Daybit had been quiet, unmoving—his hologram cold, almost surreal. Then, as he turned to leave, his eyes flicked back to the room.
Suddenly— A foreign symbol flickered on every hologram panel. Strange, angular, pulsing with ancient logic.
None of them recognized it. But it spread across the Crypter devices like a virus.
Daybit stopped. His voice finally broke the silence. "Our system is being hacked."
Hinako furrowed her brow. " What?!"
Koyanskaya straightened slightly, tail curling with unease. "This is the first time I've ever seen something like this in a Lostbelt… and I've seen a lot."
Kirschtaria turned to the side. "Beryl, if you've been compromised, I suggest—"
"Hey hey hey—" Beryl raised both hands, sweat now on his brow.
"No one's beside me! No tech. No trick. I'm alone."
Suddenly, every Crypter panel flickered—once, twice—before a new hologram assembled from distorted static. A layered voice broke through the hum of digital interference.
Jin-Woo's voice. Calm. Smooth. Almost amused.
"You sure they can still see me, Offensive Bias?"
Another voice answered—cold, mechanical, ancient. A tone stripped of emotion, forged from sheer pragmatism. Offensive Bias.
"A mockery is added. A race bound to a single planet, tangled in primitive culture, dares to challenge Forerunner superiority. The Lostbelts, meanwhile, are still formulations of variable-based probability trees. Predictable. Solvable."
Jin-Woo's hologram came into full clarity. He now stood before them—arms folded, purple eyes glowing faintly, shadow flickering behind him like coiled serpents.
"Good enough, Offensive Bias," he said without looking back. His eyes scanned the room of Crypters calmly.
"Greetings, Crypters. I believe this is the first time we've all seen each other… formally."
The silence from the others was immediate—tense, coiled, uncertain.
Ophelia narrowed her gaze. "How did you hack this? This chamber isn't even fully real."
Jin-Woo didn't answer right away.
Instead, he simply pointed—toward Beryl's projection.
"I have to admit," he said with a small grin, "I bet on myself a little."
He clasped his hands behind his back like a professor explaining a riddle.
"But I didn't expect Beryl Gut, the resident psychopath, to be so generous. Broadcasting valuable enemy intelligence across unshielded links?"
He tilted his head mockingly.
"That gave Offensive Bias—the only AI in the galaxy capable of neutralizing interdimensional nightmares—enough to slide right in. Like a whisper through a door left slightly open ."
He smiled wider. "Just a shadow slipping through a crack."
Beryl turned pale. "You hacked us through me—?"
"Not intentionally. I just gambled on a flaw." Jin-Woo shrugged. "You delivered."
Ophelia clenched her jaw. "Smartass."
Jin-Woo gave a low chuckle. "I prefer the term tactician."
Kirschtaria opened his mouth to respond—
But before he could speak, Koyanskaya, ever the chaotic wildcard, leaned forward, resting her chin in one hand, smirking with fanged playfulness.
"Do you have emotions, darling Bias?" she purred. "Can I tempt you? Or are you just a big old mech with too many cameras and no sense of touch?"
For a moment, the screens went dead silent—until Offensive Bias responded, voice as cold as circuitry and war-scarred code.
"Query added. Supreme Executor—permission requested: may I dissect this specimen?"
Jin-Woo's eyes didn't blink.
"She can shift between Lostbelts. That's valuable."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Let's test it."
Suddenly— A blinding beam of energy ripped through the hologram chamber, fired from a crackling slipspace portal above them. A Sentinel Beam—blue, precise, deadly—grazed where Koyanskaya had just stood.
A second beam followed. Then a third.
Aggressor Sentinels from Zeta Halo—emerged like ghosts, mechanical wings spread as they fired from slipspace rifts with no regard for location barriers.
Koyanskaya twirled mid-air as she dodged, her heels skimming the floor, taunting with every movement.
"Careful! You might ruin my makeup, you photogenic toaster!"
Kirschtaria froze, his gaze fixed on the unnatural fissure hanging in midair.
That… wasn't teleportation. It wasn't rayshift. It was like… reality opened.
A corridor between realms? Between Lostbelts? No—impossible.
The other Crypters remained silent.
Even Daybit blinked once.
No one had ever seen something like this.
But just as Koyanskaya prepared another twirl—
A black hand, chitinous and gnarled like a dagger forged from bone and insect, erupted from another rift beneath her.
It pierced straight through her chest.
But no blood came. Her body flickered. And her grin cracked slightly.
