Sebastian pulled on his grey-and-blue Vanguard uniform. He kept his face perfectly slack. He knew exactly why the sector was locked down.

Somewhere deep beneath the city, the Syndicate’s precious Harvest Den was

currently nothing but an empty basin filled with the melted armor of their elite guards. Sebastian had literally drank their entire power supply.

He actually felt fantastic at this moment. His physical body was humming with the massive energy of thousands of processed souls. But he made sure to slouch his shoulders. He shuffled his feet like a terrified grunt as he fell into line with the rest of the squad.

The march to Holding Block C was incredibly tense. The usually busy corridors of the military outpost were now lined with heavily armed heavy-borgs. Their red optical sensors swept over the passing soldiers with complete hostility.

In a few minutes, they were herded into a sterile white room with zero windows and a single metal table in the center. The squad of twenty men stood in a tight line, nervously whispering to each other.

"I heard the whole processing plant got wiped," Rix whispered to Sebastian, his voice trembling. "They say a Void Titan got loose. Or a rebel strike team. They are looking for whoever left the door open."

"Sounds like a management problem," Sebastian whispered back. He was perfectly

playing the part of the disinterested employee. "Not our pay grade, Rix."

The heavy metal door hissed open.

A man walked in. He didn’t wear the standard Vanguard tactical gear. He wore a long trench coat made of dark purple leather, and his eyes were entirely covered by a smooth silver visor.

Floating above the man’s head was a terrifying name tag.

[Inquisitor Vance - Level 70 - Psychic Interrogator]

"Oh, shit," Rix choked out and trembled visibly. "An Inquisitor. We are so cooked."

Vance walked to the center of the room. He didn’t speak. He simply reached into his coat and pulled out a glowing crystal pendulum attached to a silver chain.

It pulsed with a rhythmic grey light.

Sebastian’s glitched [True Sight] instantly analyzed the object, pulling up the hidden server data.

[Artifact: Heart Appraisal] [Tier: Epic] [Effect: Reads the localized soul frequency of a target. Detects spikes in adrenaline, mana fluctuation, and deceit. Bypasses standard psychological resistances.]

"Listen closely," Vance finally spoke. His voice was soft, but strangely, the sound seemed to echo directly inside their heads.

"An act of catastrophic sabotage occurred in your patrol sector last night. The Syndicate requires answers. This artifact does not listen to your words. It listens to your code. If you lie, it will know. If you know who did this and

hide it, it will know."

Garret stood in the corner, nervously wiping his brow. "Inquisitor, my men are loyal. They wouldn’t dare do such a thing!"

"Silence, Lieutenant," Vance snapped without even looking at him. "Your incompetence allowed this. Pray I do not find the rot inside your squad."

Vance stepped up to the first soldier in the line. He held the glowing crystal pendulum directly in front of the man’s face.

"Did you assist in the destruction of the Harvest Den?" Vance asked smoothly.

"N-no, sir!" the soldier stammered.

The crystal glowed a steady blue. Vance moved to the next man.

"Do you know who breached the lower vats?"

"No, Inquisitor!"

Blue. Next.

Sebastian watched the process from the middle of the line. The artifact was basically a magical lie detector, but instead of tracking sweat and heart rate, it tracked the literal source code of the player’s emotional state.

In the Ethereal Plane, you couldn’t just have a good poker face. If you felt guilt, your mana frequency spiked, and the crystal turned red.

Vance stepped in front of Rix. The young soldier was already breathing heavily.

"Did you see anyone enter the lower tunnels?" Vance asked.

"I... I swear, I didn’t! We just dropped the cargo and left!" Rix panicked, his

voice pitching upward.

The crystal flickered. It flashed a brief warning yellow.

Vance’s head snapped up. "You are terrified. Why?"

"B-because you are an Inquisitor! And Garret said he would kill us if we messed up!" Rix babbled, tears forming in his eyes.

The crystal settled back to a calm blue. Vance scoffed in disgust and took a step to the right.

He was standing directly in front of Sebastian.

Sebastian didn’t tense his muscles. He looked at the silver visor of the Inquisitor with the dull expression of a man who just wanted to go home.

But internally, his mind raced through possibilities.

He couldn’t just lie. He was the one who had melted the guards. He was the one who had drained the vats. If Vance asked him a direct question, his massive soul would register the truth, and the crystal would definitely explode into a red fireball.

He needed to edit the output.

Sebastian mentally opened his green Admin UI. He pulled up his [Code Compiler].

He didn’t use it to cast a spell or swing a sword. He used it to forcefully hijack his own biological and digital data.

Vance held the pendulum up. It dangled inches from Sebastian’s nose.

