The "Heart-Pump" of Sector 9 was a cathedral of brass and screaming steam, a space so vast that the ceiling was lost in a permanent fog of recycled air and oil-mist. It was the point where the raw geothermal mana from the planet’s core was filtered, pressurized, and surged upward to the Aether-Wing. If the Soot-Warren was the stomach of the Hub, this was the aorta—the singular point of failure that kept the "Divine" elite in their state of grace.

  Andy led the Laborers onto the high-tension catwalks, his boots making a dull, hollow sound against the metal. The air here was thicker than in the Warren, saturated with a mana-density that made the skin of the uninitiated crawl. His shoulder was a mask of dried blood and charred cloth, the brass shard still humming with a sympathetic vibration from the pumps. But the Anvil-Born core was doing more than just keeping him standing—it was feeding. It was drawing the ambient heat of the chamber into his marrow, turning his pain into a cold, focused reservoir of kinetic potential.

  "Stop," Andy said.

  His voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the roar of the pumps like a blade. The Laborers behind him, a ragtag line of sixty men and women covered in ash and desperation, ground to a halt.

  Standing at the far end of the catwalk, guarding the primary override, was the "Collector."

  He didn't look like Harlen or the petty Overseers. He was encased in heavy, articulated plate armor that didn't shimmer with the blue, friendly light of the System. Instead, it glowed with a dull, industrial orange. It wasn't steel or basalt-composite. It was the same high-tensile brass alloy that had shattered in the pressure-vessel—a material Andy’s 17th-floor memories had flagged as a minor update, but which the System had turned into a weapon of total conductivity.

  The Collector held a heavy, two-handed mace that looked like a localized mana-battery. He was Level 15—an "Enforcer" sub-class. In the original timeline, these units didn't appear until the second month of the Tutorial, usually to quell organized resistance in the mid-tiers. The System was over-spending its administrative budget to snuff out Andy before he could become a systemic infection.

  "The Schema," the Collector said. The voice was synthesized, echoing within a helmet that lacked any eye-slits. "Return the unauthorized data-plate, and the Siphon protocol for your sector will be delayed by twenty-four hours. Refuse, and the protocol begins with your immediate execution as an environmental hazard."

  Vane stepped up beside Andy, his heavy industrial wrench gripped in both hands. The big man was sweating, his muscles taut. "One man? Against sixty of us? He’s fast, but he’s not a god."

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  "He's not a man," Andy said, his eyes scanning the Collector’s joints, looking for the hydraulic fluid lines. "He's a closed-circuit. Do not touch him. If you touch that armor with anything conductive, the mana-backflow will fry your central nervous system before you can pull your hand away. This is a containment unit, not a soldier."

  Andy stepped forward, his movements stiff. He had no weapon—his gladius was a melted lump of scrap miles behind them. He had only his hands and the heat coiling in his bones.

  The Collector moved with a speed that defied the bulk of the brass plates. He swung the mace in a horizontal arc that whistled through the steam. Andy dropped into a low crouch, the weapon passing inches above his head. The sheer mana-pressure of the swing bruised his skin through the air, the displacement feeling like a physical punch.

  Andy lunged, aiming a strike at the Collector’s knee-joint where the brass was thinnest. His fist, reinforced by the Anvil-Born rooting, hit the plate with the sound of a hammer on a forge. But the feedback was instantaneous and horrific. It felt like punching a live high-voltage wire.

  The Anvil-Born core in his chest flared, trying to absorb the shock, but the brass didn't shatter like the basalt he remembered. It flexed, distributing the impact across the entire suit and reflecting the kinetic energy back into Andy’s knuckles. The "Optimization" of this timeline had turned a specialist’s best tool—physical force—into a liability.

  The Collector grabbed Andy’s injured shoulder, his gauntlet locking onto the wound.

  Andy screamed as the Enforcer’s mana-gauntlet sent a surge of raw, unrefined power directly into his marrow. It wasn't just pain; it was a systematic override. The brass armor acted as a perfect conductor, magnifying the Enforcer's level advantage. He was pinned against the railing, the Collector’s weight crushing the air from his lungs. The Laborers hesitated, watching their "Ghost"—the man who had snapped Harlen’s whip—being systematically dismantled.

  "Andy!" Kaelen yelled, taking a step forward with a jagged piece of pipe.

  "Stay back!" Andy roared, coughing up steam-flecked blood that sizzled on the hot catwalk.

  He looked at the brass plate of the Collector’s chest. He saw the microscopic runes etched into the metal—runes that matched the patterns on the Schema plate. He realized in that moment that the brass wasn't just a mistake or an upgrade. It was a vulnerability. The System had chosen it for its ability to channel Amito's light, but in doing so, it had created a two-way street.

  If it conducted the Collector’s power, it would conduct his, too.

  Andy stopped fighting the grip. He reached out with his good hand and grabbed the Collector’s neck-seal—the only part of the armor where the cooling-fins met the primary circuit. He didn't strike. He *opened*.

  He unleashed the full, uncalibrated heat of the Anvil-Born core. He didn't aim for the man inside; he aimed for the molecular structure of the metal. He turned himself into a short-circuit, a bridge between the geothermal mana in his marrow and the pressurized mana in the Collector's battery.

  The brass armor began to glow. First a dull cherry-red, then a blinding, incandescent white that illuminated the entire cathedral of the Heart-Pump. The Collector’s synthesized voice turned into a distorted electronic shriek as his own mana-battery backfired into the suit. The conductive alloy, the very thing that made him invincible against physical strikes, became his cage.

  A massive discharge of orange light erupted, blinding everyone in the room. The smell of ozone, burning insulation, and vaporized brass was overwhelming.

  When the light finally faded, Andy was slumped against the railing, his hand fused to the Collector’s melted neck-seal by a bridge of slag. The Enforcer was a hollow shell, the man inside vaporized by the thermal surge. The brass armor, once a symbol of the System’s absolute control, was now a slumped, cooling statue of ruined metal.

  Andy pulled his hand away, the skin peeling off in a jagged, cauterized strip that left his palm raw and red. He looked at the Laborers, his eyes reflecting the dying embers of the suit.

  "The pumps," Andy gasped, his vision swimming with dark spots. "Shut them down. If the Aether-Wing wants essence, they can come down here and dig for it."