CHAPTER 30: VIBRATION

The silence after the brief battle was more threatening than the sound of combat. The smell of blood, burnt magic, and sweat hung in the stifling air of the labyrinth. Eren looked at Kaela, kneeling on the ground, with the side of her left arm pierced by a still smoldering sacred bolt. She was trying to bite her own shoulder to stifle the growl of pain. Nyssa, further back, remained fluid but trembling — her body taking on an almost human form, with wide, opaque eyes. She flickered as if about to evaporate from panic.

Morwynn watched in silence, hanging upside down, nestled between two cracked columns. When she spoke, her voice was firmer than usual, almost... protective.

"We are close to collapse. They do not stop. They do not hesitate. And they do not think."

She released herself from the webs with a silent spin, landing lightly. One of her spider legs touched a stone wall covered in phosphorescent moss, and she whispered:

"We can go down. There are old routes. Forgotten. Barbed. But... breathable. We weave another fate."

Eren was silent for a moment, his eyes moving from Kaela to Nyssa, and then to Morwynn. His fingers were tense. His body, covered in soot. But his mind? Operating.

The system reacted:

[Risk of Annihilation Increasing.]

[Recommended Escape Path.]

"Even the system is suggesting I run. That’s never a good sign."

He gritted his teeth. Running was never his style. But dying here wouldn’t change anything. Not without knowing more. Not without turning the tables.

"Let’s go down, then. But slowly. If we’re going to fall, I want it to be in a place where they can’t follow us."

The group moved. Morwynn led, her body disappearing among shadows and gaps. Kaela bit through the pain and walked with her disabled arm. Nyssa clung to Eren from behind, like a living coat.

The structure of the labyrinth seemed aware of the escape. The walls pulsed. Previously solid corridors now displayed holes. Stone spikes slowly sprouted from the ground, forcing more dangerous turns. In some parts, the air was so humid it seemed to swallow the sound of footsteps. In others, fungi sang sharp, disjointed melodies — a chorus of madness trying to unbalance them.

Eren didn’t complain. He just observed. Analyzed. Waited. Because there, in that desperate descent, he knew he was going not just away... but forward.

The echo of prayers invaded the labyrinth like a feverish sound. Synchronized steps, chants in liturgical tones, and the hum of activated relics revealed the worst: the Order had fully entered.

Paladins of faith marched with phosphorescent white armor and closed eyes. Clerics floated among them, with open books and candles lit by pure magic. Bond sensors — small crosses that vibrated in the presence of bonds — trembled in their hands. The labyrinth, even alive, bowed to the presence of faith.

Morwynn was the first to react.

"We have minutes. Maybe less. Follow the left web. It lies for me."

Without waiting for a response, she scaled the walls and began casting invisible threads in multiple directions. False passages. Illusory trails. Illusion traps.

Nyssa, who usually floated with grace, was unstable. The glow of the sacred lights made her body bubble. She gasped.

"It’s too much... light," she murmured, her voice thin and choked. "It hurts..."

Eren crouched and took her in his arms without hesitation.

"I know. Close your eyes. Don’t let go of me."

She obeyed, melting against his chest, like water seeking protection.

Kaela growled, guiding them through the damp corridors. But when they heard a noise at the rear, she instinctively recoiled.

Two paladins emerged. One raised the lance. She charged like a beast.

"I will bite your souls," she roared.

The sound was muffled by tearing flesh and a dry crack of bones. The first fell, headless. The second still screamed before being silenced. But not before driving a sacred lance into the werewolf’s flank.

Kaela staggered, holding the wound with her other hand.

"It just scratched the skin... from the inside."

Eren came up behind and supported her.

"Shut up and move."

"I always move. Even dead."

Morwynn pulled a loose wall.

"Here."

They passed through a damp crevice and fell into a stuffy, ancient chamber where the air smelled of moss and fear. Morwynn sealed the entrance with a dense, opaque web.

