2026-01-27 19:37:16Mark Miller stood at the threshold of the rooftop, but instead of the open sky, he found himself plunged into a liminal space that resembled a gargantuan customer service hub, suspended over a burning residential zone. Before him, a new holographic display flickered to life—this time in a dull, uninspiring pale blue, reminiscent of the office software color schemes from the early 2000s.
[WELCOME TO THE LATEST FEATURE: HELPDESK SYSTEM & FIELD PARTNER]
[Your status has been upgraded from ‘Operator’ to ‘Customer Success Hero’.]
"Customer Success Hero?" Mark spat, his blood staining the translucent hologram. "You rebrand me after I’ve killed the man who tried to warn me? And what is that smell? Why does this place reek of old carpets and despair?"
[Helpdesk System: "That aroma is ‘Essence of Productivity,’ Senior Operator Miller. We apologize for the inconvenience. Based on your performance evaluation in Chapter 7, the Board of Directors has determined that you require stricter bureaucratic guidance to avoid ‘free-thinking’ that might be detrimental to the Company."]
"Guidance? You call life-extortion guidance?" Mark tried to step forward, but his mangled legs throbbed in protest.
[Helpdesk System: "Your next assignment: Clearing Residential Zone Sector 4-B. Below you lie the remnants of contract employees who failed to transform. They are an eyesore to the aesthetics of the New World. Instruction: Erase them. And remember, Mark... every interaction must conclude with a Customer Satisfaction Survey."]
Mark peered down through the glass floor. There, in the narrow alleys of the slums, wretched creatures that were once human—perhaps Mark’s own neighbors—crawled with distorted bodies, emitting cries that sounded like radio static.
"You want me to slaughter them?" Mark asked, his voice raspy. "They’re just victims, same as me!"
[Helpdesk System: "Correction: They are ‘Assets That Failed to Depreciate Properly.’ If you refuse, we will consider it a ‘Resignation Without Severance.’ You know what that entails, don't you?"]
Mark recalled the thousand-year sentence in hell. He clenched his fists, feeling the grinding of fingers that were still out of alignment. "Fine. I’ll do it. But I need a better weapon than this rusted iron beam."
[Helpdesk System: "Access to the ‘Black Market’ has been granted. This is an exclusive feature for employees willing to sacrifice moral integrity for the sake of efficiency."]
A menu appeared. It contained no legendary blades, but rather items that were as bizarre as they were lethal:
* Nerve-Nailing Stapler (Price: 200 Points)
* Empathy-Stripping Fluid (Price: Free, with additional contract)
* Budget-Cutting Chainsaw (Price: 500 Points)
"Budget-Cutting Chainsaw?" Mark snorted sarcastically. "The name is so corporate it hurts. I’ll take it. Just dock my points; I stopped caring a long time ago."
[Transaction Successful. Balance: -940 Points. You are now a Platinum-tier Debt Slave!]
Mark leaped from the floating platform, hitting the ground in the center of the residential zone with a heavy thud. The chainsaw in his hand roared—its sound wasn't that of a gasoline engine, but the collective screams of thousands of people forced into overtime.
A monster resembling a pile of flesh with a fax machine for a head lunged at him. Mark did not hesitate. With one horizontal sweep, he cleaved the beast in two. Blood and fax paper erupted everywhere.
[Helpdesk System: "Target Eliminated. Please request a performance rating immediately."]
"What?" Mark stood stunned in the middle of the battlefield.
[Helpdesk System: "Standard Procedure: ‘Thank you for using our elimination services. Please provide a 5-star rating for your satisfaction!’ Please recite the phrase now, or the session will be deemed invalid."]
"You’ve got to be joking! I just butchered that thing!"
[Helpdesk System: "Time remaining for rating: 5 seconds... 4..."]
"Dammit! Fine! Thank you for using our elimination services, please give me five stars!" Mark roared while decapitating another monster.
[System processing... Rating received: 1 Star. Customer Comment: ‘Messy work, blood got on my shoes.’]
"Wait, what—"
ZAPPP!
A bolt of neon-blue lightning struck Mark’s shoulder from the clear sky. Mark was thrown back, his body convulsing on the cracked asphalt. The smell of scorched flesh filled the air.
"Aaaargh! What the hell was that?!" Mark screamed, struggling to stand while fighting the tremors in his heart.
[Helpdesk System: "A 1-Star rating results in instant physical penalty as a form of ‘Retraining.’ Please improve your service attitude, Mark. Remember, the customer—even the ones you are killing—is king."]
"Customer?! He was trying to eat my head, you lunatic!" Mark rose, his chainsaw snarling once more. Two Elite monsters shaped like couriers, their legs replaced by metal wheels, streaked toward him.
