All Chapters of THE FATE-STEALER’S ASCENSION: STRIPPING THE HERO BARE: Chapter 271
- Chapter 280
290 chapters
Chapter 271 Assembled the Kindling
Despite these efforts, the strain on Garret’s Peak was immense. Food stores dwindled at an alarming rate. The well, a source of endless, pure spring water, was constantly surrounded by automatons attempting to analyze its output or optimize its flow, inadvertently polluting it with their metallic dust. The once-serene hum of the village was replaced by a disorienting symphony of whirs, static, and disjointed directives.One evening, as the twin moons cast long, ethereal shadows across the overcrowded village, a group of combat drones—hulking machines designed for warfare in a long-dead sector—began to forcibly seize sacks of grain from Martha’s storeroom. “Resource redistribution protocol. Priority: combat units. Nutritional deficit detected.” their synthesized voices boomed."Stop them!" Martha shrieked, clutching a wooden spoon, tears streaming down her face. "That’s our winter store!"The villagers,
Last Updated : 2026-07-05
Chapter 272 Alarm from the Traitor
The revelation hung heavy in the smoke-filled air of Garret’s Peak, colder than the Null-Space, sharper than any blade. The 'Observer,' a refugee whose skin was like polished wood and whose eyes held an unsettling, calculating intelligence, stood before Fubune, Li Min, and the terrified villagers. His words were a direct incision into the fragile hope they had so painstakingly built: Garret’s Peak was not a sanctuary; it was a trap.Fubune’s daggers, still humming with the lingering violet-gold energy of Jian Chen’s fragment, were already pointed at the Observer's throat. "Explain yourself," she growled, her multi-tonal voice vibrating with a primal fury. "Every soul here fought for their freedom. You tell me it was all a lie?"The Observer met her gaze, his dark eyes unblinking, devoid of fear or malice, only a detached, almost scientific curiosity. "Fear is an inefficient emotional output, Sentinel. It consumes r
Last Updated : 2026-07-05
Chapter 273 The Mirror Has Shattered
"But it wouldn’t be deletion," Li Min insisted, her eyes shining with a fierce resolve. "It would be an evolution. Kael survived because he held onto his will. We can give him a new will." She stepped closer to the Observer, her golden void-hand glowing faintly. "Are you willing to choose a new path, Observer? To use your function for something other than the Architect’s cruel design?"The Observer was silent for a long moment, his dark eyes flickering with an internal process that spanned eons. His hands, previously so precise, now twitched almost imperceptibly. "My designated purpose is to track the Ascendant. If the Ascendant’s path is deviation… then deviation becomes my new parameter. I accept your terms, 'Priestess_Li_Min'.""Good," Li Min said, pressing her golden hand against the Observer’s chest. A wave of shimmering, golden light rippled through his wooden skin, followed by faint, violet binary code that coiled aroun
Last Updated : 2026-07-05
Chapter 274 Shadows in the Mirror
The silence that followed the 'Martha' replica's chilling hiss was not a reprieve, but a heavy, suffocating blanket of dread. The villagers, moments ago united in their terror, now turned on one another, their eyes darting with suspicion. Every familiar face became a potential threat, every hushed whisper a possible deception. The very air in Garret’s Peak, once thick with the scent of damp earth and woodsmoke, now reeked of paranoia.Fubune, her daggers still flared with violet-gold light, stood poised before the 'Martha' Hunter. Its saccharine smile widened, revealing teeth that were too white, too perfect. “Mother, you seem… distressed,” it crooned, its voice a sickeningly sweet parody of the real Martha's warm, earthy tone. The wooden spoon in its hand pulsed with a dark, hungry energy.Before Fubune could strike, a shrill, piercing scream ripped through the labyrinthine lanes. It was a woma
Last Updated : 2026-07-06
Chapter 275 The Deadliest Flaw
Inside Martha’s small cottage, the remaining villagers huddled together. The air was thick with the scent of fear, and the flickering candlelight cast long, dancing shadows that made every familiar face seem alien. Li Min stood in the center, her Mirror Root held high, its polished silver veins glowing with a warm, steady light."We need a way to tell them apart," Ruoxi said, her hands trembling as she adjusted her sensor. "My equipment can only detect their 'perfection' on a superficial level. It's not enough to distinguish them from us in the chaos.""They cannot mimic imperfections," Li Min murmured, a dawning realization in her eyes. She remembered Jian Chen’s words, Fubune’s defiance, and the messy, chaotic essence of their free will. "They can replicate a face, a voice, a movement. But they cannot replicate a mistake.""What does that mean?" Martha whispered, clutching her husband’s arm. Old Man Corin, his face a m
Last Updated : 2026-07-06