Outside, the sound of the paladins persisted.

They were praying.

"May the Flame devour the Bond. May the Fusion be undone. May the link return to dust."

They had not yet escaped. But they were alive.

And that was more than many could say at that moment.

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

The underground dome vibrated in silence.

Above the four elevated chairs, runes orbited like small suns of data. Each symbol represented a function: analysis, transmission, interpretation, prediction. In the center of the dome, a large globe pulsed with distorted images — scenes from the labyrinth, flashes of bonds, numerical sequences, and emotional readings mixed with fragments of memory.

The entire room seemed to breathe with the rhythm of a collective mind.

Master Vaen, the throne of Systemology, spoke first. As always, his voice came without emotion, dry as a line of code:

"The runic judgment has been completed. Protocol failed. The anomaly was not extinguished. The system hesitated."

His slender hand glided over a projection and revealed the data: columns of commands, internal warnings, multiple attempts at automatic shutdown — all ignored.

"He survived what we call the purification of the instance. This is... unprecedented."

Kelna, from Biothermia, leaned forward. Her neon-green eyes glowed with intensity as she analyzed a hologram of Eren’s body during the confrontation.

"Look at the muscle patterns. Variations in synapses. The tissue responds to shared emotional stimuli. He doesn’t just share status, he reconfigures biology."

She enlarged the image of Eren’s chest.

"Living runes. Tattoos formed by spontaneous energetic fusion. This isn’t common magic. It’s relational alchemy. He is... symbiosis."

Lorith, the lady of Psychodynamics, sighed with a melancholic smile. Her fingers played with a necklace of crossed affinities.

--- Parte 2 ---

"""

"I feel everything he feels. Not out of empathy. Because of... structure. Every bond he forms becomes narrative. As if he were rewriting the concept of a tamer. The system not only accepts it, it adapts to him.

Vaen typed something and projected the old name."

[Order of the Ancestral Tamers – Fragmented Document No. 81]

[Natural Exploit – Theory rejected by the current system, but preserved in the hidden archives of theurgy.]

["A being that does not tame by contract, but by trauma. By experience. By reverse affection."]

Rethar, the rational fanatic of Fragmented Theurgy, smiled with teeth stained by ash. His voice was warm as embers but hard as stone:

"He is the failed prophecy. The deviation that survived. The exception that burns the rules.

He partially rose from the throne and held up a parchment torn in half."

"The Order of the Flaming Eye tries to erase all traces. But this boy is the fuse. He does not tame creatures. He embraces abominations. And turns them into home."

Silence fell. Each of the four got lost for a moment in their own thoughts.

Kelna, who rarely hesitated, was the first to break the silence:

"He is still unstable. If he falls into deep emotional imbalance... he might collapse. Or evolve."

Lorith added:

"What concerns us... is who he will take with him. Each of his monsters is becoming more... human."

Vaen responded with eyes still fixed on the code:

" And he, less."

Kelna gave a slight dry laugh.

"So what do we do? Capture him? Observe him? Isolate him?"

Rethar spoke as if he had written the answer centuries ago.

"We let the anomaly move. But we clear the path for it to fall... where it is most useful. No flower grows without pruning. No legend without a stage."

Lorith sighed.

"He will break the seals. Perhaps break the world."

Kelna closed her eyes, the lights around the Biothermy throne dimmed.

"And we... just record it?"

Vaen finally looked at the others.

His eyes shone like cold screens.

"We won’t interfere yet. But we will pave the way for him... discreetly."

On a side screen, a line of text blinked. It was the field diary of an External Observer from the guild.

[Report X-777: The anomaly has left the labyrinth. Confirmed.]

[Start of the Major Deviation. Intensive observation recommended.]

[Risk of convergence with other elevated entities: Moderate.]

[Attention to the tamer’s emotional pattern.]

On the holographic screen, Eren’s face appeared for a second.

