"Okay," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose as my head throbbed, "so before I'm tempted to stab you—repeatedly—with some kind of blunt, rusted object… please, please, tell me: what benefits do you actually provide me?"

I didn't bother hiding the exhaustion in my voice. Just talking to Gin drained me, like trying to wrestle a riddle that kept changing its language halfway through the sentence.

"Oh, my poor, poor little paper prince," Gin cooed, clapping his hands in mock sympathy, bells jingling with every movement. "You wound me. But, fine! For you? I'll be generous."

He flounced backwards onto my chair, spinning once as though the motion could charge the air with drama. "Let's begin with the obvious: no more squabbling over Cube selection. No more little meetings with the glorified tutorial bots in Pandora's Box. I outrank them. Completely. They're like a warm-up puzzle. I am the architect of pathing."

"I'm not convinced you're even housebroken," I muttered.

He ignored me, as if my sarcasm was another string on his harp.

"For instance," he said, gesturing toward the open list of Cubes glowing on my interface, "take this one—Letters to Endings."

Letters to Endings (Finality, Death, Darkness, Creation, Dimension) Effect: Allows the conjuring of Power Words. These cannot be revoked once spoken. The result of each Power Word is determined by an unknown administrator assigned to the wielder upon acquisition.

"You see?" Gin said, eyes gleaming. "That little horror would slot perfectly into your evolving core. I wouldn't even need to explain it twice, because your body would already know how to sing with it. Too bad you already refused it."

He pointed at me, suddenly stern. "That's what makes me useful. I curate. You? You're trying to wear a library like a scarf and wondering why your neck's broken."

"I built my Cube Set deliberately," I countered, arms crossed.

"You assembled it like a drunk crow building a shrine from shiny trash." He snapped. "Half your current shell is redundant. One-third actively interferes with itself. The rest are just… sad."

Gin's tone darkened, like fog pooling in a theater before the villain makes his entrance.

"Which is why," he continued, "we're going to eject the excess. You're keeping a few core elements, of course—[Lunarias], obviously. That one sings to me. The resonance is divine."

He flicked a bell on his sleeve. It chimed in the same harmonic tone that the Cube [Lunarias] gave off whenever I summoned it.

"But the rest?" He made a sweeping gesture like wiping a table clean. "We feed them to the Hydra."

I blinked. "Wait. Hold on. You're not supposed to be able to eject Cubes that have integrated into a shell. Once the structure solidifies, you're locked in."

"You can't," Gin agreed, lips curling. "But you can. But also—you can't. Not without assistance from… mm… someone like me. Or…"

He leaned in close again, voice syrupy and slow.

"An Arte."

I tensed.

"Not all Artes are created equal, darling," Gin whispered, eyes glowing with cosmic humor. "Mine? Mine is special. You see, I am the proud bearer of what your little classification system would call—" He paused, tapping the air and scrolling through an invisible interface. "—Skillcube Manipulation. Which is funny, because I'm the only one who has it."

"Of course you are," I said, deadpan.

"Such a shame, too," he sighed. "It's not even a bloodline thing. I just stole it from a system that tried to leash me. Now I am the leash."

I wasn't sure whether I should laugh or run.

He spun again, somehow stepping onto the ceiling without changing orientation. "Now let's get into the weeds. You're keeping [Lunarias]. Good synergy, high-grade potential, links into Light-as-Concept and Moon-based Tethers."

He ticked names off on his fingers. "[Gluttony of the Golden Hydra]—well, that one's soulbound. Can't eject a Beast Cube once it's fused to your living mana. That one's permanent. And [Atlas's Manifest]? Your Anchor Cube? Also permanent. I couldn't unstick that thing with a crowbar made of entropy."

He paused, grinning at me upside-down from the ceiling. "But everything else? Dead weight."

"You mean the Maw ability? The Black Hole spell? That blink cube—"

"Gone," he said, with relish. "Sugared Maw is flashy, but inconsistent. You waste more mana stabilizing its consumption spiral than you'd get back in viable spell loops. That nasty little teleport? Useless now that your shell handles repositioning natively. And that spellcasting Cube?"

