The Regional Reserve did not exist on any physical map. It was a magical vault, a bank stationed entirely outside the standard parameters of space and time.

To access it, one did not simply walk through a door. One had to exploit a mathematical tear in the financial fabric of the universe.

Standing in the damp and rusted safehouse of the Margin, Arthur held out the glowing access crystal he had pickpocketed from Gildas.

Cassia placed her hands over his. Her Stardusk magic hummed with a sharp and illicit frequency.

Vane stood behind them. His massive broadsword rested on his shoulder. He looked thoroughly uncomfortable with the sheer amount of cosmic felonies they were currently committing.

"Twist the frequency," Cassia murmured. Her silver eyes reflected the pulsing light of the crystal. "Match it to the baseline of the Deficit Zone and then invert it."

Arthur fed a trickle of his restricted base-level mana into the stone. He felt the exact moment the crystal’s code snagged on the hidden backdoor of the universe.

"Got it," Arthur said.

"CRACK!"

The air in the center of the safehouse violently split open. It wasn’t a swirling vortex or a jagged tear. It was a perfectly smooth and rectangular doorway made of glowing white light.

Beyond it lay a sprawling expanse of floating marble pathways, golden arches, and ticking geometric pendulums that defied gravity.

"Vane, you’re on the heavy lifting," Arthur ordered. He adjusted the cuffs of his blood-stained white shirt. "Cassia, you take the outer security grids. Strip the alarms before they can scream. I’ll handle the lobby."

"Just don’t die, suit," Cassia smirked and drew her sleek stun pistols.

"I have too much debt to die," Arthur replied dryly.

They stepped through the doorway.

The transition was jarring. The foul and ozone-choked air of the Margin was instantly replaced by an atmosphere so clean and sterile it physically burned Arthur’s lungs.

There was no sky here. There was just an endless expanse of shifting numerical data.

Trillions of accounts, ledgers, and merit transactions flowed like a digital ocean above their heads.

The trio moved with flawless efficiency. Vane and Cassia immediately broke off. They blurred down a side corridor of floating marble to intercept the foundational security nodes.

Arthur continued straight. His heavy boots clicked rhythmically against the gold-laced floor.

He rounded a massive curved archway and stepped into the main lobby of the Regional Reserve.

It was a massive display of cosmic wealth. Towering pillars of solidified crystal stretched up into the data ocean above. The floor was a flawless mirror.

But Arthur didn’t care about the architecture.

His pitch-black eyes immediately locked onto the lone figure standing in the exact center of the vast room.

He wasn’t a hulking monster. He wasn’t a faceless and grey-glass construct.

He was a tall and incredibly lean man dressed in an immaculate white suit that seemed to absorb the ambient light. He wore a silver pocket watch on a chain that dripped with chronal magic.

In his right hand, resting casually at his side, was a rapier. The blade wasn’t made of steel. It was forged from condensed and solidified time. It shimmered with a dizzying and nauseating distortion.

It was Inspector Sol.

"Mr Sterling," Sol spoke. His voice was not booming or arrogant. It was calm, measured, and highly intelligent. It was the voice of a man who had already calculated the exact moment of your death.

Of course he knew who Authur is and why he is here.

"I must admit, your acquisition of the Ebon Empire was a masterful display of hostile tactics. Quite beautiful."

Arthur stopped ten feet away. He didn’t draw the Ebonheart Sword yet.

"Well, I appreciate the recognition. I’m just here to make a withdrawal to balance the books."

"Unfortunately, that is impossible," Sol replied. He took a slow and perfectly measured step forward. "I have reviewed your ledger, Mr. Sterling. You did not generate capital. You borrowed it from the foundational fabric of the universe."

"Your million-fold multiplier created a reality drag that threatens to collapse the entire sector. Your debt is mathematically unsustainable."

"The universe’s math is flawed," Arthur retorted coldly. "It operates on a stagnant zero-sum game. You hoard resources in this vault while the lower dimensions starve. I just forcefully redistributed the assets."

"An ideological defense," Sol said. A faint and polite smile touched his lips.

"Fascinating, but irrelevant to the audit. The law is absolute. You are an anomaly, and anomalies must be erased to preserve the balance of things."

Sol reached into his immaculate white suit and pulled out a small glowing gavel made of pure crystal. He didn’t swing it. He simply tapped it gently against the side of his time-rapier.

"DIIIING!"

The sound wasn’t a physical noise. It was a magical ripple that washed over the entire lobby.

[Ding!]

[Warning: Hostile Injunction Field detected.]

[All administrative privileges revoked. All system assists nullified. Host is restricted to baseline physical and magical parameters.]

