... presu... me... not...
Presume not.
The broken characters flashed across the screen of the utterly ruined phone like dying gasps, then vanished into eternal darkness.
The last candle had gone out. Yet the warning remained, etched into the air like a cold inscription.
Presume not.
Presume to do what? Challenge your authority? Pry into your secrets? Presume... to become a new god?
The cold curve of my lips remained unchanged. If anything, that fragmentary warning made it sharper.
A warning meant apprehension. It meant my actions really had struck at the core, had caused pain.
The Silent Council's clerk was dead, reduced to ashes along with the secrets he guarded. That lead seemed to have gone cold for now. But the Deep Nest's response was more... restrained than expected? More oblique? Just a fragment of an archaic saying, delivered through a nearly destroyed communicator?
This didn't seem like thunderous fury. More like... a weary, final admonition?
Why?
Because the Council itself wasn't united? Or was my existence a "variable" even the Deep Nest had to handle carefully, perhaps even... something with a unique "value"?
Countless possibilities raced through my mind, only to be analyzed and eliminated one by one by cold logic.
I couldn't relax just because they were holding back. The calmer the sea, the fiercer the currents beneath it might be.
I needed to keep applying pressure. To answer that "presume not" more directly, in a way that left no room for misunderstanding.
The next target had to be loud enough, clear enough, to beat out my will like a war drum and send it straight into the deepest reaches of the Deep Nest.
I needed a... symbol. A target that embodied the vast, filthy interests of the "old order," one whose destruction would also have a widespread "purifying" effect.
My gaze swept over the scattered reports about the Vienna incident on the screen, then returned to the broader world stage. Multinational capital? Energy giants? The military-industrial complex?
Found it.
The Prometheus Global Energy Company. An enormous corporate behemoth with tentacles reaching across the globe. It was notorious for its aggressive extraction technologies, its plundering of resources in underdeveloped regions, and the environmental disasters it repeatedly caused, always escaping punishment through its formidable legal resources and political lobbying. Its board members had close ties to political leaders in several countries, making it one of the true corporate mouthpieces of the "deep state." Destroying it would directly shake one of the old order's economic foundations.
And its chief executive officer, Sebastian Shaw, was greed and ruthlessness incarnate. A man who placed profit above human life and the environment-the perfect subject for judgment.
His death should be... a judgment of resources.
I walked over to the desk. The Death Note lay open. Repeated writing seemed to have tempered my mental strength. Although it still drained me, I was recovering faster.
The pen touched down.
[Sebastian Shaw]
Cause of death: energy backlash. Time: ten tomorrow morning, while presiding over the global shareholders' meeting at his headquarters building in New York and delivering a speech to branches worldwide through holographic projection. Cause of death: his lectern and the space around him will instantly be enveloped by vast quantities of the synthetic material used in the ultra-high-pressure "Diamond Drill Bit" on his company's most advanced drilling platforms. It will compress and reshape him, transforming his entire body into a miniature, twisted "drill-bit sculpture" glittering with the sheen of carbon. Before his death, his global live feed will be hijacked to simultaneously broadcast footage of the major environmental disasters caused by his company and internal email records covering up the truth, continuing until the signal is physically cut off.
Location: the heart of power. Cause of death: consumed by the symbol of his own greed. Confession: crimes broadcast live worldwide. Outcome: a cautionary sculpture.
At his proudest moment, let the tool he used to plunder the world turn him into an eternal monument to shame.
The pen left the page.
The familiar sensation of being drained returned, but it was not intense. The notebook itself seemed to be starting to "adapt" to writing of this magnitude.
In the corner, Ryuk let out a long, inscrutable sigh. He neither tried to stop me again nor offered any comment. His scarlet eyes simply grew more unfathomable.
Judgment had been passed.
Now, let the world listen.
The next day, ten in the morning.
The auditorium on the top floor of the Prometheus headquarters building in New York.
Sebastian Shaw stood amid dazzling holographic projections, outlining the company's "grand vision" for conquering new energy resources in the Arctic Circle to shareholders and employees across the globe.
"...The future belongs to the fearless! To those who can command the source of energy! And we at Prometheus will steal the fire of heaven and illuminate..."
His voice suddenly warped!
Countless tiny, impossibly hard particles glittering with a cold metallic sheen surged out of the lectern, the floor, even thin air, as though they were alive! They engulfed him in an instant!
They were not engulfing him. They were... reshaping him!
Before countless horrified eyes and cameras, his body violently deformed and contracted as billions of particles compressed and fused with him! His skin, bones, and muscles were forcibly melded with those metallic particles!
In just a few seconds!
A living man vanished.
In his place stood a rough, hideous Diamond Drill Bit sculpture, slightly taller than a man, frozen in a posture of struggle! It glittered with an eerie, icy sheen beneath the lights!
Amid the screams, the global live feed was frantically cut off, but those dozens of seconds of horrific footage, along with the environmental disaster images broadcast alongside them, had already spread like a virus!
The world erupted in outrage!
In my room, the screen showed global news outlets and social media in complete uproar.
Financial markets began to convulse.
I was waiting.
Waiting for the Deep Nest's response.
This time, the response came faster.
And more... directly.
The lights in the room suddenly began flickering wildly! Flashing on and off!
The computer screen on the desk lit up on its own! It was no longer dark red, but a constantly shifting, chaotic storm of gibberish-a jumble that seemed to blend countless ancient symbols with modern code!
A low-frequency hum filled the air, weighing on my heart and making my teeth ache!
The already filthy wall covering began darkening and peeling at a visible rate, as though decades of decay had passed in an instant!
Under the influence of some immense, invisible force, the entire room underwent bizarre changes!
In the corner, Ryuk abruptly let out a shrill screech of pain and fury! Some force seemed to be suppressing his enormous body, making him tremble slightly. His scarlet eyes filled with shock and anger!
"Enough!!!" he roared into the air, but the low-frequency hum seemed to swallow his voice, leaving it faint and distorted. "You undying old bastards! Are you trying to tear me apart too?!"
The humming suddenly intensified!
Pop!
One of the bulbs in the ceiling light abruptly exploded! Glass fragments flew everywhere!
The storm of gibberish on the computer screen suddenly stopped!
The moment every strange phenomenon reached its peak, all of them ceased.
The lights returned to normal, apart from the shattered bulb.
The screen was black.
The humming was gone.
Only a faint burnt smell in the air and the accelerated flaking of plaster from the walls bore witness to that brief yet terrifying supernatural disturbance.
Dead silence.
Absolute dead silence.
Then.
That ruined phone, its screen black,
Suddenly,
Made an exceedingly faint,
"Click."
As though some final component inside it,
Had at last snapped completely.
Everything,
Returned to stillness.
I slowly exhaled.
Raising my hand, I brushed a tiny fragment of glass from my cheek.
My gaze was cold and calm.
So,
This was your response?
Deep Nest.
Not words.
But...
A demolition notice?
Very good.
It seemed,
You were finally starting...
To get serious.
Before you continue