"The one that creates a temporary gravitational singularity," I muttered.

"That one," Gin said, smile spreading wider. "A failure. And worse—embarrassing. Poorly constructed, riddled with dimensional leakage, and held together with duct tape and good intentions. It's going to kill you one day."

"Then why not just seal them? Archive them?"

"Because," Gin purred, stepping down from the ceiling with weightless grace, "you're going to feed them to [Gluttony of the Golden Hydra]."

He said the name like a prayer. Like a commandment. Like a sentence.

My skin went cold. "That doesn't make sense. You said it's a Beast Cube. It's bound. It shouldn't be able to—"

"—consume internal system architecture?" he finished, eyes glowing now with something inhuman. "Oh, Alex. It's not just a Beast Cube. Not anymore. Your choices—the way you fed it, what you let it remember—you've been growing a legend. That thing is… evolving."

He crouched, close enough I could see his reflection in my pupils. There was something vast behind his childlike face—like an ocean barely hidden beneath a single ripple.

"And now, it's hungry."

I didn't see him move.

One moment he was across the room, humming to himself, spinning a cube between his fingers. The next—his hand was pressed gently against my face, his eyes inches from mine, wide with delight.

And then—pain.

His thumb extended like soft clay, reshaped into a jagged blade of pale light. It slid into my left temple with a sound like ice cracking beneath boiling water.

Stolen story; please report.

I couldn't scream. I tried. But something about his touch—his will—had locked me in silence.

"Hush now," he whispered, a child comforting a dying pet. "No screams. It ruins the flavor."

Then I felt it—something inside me, something deeper than bone or blood, was melting.

Not burning—melting.

My inner self, my very mana architecture, had turned pliable. Unraveling. Strands of my identity were being pulled apart, drawn inward, as if some unseen gravity was collapsing me into myself.

"That's right," Gin murmured, voice raw and gleeful, like a beast finally granted permission to feast. "Let it happen. Let it feed. Let go."

And I felt it—the Hydra.

[Gluttony of the Golden Hydra] was not passively watching. It was devouring me. Not my flesh, but my mana. My Cubes. My anchors of ability and strength. My identity as a combatant.

And it wasn't doing it maliciously. It was rejoicing.

The beast inside me—my own legend—was ravenous, feasting on the architecture of everything I'd built. I felt it chewing through cubes, drinking down years of effort like warm marrow.

"How does it feel?" Gin said, his voice a purr coiled with knives. "To have someone else use your Cubes, with your soul as the conduit?"

His face twisted into a feral grin, one far too large for the childlike frame he wore.

"Barbatos is in the other room, you know," he added, offhandedly. "She could stop this. Should stop this. But she won't. Because she agrees with me. This? This is the better way."

He tapped my chest with one finger, right above my heart.

"So we're clearing the rot," he said. "Only the worthy remain: Lunarias. The Hydra. Atlas's Manifest. And of course, The Millennium. Although…" His grin widened. "That isn't its name. You know it. Say it."

I couldn't. My throat was sealed. My mind was molten wax.

More Cubes vanished. I felt them disintegrate, erased from the shell. Gone from the network of slotted memory. But…

They were still there.

I blinked in horror—I could still use them. Their echoes remained, imprinted into me like scars branded into flesh. Their functions, their effects—they hadn't been erased. They'd been consumed.

But not destroyed.

Transmuted.

Rewritten.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Gin whispered, his voice high with ecstasy. "All this waste you called a build. These trash-tier cubes you wore like medals. And yet—now—look. You can still feel them, can't you? Still pull on their power. But now you don't carry them."

He leaned in. "You are them."

I was trembling now—not from fear, but from the unbearable pressure building in my core. A power not just internal, but intimate. My soul was being restructured to contain things it was never meant to hold. The shell was being hollowed out, repurposed. The difference between self and ability was being erased.

And still, the Hydra fed.

Gin giggled like a child unwrapping a forbidden toy. "See what you were squandering? See why your shell was such a failure? Sure—it gave you mass. Presence. That awful aura of control. But you never feasted. You never understood what it meant to devour."