Mark evaded with a painful, acrobatic maneuver. He slashed the wheels of one, sending it tumbling, before driving his saw into its chest. "Eat this! And don't forget... to give me... five stars, you bastard!"
[Rating received: 4 Stars. Comment: ‘Fast, but the operator was too aggressive.’]
[System: "Close call, Mark. A 4-Star rating doesn't trigger lightning, but it doesn't grant a healing bonus either. Keep up the hard work!"]
Mark laughed maniacally. "This is insane. The world ends, and I’m trapped in the most toxic Customer Service simulation in the universe."
He continued the slaughter, moving through ruined homes. David and Sarah remained on the platform above, watching in horror as Mark transformed into a killing machine that incessantly screamed customer service slogans with a tone of pure hatred.
"Why are you doing this, System?" Mark asked, wiping blood from his eyes. "Why the bureaucracy? Kenapa the ratings? Why not just let me kill?"
[Helpdesk System: "The emotional energy from frustration and forced compliance is a far purer fuel than mere fear. You aren't just killing, Mark. You are ‘Producing.’"]
Mark stopped in front of a residential door that was still intact. Inside, he saw a small monster—perhaps once a child—clutching a mangled teddy bear. The monster's eyes stared at Mark, hollow and vacant.
[Helpdesk System: "Residual Asset detected. Clear this zone now to meet your daily quota."]
Mark lowered his saw. His hands were shaking. "This... this is too much."
[Helpdesk System: "Warning: Indication of insubordination. If the target is not eliminated within 10 seconds, we will automatically issue a 0-Star Rating. Penalty: Immediate Execution."]
"Mark, don't!" Sarah screamed from the platform. "Don't do it!"
Mark looked at the small monster. Then, he looked toward the sky, toward the mechanical eye of The Auditor that was surely still watching him.
"System," Mark said in a deep, frigid voice. "Open the Black Market. Now."
[Menu opened. What are you looking for?]
"Is there anything that can silence a ‘Helpdesk Voice’ like yours?"
[Helpdesk System: "Hahaha. Very funny, Mark. Such an item costs 1,000,000 Points. You couldn't afford it in a hundred lifetimes."]
Mark grinned. A mad idea took root in his half-shattered mind. "I don't need to buy it. I just need to give a one-star rating... to myself."
[System: "What do you—"]
Mark spun his chainsaw and slammed it into the holographic projector platform hovering beside him, intentionally wounding his own arm in the process.
[System: "ERROR! Self-Harm detected! Self-Evaluation: 0 Stars! Commencing maximum lightning penalty—"]
"Come on!" Mark challenged the sky. "Hit me with everything you’ve got! If I die, your quarterly quota is ruined! The Auditor will fire you, you bureaucratic bot!"
The sky turned a deep, bruised red. Thousands of lightning bolts gathered at a single point, directly above Mark Miller's head. Mark stood tall, letting Sarah and David witness him defying this mad new god.
Just before the lightning struck, a new notification—colored a dark, bruised purple—erupted across the blue screen of the Helpdesk System.
[NOTIFICATION FROM ‘THE UNDERGROUND’: Secret Acquisition Offer Detected. Wish to hijack this penalty into a counter-attack?]
Mark laughed amidst the storm. "Click ‘Yes,’ you idiot! Click ‘Yes’!"
The lightning struck. A blast of light blinded everything. But instead of a death rattle, the sound that followed was the explosion of a system undergoing a massive short circuit.
Had Mark successfully hijacked the system, or had he simply plunged into an even darker contract within 'The Underground'?
