Everett felt a wave of complete exhaustion hit him. His legs shook. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep for a week. He wanted to fall to the floor. But suddenly, the air in the throne room began to hum. The sound was deep and powerful. It did not sound like danger. It sounded like pure, raw energy. Everett opened his tired green eye. He looked at the severed head of Valerius lying on the floor. The giant’s dead body began to glow. It glowed with a blinding, bright golden light. The flesh, the bone, and the bronze armor began to dissolve. The body was turning into pure System data. It broke apart into millions of tiny, floating golden sparks. The sparks swirled together in the air above the dead body. They spun faster and faster, forming a small, tight circle. The light flared brilliantly, forcing Everett to shield his eyes with his pale right hand. When the light faded, the body of the giant was completely gone. In its place, hovering gently in the air, was an object. It w

Everett opened his eye. He looked at the giant, ugly throne sitting in the center of the room. Valerius had built the throne out of the crushed armor, broken helmets, and bent rifles of normal players. It was a throne built on the suffering of the weak. Everett turned his head and looked directly into the lens of the closest camera drone. Millions of people watching the stream shrank back slightly. Even through the screen, Everett’s green eye burned with a fierce, terrifying intensity. "Lyra," Everett said into the radio. In the bunker, Lyra stepped closer to the microphone. Tears were falling down her cheeks. "I am here, Everett.""What should I do?" Everett asked her. Silas threw his hands in the air. "Tell him to eat the core, Lyra! Tell him to heal himself!"Lyra looked at the screen. She looked at Everett’s scarred, bleeding face. She saw how tired he was. She knew how much pain he was in. She wanted him to be healed more than anything in the world. But she also knew his so

The red desert was completely empty. Everett walked alone. He dragged his heavy boots through the dry dirt. Every step took a massive amount of effort. He only had 1 Health Point. He was not a god anymore. He was just a mortal man. His left arm was completely shattered. A short, thick piece of heavy black iron was still stuck straight through his flesh and bone. He had snapped the long end of the spear off, but the metal plug remained. Blood slowly dripped from the wound. His pale, gray, artificial right arm hung by his side. It felt heavy and useless. He was walking North. He was walking toward the freezing, dark lands known as the Northern Wastes. That was where Speaker Rho was building his cyborg army. That was where two million innocent people were trapped in glass pods. Everett did not know how he was going to save them. He did not know how he would fight a machine god with only 1 HP. But he kept walking. He put one foot in front of the other. Suddenly, he heard a loud, roa

"His cyborgs are marching out there," the warrior warned. "They are made of black metal and purple code. They capture anyone they find. They drag them away to the glass pods. We are trapped here. If we leave this glitched town, the cold and the cyborgs will kill us.""Stay near the fires," Everett commanded gently. "Do not fight them. I am going to end this."Everett began to walk through the crowded town square. Silas, Lyra, and Rae followed closely behind him. The players parted, making a wide path for them. Everett looked around the strange town. He saw the stone castle walls mixing with the old brick walls of the modern buildings. He saw a rusty yellow taxi car half-buried inside a stone pillar. The System code here was completely broken. Reality was tearing apart. They walked toward the center of the town. In the center was the massive, ruined grocery store. The glass windows were smashed. The automatic sliding doors were stuck open. Inside, the store was dark, lit only by fl

The freezing, burning hands of the static-husk squeezed Everett’s throat. Everett could not breathe. His vision was turning black. The monster’s face was a swirling mess of black and white television static. Bright red light poured out of its wide, empty mouth. "YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE LEVEL ONE!" the husk screamed again. The voice was a thousand broken machines grinding together. Everett had exactly 1 Health Point left. The hands on his neck were not squeezing his flesh. They were injecting raw deletion code directly into his veins. He felt his life slipping away. He felt the cold, empty void opening up to swallow him. He needed to swing his sword. He needed to cut the monster's arms off. Everett stared at his heavy black greatsword, the Null-Edge. It was lying on the dirty floor of the grocery store, three feet away from his hand. He was too weak to reach it. He was too slow. “Pick it up,” Everett thought desperately. But before the thought even finished forming in hi