In the cold throne room, a heavy silence fell after Julia's words. Zoro looked at her, his eyes gleaming with dangerous interest, then smiled slowly and agreed to her request. But joining this cruel world required a heavy price.
"What is your token of loyalty to join the City of Darkness?"
Julia stood with feigned pride and began to present her token of loyalty. With a steady voice, she exposed Kyle, revealing his rebellion and his hidden intentions to seize Zoro's position. At first, Zoro gave her a skeptical look; after all, she was still a rebel. But the seeds of doubt were planted in his mind, and he decided to place Kyle under strict surveillance.
But the token did not end there. Julia turned to Jin and spoke words that cut like sharp blades through veins: "And from this minute on, I completely abandon this soldier. I don't want him. Jin was just a fling, a teenage folly. A rebel cannot love one of the dogs of the City of Darkness. I now declare my total loyalty to the Central System, where love is forbidden."
Zoro agreed with overwhelming joy. Julia had proven herself worthy of receiving the chip—the device that would ensure the erasure of all emotion, confirming the most important rule in his kingdom: love is a crime, a heartbeat is a great sin, and the heart is nothing but a biological muscle whose sole purpose is to pump blood.
Zoro ordered Dr. Aris to be brought in immediately. "Prepare yourself, Doctor. She will be purified right now to become one of us."
Jin stood like a statue of ice. From the sheer shock, he felt as if his heart had actually stopped beating. The girl who meant everything to him, the one for whom he had married the woman he despised most just to protect her, was now standing there, throwing their pure love away as a token to the system! He couldn't believe his eyes; his mind simply refused to accept it. But his wounded pride and shattered dignity stopped him from taking a single step forward. She had chosen her path.
As for Dr. Aris, he was in a state of horrifying shock. How could this crazy girl take such a step? She knew what the chip meant! It was the destruction and ruin of her human nature! But he didn't dare utter a word in front of Zoro.
The doctor brought his medical tools, his eyes overflowing with sorrow: surgical scissors, an anesthetic needle, and the cursed silver chip. Julia lay down on the cold table. Her heart began to beat wildly, and she looked up at the terrifying ceiling. Fear and regret crept into her soul: Is what I'm doing right? She whispered inwardly in despair, "Dad... if you can hear me, send me a sign."
The doctor began to stall intentionally, moving very slowly in hopes that a miracle might happen and Julia would back down. But Zoro shouted firmly, "You are slow, Doctor! Execute the task immediately!"
Aris surrendered to reality. This purification was inevitable. He put on his gloves, grabbed the scissors, and approached her neck, raising the anesthetic needle.
And suddenly... the main door of the hall burst open!
Jax ran in panting, and behind him walked a woman with angry, steady steps who knew this place very well: Elena (Julia's mother).
Zoro slowly rose from his throne. His eyes widened as he watched her approach. He knew her perfectly well; he recognized that angry walk that the years had not erased from his memory.
Elena raised her hand to slap him with all her might, but in the blink of an eye, Zoro grabbed her wrist with a force that almost broke her bones. In that moment, the lights in the hall dimmed frighteningly, a testament to his dark fury.
Elena screamed in his face, "What are you doing to my daughter, you monster?!"
Julia jumped up from the table and screamed in terror, "Mom! Please don't get involved, leave before he kills you!"
Jin rushed forward and grabbed Julia to stop her from interfering. She started hitting his chest with her small hands, crying out, "Let me go, you idiot! Let me go!"
The doctor stood mesmerized by the scene. Elena continued to threaten Zoro, demanding he leave her daughter alone, shouting that they had no part in his sick world.
Zoro roared with a voice that shook the hall, "Everything that has happened is because of you, you wretched woman!"
Elena replied with tears of defiance, "It wasn't my fault that I didn't love you! It wasn't my fault that my heart beat for another man and not for you!"
At that moment, the truth that had been buried for decades was finally revealed...