Sweaty. Wounded. But smiling. A smile of someone who understands they are on the edge of the impossible.

Rethar looked at it with inverted devotion.

" May the system see him. May the world fear him. And may faith... fear him even more."

The Core had awakened. And Eren no longer walked alone.

High in the dome, among the floating runes and threads of energy, a point of light twinkled silently. Almost imperceptible, like a magical insect... but there was something cruel about that spark.

It was her.

Hagan’s fairy watched everything, sitting on one of the runic spheres. Her legs crossed, wings beating with lazy cadence. Her eyes shone like crystal blades. She didn’t speak, didn’t interrupt. But listened to every word from the four thrones as if she were recording it to laugh later.

When Rethar spoke about "clearing the stage for the anomaly," she let out a low, almost childish laugh.

She nibbled on a piece of enchanted leaf — a snack picked from a forbidden plant — and chewed slowly, savoring the chaos.

The guild members continued to ignore her presence. Or pretended to.

The fairy then turned to the central globe, where Eren appeared.

She tilted her head to the side. Watched him as if studying an imperfect painting.

She lay down on the runic sphere like a satisfied cat.

Her wings glowed with a dark red hue. And then she disappeared.

Like a system error that no one could trace.

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

The silence was as thick as pitch.

The ancient chamber where Eren and his monsters had taken refuge seemed forgotten even by the labyrinth. The walls were covered in phosphorescent moss, but nothing pulsated there. No sound, no breath except those coming from their exhausted bodies.

Kaela slept lying on her wound, breathing lightly. Nyssa had taken on an almost liquid form on the ground, eyes half-closed but alert. Morwynn had disappeared into the shadows of the ceiling, weaving webs with slow, almost meditative movements.

Eren, sitting among them, stared at nothing.

He did not speak.

He did not sweat.

The only thing moving in him was his gaze — a hidden blade in a calm fist.

The system that had accompanied him for so long decided to manifest:

[Survival Mode Activated]

[Exploit Recognized | Containment Protocol Deferred]

The words hovered before him like a confession.

"Exploit recognized," he repeated mentally. The system admitted. For the first time, it had recognized something it didn’t know how to handle. A functional error. A bug with emotions.

Eren slowly ran his hand over his own arm, now less hairy, cleaner, almost smooth. He observed the living runic marks that had emerged with the fusion of bonds. They were subtle traces, but they pulsed with the same pattern as the creatures that accompanied him.

He thought of everything he had faced since entering this world: the prejudice of his own class, the first unfair battles, the emotional vulnerability that most Tamers hid behind shouts and heroic poses. He never shouted. Never posed.

The only thing he always had was a sharp mind.

And that.

The "bug."

Something that shouldn’t work but worked because he refused the normal path. Refused the classic emotional contract, the silly romance that many tamers adopted. He didn’t love them. But he also didn’t treat them as tools.

He saw... function.

In Kaela, the sincere brutality. In Nyssa, the perfect malleability. In Morwynn, the silent intelligence. Each of them was a strategic extension. And, for that, he preserved them.

If the system wanted to punish him for this, it would have to try harder. And better.

Eren leaned forward, crossing his arms over his knees. His hands were dirty with dried blood and stone dust. He didn’t seem concerned about that.

"If there’s a bug in this world for the Tamer class... I’m going to use it. And if that’s enough... I’ll be the best Tamer in the world."

He didn’t say it with anger. Nor with pride. It was just a plan. A well-formulated calculation. A rational goal.

The screen flickered before him:

[Objective Updated: Explore the Roots of the Exploit]

[Alternate Route Initiated]

He closed his eyes.

For a brief moment, he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to find these roots. To discover the origin of the error. To know if it was unique... or if there were more like it.

Maybe yes.

Maybe no.

It didn’t matter.

Because now he was playing another game.

And no one — not the system, not faith, not the guilds — knew the rules.

Only he did.

And he would play to the end.