Arthur stumbled through the heavy starlight doors. His boots skidded against the floor.

He collapsed against the cold metal wall.

His chest heaved as he gasped for air. His right arm and left leg throbbed with the dull weary ache of accelerated entropy.

But a dark triumphant smile stretched across his face.

He had survived.

"You look like shit," Cassia’s voice called out from the center of the room.

Arthur looked up. The fatigue in his bones momentarily vanished. It was replaced by the sheer awe of absolute corporate victory.

They were standing in the core of the Regional Reserve. The room was the size of a stadium, and it was filled to the brim with pure concentrated Merit Energy.

Unlike the divine crystals of the Apex Dimension, Merit Energy existed as a fluid glowing silver mist. It gathered in massive swirling pools and solidified into towering ingots of pure cosmic capital.

It was enough wealth to buy a hundred universes.

"It’s beautiful," Arthur whispered. He pushed himself off the wall and limped forward.

Vane was standing near a pool of liquid silver. His jaw hung open.

"This is crazy. I’ve never seen this much raw power. We could rebuild the entire Margin a thousand times over with just a handful of this."

"We aren’t rebuilding a slum, Vane," Arthur said. His corporate instincts rapidly overrode his physical pain. "We’re buying back an empire. Start bagging it up. Everything we can carry."

"Hold that thought, suit," Cassia warned. Her tone suddenly dropped into a lethal serious register. She raised her sniper rifle and aimed it toward the center of the vault.

The silver mist was swirling unnaturally. The ambient Merit Energy began to violently clump together. It was forcefully drawn toward a massive runic circle carved into the center of the floor.

"The vault has a localized defense mechanism," Cassia explained rapidly. Her eyes narrowed.

"A Debt Golem. It is an automated enforcer that scales in power and size based on the combined Cosmic Debt of the intruders.

Since Vane and I have relatively clean records, it should just be a standard sentry."

Arthur paused.

"Cassia," Arthur said slowly. "My debt isn’t exactly standard."

"What do you mean?" Vane asked. He stepped back as the glowing silver mass in the center of the room began to rise and take on a humanoid shape.

"My current balance," Arthur muttered. He gripped the hilt of the Ebonheart Sword tightly. "Is roughly nine hundred and ninety-nine billion."

Cassia whipped her head around to stare at him. Her silver eyes bulged in absolute horror.

"You owe a trillion Merit Points?! What the fvck did you buy, a universe?!"

"Three of them, actually," Arthur smirked tightly.

"GRAAAAAAAH!"

The silver mist violently solidified. Because it was scaling to Arthur’s astronomical debt, the Golem didn’t stop growing at the size of a sentry.

It kept expanding. It absorbed millions of gallons of liquid Merit Energy until it towered fifty feet in the air.

It was an apocalyptic monstrosity of shifting liquid silver and jagged crystal plating. It possessed no face. It just had a glowing red ledger screen across its chest that rapidly ticked up to match Arthur’s debt.

"You arrogant bastard!" Vane roared. He drew his broadsword as the sheer pressure of the Golem forced them backward. "You brought a Doomsday weapon down on us!"

"I brought us an opportunity!" Arthur yelled over the deafening roar of the beast.

He didn’t panic. The system multiplier was still offline, but he wasn’t completely helpless.

"I’m the CEO here! Vane, you’re the vanguard. Take the aggro and absorb the kinetic blows. Cassia, snipe the joints. Keep it off-balance."

"And what are you going to do?" Vane shouted. He ducked as a massive silver fist the size of a transport truck smashed into the wall where he had just been standing.

"I’m going to audit it," Arthur snarled.

He didn’t charge into the fray. He pulled up his severely restricted system interface.

"System. Access the Cosmic Ledger. Run a diagnostic on the Golem’s energy routing."

[Ding!]

[Analyzing hostile construct. The entity is fueled by the ambient Merit Energy of the vault.]

[Its internal logic loops are highly structured but strictly linear.]

Arthur’s eyes darted across the glowing data streams. He was a liquidator. He didn’t fight fair. He found the structural weaknesses in the corporate model.

The Golem was incredibly strong, but it was just a machine following a script.

"Vane! Force it to swing with its right arm! Cassia, target the left knee the moment it shifts its weight!"

The scarred hero didn’t question the order.

Vane lunged forward. He roared with fury. He swung his heavy broadsword, not trying to cut the beast, but slamming the flat of the blade against the Golem’s right thigh to provoke a reaction.

The silver monstrosity bellowed. It twisted its massive torso and brought its right fist down in a devastating hammer blow aimed at Vane.

"Now!" Arthur shouted.

"BOOM!"

Cassia’s sniper rifle barked. A hyper-condensed plasma bolt struck the Golem’s left knee at the exact microsecond its weight shifted forward.

The crystal joint shattered.

The fifty-foot beast violently stumbled. Its attack missed Vane by inches and smashed into the floor. The impact shook the entire vault.

"Its internal energy is violently attempting to re-route to repair the knee!" Arthur called out. He read the scrolling green text of the Ledger.

"It’s pulling power from its primary core.

Cassia, hit the chest plate! Vane, aim for the neck!"

They moved with flawless and terrifying synergy.

Cassia unloaded three rapid shots directly into the glowing red ledger screen on the beast’s chest. The heavy crystal plating cracked instantly.

Vane used the beast’s slumped posture to leap into the air. He drove his broadsword deep into the Golem’s thick silver neck.

"GRAAAH!" The Golem shrieked. Its internal mana conduits completely short-circuited as it tried to repair three critical wounds simultaneously.

Arthur blurred forward. He ignored his aching and aged arm.

He channeled every ounce of his remaining physical strength into the Ebonheart Sword.

He aimed directly for the cracked glowing core exposed by Cassia’s sniper fire.

"SQUELCH!"

The pitch-black blade pierced the red screen. It drove deep into the Golem’s algorithmic heart.

Arthur twisted the blade. He violently severed the entity’s connection to the vault’s ambient energy.

The massive beast stiffened. The glowing silver mist composing its body lost its cohesion.

It instantly dissolved into a torrential downpour of harmless liquid Merit Energy that flooded the floor.

"Target liquidated," Arthur breathed heavily. He ripped his sword out of the dissipating mist.

Vane landed heavily beside him, panting.

There was a begrudging look of respect in his eyes. Cassia lowered her rifle and offered Arthur a sharp triumphant grin.

"Start bagging," Arthur ordered. He gestured to the mountains of wealth. "We’ve got five minutes before Sol digs himself out of the lobby."

But before Cassia could grab a single crystal, the heavy starlight doors at the far end of the vault hissed open. It was the secondary executive entrance.

"Well, well. I thought I heard rats in the walls," a sickeningly arrogant voice echoed through the chamber.

Arthur looked up. His jaw locked tightly.

Stepping into the vault and completely bypassing the collapsed lobby was the massively obese four-armed Regional Manager.

Gildas.

Gildas was flanked by a dozen heavily armed elite Spire Guards. Their weapons were drawn and humming with lethal intent.

The Manager smiled. His multiple eyes gleamed with pure corrupt greed as he looked at the trio, and then at the mountains of unprotected wealth behind them.

"Thank you for opening the vault, anomalies," Gildas sneered. "I’ll be taking that Merit Energy to balance my own books now. Guards. Kill them all."