Flashing back to the past, Zoro was a handsome young man, full of life, living in a city once known as the "White Pearl." He was a lonely orphan after his grandfather's death, and he knew no one in the world but his childhood friend, Elena. They studied together, played together, and were closer than a soul to a body.
Until the day a new boy entered their lives (Julia's father). He was a special and talented boy in everything—from cooking to archery, all the way to brilliant programming.
Gradually, Elena began to distance herself from Zoro, drawn to the new boy. One night, Zoro gathered his courage and proposed to her, confessing his pure love. But she rejected him, telling him she loved the new boy. Zoro tried over and over to prove himself, but despair consumed him when the boy proposed to her, and she accepted with a smile she had never once given Zoro.
That night, Zoro cried bitterly. That crying was the end of the good young man and the beginning of the Master of Darkness. Those tears were the end of everything and the beginning of everything. Zoro swore that day to never allow anyone's heart to be broken again, and that he would make "love" a crime punishable by law.
While Elena was busy with her wedding preparations, Zoro was secretly building his Central System. He invented the chips that controlled emotion, founded his robotic army, and led a bloody coup against the ruler of the "White Pearl," transforming it into the "City of Darkness." Elena and her husband fled to a distant village to survive this evil that was sweeping the world.
Breaths returned to the present, and shock gripped everyone. Julia, who had always heard from her mother the story of "the young man whose heart she broke," never imagined that this young man was Zoro himself! She didn't know that the price of his broken heart was decades of human enslavement.
As for Jin and Dr. Aris, they were utterly bewildered. Finally, they understood the cause of the disease... and perhaps this knowledge would be the only way to find the cure.
Elena held her daughter's hand tightly and stood before Zoro, saying in a broken voice, "I apologize to you... for all the pain I caused you. But it was out of my hands."
Zoro's expression changed, and outside, a fierce storm blew with howling winds, shrouding the city in pitch darkness. Zoro pointed his hand toward the door and shouted in a choked voice, "Get out, all of you!"
Elena and her daughter left in their military vehicle. The mother wept bitterly, realizing she was the spark that burned this world. Meanwhile, Julia sat beside her, her heart torn between pity for her mother and overwhelming anger at this cruel fate.
Outside the hall, Jin stood watching the storm alongside Dr. Aris. The doctor whispered, "Who would have thought that the great Master of Evil... is nothing but a boy with a broken heart who loved a girl and was rejected?"
Jin replied sadly, "Now I understand the reason for all this cruelty... He turned the whole world into darkness to put out the fire in his heart."
Behind one of the marble pillars, Kyle was listening to every word. He couldn't believe his ears! Zoro had a heart? He had loved a girl?
Kyle hurried off to Caroline's suite and told her everything. She asked him skeptically, "Are you sure? Or is this just nonsense?"
Kyle confirmed with absolute certainty, "I heard Jin and the doctor! This explains why Zoro personally intervened to protect that woman when I almost killed her... She was the love of his life!"
Caroline smiled cunningly, "I understand the game now..."
In the evening, Kyle and Caroline met with the engineers in secret. One of the engineers presented an advanced syringe containing a sedative antidote for the biological lions, divided into four doses.
The engineer said, "This is your only way to the bottom of the capital, to cross the Lion Doors without being devoured."
When night fell and the city drew its darkest curtain, Kyle and Caroline sneaked through the old secret tunnel. Their goal was to reach the deep abyss, the place where Zoro created the very first silver chip (the one implanted at the base of his neck), and the place where the Central System was programmed. It was a place that was merely an urban legend whispered among people—the place where this story began, from whose womb all this suffering was born.
After successfully passing through the Lion Doors thanks to the sedative, they opened the massive metal door leading to the core.
The moment they stepped inside, their eyes widened in terrifying shock. They froze in place as if in a dream. They had never expected, not even for a single moment in their lives, that what their eyes were seeing now could be real and existing right in the heart of the City of Darkness...!