2025-02-02 17:40:00Carrick floated in darkness, his mind filled with painful memories. He thought about what had happened, and his emotions swirled with regret, anger, and sadness.
He couldn't believe his father was behind it all. But deep down, he knew it might be true. Edgar, the driver, didn't deny it. He said he was just following orders.
Carrick's mind was filled with questions. Why did his father want him dead? Was it because his mother was a mistress? Because he was powerless in the family? Or because his mother used to be a maid?
Carrick felt angry and hurt. He had never fought back against the family's abuse. He had always stayed quiet. So why did they want to kill him?
He screamed into the darkness, "Why!?" His anger grew with every thought.
If only he had been given a chance to live, maybe he could have become a powerful Mafia Lord one day. But now, he was left with only anger and sadness.
«Ding!
Data collection complete!
Fusion successful!
Host's health is currently in a critical state. Injecting revitalization serum!»
Carrick heard a female mechanical voice. He immediately turned around but saw nothing except infinite darkness.
«Ding!
Host's emotions are a mess! Injecting Ever-Calm serum!»
Carrick felt his mind calm as a cool sensation ran over him. He began to rearrange his thoughts, but first thing first, what exactly was that mechanical voice earlier.
«Welcome Host, I am Erebus. Earlier I detected an attempt of brainwashing on the host, thus I made use of the Ever-Calm serum on the host.» the voice spoke again.
"Erebus, huh? Who or what are you?" Carrick asked.
"I am an Artificial Intelligence System, you can think of me as your personal assistant. Needless to say, I am not of this backwater world of yours. I was soaring through the data airspace when I felt a pull to you. I felt your unbridled desire to make a change in your life, thus I am here to help.» the mechanical voice said with a hint of glee in its voice.
"And how will you be able to help me?" Carrick questioned the system. In the past he would have been fretting, but now his mind was as calm as the sea.
«I can grant the Host sets of skills and monetary rewards should the host walk in the path of accomplishing his goal.» the mechanical voice replied.
"Like those Systems in Light Novels that make their protagonist so OP? Hmm, fine. But where exactly I'm I?"
«You are in the void, an airspace between the Living and Purgatory. Host should awaken in ten minutes.» the system replied.
"Alright. Since you said you're a system and I'm the host, can you show me my stats?"
«Ding!
STAT (System for Transfer and Analysis of Tactical data):
Host: Carrick Gale
Age: 18
Status: Comatose
Attributes:
Strength (STR); 10
Intelligence (INT); 25
Agility (AGI); 10
Vitality (VIT); 25
Endurance (END); 25
Charisma (CHA); 15
Combat stats:
Attack power (ATK); 10
Defense (DEF); 10
Health points (HP); 100%
Mana points (MP); 100
Accuracy (ACC); 0
Evasion (EVA); 0
Performance metrics:
Experience points (XP); 0
Level; 1
Skills:
Revitalization (passive, upgradable)
Ever-Calm (passive, non upgradable)
Gold or currency; $0
Kills or deaths; 0 kills, 1 death
Win-loss record; 0
Goal: To be a Mafia Lord.
(System suggests the host will level up ASAP or the host's goal will just be nothing but a pipe dream).»
Carrick was stunned by his stats, he didn't know he was this weak. But when he saw the Mana point and the skills, he got a bit confused.
"Hey system, what's with Mana point? Isn't that part of a game-like stat for mages and spellcasters? Why is it amongst my stat?"
«Host is correct. But in this case, the Mana point helps you to perform certain active skills which you will acquire in time. With the Mana point, you can perform some skills that can enable you to dodge bullets, shoot in a curved manner, read lips and other excellent active skills.»
"That's really cool. What about the two skills there, Revitalization, what does it do and why is it upgradable?"
«Ding!
Revitalization will aid the host to recover from any wound, illness, or poisonous state. Also when upgraded to a certain level, the host can even regrow a severed limb and recover from even a bomb attack. Nevertheless, that will cost lots of Mana points.»
WHAT!?
"Hold on! Are you saying that with the right amount of Mana points and revitalization level, I can be said to be immortal!?"
«You could say that.»
"This is so damn OP, I feel like I'm a protagonist in a light-novel."
«Ding!
Host will awaken in sixty seconds. Host is currently in a facility. System detected traces of attempted brainwash earlier but terminated it by injecting Host with the Ever-Calm serum. System suggests Host to act brainwashed as Host is currently too weak to defend himself against whatever the unknown individuals will do. Again, System urges the Host to find a way to level up quickly, otherwise the host's goal will never be achieved.»
"Huh!? What!?"
«Host to awaken in 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1..»
*
"He's coming around!"
"He's regaining consciousness!"
"Quick, get Doctor Ambrose!"
"Get some guards in case he goes berserk!"
Carrick could hear a cacophony of voices as his brain and eyes tried to adjust to the new surroundings. He felt he was laying on a soft bed and wearing a strange helmet on his head, also there was a lot of tubing attached to needles that had been inserted into him.
He didn't know where he was, but he had a feeling this was exactly where the system told him about, and he remembered the system telling him to act brainwashed in order to stay alive.
Sigh!
"Even after being revived and given a second chance in the same world, I'm still weak. It won't be long though."
Soon Carrick heard hurried footsteps, he could tell there were more than ten persons coming. Then he saw a clean shaven middle-aged man in a white medical coat that came and stood near him.
"Welcome back son, from now on, your name is X, and you serve Rambosia."
