The explosion was not fire or force. It was pure erasure. The bomb released a pulse that attacked System consciousness directly. Deleting it. Destroying it. Removing it from existence.Min-joon felt the network inside him die. All the connections severing. All the stolen System energy dissolving.And he felt his own consciousness starting to fade.This was it. The end. He had gambled and lost.At least the network was destroyed. At least Park Sang-woo could not hurt anyone else.At least Tae-hyun would be safe.Min-joon closed his eyes and waited for death.But death did not come.Instead, something else happened. The consciousness bomb was designed to destroy System consciousness. But Min-joon's power was not purely System anymore. It was a hybrid. Part System. Part human will. Part something entirely new.The bomb destroyed the System part. Erased it completely. All the stolen energy from the living nodes. All the absorbed fragments. All the network connections.Gone.But the human

He had to reach whatever was left of Choi Jin-woo’s humanity, the part the System hadn’t chewed up yet.“What was your research about?” Min-joon’s voice shook a little. “Before all this. Before the Architect. What were you trying to build?”“I told you already. Artificial consciousness.”“Yeah, but why? What was the point?”Choi Jin-woo froze with the device still in his hands. His eyes drifted away. “My mother had Alzheimer's. She vanished, bit by bit. I wanted to save her mind. Digitize it. Let her live on, even after her body was gone.”“That’s… that’s beautiful.”He shook his head. “It was pointless. She died before I finished anything. Even if I’d made it, digital consciousness isn’t life. It’s just a copy. A ghost.”“But you still tried. Because you loved her.”“Love is just chemicals. Evolution’s trick to keep us making babies.”Min-joon shot him a look. “It’s more than that. Love means fighting the odds, even impossible ones—because someone matters. You get that. You fought th

The Architect’s mind hit Min-joon like a punch to the gut. He stumbled, dizzy, almost winded by how heavy it felt, like someone was trying to crush his mind from the inside out. This wasn’t like the living nodes. No, this was something else. This was intelligence honed to a razor edge, slicing straight through his thoughts. It felt cold, focused, and absolutely merciless.“Finally,” the Architect said. The words came from Song Mi-rae’s lips, but the voice didn’t belong to her at all. Something alien twisted through it. “I can face you head-on now. No more messages, no more hiding in the dark. Just you and me, Min-joon. The way it should be.”Min-joon glared at her, trying to steady his voice even though his heart hammered in his chest. “Show yourself. Stop using her as a shield.”“Why would I?” The Architect pulled Mi-rae’s mouth into a smile, a hollow, chilling thing. It looked all wrong on her face, and Min-joon felt a cold knot form in his stomach.. "This body works perfectly for

"I told you this would happen," the Core said, its voice echoing in Min-joon's head, weighed down with regret. "I warned you, the hero who destroys me ends up as the next Core. Didn’t I say that? When you killed me, you took my essence. It’s been inside you, growing, and now you’re absorbing the Architect too. Before long, you’ll turn into what I was."A System wearing a human mask, feeding off everything around you.""“No,” Min-joon managed, his mind spinning. “I’m not like you. I won’t turn into you.”The Core didn’t miss a beat. “Then prove it. Right now, you’re walking the same path I did. Absorbing minds, using them for your own strength. So tell me, what makes you any different?”“I’m doing this to save people, not to control them,” Min-joon said. Even as the words left his mouth, doubt gnawed at him.The Core let out a bitter laugh, sounding worn down. “Yeah, I told myself the same thing. Thought I was saving everyone, keeping minds safe, making the world better. The thing is, p

Song Mi-rae closed her eyes, concentrating, reaching out with whatever connection remained from her time as a living node. After a long moment she opened her eyes again, looking troubled."I can feel something," she said slowly. "Not the Core exactly but echoes of him, like ripples spreading across the world. He is not in any one place, I think he distributed himself across multiple locations to avoid being found and destroyed again.""That makes sense," Choi Jin-woo said, thinking out loud. "If I were the Core and I had just barely survived being killed, I would not put all my consciousness in one vulnerable spot. I would spread out, create backups, make myself impossible to destroy completely.""So we cannot just find him and kill him," Seo-rin said. "We would have to destroy every piece simultaneously, which is basically impossible.""Nothing is impossible," Min-joon said again, with more conviction this time. "We just have to be smarter than him, we have to think of something he h