The choice not to kill echoed louder than any blade swing.
Jiwoon sat silently on the rooftop of a burnt watchtower, his wounds bandaged but his mind unsettled. Nyxfang lay beside him, humming softly, dissatisfied.
"You had him. You had the heir."
"I spared him," Jiwoon murmured. "That was strength."
"No… that was fear."
The blade fell silent—but Jiwoon couldn't shake the truth of its words.
Mira's Concern
Mira found him at dawn.
"You let Maljun go," she said, arms crossed.
"Why?"
"Because he's not our enemy yet."
"He will be," she said coldly. "That family… they never stay quiet for long."
System Distortion Detected
Suddenly, Jiwoon's internal HUD glitched—jagged data flickering at the edge of his vision.
[ERROR: UNREGISTERED ENTITY INTERFERENCE]
[Source: Layer-3 Cognitive Field Breach]
Before Jiwoon could react, the world warped.
Buildings stretched. The sky inverted. And a deep voice rumbled:
"So this is the one they spared."
Encounter with the Pale Adjudicator
A tall figure descended from the distortion—clad in white, faceless, with wings made of bone and crystal.
[Classified Entity: The Pale Adjudicator]
Role: Enforcer of Divine Error Correction
Purpose: Remove anomalies from the system]
"You should not exist," it said to Jiwoon.
"Your mercy is a deviation. You are a virus."
"And you're a bug fix no one asked for," Jiwoon replied, standing.
Battle Without Time
The fight was unlike anything Jiwoon had faced.
The Adjudicator moved by bending space.
Its attacks weren't just physical—they rewrote his perception.
Each strike erased seconds from his memory.
Each dodge felt like it had never happened.
Jiwoon was losing reality itself.
Breakthrough: Anchored Sin
In the blur of distortion, Jiwoon stabbed Nyxfang into his own leg—pain anchoring him to reality.
[New State Unlocked: Anchored Sin]
Pain anchors memory. Pain resists divine overwrite.
He retaliated. The blade screamed in joy.
"You're no god," Jiwoon growled. "You're just bad code!"
With one devastating strike, he shattered the entity's mask—revealing nothing underneath.