Arthur felt the heavy comforting hum of his system interface go completely dead. The localized reality of the lobby shifted and locked down all external laws.

There were no multipliers here. There was no absolute spatial teleportation. There was only raw physical combat.

"I prefer a clean audit," Sol stated smoothly.

He raised his shimmering rapier. "No system manipulation. No reality-bending loopholes.

Just the raw and basic merit of your existence, Mr. Sterling. Let us see what you are truly worth."

"You want to do this the hard way?" Arthur snarled.

He reached over his shoulder and drew the Ebonheart Sword. The heavy pitch-black blade did not ignite with the Primordial Flame. It was just cold, heavy, and unbreakable metal.

"Fine. Let’s do an aggressive physical inventory."

"WHOOSH!"

Arthur didn’t wait for the Inspector to make the first move. He launched himself forward.

His heavy boots cracked the mirrored floor.

He closed the distance in a fraction of a second and brought the heavy broadsword around in a brutal decapitating horizontal arc.

Sol didn’t blink. He didn’t even shift his footing. He simply raised the time-rapier in a flawless textbook parry.

"CLANG!"

The impact should have shattered the slender blade and crushed the Inspector’s arm. Arthur was swinging with the raw pseudo-ascended strength of a Celestial King.

But the moment the Ebonheart Sword struck the solidified time, the kinetic force simply vanished. It was swallowed by the chronal distortion.

Arthur’s eyes widened. Before he could pull his blade back, Sol’s wrist flicked with impossible and blurry speed.

"SHAAAAANK!"

The tip of the rapier bypassed Arthur’s guard entirely. It sliced a shallow precise line across Arthur’s right forearm.

It didn’t hurt. It didn’t burn.

Instead, a terrifying and sickening sensation washed over Arthur’s arm.

"Fvck!" Arthur grunted. He violently jumped backward to create distance.

He looked down at his right arm. The fabric of his pristine white sleeve had instantly rotted and frayed into grey dust.

But that wasn’t the horrifying part. The skin of his forearm had withered. The dense hyper-optimized muscle mass had atrophied. The veins bulged against sagging spotted skin.

In a single fraction of a second, his arm had aged by a full decade.

"So this is what it feels like to be on the losing side."

Arthur smiled bitterly. His eyes were hollow.

Just one scratch and the punishment is aging? What kind of monster is this?

"A word of advice, Mr. Sterling," Sol said politely. He lowered his rapier to a resting guard. The time-blade hummed with a quiet lethal patience. "You cannot out-fence time."

Arthur gritted his teeth. His grip on the Ebonheart Sword felt noticeably weaker in his right hand. The arthritis was sudden and agonizing.

The baseline stats of his Dimensional Breaker Physique were fighting the temporal rot. But without the system’s active regeneration, the healing was painfully slow.

He had spent the last five years acting as an untouchable and omnipotent God. He had forgotten what it felt like to be genuinely outmatched in a straight physical duel.

"We’ll see about that," Arthur spat. His pitch-black eyes burned with pure corporate ruthlessness.

He didn’t charge blindly this time. He fell into a tight and highly defensive martial stance.

He needed to perfectly calculate the exact trajectory of a weapon that literally altered the flow of seconds.

Sol offered a respectful nod. "Commencing asset liquidation."

The Inspector blurred forward. He didn’t run. He seemed to simply skip the frames of reality between them. He appeared directly in Arthur’s guard with a blinding flurry of thrusts.

"CLANG! CLANG! SQUELCH!"

Arthur parried the first two strikes. The heavy impacts sent jarring agonizing shockwaves up his aged arm. But the third thrust grazed his left shoulder. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Instantly, a deep weary ache bloomed across his collarbone. Another five years of vitality were violently stolen from his flesh.

Arthur cursed. His heavy boot lashed out in a brutal front kick aimed at Sol’s knee.

Sol didn’t dodge. The rapier blurred downward and intercepted the heavy boot.

"CRACK!"

Arthur felt the leather of his boot instantly petrify and crumble into ancient dust. A sharp stinging pain flared in his shin as the temporal edge kissed his skin. It aged the bone beneath to a brittle fragility.

He stumbled back. His breathing was ragged.

This wasn’t a fight he could win by overpowering the opponent. The Inspector was flawless. His technique was perfect, and his weapon bypassed durability entirely.

Every time their blades crossed, Arthur bled time.

"Your margins are shrinking, Mr. Sterling," Sol noted calmly. He advanced with a slow predatory grace. "Surrender the Ebon Citadel, submit to the erasure of your anomalies, and I will ensure your personal bankruptcy is painless."

"I don’t do surrender," Arthur growled.

His mind worked furiously.

If he couldn’t beat the auditor, he had to do something.