"The problem, High Priest Johan, isn't that you’re incompetent," Baskara said, his voice cutting through the stunned silence of the Cathedral plaza like a sharpened blade. "It’s that you’ve fundamentally misunderstood the nature of property rights in a system where I have full administrator access. You think that sword is yours because you paid for it with tithes. I think that sword is a resource that is currently failing to meet its performance metrics."Baskara waved his hand, a ripple of translucent, golden light distorting the air around Johan’s shimmering, jeweled longsword. The weapon, once glowing with a soft, divine radiance, suddenly turned a dull, matte grey. It looked less like a holy artifact and more like a rusted piece of scrap metal salvaged from a dump."What did you do?" Johan gasped, his voice cracking as he scrambled back, the heavy, dead steel clattering against his armor. "The light! The blessing! It’s gone!""It’s not gone," Baskara replied calmly, his eyes flick

"The seals aren’t broken, Johan," Baskara said, his voice echoing with an unnerving, synthesized clarity against the marble arches of the plaza. "They’re simply obsolete. You’re trying to lock a door that no longer exists in my database."Kiet didn’t wait for the High Priest to recover his dignity. He grabbed Baskara by the shoulder and hauled him behind a decorative fountain. "We need to go. Now. The guards are confused, not dead. The moment they realize their swords are just dead weight, they’re going to stop trying to use magic and start trying to use numbers.""Numbers are exactly what I’m counting on," Baskara countered, tapping a series of commands into the air that only he could see. "And while they’re busy counting their empty bellies, I need Mayari to get the Ledger. If we’re going to dismantle this house of cards, we need the foundation records. Not the public propaganda,

"Soul-siphons," Kiet breathed, the word tasting like ash. He stared at the ledger, his hands trembling as the realization of his entire military career, the prestige, the training, the 'holy' battles, collapsed into a singular, grotesque truth. "I killed for this. I defended a furnace that burned the very people I was sworn to protect."Baskara didn't offer a platitude. He didn't care about Kiet’s morality in that moment; he cared about the logistical failure of the Cathedral. "Stop processing your trauma, Kiet. We don't have the bandwidth. Mayari, did you disable the output-limiters on the primary vaults like I asked?"Mayari looked up, her face pale, her eyes hard. She wasn't just a scout anymore; she was an accomplice in a total systemic teardown. "The protocols were tight, Baskara. It took everything I had to override the 'Divine Sufficiency' filters. But it’s done. The entire history of the Cathedral’s 'ti

"Move your feet, Baskara!" Kiet roared, hauling the logistics rogue by his collar through the mud-slicked drainage canal beneath the lower district. "The Templars aren't searching for stolen gold anymore! They’re shooting on sight!"Behind them, the muffled echoes of roaring crowds and structural collapses echoed down the brick tunnel. Forty tons of centuries-old rotting tithes had shattered the central plaza, crippling the city's main arterial thoroughfare in a flood of putrid grain and rusted relics."I’m moving," Baskara gritted out, though his heels dragged against the wet stone. "Calculated escape speed is within acceptable parameters.""Acceptable?" Mayari sprinted alongside them, her twin daggers drawn, her eyes darting between the dark alcoves of the aqueduct. "You missed the turn to the outer sluice gate by ten paces! You ran straight into a dead-end culvert!""A minor indexing delay,"

"Baskara, stay with me!" Kiet shouted, his voice echoing against the damp, subterranean stone of the tunnel. He shook the logistics rogue by the shoulders, but Baskara remained locked in a trance, his eyes tracing invisible lines of code in the stagnant air. "The interface, it’s bleeding into your motor functions. If you don't close the debug window, you’re going to overwrite your own consciousness."Baskara blinked, the translucent blue light dimming ever so slightly. He looked at Kiet, his expression blank, stripped of the manic intensity that had defined him for weeks. "I wasn't rewriting, Kiet. I was auditing. The Cathedral’s wealth isn't held in coins. It’s held in Mana Credits, abstract digital tallies backed by the life force of the villages. I found the master key."Mayari shoved her way between them, her breathing heavy. She pushed a lock of hair from her sweat-slicked forehead, her eyes sharp wi