The hand retracted instantly into the slipspace—along with its owner.
Beru's voice followed through the comms, guttural and calm.
"My liege… I have secured the bitch."
Jin-Woo remained silent. He lifted one hand—two fingers pointed in the air.
A spatial cube shimmered in front of him, crackling faintly with darkness. Inside it—Koyanskaya's heart, perfectly extracted, floated in stasis.
A quiet, tight seal around it.
Across from him, Koyanskaya's confident posture crumbled. Her grin vanished. Her eyes widened as she realized what was missing from her body.
She dropped to one knee. "You give me that back, you shitty—shadowy gigolo!" she hissed through her teeth.
Jin-Woo didn't flinch. He calmly clenched his fingers around the cube.
The spatial seal compressed The cube .
On the floor, Koyanskaya writhed, her body convulsing as invisible pain laced through every nerve. Her hands clawed at the ground, her back arching. She screamed between clenched teeth.
Jin-Woo's voice came slow and sharp.
"Very funny… someone like you, who takes pleasure in making people suffer in every way imaginable—"
He stepped forward.
"Now begging to have something returned."
Koyanskaya glared at him, still panting, rage boiling behind her amber gaze. But then—like flipping a mask—her expression changed. She smirked through the pain. "We can… do business," she gasped. "I mean it. I like profits. We both know I'm useful."
Jin-Woo tilted his head."No."
He lowered the cube slightly, shadows swirling tighter around it.
"You don't have what I need. Except to be a jester."
A tense silence followed, until Kirschtaria—still calm, still composed—spoke, his gaze never leaving Jin-Woo's projection.
"Before things escalate further… perhaps a conversation first, Shadow Monarch."
Jin-Woo gave a small nod.
"Just call me Jin-Woo. It's enough that my army calls me that."
Kirschtaria accepted the correction without pause.
"All right, Jin-Woo. Although I don't yet understand where exactly your… companion, Offensive Bias, resides… I want to ask something directly."
He folded his arms.
"Are you a metaphysical construct—or an artificial god?"
The silence was broken by a flat, mechanical voice:
"Supreme Executor, permission to reveal myself."
Jin-Woo blinked once and looked around. He was still standing in the arena, now silent and empty—save for three figures still present: Morgan, watching intently; Baobhan Sith, at her side; and Barghest, now conscious again, seated but alert.
Jin-Woo spoke quietly.
"Morgan… one of my subordinates wants to appear. You mind?"
Morgan raised an eyebrow.
"Are you joking, Jin-Woo? You already darkened the skies with millions of shadow soldiers earlier. Asking permission now feels almost… polite."
Jin-Woo gave the smallest smirk.
"Proceed."
Suddenly, the sky above the Lostbelt of English split open.
A massive rift tore itself into reality—not through magic, not through Rayshift—something entirely alien.
A storm of metal and light flooded the horizon.
Hundreds of thousands of Sentinels emerged, taking formation in silence. Their forms gleamed in geometric perfection, forming a floating lattice above Camelot.
And then it appeared— Offensive Bias.
A mechanical behemoth, vast enough to dwarf towers, descended slowly, its mass carried not by wings, but by gravitic fields humming with unimaginable power. Its core pulsated with crimson light, a singular red eye fixed forward like a god watching ants.
Its elongated frame floated effortlessly, with multiple segmented appendages extending outward, each lined with radiant, ancient Forerunner glyphs. Sharp, angular armor interlocked around its central body, the design impossibly clean—a perfect blend of war and logic.
Its voice echoed across both the arena and the hologram chamber where the Crypters sat.
"I believe you already know the answer, Kirschtaria Wodime."
The words weren't spoken with pride. They were stated like a law. Unyielding. Cold. Final.
Kirschtaria narrowed his eyes, unmoving, but deep within, a single thought echoed like iron dropped in still water:
So this is what it means to create a system beyond the Tree of Fantasy…
Something that cannot be ruled, persuaded, or reasoned with.
From one of the holograms, Peperoncino leaned back, his fan lowered for once.
Oh sweet stars above… That thing's not just an AI—it's an empire.
Hinako Akuta, arms folded, brow furrowed in visible tension, thought in silence:
That's… a cosmic predator. It eliminates. Sustains. Learns.
Kaddoc Zemlupus, already on edge since the first projection, nearly lost the will to breathe.
Not that my Lostbeltt already the weakest… but how could I fight something like that? How could anyone?