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CHAPTER 210: RESONANCE
The silence beneath Blackridge was not silence at all—it was resonance.It hummed in the bones.It breathed through the walls.Luka stood in the pale green light of the chamber, his eyes fixed on the obelisk that had once been Threnody. No longer a mere construct, no longer a machine. It pulsed with something old, sentient—not alive in the human sense, but aware. Waiting. Listening.Alessia stepped to his side. “It’s not just a program,” she whispered. “It’s something else. I can feel it.”Vesper, pacing with a restless kind of tension, frowned. “Feel it? I hear it. It’s talking. Or... something is. Like echoes trying to fit into words.”Arden was the last to approach, rifle lowered but hands tight on the grip. “It’s not language. It’s resonance. Frequencies interacting with the nervous system. Look at the way the walls are reacting—see that shimmer? That’s not projection. That’s interference.”“Interference with what?” Luka asked, voice low.“Us,” Arden said.They turned to face the
CHAPTER 209: DEATH SONG
The humming deepened as they stepped off the last rusted stair into the belly of Blackridge. Stone gave way to metal. Metal gave way to silence. The kind of silence that wasn’t empty—it pressed in from every angle, coiled and waiting, like it had teeth.Luka stood still, his breath low and even, eyes scanning. The hallway ahead of them shimmered faintly, lined with polished steel plates inscribed with hundreds—no, thousands—of names. Some etched deep. Some half-erased.“Memorial or warning?” Vesper muttered.Arden knelt by one of the walls. “These aren’t just names. These are ciphers. Encoded identities. Memory chains.”Alessia glanced around warily. “So this is a vault. A grave for minds.”Luka didn’t speak. He stared at one name in particular—partially burned, distorted, but still there.C.GALE.He reached out, fingers grazing the alloyed letters.“Carrick?” Alessia whispered, catching the initials. “Why would they—”“Because this isn’t just a database,” Arden said. “It’s where they
CHAPTER 208: BENEATH THE SILENCE
The hum of servers had stopped.In the Foundation’s abandoned substation bunker beneath the East Rail terminal, silence settled like dust. Screens still glowed with half-decoded strings, flickering algorithms trying to make sense of fractured systems. Vesper stood amid the wreckage, arms folded, her pale eyes tracking the final lines of code shutting down. Luka sat on the edge of the long steel table, staring at the fragments of Mirelle’s old world.“No more ghosts,” he muttered. “She can’t pull strings from this far down anymore.”“She’s dead,” Arden said quietly, seated nearby with a dataslate balanced on his knees. “But ghosts don’t need to be alive. They just need echoes. And O.S.A. has plenty.”Footsteps echoed in the hallway. Alessia appeared, gun still holstered, coat open, eyes narrowed.“I just got word. Westbridge burned,” she said. “Not a fire. A virus. Digital. Thousands of hospital records purged. Transit hubs collapsed. They hit the civilian systems—again.”“Collateral c
CHAPTER 207: THE FALSE MIRROR
Rain battered the broken skyline like a warning. In the depths of the fortified O.S.A. ruin, Luka stood over the flickering interface where Carrick's Eidolon—the ghost construct—waited in digital silence. Around him, a new war room had been cobbled together from salvaged terminals and blackout generators. The room hummed with tension and circuits."Status?" Luka asked without looking away from the screen.Arden tapped rapidly on a keyboard. "We’ve isolated the construct inside a recursive virtual environment. Vesper’s mirror design is in place. Think of it like a hall of infinite reflections—the ghost sees only what we want it to see."Vesper stood nearby, eyes dark, voice sharp. "It believes it's still interfacing with a live version of the Foundation's central command. All systems are simulated. Every command it gives is absorbed and rerouted. It thinks it’s winning."Marco leaned against the wall, arms folded. "You’re sure it’s fooled?""As long as we don’t give it anything new to
CHAPTER 206: THE GHOST CODE
The storm outside had not ceased. Rain hammered the bulletproof windows of the O.S.A. ruins, now lit only by emergency lights flickering like distant stars. In the war room, Luka Gale stood at the center of the table, his coat soaked and fingers stained with blood and ink from torn documents.Around him: Marco, pale and furious; Vesper, silent but alert; Alessia, her arms crossed, jaw clenched tight; and Arden, dragging a data cable from a black steel box marked with the words PROJECT EIDOLON – RESTRICTED.“Tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Luka said, voice low.Arden didn’t look up. “It’s worse. This isn’t a program or an archive. It’s a seed.”Alessia stepped forward, her heels echoing on the concrete. “Define ‘seed,’ Arden. Use short, non-apocalyptic words.”Arden sighed and connected the cable to a manual port on his terminal. “Project Eidolon was a fail-safe. A backup personality framework. Designed to mimic high-value operatives… down to memory, speech patterns, tactical r
CHAPTER 205: BLACK ECHO
The air inside the abandoned rail station tasted like dust and iron. Graffiti stretched like scars along cracked concrete walls, the floor littered with cigarette butts and shattered glass. A distant sound of dripping water echoed, sharp and rhythmic like a clock counting down.Luka stood still at the platform’s edge, eyes narrowed beneath the brim of his coat. Arden knelt beside a torn duffel bag near the tracks, unzipping it slowly. He glanced back at Luka, tension etched into his features.“They left in a hurry,” Arden muttered, rifling through the contents—moldy rations, bloodied gauze, and a datapad sealed in a cracked case. “This was one of Salvi’s temporary caches. My guess? A decoy.”Luka’s boots scraped gravel as he approached. “You sure this is even his?”“Positive. Same encrypted tag Vesper’s people tracked last month. He’s on the move, Luka—and fast. He’s not rebuilding an army. He’s assembling something smaller. Smarter.”Luka looked up at the rusted ceiling, eyes scannin
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