The crimson sky above the Kyuran Proving Grounds pulsed dark red through the arena grates. Below, grit hung in the Kyrikin training ring alongside the copper tang of pulverized shale. Vahan slid sideways, his twin-bladed *Harpy's Kiss* scythes deflecting a sweeping blow from the colossal stone construct. The shock rattled his collarbones. [ANCIENT STONE AUTOMATON: 7,500,000 / 7,500,000 HP] "This is pointless!" Naira’s voice, usually a gentle murmur, was tight with strain. She ducked beneath the automaton's granite heel, boots kicking up chalk. Her *Luminous Aegis* skill, a translucent dome of pale gold, cracked under another stomp. "It's immune! We can't even scratch it!" The 'CRITICAL ERROR' banner had barred the exits with solid forcefields. The automaton, an introductory encounter, had been tuned for Tevan to crack with time dilation. Tevan was a corpse in the Sunk-Hollow, and his scroll was nowhere in sight. Vahan spun, his momentum carrying him into a brutal upward slash that connected with the golem’s knee. A shower of orange sparks erupted, but the entity's gauge remained untouched. His scythes were high-rank steel built for triple-digit damage metrics, yet the skin yielded nothing. [FAILED STRIKE: TARGET (IMMUNE)] "Damn it!" Vahan snarled, dodging another fist that cratered the stone floor where he had stood moments before. "Without a damage multiplier, this thing might as well be solid bedrock!" Gilded system glyphs hung suspended in the dust, flickering Tevan's death notice. The granite brute dragged its knuckles over the flags, grinding down their remaining stamina. Footsteps sounded at the broken peristyle. Zaven Dalmas stood under a cracked lintel in his frayed scarlet vestments, arms crossed. "Dalmas?" Vahan barked, resetting his stance. "The gates are sealed! Get back before it splits you!" Zaven pushed off the pillar. His focus remained locked on the construct's chest plate. Detecting a fresh target profile, the entity swung its blocky skull around and ground forward like a collapsing quarry. Zaven kept his hands free. As the granite arm hammered downward, he cut two inches to the left. Granite met flagstones with an ear-splitting crack. Zaven drifted precisely outside the swing radius, drawing its forward momentum. [WEAVE OF FATE: PACIFIST MOVEMENT PENALTY APPLIED (-50% MOVEMENT SPEED)] Despite the fifty-percent penalty on his sprint speed, Zaven led the brute by tethered aggro toward the arena's eastern corner, where a sheared flagstone formed a narrow dead end. Naira lowered her staff. Vahan stayed motionless. Zaven turned on the ball of his heel half a tempo before each telegraph began, reading hitboxes invisible to ordinary fighters. Zaven backed into the corner masonry. The construct raised both forearms, basalt shoulders locking into their apex. As the descent started, Zaven reached into his belt pouch. [ITEM USED: POTION OF RESTORATION (GREATER)] A glass phial filled with luminous green salve snapped into his fingers. With a thumbnail flick against the wax seal, he drove the glass neck into the seam between the construct's chest plates. The fluid vanished through the porous granite. [OBDURANT GOLEM: 7,500,000 / 7,500,000 HP] [POTION OF RESTORATION (GREATER) HEALED TARGET FOR 50,000 HP.] The numeric reserve stayed pegged at cap, but the system acknowledged the recovery value. Zaven’s wrist twitched, canceling the flask recovery animation on frame three. Another vial materialized. Another strike. Another cancel. Flasks vanished from his sleeves in a rapid, rhythmic cadence. [POTION OF RESTORATION (GREATER) HEALED TARGET FOR 50,000 HP.] [POTION OF RESTORATION (GREATER) HEALED TARGET FOR 50,000 HP.] [POTION OF RESTORATION (GREATER) HEALED TARGET FOR 50,000 HP.] [CRITICAL ERROR: INTEGER UNDERFLOW DETECTED] [TARGET HP: -2,147,483,648 / 7,500,000 HP] [ENTITY INTEGRITY DELETED.] The golden text blazed across the air. The construct froze mid-strike, runes draining to dull ash. The torso split with a crackle like shattered glass, detonating into fragments of grey aggregate that showered the perimeter alongside a pile of metallic reward caches. Vahan gripped his scythes, paralyzed. The boss had not taken a single point of damage. By forcing rapid arithmetic additions onto a maximum variable, the game's 32-bit signed counter had flipped across the boundary into a fatal negative integer. Zaven kicked aside silver ingots and rare skill codices. His fingers plunged into the debris, closing around a tarnished leather-bound logbook flickering with dull violet light. He flipped it open. [CORRUPTED QUEST LOG: WORLD INTEGRITY AT 89%. INITIATING TIMELINE DELETION PROTOCOL.]

Integer Underflow