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
CHAPTER 110: THE ARCHITECT OF BARBARISM
Mark Miller’s footsteps echoed heavily across the cold metal floor of Sector 14, leaving behind the lingering remnants of data bursts from the previous storage vault. The scent of burnt ozone and the suffocating heat radiating from the server engines behind the walls felt like a physical weight. Red emergency lights pulsed rhythmically along the corridor, casting a ghastly hue over Mark’s face and sharpening the lines of exhaustion and stony fury etched there. Behind him, David monitored his digital tablet with trembling fingers, while Sarah maintained the rearguard, her binary rifle leveled and ready to spit pure energy into the encroaching darkness.They had just managed to breach the black particle curtain that barred the way to the primary research laboratory. Mark came to a halt before a terminal desk unlike any he had ever encountered. It was crafted from obsidian glass that reflected their shadows with an eerie clarity, as if the surface itself were scanning their biological es
CHAPTER 109: DESPERATE MEASURES
The air inside the R&D core database felt suffocatingly heavy, as if gravity here exerted twice the force of the previous sectors. A sharp scent of ozone mingled with the stifling heat radiating from thousands of crystal data pillars that loomed toward the darkened ceiling. Mark Miller stepped forward, his legs still feeling a trace of weakness after weathering the cognitive onslaught of the Logic Traps. Behind him, David kept a frantic eye on his scanner, while Sarah took up a position at the mouth of a narrow corridor, her index finger never straying from the trigger of her binary rifle.They now stood before the final gate, a digital architectural anomaly known as the Causality Firewall. Unlike steel doors or light partitions, the barrier ahead was a curtain of slow-swirling black particles, emitting static waves that made Mark’s skin crawl. Every time a particle collided with the air, a faint hiss echoed—a sound that reminded Mark of the thousands of agonized whispers he had heard
CHAPTER 108: THE LOGIC TRAP
The pulsing red emergency lights along the R&D corridor created a sickening illusion that the metallic walls of Sector 14 were breathing, contracting and expanding in sync with Mark Miller’s erratic heartbeat. Mark came to a halt before a massive gate. It wasn't forged from steel, but rather from a lattice of liquid crystal screens displaying thousands of raw data streams flowing vertically. This was the entrance to the R&D core database—the final bastion holding the secrets of what truly happened to test subjects like the figure he had seen in the earlier footage.David attempted to link his device to the gate’s interface, but a static shock wave instantly repelled the panel, sending the young man tumbling backward. The screens in front of them abruptly turned a blinding, clinical white, and a layered mechanical voice—sounding as if it were composed of thousands of overlaid human voices—echoed through the stale air."Access denied. Cognitive Defense Protocol engaged. Prove your logic
CHAPTER 107: SHREDDED MEMORIES
The Sector 14 corridor felt increasingly claustrophobic, its metallic walls encased in a web of pulsing fiber optics that carried raw data like lifeblood through the veins of a titan. The sharp tang of scorched ozone and the stifling heat radiating from the server banks behind the bulkheads made the air thick and heavy. Mark Miller moved forward, still reeling from the shock of the previous archive room. His mind was trapped in a loop, haunted by the echo of a child’s voice calling out for "Father" within the system—a ghost in the machine that played over and over like a corrupted tape.Behind him, David and Sarah remained on high alert. David wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, his eyes fixed on a scanner showing the Management’s defense systems growing increasingly aggressive. Sarah held her weapon at the ready, though her gaze frequently drifted toward Mark with a look of profound concern. She could tell their leader was standing on the precipice of an emotional breakdown."Ma
CHAPTER 106: THE FAMILY QUEST
The wail of the alarms from Sector 12 still rang in the distance, creating a constant vibration that pulsed through the cold metal floors of Sector 13. Mark Miller moved with uneven breaths. Each intake of air felt like inhaling shards of glass—sharp and suffocating. The haunting images of the Thousand Souls Project lingered behind his eyelids, making the hand he used to grip the decryption device tremble violently. Behind him, David kept a constant watch on his digital tablet, trying to ensure that the Auditor pursuit had not yet reached their coordinates, while Sarah stood tall, her binary rifle ready to spit pure energy.They now found themselves in a room vastly different from the previous laboratories. This place more closely resembled a derelict digital archive. Rows of old terminals embedded in the walls emitted a dim, static orange glow. The air here felt damper, carrying the scent of burnt circuit dust and lingering ozone. Mark approached a central terminal that appeared to s
CHAPTER 105: THE THOUSAND SOULS PROJECT
The darkness in the corridor leading to the heart of Sector 12 grew increasingly thick, as if the very air were becoming saturated with an invisible charge of data. Mark Miller moved forward, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he tried to shake off the lingering nausea from his encounter with the Humanity Algorithm in the previous room. Behind him, David remained preoccupied with a decryption device that was now emitting a high-pitched hum—a sign that the Management's local defence systems were attempting a passive counter-attack against their hardware. Sarah held the rear, her binary rifle trained on the darkness they had just emerged from, her eyes sharp for any signs of pursuit that might appear at any moment.They arrived before a heavy steel door devoid of any physical control panels. In the centre of the door was a raised circular symbol bisected by thousands of fine lines, resembling a complex neural diagram. Mark placed his palm in the centre of the symbol. The Illegal Ware
You may also like
The Ultimate Heir System
Ramdani Abdul78.4K viewsSkythunder System
Scoco21.4K viewsEast Meets West (Cultivation World)
OROCHIsBLADE29.4K viewsIt All Started With Lightning
monstersells38.3K viewsTHE CONTINENTAL HEIR
Bigsnowy 1.7K viewsRise of the betrayed overlord
Purity 215 viewsJust Became a Vampire, I Clinged to Life by Grinding Health
Cheerful Atmosphere Group1.8K viewsMastering the fates with Role-play system
De_law1720.4K views