He raised his arms like a conductor summoning a crescendo. "Feast, little beast. Feast. And feast. And feast."

His shadow stretched behind him, too long, too tall, and shaped like something that wasn't even remotely human.

"And then," Gin whispered, eyes now shimmering with countless reflections, "we build you new teeth."

***

I woke in my office.

The first thing I noticed wasn't the light or the sounds of the world returning.

It was the cold.

Not a chill in the air—not the kind that creeps through cracks in windows. This was the kind of cold that lived inside me. A slow, creeping frost behind my ribs, around my heart, like something vital had been replaced with ice and silence.

Barbatos was there. Quiet. Composed. Sitting in one of the chairs across from me, her legs crossed, a book open in one hand. In the other, she held a porcelain teacup—steam curling in ghostly spirals above it.

She set the cup down in front of me without a word.

The tea was warm. Too warm. I could feel it even before touching it, as if its heat was trying to coax my soul back from the edge of something yawning and permanent.

"This is for you," she said gently. "It's medicinal. And no—Cordelia wasn't available for this one. Spiritual damage is..."

She hesitated, closing the book with a soft thump.

"Spiritual damage is not fun," she finished, her voice low. "But in this case, it was necessary."

I stared at the cup for a long moment. Then, finally, sighed. My breath felt like smoke leaving a broken chimney.

"Why?" I asked, my voice hoarse. "Why would you subject anyone to that?"

Her expression flickered—something between regret and resolve. She didn't look at me as she answered.

"For starters, Alex... Gin outranks us."

She waited for that to settle in before continuing.

"He's not a Dominus. But he's something... else. His true title is the Catomancer of Calamity. Archon Gin. And yes—he's one of the administrators' managers."

My mouth felt dry. My blood felt thinner.

Then it clicked. The cold. The unnatural sensation hollowing out my chest like frostbite on a metaphysical level.

"His mana type," I said slowly. "It's... Entropy. Not just decay, but the raw dissolution of space itself. Isn't it?"

Barbatos gave a single nod.

"Yeah. He sculpts it into cats because..." she exhaled. "Honestly? Because he thinks it's funny. Also—laziest pun in existence."

She stuck out her tongue, just briefly, mimicking his tone: "It's time for the cat-astrophe!" Then she shook her head and muttered, "Stupid child…"

Her voice carried the weight of someone who had tried, more than once, to contain the uncontainable.

I took a sip of the tea. It tasted like someone had boiled spoiled cabbage in melted chocolate. I gagged, but forced it down.

Barbatos's eyes were suddenly sharp again.

"Alexander," she said, folding her hands together on her knee. "I didn't interfere because, brutal as this may be—Gin is right. You're choosing your skillcubes like someone throwing darts at a tavern wall. And the worst part is—you don't even need to. You've been squandering your father's gift."

She paused, then softened.

"Although…" Her gaze drifted downward. "Have you ever considered evolving your monstrous bloodline? Making it into something more than a rabbit?"

I blinked, too tired to react fully.

"Excuse me?"

And just like that—he was there.

Gin manifested on my desk like he'd always been there, legs swinging lazily off the edge, head tilted, all wide eyes and mischievous grin. His presence was impossible. Like a shadow that somehow cast light.

"You are excused," he chirped, kicking his feet. "But really. You should take that advice seriously. There are much better monstrous bloodlines to work with. Yours is so... adorably undeveloped. And we still haven't unlocked the elemental affinity hidden in your core."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked, completely baffled.

Gin leaned in, all teeth and sugar-sweet menace.

"You haven't met your bloodline's true nature yet. But you will. You're the fourteenth child of a woman with the Arte of Septuplication. You honestly thought you'd get away with just some fluff-eared instincts and a dash of agility?"

He giggled.

"Oh, Alexander... you're not just some broken heir scrambling through the ruins of forgotten cubes. You're something that was meant to evolve. And we're just getting started."

His grin stretched too wide again.

"Now—shall we begin phase two?"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.