Inside the vault, rows of computers and suspended holographic screens filled the interior, giving the space the feeling of a sealed command core rather than a simple storage room. Cold white light spilled from embedded panels in the walls, reflecting off dense layers of alloy and composite plating.

Set directly into the inner walls were several massive storage boxes, arranged in precise formation. Each one was enormous, nearly the height of two adult humans stacked together. Thick locking seams ran along their edges, and faint indicator lines pulsed intermittently across their surfaces.

They looked silent.

But they were anything but that.

The moment Grey focused on them, his expression sharpened.

Every box was sealed by multi-layered, military-grade encryption.

"They really know their way with technology," Grey muttered quietly, a hint of genuine admiration in his tone.

Even as villains, even as enemies of Eterna, the High Order possessed technological foundations that could not be underestimated.

These were the same people who had once developed devices capable of interfering with Eterna's surveillance layers. The same faction that had dared to tamper with fragments of the Law of Machinery itself.

With foundations like that, it was only natural that their encryption systems would be monstrous.

Grey's gaze sharpened as streams of information unfolded before his mind.

The encryption structure was absurdly complex. Data loops nested within larger loops, false access points deliberately designed to collapse intruding logic paths. Even attempting to trace it linearly would cause most ethical ByteRippers to lose orientation within seconds.

A single mistake would trap the intruder inside a recursive encryption maze, frying their neural interface or locking them out permanently.

Speaking of ByteRippers, they still existed.

Although Eterna had officially banned the evolutionary path long ago, erasing an entire path from reality was never that simple. Especially not for cyborg cultivators who had already replaced parts of their flesh with machinery.

Switching evolutionary paths was far easier said than done.

For cyborgs who had already fused technology into their bodies, reverting required more than willpower. It required reconstruction at the biological level.

To regrow limbs that had already healed and fused with machinery, one would need at least a three-star alchemist. Possibly even a four-star, depending on how deeply the technology had integrated with the nervous system.

Only after restoring a complete, untainted flesh body could one even attempt to cultivate another path.

After all, every evolutionary path demanded a competent physical vessel.

Take martial arts, for instance. The flow of power relied on the body as a complete circuit. If even one limb was missing, the circulation would destabilize, causing energy imbalance and inevitable qi deviation.

Without restoring the body, cultivation became impossible.

Which meant those ByteRippers were effectively trapped, waiting for the emergence of a sufficiently powerful alchemist to save them.

Grey dismissed the thought.

That was not his concern.

His focus returned to the boxes before him.

The goal was simple.

Decode the encryption.

Disable the security.

Access the contents.

And it just so happened that he possessed the perfect tool for the job.

His mind interface.

The ultimate bane of all technology.

As long as something existed within the radius of his mind perception, ownership became irrelevant. Technology ceased to recognize its original master.

With a single thought, translucent windows erupted across Grey's vision.

They did not float passively. They moved with his gaze, sliding and aligning themselves precisely wherever his attention fell. Streams of encrypted data unraveled in real time as his consciousness pierced through the defensive layers.

He reached out mentally, linking directly to the encryption nodes embedded within the boxes.

Connections formed.

Access pathways unfolded.

Grey bypassed the outer layers without resistance and traced the data streams inward, directly toward the local hosting server controlling the vault's storage network.

The moment his connection stabilized, the vault's security system shuddered.

What had once been an impenetrable fortress of encryption now stood exposed.

All that remained was to tear it open.

Grey's eyes narrowed slightly.

Within his vision, the translucent windows shifted, overlapping and multiplying as deeper system layers revealed themselves. Security protocols flared into existence, attempting to authenticate, verify, and reassert control over the connection.

It was futile.

Grey did not bother with careful dismantling.

He exerted pressure.

The mind interface surged, raw computational authority flooding outward as his consciousness expanded through the system. Encryption keys embedded in hardware cores began to unravel, their verification cycles forcibly interrupted mid-process.

One by one, the looping logic paths collapsed.

False access points shattered as Grey severed their recursion anchors, converting them into dead ends. Defensive subroutines attempted emergency rerouting, only to be intercepted and overwritten before they could complete a single cycle.

The vault's security AI finally reacted.

Counter-intrusion measures activated, flooding the system with containment threads meant to isolate the breach and eject the intruder.

They never reached him.

Grey's mind interface expanded again, engulfing the containment threads before they could form a closed loop. Control nodes flickered, stuttered, and then went dark as he severed their command hierarchy at the root.

In less than a second, the hosting server fell silent.

The encryption was broken!

Click! Click! Click!

The vaults opened one by one.

Heavy locking mechanisms disengaged with dull, metallic reverberations as layered seals slid apart. Inside the boxes, internal lights flickered on, illuminating their contents as the final security restrictions collapsed.

And while all of this unfolded, a certain existence observed in absolute silence.

[…]

The system consciousness froze.

It did not scream. It did not react immediately.

As a technological entity with direct access to the information layer, proximity to Grey allowed it to perceive things that ordinary beings could not.

And in that instant, it realized something profoundly wrong.

He had a cognitive anchor!

The realization struck like corrupted data tearing through its core processes.

A cognitive anchor was not something a human should possess.

Humans did not have those.

They could not have those.

[Host, he has a cognitive anchor!] the system exclaimed internally, its logic threads spiraling out of control.

[He's definitely not a human! He must be an AI!]

In its entire existence as a so-called golden finger, it had never encountered anything like this.

Not once.

What the fock?

What kind of existence possessed a human shell, yet maintained an AI-grade cognitive anchor?

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.