Chương 30: The Sharecrop Sunset

The silver light of the five-day moon began to fracture against the dark limestone edge of the western hills. Ethan stood inside the hidden cave cavity, his chest heaving under his sweat-soaked burlap apron as he tracked the green interface logs scrolling across his visor. The numerical cells were ticking down toward the final zero line. [Arayut Contract Status: Terminal Notification] Moon Phase Reset Condition: Met. Remaining Duration: 0 Hours, 0 Minutes, 14 Seconds. Status: Expiring...

The safety net is dead, Ethan calculated, his breath flat, silent, and ragged. The last several hours had been a desperate, waking nightmare. He had successfully outrun Bochim's predatory premium ration co-pay—which had relentlessly swallowed 13. 50 shekels over his grueling six-hour shift—by triggering a macro-economic supply chain bounty. The massive system-root reward had anchored his character firmly at Level 9 Apprentice Yotzer HaRishon.

But the cost to his real-world body inside the Chinatown capsule was catastrophic. The emergency glucose patch was completely depleted. A sharp, high-frequency alarm was chiming in his physical ears, warning him of severe neural fatigue. His hands were shaking so violently he could barely hold his tools. Worse, the system-root alert wasn't just a blessing. A flashing, pale-white terminal line cascaded over his visual grid—one that had nothing to do with local guild rivalries.

[SYSTEM ROOT DIAGNOSTIC INTRUSION] Anomalous progression metric detected in Sector 3. Global Administrator Review: Pending Queue #0412. Automated Network Ping: Initiating Local Scan... The global server admins were actively hunting the structural anomaly that had broken the lower ward's tariff walls. Ethan didn't wait for their automated scan to lock onto his coordinates. He dug his bronze trowel directly into the main joints of his primitive alluvial kiln.

He didn't use an explosive charge; he simply utilized his newly unlocked Grade 2 Tri-Consonantal Radical Extraction syntax, mentally reversing the consonantal root א-ד-מ to instantly cancel the hard-baked brickwork cohesion code. The two-metre-tall beehive kiln collapsed with a soft, watery slump, dissolving instantly back into an unrefined, untaxable heap of loose grey mud and wet silt.

The thermal draft died, the smoke dissipating into the dark stone cracks of the cavern ceiling without leaving a single trace of industrial geometry. He swept the final pieces of uncoined Hacksilber scrap into his leather pouch, pulling the drawstring tight. His private pocket sat light but secure against his hip— 5. 25 Silver Shekels in hard coin, and the jagged silver fragments he had extracted from the blacksmith.

He had survived the corporate financial chokehold, but he was completely running on empty, and the network pings were getting closer. A sharp, synchronised string of metallic clanks echoed down the narrow limestone mouth of the nahal. Ethan didn't run toward the valley floor; his exhausted virtual limbs wouldn't allow it.

He backed into a narrow, unmapped subterranean fissure at the rear of the cave, dropped his posture into a low crouch to activate his Wilderness Camouflage multiplier, and held his breath as the torchlight hit the canyon walls. A six-man enforcement vanguard from the Pixel Rex Mercenary Corps dropped heavily into the hollow. They weren't casual trainees.

They were high-level Level 13 Vanguard infantrymen wearing matching, dark blue iron-scale cuirasses and heavy bronze Naue II swords drawn across their chest plates. At the head of the detachment marched Bochim, his face twisted into an expression of raw, predatory corporate vengeance.

"Clear the brush!" Bochim barked, his voice bouncing violently off the limestone hollow.

"The moon phase contract has cleared the server log! Lock his character ID the moment he appears near the silt beds! I want every pelt and silver piece he extracted from my allowance ledger!" The two skirmishers lunged into the cave mouth, their heavy bronze blades cutting through the dry terebinth brambles with a series of sharp, metallic swishes. They thrust their swords into the dark corners, searching for the F2P player who had bled their manager's private chest white for five straight days.

"Nothing here, Boss," the lead vanguard reported, his brow furrowed as his torchlight raked over the empty dirt floor. Bochim stepped into the center of the hollow, his heavy leather boots stomping directly onto the wet mound where Ethan's kiln had stood seconds ago. He looked down, his hand shaking against the horn stave of his Syrian composite bow as his eyes scanned the wet mud. There were no clay jars. There were no fire bricks. There was nothing but ordinary, worthless river dirt.

