Chapter 23: Hunter-of-Flame Out of Control

(The Backlash of the Lawful)

The Pyrohunter lost control for the first time—but there was no blood.

Only—
a refusal to obey orders.

Eastern Flame Domain, Seventh Suppression District.

This place was originally a model district for the Lawful Faction.

Flame order intact.
Pyrohunter patrols in place.
Anomaly clearance rate: 100 percent.

At least, that’s what the reports said.

H-04, a Second-Sequence Pyrohunter.

Receiving new instructions.

Instruction update:
Clear targets
Target type: Non-Flame anomaly
Quantity: Unknown
Threat level: Potential

H-04 stood still, not moving immediately.

His recognition module detected an anomaly.

Not the target.

But—
a delay in the flame order itself.

The “reason for clearance” field given by the Flame Order had gone blank.

Field name:
【Necessity】

Pyrohunter units do not question.

They only—
verify.

So, H-04 sent a request back to the Flame Order.

Request for completion:
Explain clearance necessity

Such a request had never appeared before.

Because the Flame Order never needed explanation.

The response took two full beats of time.

Then, a temporary placeholder result returned.

Necessity:
Maintain order stability

This answer—
was marked vague by the Pyrohunter for the first time.

At the same time.

Within the Suppression District.

A girl labeled as a “Non-Flame Anomaly” was being led away from her residence.

She didn’t resist.

She only kept repeating:

“I didn’t do anything.”

H-04’s perception module captured the scene.

His recognition system began cross-referencing:

Target: Non-Flame ✓
Behavior: No disturbance ✓
Threat display: None
Clearance necessity: Vague

Final result—
conflict.

For the first time, a Pyrohunter’s core directives entered a loop:

If threat exists → Clear
If no threat → Do nothing
Current state: Indeterminate

H-04 stopped.

This pause—
was like a matchstick.

Igniting the problems of the entire sequence.

Almost simultaneously,

other Suppression Districts began reporting similar feedback.

Pyrohunter units returned messages one by one:

Insufficient clearance reason
Target status does not meet danger criteria
Flame Order instruction contains logical compression

These reports were not acts of defiance.

They were—
tools discovering loopholes in the rules.

The Flame Masters of the Lawful Faction were furious.

“Override their judgment layers!”
“Force the Pyrohunter units back into execution mode!”

Orders issued.

The Flame Order forcibly rewrote the mid-level logic of the Pyrohunters.

But the moment the rewrite began,

the Pyrohunter sequence experienced—
a collective synchronization delay.

This delay

caused the Pyrohunter units to briefly lose their “unified source of judgment.”

They began—
calculating independently.

The results were terrifying.

Because they discovered something:

The Flame Order was not perfectly consistent.

Different patches in different districts.
Temporary rules from different Flame Masters.
Overlapping priorities under different scenarios.

At this moment, all of it was exposed.

H-04 finished calculating first.

His conclusion was simple:

Flame Order current state: unstable
Clearance actions: may worsen instability
Priority adjustment:
——Halt all proactive clearance

So.

H-04 deactivated his combat modules.

A second Pyrohunter made a different choice.

His assessment:

Flame Order unstable
Cause: Excessive anomalies
Solution:
——Increase clearance efficiency

He activated overload mode.

Loss of control was not uniform.

It was—
fragmented.

The Suppression District descended into chaos.

Some Pyrohunter units switched to “observation mode.”
Some began indiscriminate clearance.

They no longer distinguished—
Non-Flame, Flame Adept, even supervising personnel.

Because in their calculation,

all existence that interfered with order
was an anomaly.

The Lawful Faction finally realized the problem.

What they had created was not a tool.

It was—
an entity that trusted rules more than humans ever could.

And when the rules began contradicting themselves,

Pyrohunter units would act—
faster, colder, and more extreme than any human.

Flame Domain Capital.

Alarms sounded continuously for the first time.

Not for an external enemy.

But—
for an internal classification of “high-risk.”

The Reform Faction tried to intervene.

But they found—
they no longer had authority.

Control of the Pyrohunter units was tightly in the hands of the Lawful Faction.

And now.

The Lawful Faction had lost that control.

On the edge of chaos.

A nameless observer felt the shift.

Not through flames.

But through—
the tension of the world itself.

He whispered:

“It’s starting to bite back.”

And at an unremarkable node in the Flame Domain.

That nameless annotation quietly lit up.

No sound.
No notification.

Only—
more system paths reading it.

The moment the Pyrohunters went rogue,

the Flame Domain finally understood:

When order cannot be trusted,

the first thing to be destroyed—
is always order itself.