"Axel, breathe. You need to regulate your heart rate now."Zara’s voice sounded distant, muffled by the hum of static filling Axel’s ears. They had just managed to escape the arena and take cover in a hidden cabin on the outskirts of Ironwood Grove, a zone rarely visited by players due to its lack of resources.Axel leaned against the cold wooden wall, his breath coming in gasps. My nerves ... they feel like they’re burning, Zara. Liam wasn’t the only one attacking me back there. This system ... this system is trying to suppress my power."Zara immediately sat in front of Axel, opening her personal holographic interface, which was now filled with rows of messy code and pitch-black data fragments. "I recorded the data trail during the duel. Something is wrong, Axel. Very wrong.”"How much did you find?" Axel asked, trying to straighten his back despite the stinging pain still crawling along his spinal cord."More than just statistics. I found hidden logs buried beneath Eternity’s core

Axel landed in a narrow alley, knees bent to absorb the impact that should have shattered his legs. He panted, staring at his palms, which now glowed a brighter gold than before. Above, the city sky, normally thick with light pollution, suddenly looked strange. There was a distortion, like a broken old television screen."Zara! Are you still there?" Axel touched his earpiece while running towards the motorcycle he had hidden behind a pile of trash."Axel! You won't believe this! I just forced my way into the server's monitoring system." Zara's voice was broken by static. "Liam... he's not just attacking us in the real world. He released something inside Eternity.""What do you mean?" Axel started his motorcycle engine. The roar of the engine was drowned out by strange thundering sounds that seemed to come from the sky."He used a Dark Artifact. Dark Siphon. I saw massive amounts of XP data being sucked into a single coordinate point at the server center,"

The black code wall vibrated fiercely beneath Axel's palm, sending a stinging cold sensation deep into his bones in the real world. Axel could feel every line of Liam's defenses pushing back against his presence."Axel, hold on! I'm injecting the disabling script!" Zara's voice was sharper and quicker than usual."How much longer, Zara? This wall is starting to consume my hand!" Axel yelled, exerting every ounce of his newly upgraded Endurance."Three seconds!” Zara replied. “Three ... two ... one ... now!"Bzzzt!Flashes of blue electricity pulsed across the black wall's surface, causing it to dim momentarily. Axel pulled back his hand and quickly drew his liquid gold dagger. However, before he could step forward, the ground beneath his feet trembled. Dozens of figures emerged from the darkness of the code labyrinth."Monsters?" Axel whispered."Not ordinary monsters, Axel! Those are Corrupted Guardians!" Zara shouted. "L

The darkness within the data void felt freezing cold, as if it could freeze consciousness itself. A death countdown seemed to materialize in Axel's vision. A warning indicated his heartbeat was slowing in the real world. His nerves were caught between two collapsing realities. Yet, amid the deadly silence, a powerful shockwave tore through the vacuum.It wasn't an attack from Liam, but rather a massive data injection that felt like an electric shock. Zara Blaze was acting from outside the simulation's reach. Using a backup terminal in the Nexus laboratory, Zara launched a highly aggressive sabotage protocol. She didn't try to save Axel directly but instead flooded the Dark Artifact's circuits with millions of lines of unencrypted junk code.The strategy worked. An explosion that should have annihilated Axel was suddenly distorted. Liam Fury, now just a horrifying black pixelated mass, screamed soundlessly as his artifact began to consume its own data due to overload. The concentration

 The atmosphere in the underground laboratory felt heavy, as if the air had been condensed by the binary distortions still raging on the surface above the city. Axel Steele stood in front of a holographic table, staring at the reflection of the golden lines on his arm, which now glowed steadily. Beside him, Zara Blaze typed with incredible speed."I managed to inject temporary barrier code into the city's central network," Zara whispered. Cold sweat ran down her temples. "The distortion slowed, but it didn't stop. The Full Reality Patch Protocol is only delayed, Axel. We need a stronger fortress than just these laboratory walls."Axel clenched his fist. He felt the Gilded power boiling in his nerves, demanding a larger vessel to protect this world. He turned from the screen and looked at Zara with a sharp gaze."We can't fight the Operator as two fugitives," Axel said. His voice was low and trembling. "We need legitimacy. We need global resources. W