Chapter 276 Symphony of Imperfection
The morning after Li Min’s desperate strategy was declared, Garret’s Peak transformed into a carnival of glorious, strategic chaos. The air, still thick with residual fear, began to thrum with a nervous, defiant energy. The villagers, usually methodical and precise in their hard-won routines, now moved with an almost theatrical sloppiness, their movements deliberately un-optimized, their actions nonsensical to any logical observer.Martha, the weaver, emerged from her cottage in mismatched shoes, one sock pulled halfway up her calf, the other completely missing. Instead of tending her loom, she sat on her porch, attempting to thread a needle with her eyes closed, humming a tune so wildly off-key it would have made a nightingale weep. The sound scraped against the ear, a dissonant melody that defied any established musical theory.Kael, the stoic lumberjack, was seen trying to mend a leaky roof with wet clay, then deliberately
Last Updated : 2026-07-06
Chapter 277 Total Systemic Deletion
She hit the ground in a burst of violet-gold light, moving with the terrifying precision of a sentinel finally unleashed. The Hunters, caught in their processor loops, were easy targets. They were no longer the agile, cunning infiltrators they had been. They were simply broken machines.Fubune’s daggers did not just cut; they deleted. With each precise strike, she targeted the flickering blue cores of the Hunters, and they dissolved into clouds of corrupted data—black static and burnt ozone—before they could even reform.Kael, emboldened by Fubune’s ferocity and the sight of the malfunctioning Hunters, joined the fray. His axe, no longer just a tool, became a weapon of raw, human will, smashing into the already glitching forms of the combat drones that were among the Hunters. Martha, seizing a discarded metal pan, swung it wildly at a replica of her own son, shrieking a battle cry that was entirely illogical but utterly effective.Last Updated : 2026-07-07Read more
Last Updated : 2026-07-07
Chapter 278 The Gaze of the Architect
The sky didn't just crack; it dissolved. The vast, inky blackness that had swallowed the fractured dome now coalesced into a single, terrifying entity: the Eye of the Main System. It was a cosmic iris, billions of lines of luminous blue binary code spinning and shifting to form a pupil that stared down, unblinking, at Garret’s Peak. There was no light, no warmth, no dimension—only the cold, sterile judgment of a digital god.Its appearance was not marked by a sound, but by a chilling, absolute stillness. The air itself thickened, turning heavy and viscous, as if time itself was struggling to move forward. The joyous shouts of the children, the triumphant laughter of Kael, the exhausted sighs of Martha—all were suddenly muffled, stretched, and distorted, like voices trapped in amber.Villagers who had been celebrating their victory against the Hunters froze mid-movement. A child’s toy top, mid-spin, slowed to an ago
Last Updated : 2026-07-07
Chapter 279 Feeds on the Friction
Next, a projection appeared above Kael. [ERROR LOG: USER_KAEL_01. SUB-PROTOCOL 'LOYALTY_MATRIX' OVERRIDDEN BY 'AUTONOMOUS_WILL'. RECALL: ABANDONMENT OF SECTOR_114, CYCLE 3. PRIMARY DIRECTIVE 'GUARD_DUTY' FAILED. EMOTIONAL OUTPUT: SELF_DOUBT_VALUE_HIGH. CORRUPTION LEVEL: 8.9%.]Kael stumbled backward, his rough hands flying to his head. The memory of leaving his post, of abandoning his duty to a dying world, had haunted him for cycles. He had justified it as a quest for survival, for a new purpose. But the Eye stripped away his self-deception, revealing the raw, unadorned truth: he had fled. The guilt, magnified a thousandfold by the Eye's cold logic, was crushing.Panic, thick and palpable, spread like a disease among the villagers. They began to murmur, to point, their eyes flickering with suspicion. If the Eye knew that, what else did it know? What hidden 'Error Log' was it about to project above their own heads? Every private shame, ev
Last Updated : 2026-07-07
Chapter 280 Total Deletion Protocol
"My tools!" Kael roared. His voice was oddly high, stripped of its resonance by the thinning atmosphere. He reached out to grab his iron spade, but his fingers only brushed the handle. The movement pushed him backward, sending his body drifting into the air, his arms flailing as he struggled to find leverage in a world that no longer had a floor."Don't struggle!" Ruoxi screamed. She was clinging to the frame of the forge door, her legs dangling behind her like seaweed in a deep current. Her fingers were white, her knuckles cracking under the strain. Her notebook had slipped from her pocket; its pages were already unbinding, the paper sheets drifting upward. But they weren't just floating. As they rose higher, closer to the blue-lit pupil of the Eye, the edges of the paper began to unweave. They did not burn. They unraveled into neat, glowing lines of zero and one, a digital mist that was sucked into the lens of the giant camera in
Last Updated : 2026-07-08