Still kneeling, Koyanskaya trembled. Her heart pulsed quietly inside the spatial cube hovering near Jin-Woo. Even now, pain flickering through her every nerve, she stared at Offensive Bias in horror.
Even if I kill him… that thing… will just make another to replace him.
Ophelia Phamrsolone, whose entire life had been rooted in discipline and calculation, had to pause.
This isn't magecraft. This is pure cause-and-effect, weaponized.
Every input, every outcome—predicted, corrected, enforced.
Then there was Beryl Gut, still in the English Lostbelt, hiding at the edge of the now-empty arena. The arena that once felt like a stage now felt like a battlefield he didn't belong on.
He laughed. It was loud, cracked, and tinged with madness.
"Ahahahaha… fuck."
He staggered backward, running a hand through his hair.
"What a fucking day. All because of me, huh?"
"I just wanted to share some intel about the enemy… and the enemy hacked our entire system. Not just that—noooo. Crazy Sung Jin-Woo went ahead and showed off another goddamn weapon."
The others said nothing.
But Daybit Sem Void—who until now had said and shown nothing—finally moved. Just his eyes. He watched Offensive Bias. Watched its posture. Its scanning behavior. Its positioning.
...A complete logic tree, he thought.
That understands loss, adaptation, and probability mapping… We're not just outmatched.
We're being mapped.
[[ But Daybit Sem Void—who until now had said and shown nothing—finally moved. Just his eyes. He tracked Offensive Bias, studying the way it floated, the way its red eye shifted across the room with surgical precision. Watched how the segments of its plating adjusted minutely, recalibrating positions based on information no one else could see. ( BONUS DIALOGUE TO SHOW HOW INTELLIGENT DAYBIT IS )
...A complete logic tree, Daybit thought.
That understands loss, adaptation, and probability mapping… We're not just outmatched.
We're being mapped.] ( BONUS DIALOGUE TO SHOW HOW INTELLIGENT DAYBIT IS )
Then Jin-Woo casually turned toward the Crypter projections. His voice came quiet, casual.
"Any questions?"
The Crypters didn't move.
They all stared. All of them, silently—each with the same thought.
All of us… are afraid of you. Afraid of what you are.
Afraid of what your army can do. And you… you just joke about it.
Finally, Ophelia Phamrsolone stepped forward in her projection, voice composed but tense.
"Then I'll ask, Jin-Woo, the Shadow Monarch… and Supreme Executor of Offensive Bias."
Jin-Woo looked at her for a moment.
This is probably too much for her, he thought silently.
But aloud, he gave a slight nod. "Go ahead. Shoot."
Ophelia didn't hesitate.
"How did Bias bypass the Rayshift barriers? This system isn't even complete."
Jin-Woo lifted his hand—his shadow swirling with quiet intensity.
A sudden dark purple portal opened beside Ophelia's hologram, warping the space with an eerie silence.
Ophelia's eyes widened—the portal was right beside her, on the edge of her own Lostbelt: the Norse one.
Jin-Woo spoke without raising his voice.
"I can also open portals. But I need coordinates, of course."
He nodded toward the edge of the rift.
"Bias provided them. It's actually very simple. But if you're asking how he did it…"
Jin-Woo's expression sharpened slightly.
"Do you even understand what you're dealing with?"
He stepped forward slightly in the hologram.
"You're speaking to the only AI in existence who saved his entire galaxy from the Precursor Infestation. Without him, every sentient species in his domain would have been devoured by the Flood."
He tilted his head slightly.
"If the galaxy was neighboring yours, you'd already be swarmed. If Slipspace was open to this system? You'd be gone in a week. Right?"
The AI responded without hesitation.
"Affirmative. This primitive world resides in close proximity to the edge of my operational range. Calculating Slipspace jumps here required minimal correction."
Its voice remained mechanical—but now there was weight behind it. Authority.
Then its tone shifted—sharper. Heavier. Almost condescending, though it lacked any true malice.
"Additionally, comparing your computing methods—and your 'Rayshift,' a primitive workaround to causal limitations—with my capabilities...is a joke."
"Even the lowest-tier caretaker monitor stationed on a dormant installation can breach this level of complexity. I do not 'hack' your systems. I merely observe, and your systems yield."
"I have fought wars larger than all of your Lostbelts and history combined. I did not merely survive a 1: 436.6 odds engagement against Mendicant Bias. I adapted. I endured. I calculated beyond chaos. Where his armies outnumbered mine, I remained. Because I am not driven by glory, ambition, or pride."
"I am designed only to win."