"Where is the factory?" Bochim whispered, his voice trembling with an incredible, high-stakes rage that made his character's shoulder glitch against the stone wall.

"The market logs showed he sold dozens of high-durability containers to the oil merchants over the last few hours!"

"The system logs record this node as a public blind spot, sir," the skirmisher said, checking his guild interface module.

"No active property leases. No recorded craft structures." Above them, a pale white grid of light—the global admin's network scan—swept silently across the ceiling of the ravine, completely missing Ethan's cloaked signature in the deep fissure. Bochim slammed his fist against a limestone stalagmite, spraying white rock dust across his polished cuirass.

"Find him! Search every fissure between here and the Dung Gate! He's just a Level 9 crafter, he can't cross the open terrace without our scouts mapping his profile!" Ethan watched the torchlight fade as the Pixel Rex vanguard scrambled back up the rocky incline, their heavy boots clattering uselessly against the boulders of the ravine. He didn't move from the shadow of the fissure. His vision was tunneling, a cold sweat breaking out across his skin back in Singapore.

He had to secure his character before his physical brain forced a blackout. He pulled up his master system interface, his fingers navigating past the flashing corporate recruitment ads straight to the municipal registry logs for the lower ward of Hazor. He didn't need to fight their vanguards on the open terraces, and he needed a permanent cover story to fool the global admin logs.

He opened his Grade 2 Semitic Syntax layout and sent a direct, encrypted data package to the NPC administrative scribes behind the cattle pens, inputting his Level 9 artisan profile under an untaxable municipal poverty exemption charter. Click. [System Notification: Municipal Registration Finalized] Registered Identity: Etan (Apprentice Yotzer HaRishon). Zoning Classification: Independent Landless Artisan (Lower Ward Slums). Tax Rating Applied: 0% (Customary Right of the Tool). Status: Active / Documented.

Ethan let his head fall back against the cool limestone rock, a sharp, cold grin cutting through the red soot on his face. By embedding his profile directly into the local civilian NPC infrastructure, the global admin logs would simply read him as a standard, hard-coded lower-ward pauper rather than a malicious macro-harvester. He had broken the corporate squeeze, cloaked himself from the system monitors, and his private industrial loop was completely hidden from their ledger grids.

He closed his eyes, hit the disconnect command, and let his consciousness collapse into the dark, welcoming safety of the real world. The transition was a violent deceleration. The neural link snapped, and Ethan woke up to the harsh reality of his own body inside the Chinatown capsule. His chest was heaving, his muscles screaming under the weight of a massive metabolic deficit. He didn't check the terminal. He pulled the seals, stumbled out onto the concrete floor, and dragged his shaking limbs across the flat.

He didn't check the bills this time. He didn't audit the ledger. He collapsed straight onto the small mattress in the corner, his mind slipping into a profound, natural, dreamless sleep before his head even hit the thin pillow. His body needed this. The chemical patches were gone, replaced by the deep, restorative recovery of a human mind finally allowing its synapses to rest. For twelve solid hours, the Chinatown flat was completely silent. No alarms. No warnings.

Just the steady, unthrottled hum of the ventilation fan and the rhythmic breathing of two survivors. When Ethan's eyes finally snapped open again, the physical trembling was gone. His mind felt cold, clear, and perfectly reset. He sat up, stretching his completely recovered back muscles as he looked toward the capsule. The biological debt had been paid in full. He was no longer running on borrowed time or emergency sedatives; his brain was firing with its baseline photographic sharpness.

He walked over to the terminal, routing a portion of his newly liquid silver scrap to clear the immediate HDB estate upgrading levy reminder. The red warning screens on his console instantly dissolved into neutral green. The real-world intermission was over. There was a massive, untracked expanse of server data waiting for him back inside Hazor. With his new Level 9 baseline, his Grade 2 linguistic syntax matrices, and a mind that was finally, fully rested, he was ready to return to the game.

He stepped back into the capsule, the gel bed rising to meet his neck as he lowered the visor.

"Log in," Ethan whispered.