"State your designation," Vance whispered.

"Trent. Level 42 Gunner," Sebastian replied.

While he spoke, Sebastian highlighted the lines of code governing his heart rate, his mana fluctuations, and his stress responses. He locked them down. He put a hard mathematical cap on his own emotions, forcing the data to output a perfectly flat line.

"Were you involved in the sabotage of the Harvest Den?" Vance asked and leaned

in closer.

Sebastian forced his brain to think about the most boring thing he could imagine. He pictured watching paint dry on a wall.

"No, sir," Sebastian said flatly.

The crystal glowed a steady, perfect blue.

Vance frowned behind his visor. The Inquisitor was a Level 70 psychic. He was

used to feeling fear or at least a baseline level of respect from the grunts.

But radiating from the man in front of him was absolutely nothing. It was like scanning a rock.

"Do you know who destroyed the facility?" Vance pressed, his voice dropping into

an aggressive telepathic push.

Sebastian felt a slight pressure against his mind. It was a psychic intrusion.

Sebastian’s inner Sovereign wanted to violently snap the mental probe in half

and turn the Inquisitor into ash. The red [Admin Suspicion] meter in the corner of his vision twitched and hovered at 1 percent.

’Easy,’ Sebastian told himself. ’Just play the game.’

He fed the psychic probe exactly what it wanted to see. He fed it the memories of Trent complaining about rations. He fed it the image of Trent cleaning his rifle. He completely walled off the memory of diving into the boiling acid vat.

"I don’t know anything about it," Sebastian said and let out a perfectly timed sigh. "I just haul the bodies where I am told."

The pendulum didn’t even flicker. It remained a pristine blue.

Vance stared at him for a long moment. The Inquisitor pulled the artifact back, clearly frustrated by the lack of emotional data.

"You have the pulse of a corpse, Gunner," Vance muttered.

"I do a lot of cardio," Sebastian replied expressionlessly.

Vance sneered. He turned his back on Sebastian and moved down the line to terrify the next soldier.

Sebastian let the artificial lock on his data slowly dissolve. He kept his face completely blank, but internally, a victorious smile spread across his mind.

The Inquisitors were supposed to be the ultimate lie detectors of Server 112. They were the terrifying monsters of the Syndicate. And Sebastian had justlooked the head interrogator in the eye and lied without tripping a single alarm.

"Clear," Vance finally announced and walked toward the exit. He pointed a gloved finger at Lieutenant Garret. "Your squad is clean, Garret. But your sector is compromised. Command is not pleased."

The heavy metal doors hissed open, and Vance swept out of the room.

Garret slumped against the wall and exhaled a massive breath of relief. "Alright, you miserable bastards. You heard him. We are clear. Get back to the barracks and wait for deployment."

The soldiers instantly relaxed. They sagged against the table and wiped sweat from their faces. Rix let out a shaky laugh and patted Sebastian on the shoulder.

"Man, Trent, you are so brave! I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest, and you just stared that freak down!"

"It is just a job, Rix," Sebastian said and turned toward the door.

Before he could take a step, another figure walked into the holding room from the observation deck.

The casual chatter of the squad instantly died. Garret snapped to absolute attention, his cybernetic arm practically saluting on its own.

Sebastian looked at the newcomer, and his perfectly maintained boredom almost slipped.

Things were about to get a lot more complicated.

—-

The man who walked into the sterile holding room looked incredibly wealthy and important.

He was tall with perfectly styled silver hair and striking blue eyes. He wasn’t wearing the standard grey-and-blue tactical gear of the Vanguard grunts. He wore a high-end white armor that glowed with gold mana-circuitry. A midnight blue cape hung from his shoulders.

He didn’t just walk, he glided with an air of absolute superiority.

[Player Identified: Commander Sterling] [Level: 75 - Vanguard Aristocrat]

Sebastian recognized the type immediately. Sterling was the corporate elite. He was the kind of player who spent his real-world money on premium stat boosters while letting his subordinates do all the actual fighting.

"Commander!" Garret barked, his voice trembling with subservience. "Sector 4

squad is present and accounted for, sir! We have been cleared by the Inquisition!"

Sterling didn’t even look at the Lieutenant. He waved a dismissive hand in Garret’s direction and silenced him instantly.

The Commander’s blue eyes swept over the line of terrified soldiers. He looked at them the way a man might look at a row of defective tools.

Then, his gaze locked onto Sebastian.

Sterling smiled. It wasn’t a warm smile. It was the sharp grin of a man who had just found a highly profitable asset.

"You," Sterling said and pointed a finger at Sebastian. "Gunner Trent. Step

forward."