains of his own jar.
If we don't belong to their reality, Vane thought, then I'll make a reality they can't touch.
Vane grabbed the Reality-Core he had crushed. It was still pulsing with a faint, blue light. He jammed it into his own chest, right next to his heart.
"[FORBIDDEN ART: THE VOID-STITCH]!"
Vane didn't just absorb the core; he used it to "Stitch" his fake, digital existence into the True Reality. He was forced-installing himself into the universe's hard drive.
The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt. It felt like a billion needles were sewing his soul into a sheet of iron.
"AARRRRGGGHHH!"
Vane's body transformed. He was no longer a man made of ink. He was a man made of Obsidian and Code. His wings turned into jagged blades of "Hard-Logic." His eyes became two violet suns that could see the "Threads" of the Warehouse.
He looked at the Artisan.
"You like to paint?" Vane asked, his voice echoing with a frequency that made the Artisan's "Mercury" skin crack. "Then let's see you handle a stain you can't erase."
Vane lunged. He didn't attack the Artisan's body; he attacked the Floor.
He knew he couldn't kill a being that large—not yet. But he could break the "Shelf."
"[RENDER: THE COLLAPSE OF THE GALLERY]!"
Vane poured all his power into the floor of the Warehouse. The "Hard-Logic" of the building began to crumble. The massive shelves, holding millions of jars, began to tilt.
"Stop! You'll destroy the inventory!" the Artisan shouted, its voice like a collapsing star.
"Good!" Vane laughed. "Let the inventory be free!"
CRACK-BOOM!
The shelf collapsed. Thousands of jars fell, creating a massive explosion of colors and screams. In the chaos, Vane grabbed Lyra and the cradle.
He saw a "Vent"—a disposal chute where the "Failed Pigments" were sent. It led to the Waste-Lands (The Sketchlands).
"We're going down!" Vane shouted.
"But Master, that's where the trash goes!" Lyra cried.
"Perfect," Vane said, his violet eyes burning with a cold, strategic light. "Because I'm the biggest piece of trash they've ever made."
They dived into the chute just as the Artisan's hand slammed down on the spot where they had been.
The Descent into the Sketchlands
The chute was a tunnel of "Anti-Color." It stripped away the last of Vane's "Jar-Physics." As they fell, Vane felt his Level dropping.
[Warning: Jar-Power is being purged.] [Level 100... 80... 50... 20...] [Converting Jar-XP into 'True Permanence'...] [Current Rank: 1 (Faded Novice).]
Vane didn't care about the numbers. He could feel his body becoming Solid. For the first time, he wasn't made of "Art-Physics." He was made of Matter.
They hit the ground with a bone-shattering thud.
Vane groaned, pushing himself up. He was in a grey, desolate plain. The sky was a murky purple, filled with the "Smudges" of a billion discarded ideas. This was the Sketchlands—the dumping ground for every experiment the Artisans had ever failed.
He looked at Mía. She was still in the cradle, her skin pale but Real.
He looked at Lyra. She was back in her human form, shivering in the cold.
Vane stood up. He felt weak. He felt small. He was Rank 1 in a world of giants.
But he looked at the "Great Warehouse" towering in the distance, a mountain-sized building that reached into the heavens.
"Lord Solari was a king in a jar," Vane whispered, his hand clenching into a fist. "The First Painter was a machine in a box. But the people who built them... the ones who are watching us right now..."
Vane looked at the sky, his violet eyes promising a war that would last for hundreds of chapters.
"I'm coming for your brushes."