Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!-Chapter 349: Atalanta faces Vivian, Levi Rescues.

Vivian barely gave Atalanta a second glance as she passed her.

Just a slow, half-lidded gaze—bored, disinterested, like she was mentally swiping left on the entire evening. Her boots clicked softly across the polished floor, her coat hanging off her shoulder like she didn't give enough of a damn to wear it properly.

She'd collapsed into the couch like the world bored her to death, one leg slung over the other, her thumb lazily scrolling through whatever void she found more interesting than everything else. Her coat half-hung from her shoulder, her dark hair slightly tousled like she hadn't even tried today—and still, the room bent around her like it knew not to breathe too loud.

The tension from outside didn't follow her in.

It was already dead.

She let out a breath that practically yawned: "God, this whole thing's so damn long…"

Then she pulled her phone from her pocket with the casual grace of a queen checking memes during war council, she unlocked it with one flick and scrolled, legs crossed, nails tapping softly on the glass.

The entire mansion's tension?

She wasn't in it.

She was waiting for it to end.

Atalanta, ever the proud Olympian Champion, stood across the room. Her arms were relaxed, tone soft, eyes curious. She wasn't here to threaten. She only wanted conversation.

"You must be Vivian Blackwood," she called gently, with a polite incline of her head. "I heard..."

That's when it happened. freēwēbnovel.com

Vivian didn't lift her head. Didn't move. But her eyes—those lazy, half-lidded, soulless eyes—slid toward Atalanta.

And in that instant, everything collapsed.

Atalanta's lungs seized like they'd been wrapped in iron bands. Her Ether? Gone. Disintegrated. Like it had never existed. Like the very concept of energy had been rejected by the space she stood in. Her divine aura flickered—then died.

Not suppressed. Erased.

The air snapped.

The temperature dropped without dropping—like someone had turned gravity into a blade and aimed it at her spine.

And then she dropped.

Not a fall. A forced descent. Her knees slammed into the marble so hard the stone cracked beneath her—a spiderweb fracture slicing out from her body in every direction. She tried to speak, to breathe, to even blink.

She couldn't.

Not magic.

Not divine pressure.

Something older.

Something wrong.

It wasn't rage. It wasn't hatred. It was pure disdain—the kind that didn't even justify an emotion but a relationship between an ant and a dragon.

And then—the voice came.

Not from Vivian's lips.

But from every speaker in the mansion. From the walls. The floor. The air itself.

A calm, emotionless, surgical—

The voice didn't roar.

It didn't rage.

It unfolded—smooth as old velvet, with the crisp precision of ancient nobility. Each syllable landed like a wax seal pressed into stone.

> "Utter that name once more when addressing me, little thing… and not even thy goddess shall witness the morrow."

> "Thou draw breath in this house by mine indulgence."

> "Thy Ether exists still because I've not the mood to part thee from it."

> "And thy presence here… persists only because I grow weary of erasure."

*

There was no heat in it.

No tremble. No noise.

Just the kind of voice spoken by beings who once debated the shapes of stars and the colour of oblivion—only to grow bored halfway through. It ended on a whisper that sounded less like sound… and more like a memory trying to forget you existed.

Vivian?

She went back to scrolling.

No interest. No apology. No reaction.

Atalanta remained kneeling, shaking slightly, her entire being crushed beneath an authority she couldn't even identify.

She'd faced monsters. Faced gods.

But this?

This was something else.

"What kind of monster was this!" She couldn't even will herself to get back from her knees. And for the first time in her life… Atalanta felt like prey.

Seconds passed Atalanta remained kneeling pressed down, her body locked to the cracked marble floor beneath her like gravity itself had turned vindictive. Her vision blurred, her breath ragged, and her divine Ether—something she once believed unshakable—was gone, not suppressed, but stripped. Unmade.

And still, Vivian lounged like nothing had happened. One leg crossed over the other, half-curled into the mansion's couch like royalty too bored to sit up straight, her phone in hand, thumb scrolling with all the interest of someone waiting for this whole world to get to the end of its chapter.

The living room's warm lights flickered slightly, almost reverently. Even the walls seemed to hesitate.

Then, without sound or announcement, a subtle pad of paws broke through the suffocating stillness.

Ere appeared—not stepped, not emerged, but unfolded into existence like a shadow finally agreeing to be seen. Her form sleek and graceful, her golden eyes burning not with cuteness or curiosity—but with calculation. She passed the fractured remains of Atalanta's pride without sparing her a glance. Her paws made no noise, but her presence spoke volumes.

She approached Vivian.

And then… she bowed.

Not like a pet. Not like an offering. But like a force of nature yielding to a more powerful one.

When Ere finally spoke, her voice came smooth but otherworldly, rippling with something more than intelligence—a weight, deep and ancient. The cadence was no longer just hers. It was unmistakably layered with Levi's voice—refined, serpentine, omniscient.

"Forgive her," she said, her feline head still bowed. "She knows not where she stands. The Olympian is new. Naïve. Unaware of her place—and yours."

The room didn't sigh or crack.

It listened.

Vivian's gaze, slow and lazy, lifted from her phone to Ere. She said nothing, but there was something behind those eyes. Not rage. Not interest. Just acknowledgment. Respect. A rare thing in her vocabulary.

She nodded once.

A gesture that meant more than words in rooms like this.

Then she spoke—not to Ere, not to anyone in particular. Just softly, like she was asking the air a question it should already know the answer to.

"Where are you?" The silence that followed was not empty. It buzzed.

And then—beneath Atalanta—the floor opened.

No crack. No portal howl. Just a black spiral, subtle and silent, swallowing the marble and her knees with it. Atalanta gasped as the cold of null-space gripped her, her divine instincts scrambled, broken, useless.

In an instant, she was gone.

As if she had never been.

Ere raised her head again.

"I am just a fragment that walks beside my master for now," she answered. "The rest of me sleeps. Beneath layers. Not yet whole, Your Highness."

Her tone didn't shift, but Levi's presence bled deeper through it now, coating the words with that chilling clarity that made even truth feel like prophecy.

Vivian stared forward. A pause. Then her head tilted, and the question came—low and velvet-edged, drawn from memory, not curiosity.

"Like Judgment, the Phoexies and the others?" Vivian asked.

Ere—now possessed by Levi—nodded. "Precisely but unlike me, Judgment and Fen—the Phoenixes and others haven't awakened even their first presences."

At the mansion's towering entrance, framed in gold trim and moonlight, Evelyn and Annabelle remained frozen. Neither moved. Their eyes locked on the girl sprawled casually on the couch like she hadn't just made an Olympian vanish with a look.

Neither dared breathe too loud.

And both, at the same time, whispered the same thought aloud—just softly enough for only the other to hear:

"So she talks?"

Even after years at her side posing as sisters… this was the first time Anabelle heard Vivian speak more than one word in their presence. And somehow—just somehow—they understood now why she never needed to say more.