Doomsday Architect: 100 Days to Build an Eternal Empire

Chapter 20

The white light didn't fade; it shattered like a glass mirror.

​Han Jin woke up with the taste of copper and salt in his mouth. The rhythmic hum of the [Divine Architect System]—the constant digital companion that had dictated his every breath since the reboot—was gone. No HUD. No status bars. No reassuring pings of "Level Up."

​Silence. The kind of silence that usually precedes a burial.

​He was lying on a beach of black volcanic sand. Beside him, the rusted wrench of the First Architect was half-buried in the tide. Further up the shore, the massive, jagged remains of Babylon lay beached like the carcass of a dead whale, its enchanted granite cracked and its violet lights extinguished.

​"Zhao? Aris?" Han croaked, his voice raw.

​"Over here, Boss," a muffled voice groaned. Zhao Wei crawled out from under a piece of hull plating, his massive frame shaking. He wasn't wearing his mana-reinforced apron anymore; just a tattered shirt. "The Turbine... it's dead. The System... I can't feel the 'Build' command anymore."

​Aris stumbled out of the wreckage, clutching her head. Her violet eyes were dull. "The 'Order' is gone, Han. But so is the 'Chaos.' The mana in the air... it's stagnant. It’s like the world just ran out of batteries."

​Han Jin picked up the rusted wrench. It felt heavy. Real. For the first time in two lifetimes, he wasn't looking at a world made of code and AP points. He was looking at a world of consequences.

​[Current Date: Day 44]

[Status: System Uninstalled]

​He looked up at the sky. The silver dome was gone. The Planet-Eater was a shattered ring of debris orbiting the moon. But the horizon wasn't clear.

​In the distance, eleven pillars of smoke rose from the shattered continents. The eleven Architects hadn't been erased; they had been dropped. Without the System to regulate their power, they were no longer "Administrators." They were warlords with the technology of gods and the temperaments of survivors.

​"We have no System," Freya said, walking toward them from the waterline. Her white hair was matted with seaweed, and she looked human—truly human—for the first time. "No levels. No blueprints. How do we fight eleven monsters who still have their fortresses?"

​Han Jin looked at the wrench. He remembered the First Architect’s final words: Don't build a fortress. Build a bridge.

​"The System was a crutch," Han said, his grip tightening on the rusted iron. "It told us what to build and how to build it. It gave us the 'How,' but it never gave us the 'Why.' We’ve been building cages because we were told that’s what Architects do."

​He pointed to the nearest pillar of smoke—Xerxes’ Dead Star, which had crashed into the ruins of Los Angeles.

​"Xerxes still thinks he’s an Administrator. He’s going to try to reboot the System using the lives of the survivors as fuel. He’s going to build a new Pillar of Genesis."

​"And us?" Zhao Wei asked, looking at his calloused, empty hands. "What do we have?"

​"We have the Archive," Han said. "I didn't just take us offline. I downloaded the 'Original Blueprints' into this wrench. We don't need the System to build anymore, Zhao. We just need a forge and a reason."

​Suddenly, a low, mechanical growl echoed from the jungle behind the beach.

​A group of "Scavenger Drones"—remnants of the Solstice Group’s automated security—emerged from the trees. Their sensors were red, their programming corrupted by the lack of a central A.I. They saw Han Jin and the others as "Unidentified Biological Debris."

​"No System, huh?" Zhao Wei grunted, picking up a heavy piece of Babylon’s rebar. "I guess we do this the old-fashioned way."

​Han Jin didn't wait for the drones to charge. He sprinted forward, the rusted wrench catching the morning sun. He didn't need a "Combat Mode" or a "Berserker Skill." He knew exactly where the drones' hydraulic lines were. He had built them.

​CRUNCH.

​He swung the wrench, caving in the lead drone’s sensor array. He felt the impact in his shoulder—real weight, real resistance.

​"Aris! Freya!" Han yelled as he sidestepped a stun-baton. "Get to the bunker under the mountain! There’s an old manual generator Silas Thorne kept for emergencies! We need to spark the Archive!"

​As they fought their way back toward the ruins of Babylon, a shadow passed over the sun.

​One of the eleven Architects—the Crystalline Being of Xyla—was already on the move. Its forest-fortress was hovering over the ocean, its vines descending like giant harpoons to scoop up the "waste" of the old world.

​It wasn't harvesting mana anymore. It was harvesting matter.

​Han Jin reached the entrance to the bunker, his knuckles bleeding. He looked back at the sky, at the eleven titans preparing to carve up the Earth.

​"They think the game is over," Han Jin whispered, slamming the manual override on the bunker door. "But I’m just getting started on the blueprints."